New scenario design contest

OK guys, I haven't yet found the time to come up with a complete "official press release quality" kind of announcement text, but to get the ball rolling, here's your chance to preview and ask questions for clarification (would be much appreciated since that'll help me to identify what else I need to fill into the official announcement).

As with the past contests, this one will be themed:

Combat at/with obstacles

Whether it's the player's task to defend an obstacle, or to breach it, or to reconnoiter and bypass it, is up to you. All that matters is that obstacles play a central role in the scenario.

No more than three platoons are to be left without a scripted route (now, that's a tough challenge, I know).

The reward:

• Grand Prize for Best Scenario: $1,000.-
  Yep, a thousand bucks. And the life-time SB Pro PE free upgrade plan.
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• 2nd winner for Best Scenario: $500.-
  The winner doesn't take all, at least not this time. That could be a sweet new graphics card, or ... well, you will know best what to do with the money. I'm sure you'll spend it ... wisely.
  Both first and second place winners are invited to submit suitable photos of their faces to be put on 3D characters which will make their way into SB Pro around the end of this year (according to the current project schedule).
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• 3rd winner for Best Scenario: $250.-
  Winning is more than four time better, yeah... but 250 bucks is still more than you probably ever paid for all the Steel Beasts copies and upgrades combined.
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• Category winner for Best Mission Briefing: $250.-
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• Category winner for Highest Replayability: $250.-
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• Category winner for Best Scoring Formula: $250.-
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• In addition every participant will get one of those still rare and hard to get shiny new mousepads Mk II

Okay, this is not 'Nam! Here are rules!

Rules of Participation:

• Submissions must be your personal work, and your work alone.
• This means, we'll put up a PDF form sheet (see attachment at the end of this post)for download which you need to print, fill out, sign, and send in by snail mail where you make a statement that you really are the creator of the work and that if someone sues eSim Games for copyright infringement, we're held harmless and instead the hounds of swift and brutal justice will be unleashed to get you.
• If a team wants to submit a scenario, it must do so through one representative who will then receive the prize, and it's up to him to be fair and honest and distribute the plunder fairly among his mateys.
  Of course, the entire team will be given full credit in the amended mission briefing text, see next point
• Scenarios must be submitted in anonymized form. This means, the mission summary, briefing text, or map graphics must not contain information that will allow the judges to identify the mission designer.
  In addition submit a copy that includes full credentials in the mission summary.
  Anonymized scenarios are to be sent to the following email address per email attachment: Contest@eSimGames.NET
  The "normal" scenario is to be dropped off at eSim's ftp server: server: ftp.esimgames.net
  user: contestsub@esimgames.net
  password: es777##x
• Only one scenario per mission designer. Yeah, we want many scenarios, but they should also be really good. If more than one mission could be submitted, there's the temptation to overwhelm the judges with a boatload of mediocre drivel that just costs a ton of time to play through in the hope that one of them might accidentally be chosen. No, thanks.
  
• Participation is non-discriminatory - previous winners may submit too.
  However, employees of eSim Games, LLC are excluded from this contest.
• For reasons of practicality, judges will terminate their scenario evaluation after 60 minutes.
  This is somewhat problematic, but probably necessary. We all have a life and a job, that means probably no more than one or two scenarios per day on probably no more than three days a week, so that's four scenarios per week as a realistic estimate. With an evaluation period of about two months the overall capacity limit is about 30 scenarios. With a 90 minute limit we'd be down at 20 scenarios, and that would still mean to play these scenarios in nearly every free minute of our lives for two months straight.
  So, scenarios may actually last longer.
  But in this case you should add a "contest trigger" which will make the scenario stop after 60 minutes to give the player a score about how well he did so far. The "open" scenario (containing the mission designer's name, see above) does not need to have this trigger, and therefore need not have a time limit either.
  Then again, short & sweet is usually more entertaining than Lord of the Rings style (unless you can wrap it into exceptionally beautiful pictures and have a motherfucking Balrog in it; I mean no disrespect here, J.R.R., but you told us yourself that you simply started writing and only a year later realized that you needed some sort of a plot and some action)
• Submission deadline is June 19, 2010. (not June 15, as previously announced)

The winners will be announced at the Ten Years of Steel Beasts Anniversary which may coincide with other celebratory activities.

Submitted scenarios become the property of eSim Games, LLC, to be released at eSim Games' discretion.

SCE_CONTEST_LIC_AGR.rar

Are previous contest winners allowed to submit entries?

Yes, previous contest winners are allowed to submit entries. We are trying to get more people to submit entries, not less.

Can you use someone elses scenario, add extra units and put your name at the start of the filename?.

Who made this shit!!!!? (inside joke)

:diable:

I made some substantial amendments to the original text.

See page one, top entry.

As minefields are the primary obstacle in the game, and that creating a reliable breach route requires proofing by engineers, and that the only such engineer assets now available are the M113 (ENG), are there plans to, prior to this Summer, incorporate other engineer assets such as Warsaw Pact MICLICs or MTLB mounted engineer squads?

That's an interesting point. I don't think that this is practical. However, you can add a passage at the end of the briefing saying that the M113 with Miclic is a stand-in for an MTLB with similar equipment until it becomes available in SB Pro.

So, if we happen to have such a vehicle in our stockpile and if we happen to include it in the coming upgrade and if there is enough time, we will go into the mission editor and edit the corresponding unit, then delete the corrponding passage from the mission briefing.

Does that sound reasonable?

• This means, we'll put up a PDF form sheet for download which you need to print, fill out, sign, and send in by snail mail where you make a statement that you really are the creator of the work and that if someone sues eSim Games for copyright infringement, we're held harmless and instead the hounds of swift and brutal justice will be unleashed to get you.

Is FAX okay too?

Another dumb question: we are talking about artificial obstacles only? What about a river crossing? A bridge jammed by broken-down vehicles? Wadis? Terrain themes with really low traction values? Shipping containers..

Actually, I'm kinda old-fashioned. Snail mail would be much preferred.

WRT the obstacles - be creative. What the player should experience, at the end of the day, is a tactical challenge that revolves around a limited piece of terrain which is difficult to traverse, whatever the reason, but which must be traversed, or bypassed, or defended in order to accomplish the mission.

OK, just wanted to make sure that the one and only scenario I am allowed to submit will not be disqualified.. (and now I spilled my secret plans, darn).

Someone brought up the question whether a scenario file that is derived from a historical battle or from a textbook or a military exercise still is "original work".

The idea about and the circumstances of a tactical vignette are not protected by copyright. You do not take someone else's scenario file here, change it, and sell it under your own name as an original creation. You just pick inspiration, but all the work - setting up the routes, picking a suitable terrain, scripting decisions by units under computer control - all this is your work, and your work alone.

Just look at Disney's "Pocahontas" and "Avatar". The storyline of both movies is virtually identical, yet both films are original work by different teams. I don't know, maybe the scriptwriter was the same, but it doesn't matter - same idea in a different context or a different setting makes a new creation. Maybe the audience isn't too pleased, but stealing plots and twisting them into something new is common practice and violates copyright only if it is, well, a direct copy.

Okay, in all fairness - the line is a bit more blurred where inspiration ends and copyright violation begins; I'm not a lawyer, and depending on where you live the laws may be slightly different or there may be important details that I drowned in my deliberately broad brush.

A couple more questions (sorry if these were already asked I missed it..)

• Did you already post the pdf submission form?
  
• Does the June 15 deadline apply to electronic submission (ie upload) of the scenario file, or to your receipt of the mail?
  
• In the submission form we'll have to state that the scenario is our work - but what about the underlying height map and terrain file? I guess you'd like to include the winning scenarios in future updates, but this might not be possible if the ownership/origin of the map file is in doubt, correct?
  

1. No.
   Being back from the ITEC now, I shall do this some time next week.
2. Let me put it this way - by the 16th in the morning I'll have a look at my email in-box, and what isn't there won't participate. You can try and push your luck with last-minute submissions, maybe even with post-deadline submissions, but the risk is all on your end.
3. Pick terrain that's part of the standard installation; that seems to be the best option IMO - or make sure to get the permission of the map maker (not just for yourself, but also for eSim Games), and include that in your papers.