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Hackjam #2 - Rules & Discussion


Greetings, all Hackjam fans! Welcome one and all to this worldbending journey. After a whole week of preparing your teams and sitting tight doing absolutely nothing else, scarcely even managing to sleep I imagine, it's finally time to embark.

Below the rules, you will find the theme of this Hackjam (Make sure to caaarefully pay attention to all the rules before, of course. No scrolling down to see the theme before reviewing the rules, I have eyes everywhere).


Regarding Teams
As this is a strictly team-based event, there are some rules to follow when it comes to how that's gonna work. Below the rules are also included the guidelines from the team creation thread if you don't have a team to your name yet.

Team Rules
  • Each team must be a group of 2 to 5 people. No more than five (5) people can be on a team, nor can you participate by yourself.
  • Anyone that contributes materially* to a team's entry is considered a team member. This does not apply to publicly available resources used in your team's entry (see Submission Rules for crediting guidelines).
  • Giving feedback or testing entries does not make someone a team member, so there are no limitations there. You can even test for other teams.
  • You cannot be a member of more than one team. You are allowed to provide help to others.
  • Banned users cannot participate in this contest. If we find out that a banned user participated with a team and that information was withheld, the entire team may be punished accordingly.
  • People without SMWCentral accounts can join a team, but their identity must be easily verifiable, and they must follow all of the above rules. At least one team member has to have a site account to submit the team's entry.
  • You cannot make a project thread unless you have a team. Solo threads will be closed and repeat offenders will be disqualified from the contest.

Any entry or team that does not comply with the above rules will be disqualified.

*a material contribution means that that person has either ported music, created graphics, ASM or any other private-use resource for the hack, or designed aspects of the game such as levels, title screen, overworld, etc. during the contest period. Using a pre-existing resource (public or otherwise) does not make that person a team member.

Team-building Guidelines
  • Try to have good synergy in your team. If you're good on level design and graphics but need help with music, look for a music partner!
  • On the other hand, don't be too picky when building a team. This isn't a ranked contest, so use this as a chance to connect with other users!
  • Make sure your teammates and potential teammates are easily contactable! This is supposed to be a cooperative event, so make sure you all have a place to chat and share resources. Be sure to share your preferred method of communication, whether it's via Discord, forum PM or a PO Box
  • Remember, you only need two people on a team to submit your entry, so don't stress over having too few members! It's better to make something
    with one other person than to make nothing because you wanted a full team of 5.
  • No one is required to join your team. If someone says they're not interested, leave them alone! If you harass other users to join your team, you may receive a punishment as per site rules regarding harassment.
  • Once you commit to a team, assume you are expected to follow through on your commitment. If, for one reason or another, you cannot and you find this out early on, you should amicably part ways with your team and have your content removed from their entry.

If someone needs to drop out, the rest of the team should not attempt to pressure them to stay. If you do not know how to proceed with said member missing, feel free to message me via Forum PM or discord DM (@saturday_suzumiya) and we can try to work something out depending on the circumstances of the former team member's departure.


Entry Rules:
  • You can only submit one entry per team.
  • Your team’s entry must either be Standard or Kaizo difficulty.
  • If your team’s entry has a mix of Standard or Kaizo levels, it will be judged as a Kaizo entry.
  • All levels must be within the Standard: Easy - Standard: Very Hard and/or Kaizo: Beginner - Kaizo: Expert range.
  • All levels used in your team’s entry must be created within the submission period.
  • Your team’s entry must include an Infinite Lives ASM patch or a life farm of some sort.
  • The use of MSU-1 is not permitted for including unoriginal, copyrighted music or video. You may use MSU-1 for external level data and ASM, as long as your entry & its additional resources are below 10mb. No .pcms!

Entry Guidelines:
  • Barring anything listed in the above rules, your team’s entry can use any resources, available or original.
  • There is no limit to the amount of levels in your team’s entry, nor a limit to exits or screens.
  • While there is no overall size limit to entries, we heavily advise not going overboard on length. Entries are expected to be 30 minutes to 2 hours long, and not much longer than that. Judges can choose to disqualify an entry that vastly exceeds these expectations.
  • All aspects of your team’s entry will be judged, not just the levels. Everything present in your entry should be changed from the original game.
  • There are no restrictions to the format of your team’s entry. There are no limitations on genre or aesthetic.



Submission Rules:
  • Your team must submit a single .bps patch of your entire entry. Submitting anything else will disqualify your team, and submitting a ROM file will lead to site punishment.
  • Your team will present your submission by making a thread in the HackJam subforum and tagging the thread “Completed” and either “Standard” or “Kaizo” depending on what your entry is. (It cannot be both.)
  • Unlike other contests, all team members must be identified in the submission. This can be done in the entry itself or via the credits list below. (Having a team name is encouraged, although I don't think you people need to be encouraged to do it anyways.)
  • Your team must include a credits list, either in the OP of the submission thread or as a text file, thoroughly detailing what each team member contributed. It should also list any external resources used.
  • If an off-site but publicly available resource is used, your team must provide a direct link to it in the credits list. This includes BaseROMs.
  • We recommend that your team place your submission in the OP of the thread to make it easily findable for the hosts and others.
  • Your team’s thread can also be used for communicating with your teammates and feedback from others. However, if your entry is not present and visible somewhere in the thread, then it will be disqualified.


Theme:
As promised, this time around hackjam has a theme, which is:
🌎WORLDSHAPER🟥



Judging & Prizes:
  • Standard entries and Kaizo entries will each have a separate set of three judges.
  • Entries will not be scored; instead, the judges will review each level qualitatively, similar to QLDC. They will then come to a consensus on the best overall entries of the event. The number of “best in show” entries will be determined by the judges.
  • If the judges determine an entry was incorrectly tagged Standard or Kaizo, they will give the entry to the proper judging team. (For example, if the Standard judges find that a Standard entry has a Kaizo level included, they will give that entry to the Kaizo judges.)
  • In addition to the judges, users will be able to vote on their favorite entries. This will be done in the same style as C3, with different categories users can vote on (including “best in show”).
  • There will be separate trophies for judge picks and user picks, in addition to the usual participation and judge/host trophies.
  • Usage of theme will not be judged, but there will be a Best Usage of Theme trophy that will be voted on by the users.

Standard Judges:

Kaizo Judges:



Deadline

HackJam #2 submissions must be in sometime on or before Saturday, October 19, which means you have about:




Discussion & Questions

You can use this thread to ask any questions or start a discussion about the event or use the appropriate #hackjam channels in the Discord.
On behalf of Cryoart Cult (SF - The Dark Warrior, Moltz,  Ringo, Masterlink and myself), I'd like to request a deadline extension of, preferably, two weeks. Despite having 14 days left, we are concerned it may not be enough for us to get it all done in a playable state. Many are the reasons: we are all quite busy irl thanks to work and other tasks, related or not; the Hackjam theme itself was quite odd and challenging for us to come up with anything interesting, demanding days of brainstorming to begin with, and even though we did have a week to organize teams, the theme came in for us later so actually it didn't help at all; and finally because some prior contests provided longer deadlines for users to build a single level, free of theme restrictions (e.g. 7 weeks for a VLDC entry).

In other words, we want to provide a playable but also polished entry to Hackjam 2. It isn't even unrealistically ambitious or large for us to be that worried, but I can speak with property due to experience with collabs, base ROMs, resources and development in general. Six weeks is not enough. Neither for me, nor to anyone wanting to deliver a quality product by the limit date. And I'm pretty sure an extension would not only benefit our team, but all others in need of extra time, and also the community/event itself as more time usually equals more quality which means more engagement. Sorry in advance if this comes up as harsh.