Contest Overview
The purpose of this contest is to create the most graphically appealing, interesting to watch fish tank. The only catch is that this is an ASCII (text only) fish tank. No fancy graphics or 16 million colors, the sole method of displaying your aquatic world is through text.The contest will end on November 30, 2002 at 11:59 PM, EST
Specifics
Each entry must portray a fish tank/aquarium with your choice of real or mythical sea creatures (though it is expected that most of your sea creatures should be recognizable and not totally alien). You are limited to using either standard 80x25 character or 80x50 character text mode, and the standard palette of 16 foreground colors and 8 background colors (these colors may not be altered). How you go about this is up to you. You may create a 32bit Windows console application, a 16bit DOS application using mode 3, or you may create a pixel perfect emulation of either mode using your preferred graphical API.Additionally...
- Each individual can submit any number of unique entries (however it is at the organizers/judges discretion to determine if two entries by the same person are not sufficiently different, in which case the competitor may choose only one to be judged).
- Entries must run on Microsoft Windows 98 or 2000 (preferably they should run correctly on 95, 98, ME, 2000 and XP).
- The contest is open to everyone that abides by these rules, however entries by judges/organizers are not eligible to win and will be removed from the pool of contestants after the first round (scoring).
- Existing "Ascii art" libraries, such as aalib cannot be used. If you have any doubt regarding the validity of a library please contact the contest organizer and provide a link to the libraries homepage.
- These rules may be modified at any time without prior notification.
Judging
Each judge will score entries in three categories:- Graphics : General eye candy appeal. Use of shape, color and animation will be considered.
- Life : How interesting/impressive the behavior (AI) of your aquatic creatures is.
- Appeal : Overall impression of polish, creativity and original features.
Number of winning positions subject to change without prior notice depending on the number of entries received.
Submissions
In order to qualify you must submit a single ZIP file of no more than 500KB containing:- Your executable and any data files it needs.
- A readme file (plain text or HTML) explaining how to use your program and any special features you wish to point out.
- The complete source code to your entry.
- A plain text file, ENTRY.TXT , which lists your name, the name of your entry, your email address and optionally your forum nickname.
Legalities
- Authors retain all rights and ownership to their entries.
- If source code is submitted with the contest as per the requirements, then it is up to the entrant to include any terms of use licenses with his/her source code.