Well, I'm still working on this thing, so here's how it's looking at the moment...

I've secured a whole bunch of prizes from some long standing sponsors and some new ones, and I'm still working on some others.

Will has been kind enough to help me out with artwork and that kind of stuff for the competition, leaving me free to use my limited free time to work on the competition site. The development version is looking pretty good, I'm just in the process of building the competition handling side of things... ie. the bit where we setup the competition, list the prizes in the prize pool and allocate them to places and awards. I was going to try and implement team support but that isn't that important right now so that will be added in the future.

I've sketched out some rules, the other staff are going through them and giving me some feedback and they are being fleshed out. The theme.... is decided, but will not be released until a couple of days before the competition officially starts. The standard rules apply, your entry must be coded with Pascal. It can make use of pre-existing libraries, but the bulk of the code, artwork etc. must be produced specifically for the competition. Full details will be posted before the start date.

The competition itself... the plan is to have two stages. The first is a design stage which will last approximately 5 days. This will start 2 days after the theme/rules are released. After that it will be a straight run to the finish line. In terms of dates, unless things change, the rough dates are start at the beginning of July and finish at the end of September.

The judges will then be expected to mark as quick as possible against the standard categories.

There will be bonus points available... details will be posted when the rules are released.

The judges will not necessarily be from PGD, as suggested by Will, it may be a good idea to have independent people to judge the competition, so we'll try it this year. Machine specs of the judges... these will be available to you via the competition site, so they won't be published anywhere.

I'm still chasing prize sponsors, and I can confirm that I've lined up a sponsor for the IGF

So, thats it from me for now... get a stock pile of your favourite beverage and prepare for a frantic summer of code!