If it's all in the interpretation, why are you interpreting it for us? Not to mention the closest thing to a herring in the RTP is a wooden fish in one of the tilesets. You can't be ambiguous in your original rules, and now decide to be specific.
The interpretation is up to the person making the game. Anyone can come up with a plot on their own, but to make something unique given a particular starting point requires skill.
I'm not sure how I'm being ambiguous when I said "herring". I didn't say it was red, and I didn't say "a supposedly useless item/feature that should then unexpectedly become useful". And if you recognise the half-quote, you'll know that the herring in question was an actual literal one. All I intended is that you use an actual herring (or a sign depicting one, perhaps) rather than a figurative "red herring".
The lack of a fish sprite is a problem, I'll admit. But if you're going to use that feature in your game, I'm sure you'll find a way around it. Suggestion: No one said there literally had to be a visible interactable fish in the game. Remember Monty Python and the unladen swallows? That's where the imagination and interpretation comes in.
And what's so wrong with taking parts of the RTP and moving them around? It's STILL the RTP. I can't even turn an icon into a picture without worrying about my game breaking. You didn't address this in the original rules, so it should be allowed to move pieces of the RTP around.
Mainly because it's harder for me to check for cheating, and partly because it IS in the rules (and subsequent explanations that everyone keeps wanting). You can use the RTP as-is, and you can also use the two custom tilesets and make your own title screen. That's it.
There's nothing specifically
wrong with it, but them's the rules - I can't very well change them now. No one said this competition was going to be perfect. I've tried my best, but once again I've seen that just one man cannot consider all the possibilities.
Not to mention you posted the rules at midnight GMT on August 2nd, but that's a small complaint. One day could make a difference though...
Also, please address this because I'm sick of you changing (oh, I mean interpreting) the rules and not revising your rule post.
I know I said you'd all have a month, and you've still pretty much gotten one, but that was just a little slackness of language. The "month" was little more than to give you an idea of how long it would last, not a fixed-in-stone declaration of the exact competition period. At the end of the day, the competition starts from when I said it starts, and finishes when I make a post to say it finishes.
I've edited the "
competition start" post to clarify a few things. I hope it's to your satisfaction now.
Just because it's your competition doesn't mean you don't have to think of the convenience of the participants.
One man's inconvenience is another man's challenge. But meaningless statements like that won't convince you anyway, so I offer you this:
This is the first attempt I have made at hosting a game-making competition. It is the first such game-making competition in this forum section, and as such there is nothing to research and compare and build upon. I did my best to come up a decent set of rules, and clearly people have found flaws with them. I have subsequently done my best to patch them up and clarify things, but again not everyone is happy with it. I know there are flaws remaining, some of them quite large ones, but it's now too late to try to do anything about them, so we'll just have to muddle through somehow with what we've got. I'm sorry it's not perfect from the very start, but then that's only to be expected of something new like this. At least now there's a baseline for other game-making competitions to expand from (and of course I will be happy to offer my advice based on what I've learned about the process to prospective new hosts).
Everything needs to start somewhere. This is where game-making competitions start, and I sincerely hope that they go on to much better and brighter things, and are handled much better than I have this one.
