Competitions

The following competitions will be held at Black Valley:

Graphics 🔗

Music 🔗

Real-time 🔗

Exclusive: T-shirt remix! 🔗

This is our exclusive competition, where you make your own Black Valley party t-shirt! We provide you with the SVG of our logo as a “reference design”, and you can choose how much or how little of it you use! The result should be a physical t-shirt that you bring to the party. Have fun!

Competition rules 🔗

General Rules 🔗

These rules applies to all competitions.

  1. Remote entries 🔗

    We allow remote entries in all competitions, except for the t-shirt remix competition. Remote entries needs to be delivered to us via email at latest the day before the party starts. In addition, you need make yourself available via email or on Discord for any troubleshooting / questions during the party.

  2. Respect the deadlines 🔗

    We publish deadlines ahead of time, and these must be respected. If you fail to deliver a working entry in time for the deadline, we might not include your entry. If you’re in the need of more time to finish your entry, contact us; we’re some times able to be flexible. But no guarantees.

  3. No prereleased material 🔗

    We do not allow previously released material to be entered into any of our competitions. This includes “light” remixes of content. All productions needs to stand on their own creative legs.

  4. One competition per entry 🔗

    We do not allow an entry to be entered into multiple competitions. Pick the most appropriate competition and enter it in that. This only applies to the whole production; you can for instance enter the soundtrack for a demo in one of the music competitions.

  5. Only one entry per participant per competition 🔗

    If you’re entering a compofiller, please have the decency to make up a fake name 😉

  6. Other reasons for disqualification 🔗

    We reserve the right to disqualify entries that are too unserious, boring, bad, disrespectful or otherwise illegal or inappropriate content. In fact, we reserve the right to disqualify entries for any reason we find reasonable.

  7. We won’t release disqualified entries 🔗

    In case an entry doesn’t make the cut for some reason, we of course won’t release it after the party either. This way you can hand it in at some other competition in the future.

  8. License 🔗

    When you enter a production in a competition, you implicitly grant us a world-wide, no-revokable license to display and redistribute your entry. The reason for this is that we need the legal rights to display the entry in the competition, and to upload the contributions to Scene.org for archival reasons after the party is over.

Graphics competitions 🔗

We have some rules that apply to all graphics competitions, as well as some specific rules per competition.

  1. All techniques are allowed 🔗

    We allow all creative techniques, draw, scan, convert, whatever. Just make sure your entry is all your own original content.

  2. Deliver work-in-progress snapshots 🔗

    Entries must be supplied with three representative work-in-progress snapshots. These will be shown during the competition.

  3. Please deliver a PNG version 🔗

    We can’t support showing every conceivable format correctly, so please deliver an unmodified PNG version together of your entry. You’re free to deliver other formats in addition, but the PNG file is what we’ll show in the competition.

Pixeled graphics 🔗

  1. Maximum 256 colors, 8 bit per component 🔗

    The pixeled graphics competition is intended for up to 256 color, paletted images. You’re of course free to use fewer color or more restrictive palettes than this.

  2. Max resolution 320x256 pixels 🔗

    The maximum width and height of the entries are 320 and 256, respectively. Do note that our big-screen is 16:9, so if you want your entry to fill as much as possible of the screen, consider using a 320x180 resolution.

Freestyle graphics 🔗

There’s no color or resolution limit in this competition, but bear in mind that the image will be shown in 1920x1080 resolution on the projector, so consider delivering an additional PNG at that resolution if your entry is larger. Otherwise, we can’t guarantee how the image will be rescaled to fit the screen.

Music competitions 🔗

We have some rules that apply to all music competitions, as well as some specific rules per competition.

  1. Please deliver a pre-rendered version 🔗

    We can’t support playing every conceivable format correctly, so please deliver a pre-rendered, unmodified MP3 version together with your entry. You’re free to deliver other formats in addition, but the MP3 file is what we’ll play in the competition.

  2. Maximum 4 minutes play-time 🔗

    Music competitions tend to get tedious for the audience if there’s a lot of long entries. To avoid that, and to make sure we stay on schedule, we’ve decided to set a 4 minute play-limit on entries. Make sure your entry stays within that limit, otherwise we might cut it before it’s done!

Oldskool music 🔗

The definition of “oldskool” isn’t something everyone agrees 100% on, and we don’t plan on making a very strict definition. Instead we give a few guidelines about what we think this is, and take the debate once we have entries that we feel fall outside our definition.

  1. Old computers or games consoles 🔗

    The entry should be made for 80s or early 90s-era computers or game consoles. This means, no fantasy-console music in this competition.

  2. No streamed music 🔗

    While some of these systems are techically capable of playing back MP3 or WAV files, those entries belong in the newschool music competition.

  3. Tracked music limitations 🔗

    Tracked music formats should be limited to 4 channel, 8bit samples. In other words, Amiga / Protracker MODs.

We will list the platform on the beam-slides for all entries.

Newschool music 🔗

There’s no limit on what kind of format or tools used in this competition.

Just follow the other rules, and you should be good!

That being said, Xerxes will automatically be disqualified.

Real-time competitions 🔗

We don’t differentiate between platforms in the real-time competitions. Instead, we expect our audience to take the platforms into account when voting, at their own discretion.

There’s several computers available that we can use to show entries on, here’s an overview:

  1. Windows / Linux PC: 🔗
    • AMD Ryzen 9 5900X CPU
    • 64 GB RAM
    • Gigabyte RTX 3080 Ti OC 12G GPU
    • Windows 11 21H2
    • Ubuntu 22.04 LTS
  2. Commodore 64: 🔗
    • 1541 Ultimate II
    • SidFX with 6581R3 and 8580R5
    • USB and/or MicroSD card reader
  3. Commodore Amiga 500: 🔗
    • Kickstart 1.3
    • 512 kB chip RAM + 512 kB fakefast
    • Floppy emulator
  4. Commodore Amiga 1200: 🔗
    • Kickstart 3.2
    • TF1260, 68060@50MHz
    • 128 MB Fast RAM
    • 2 MB Chip RAM
    • Compact flash and/or SD card reader
  5. Atari Falcon: 🔗
    • Motorola 68030 CPU
    • 14 MB RAM
    • Compact flash reader

We also have much more equipment available, please contact us if you’re planning on bringing something for some other platform. If we don’t have the right machine, you can always bring your own to the party, assuming we have the ability to get a reasonable video / audio signal out of it.

We will list the platform on the beam-slides for all entries.

Maximum 8 minutes run-time 🔗

While we know that certain oldskoolers love their scrollmos to run on forever, it’s often not too fun to watch in a competition setting. To avoid that, and to make sure we stay on schedule, we’ve decided to set an 8 minute run-time limit on entries. Make sure your entry stays within that limit, otherwise we might cut it before it’s done!

Combined intro 🔗

  1. Maximum executable size 🔗

    The entry must be maximum 65536 bytes (64 kB) large. This includes any operating-system defined padding.

  2. Single executable file 🔗

    The entry must be a single executable file, without depending on any non-system default code or data-files.

We will list the size of the entry on the beam-slides for all entries.

Combined demo 🔗

There’s no limit on size in this competition, but do keep in mind that the entry needs to be practically possible to redistribute after the party. So please try to keep the file-size within reason.

Also, please to make the distribution as non-intrusive as possible. In other words, don’t require extra installation steps, don’t needlessly write files to the file-system… You know. Try to be nice to the system that the production is run on.

T-shirt remix 🔗

To display this in the competition, you (or someone else on your behalf) will have to wear the T-shirt in front of the big-screen. In addition, we will take photos of the t-shirt for voting purposes.

For the obvious practical reasons, the T-shirt competition can only be entered in-person.

And that’s pretty much it! If there’s anything that unclear, or you otherwise are unsure about, don’t hesitate to contact us and ask!