Re: Contest Preperation

[Chaosy]

When reading some posts in the current spell contest I imagined a scenario for mapping contests.

Contests usually (if not always) have a rule that you may not start before a certain date to make everyone have a equal time-frame to work within.
So I usually have to wait a few days after the approval of a map contest before I can begin.

What IS allowed though, is using systems from the spell section once the contest has started.
You may be thinking "How is that related? of course you should be allowed to use things from the spell section!"

I could come up with a concept for my map and notice that I need a certain system for my map. I can create and upload that before the contest has started and then import it to a clean map at the start date.
This is not limited to spell submissions though, if I have some code laying around on my harddrive, I can import that to my contest entry - which is allowed.


TLDR; you can prepare your map entry with systems beforehand, it does not break any rules. While in theory you get a head start.

 

[IcemanBo]

Strictly said I would not exclude the preparation from the contest start rule.
Making a product (spell/system is just a specified product) can have much more elements than "simply" writing code.
The deep thinking and planning, sometimes maybe even on a board or paper, can consume much more time than the final implementation.
The more complex your product should be, the more time you should invest in planning in before. And this time is indeed a required part of the development.

But that's only in theory though. Practicaly noone will ever recognize if you do some preparation a few days before the contest offcialy starts.
So if noone knows about it ...
Anyways, in the end discussing this topic won't change anything, because noone can control the behaviour of the competitors.
And honestly most people would also just not care if you already work a bit before the start-date, as long you don't do it officialy.

 

[Chaosy]

That's understandable, planning and preparing concept wise is almost equally important.
So I guess that would technically break the rule too.

And I understand that it may be hard to detect when someone starts (or that some simply don't care). But if there is a rule it should be enforced to be honest, if you can't do that you might as well remove it.