Edit: These are the original rules that I abandoned. Look for a newer topic with updated rules.
In 1989, when I was a junior in high school, I took a computer programming class. We had a teacher, Larry Welch, who would frequently tell us that school was not the real world, and what we did there only occasionally rose above complete meaninglessness. "
Life isn't fair,"
he would say when I whined about my program assignment running perfectly at home, but not on the school's computers. And then, when I presented an irrelevant argument about why Microsoft BASIC was in some ways superior to Borland Pascal, he changed my C+ to a B- because "
debating is a valuable skill which is quite useful in some situations, like when you are in a debate club, for example."
The man ruled his classroom with the decadent detachment of a Caesar. I once watched him dismantle an overhead speaker because he hated having his lectures interrupted.
One of the more valuable lessons I got from Larry Welch's unique style of teaching, was the way that groups of people are rewarded or punished in the real world. Larry was a big fan of making us choose people to work with on a project, and then giving us all the same grade for the project. So if you are the only solid member of your team, then you might end up doing all the work--a situation to be avoided! Or if you couldn't write one error-free line of code, then you still had a chance to buddy up to the right people and let them carry you. Just like real life, right? An important thing was getting good people on your team quickly before they were snatched up. These team exercises were my first introduction to the ruthless and unfair politics that frequently come up in software projects.
Contest Rules
For our August contest, things won't get terribly ruthless and unfair, but the Welchian standard of one-team-one-grade will be observed. Each team will be responsible for creating a film, which is actually a hold that presents a skit, monologue, musical number, or similar theatrical presentation. Teams must have exactly three members, and no member can be on multiple teams.
The film will meet these criteria:
- The film should be no longer than 15 minutes.
- The film can be Eighth-related, but doesn't need to be. The same rules of conduct for forum posting (i.e. no swearing, discussion of illegal activity, copyright infringement) apply to the presentation.
- No puzzle-solving or interactive elements. Player movements can't affect the presentation other than perhaps to make it pause or progress.
- Characters will have recorded speech.
- The completed film (hold file) must be
e-mailed to me by
Local Time:08-20-2005 at 01:00 AM. You can't make multiple submissions. Avoid sending updates or multiple versions of the same hold.
The Film Festival
We will "
screen"
everyone's productions in our own little festival. Your film will actually get a distribution beyond the forum-going crowd! I'll tell you more about that later.
Prizes
After the screening, we'll have a rating poll for the films. Each member of the team with the top-rated film will get 100 rank points and an item of his choosing from
the Prize Pile. (Yeah, that's right--we're tripling the prize count for this one.) Second-place winners get 50 rank points apiece, and third-place get 25 rank points. If the team has one or more members that have never participated in a Caravel contest before, then everyone gets +10 for each rookie on the team. That's how Larry Welch would do it.
Team-Forming Strategy
How can you get a team together? Well, you might pick some roles and try to fill them. For example:
- Writer (writes the script for the characters)
- Audio engineer (edits voice recording samples into clips that can be used)
- Hold scripter (assembles everything together in a hold)
If you have an idea for the type of production you want to make, then you're probably going to be the writer and team leader. You can post here with your idea or a first draft of your script, and recruit for two other people to help. If you don't have a project idea, you could also post here saying what kinds of things you'd like to do, and someone may invite you onto their team. Or you could handle it all by contacting people privately--the old shoulder-tapping method. It's up to you!
So let's get some teams going! This contest is definitely very experimental. A year ago I wouldn't have even attempted to do something this tricky, but I think you guys can pull it off. We just need some bold people to start things moving.
-Erik
____________________________
The Godkiller - Chapter 1 available now on Steam. It's a DROD-like puzzle adventure game.
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[Last edited by ErikH2000 at 08-06-2005 08:35 PM]