Not that I'm competing this year, but I tend to agree with Traveller on the subject of pre-written engines. I could have spent months (years even) writing an engine, it could encapsulate a lot of the functionality that someone who is starting from scratch will have to contend with. All I have to do is pump in control logic and content. By anyones definition that would give me one hell of an advantage in the competition.

For that reason, from a personal perspective, I'd like to see a ban on pre-written engines.

Just for clarity... I don't consider Asphyre or DelphiX etc. to be engines as such. By engine I mean a more fully featured tool set.

As for the quality of the games... I would say Tanx was pretty dam good... that was Dirk on his own using Asphyre as a base... pre-written engines do not necessarily mean a better finished product. I was also chuffed to bits with what I managed to achieve (given it was my first client side game), and there wasn't a single line of code in existence before the start of the competition... except of course for unDelphiX.

However, I suspect there would be a lot of people complaining if engines were banned... reinventing the wheel and all that, so maybe a good solution is to use one of the Pascal engines that are available. And, to try and make it a fair fight, the authors of said engine can't compete in the competition in which their code is being used. Thats kind of a nice halfway house. Those people who want to use a pre-written engine can use one... the same as everyone else is using, or they can write their own.

Just my $0.02