ok...

reading this straight off the page:


Animations are allowed as long as you code the player yourself, and create the animation yourself.

Make sure all textures, sounds, music and models used in your demo do not violate anyone''s copyright. If you use anything shareware or commercial, you must have the owners permission before you submit your demo!


I don''t see any reason not to take that by the letter,
and that voids a hang of a lot of the entries... including all the ones that use 3rd party models of some kind :/

yeah, especially since the Tolkien foundation is litigation happy. they go crazy over copyright infringements and are more likely even than Fox to sue someone over something like including a sound or graphic in a freeware game.

the issue is that in their perception, anything that contains LOTR material/themes/names/etc is instantly related to the Tolkien foundation. they don''t want crappy stuff with their name on it b/c they believe it reflects poorly on their brand.

i personally think it''s all a load of horsecrap.

but, hey, that''s their reasoning and they like to sue people.

-me

I also read that in the contest details, RipTorn, and I don''t see why lots of entries obviously didn''t bother to read it.

I think all entries that didn''t obey the rules, should be disqualified. That means that all the copyright violators will be out of luck, and it is their own fault for doing this.