Well, here is the generic contests page, here is the download page for 4elements3, and yet more downloads for 4elements2. Enjoy!

It will qualify, but you'd score higher in certain categories if you really made use of the fact that they're pirates/zombies and not just generic bad guys that happen to /look/ like pirates/zombies.

Also, bear in mind that this 4E contest is quite a bit bigger than the ones that have gone before, so the standard of entries will probably be quite a bit higher. Take a look at the screenshots thread to see what people are working on if you haven't already.

I have a slight extension to this question... if, for example, you were making an air-hockey style game (which incidentally I'm not!), but didn't directly include the 4 elements in their purest state, but instead included them in the form of powerups/abilities/etc, would you still score as well as someone who actually included zombie/robot/pirate/ninja characters?

That is to say, if you gave zombie-like abilities to a player and kept true to the elements character, is that enough to say the game has zombies in, or would you be required to include them as fully fledged characters/NPCs. Strictly speaking the game wouldn't really have the elements in it, only characteristics of the elements, but I still personally think that should be enough.

I ask this mainly because I have no problem in creating some basic skinned models, but to have to include fully animated models would almost definitely push my schedule past the deadline (requiring extra coding work and animating skills which I'm only in the process of learning), and it would be nice to know that I can work around this limitation and not lose out too much, so long as the gameplay is good enough.

Thanks for any clarification,

Steve

As always, the question is "does it have zombies in?" If you have a floating zombie on the playfield and when you get it a deep voice goes "Zooooombie POWERUUUUP" and the player gets some zombie-like abilities, the answer most people would give is "yes." You might even only need to have the floating zombie to qualify. It's like asking if Gridrunner++ has sheep in.

Ok, that's great. I appreciate that it's a pain to have to answer a thousand variations on the same question, but I think it just goes to show that people care about their potential score and don't want to head off in the wrong direction and waste time on creating something that doesn't qualify.

Also by my question I was implying something slightly different, not that the powerups would represent zombies/ninjas/pirates/robots (or transforming the player into one of aforementioned) but that, for example, a robot player may get the powerup "laser eyes" (among others), a zombie might get a powerup "infect enemy", a ninja might get "stealth puck of awesomeness!" and so on. So technically there are no ninjas/zombies/robots/pirates as such (so it's hard to guage whether people would say it had them in or not) but it is still in some keeping with the theme.

I'm going to assume that's ok because I think you've pretty much answered my question, but just wanted to point out the subtle difference between what I'm saying and what (I think) you think I'm saying.

So anyhoo... no need to answer this, I think I'm safe to say my game will be worth finishing!

Steve

Anyhoo