Im entering too :D THe story with have alot of "my little pony"'s in it ^^

My entry's finished, I should have it typed up by the 10th.

I guess I'd better do my final touches soon also.

Nine days left (and still only two entries). Get a mojo on everyone!

then i'm gonna win lol jkz guys i'm not that big headed.

Scrabtrapman, I would really appreciate it if you could put more effort into the spelling and punctuation in your posts. I know you can do better than you do, and hurrying it in the way you do makes you look more... nooby than you really are. It would do you a favour to put the effort in.

Right, I have now recieved four entries to the competition, which is enough for it to run :D BUT that doesn't mean that I don't want more!!!!! So if your story's in progress, don't be shy about posting it!

I am also pushing the closing date forward by a few days, because I will be very far away from a computer next weekend. The closing date will now be Tuesday the seventeenth of November. This is mainly for my benefit, but I hope it gives any more of you still frantically scribling away to finish your masterpieces! The closing date won't move again.

Judges, you have 10 more days to clear your schedules, test your red biros and watch videos of Simon Cowell on youtube.

Scrabtrapman, I recommend taking Splat's advice. Some of our less tolerant members won't stand for your writing style forever.

I want to say that I feel like the people over the original deadline are cheating, for getting extra time, that I may have had use for... But it can't be helped, and even if it could be helped, it doesn't matter.:D

Hope you guys put up a fight.

Oddey you could always use the extra time to work further on your story :-/ No cheating here..

I submitted it before the oiriginal deadline had come to pass. I didn't want to reveal I had already submitted mine, but... Duty calls.

Unless you can unsubmit your story and rework it?

My mind goes: Why not?
The judges haven't started reading it yet, and they only will after all entries have been handed in. I say, if you can make it, keep working on your story untill you're happy with it!

my story is still in progress i hope i can finnish it till the 17th ^-^

...lol you guys scared my for a moment because i thought you mean this tuesday xD

I say good luck to everyone who is participating and you put up a good fight but can I ask if we are aloud to re-submit our entries or can we only submit one finished copy?

I've resubmitted my piece of work. I assume that before the closing date, you can submit multiple copies (within reason). Although I would only submit one version, unless you made any major misakes or errors.

Teehee :D

Whoa, did I seriously write that? My bad.

Scrabtrapman and Oddey, since you guys were within the original deadline I'll let you resubmit your stories if you want to spend more time on them.

thankyou Splat, I think my actual [spoiler] is rushed a wee bit. It'll only be minor

Less than twenty four hours to go!

Ladies and gentlemen, the competition is now closed!

Our first ever entrants for the (hopefully) annual FC writing competition are...

Scrabtrapman
Oddey
Meechmunchie
AlexFili

I will be PMing their stories to the judges shortly (as soon as I put said PM together) and then I'll post the stories in a new thread once all of the entries are in!

(Also, I need to change my banner now...)

I will take this moment to tell people what my observations for future competitions have been.

Firstly, seeing how much effort it's been to get stories written, I won't be making game competitions any time in the near future. I don't think people will be able to put things together that quickly.

The second issue is about timing, both in competition length and positioning in the year, so people can fit it into their schedules. Next year we'll have an art competition and a fiction competition (which will take place earlier in the year than this one) and we'll see how it all goes.

Anyway, massive thanks to the entrants and anyone else who tried to participate (sorry guys...) Without you, I'd be sat here at my laptop looking like a total prat.

Thank you Splat. I know it take a bit of work but we did manage to get some people to submit stories at least ^_^.

I think a game can be made in a month. Whether it's a small game engine or a short demo, I myself never make anything that takes longer than a few days to fully code. I'll host it myself if I have to! :D

I'm really looking forward to future art and fanfiction contests. You've got at least one guaranteed entrant! In terms of timing, I think it would be ideal if you made it on the 1st of a particular month and then ended it at the end of that month.

I'm sure everyone else is looking forward to more competitions in the future!

Perhaps a mini-game can be made in that short space of time, but I know I sure couldn't create a good quality game in that amount of time unless it was just a simple mini-game or something. Partly because I have a lot of other commitments, but I'm sure there are heaps of other people who are in the same boat as me.

But that's a point, we could always have mini-game competition, some of the judging criteria could be on the creativity used on making the objective of the game and of course the replay value. Anyway, I look forward to seeing who the winner is! I have to admit, I'm one of the judges and I have greatly enjoyed reading your stories a first time, so I'll be sure to try to get marks done sometime within the next two weeks :D I already know what my favourite is, but I'm not going to say until all the judging is completed and the final results are known ;)

I think a story can be written in a week.

Tried that with this one; didn't work. People needed more time.
While you can see an idea from beginning to end in a month, it does depend on having an idea.
Add time to form an idea from a given theme, to develop it, to write it, to edit it... all this fills up hours. And people can't always devote time every day. And then there's writer's block. And then there's Going Away on Holiday and Leaving your PC at Home.

Then there's the issue of when in the year the competition falls. Are people doing exams in America? Are they doing exams in Europe? In Australia? Are people moving between educational institutions? Are they working? Are they preparing for big events? It'd be pretty annoying if I gave two months to write a story or draw a picture when people were meant to be revising for their Most Important Exams EVAH.

So I'll give people more time next time. I'm gonna start a discussion for the art competition here in the new year; since I don't do much art myself (cus I'm pants at it) I'd like to hear from some more artistically inclined board members.

OMG!!! an art competition! <3

next time I'll try to take part in both xD

I actually did write two stories for this competition but the first one was too long and I couldn#t complete any of them yet anyways xD

but I think I'll post the stories here if someone would be interrested in reading them xD

cool I'm looking forward to who will win this! and to read the other stories! 8D

I'm on my toes for the results. First contest I've ever joined... If my memory serves me correct.

I would join a game competetion. Not the art one though.

I'd probrably read your stories Scipionyx.

Fanwerkz woul particiapte I think? Maybe

quite want to see who wins this, and the art competition sounds like fun, depending on how long we'd get to do it

By the way, when do the annual forum awards take place?
A minigame contest would be good, but you can still make a decent game in a month.

Around February and March.

Well, as Splat said, a decent story can be written in a week. How many people actually have the spare time to do that though?

For me personally, I'm working 9 hours a day during the week, so by the time I've done all the other things that need doing each day I don't have a lot of spare time and I sure don't want to spend it all programming. And most of my weekends are taken up with personal commitments. So there is no way I could make a decent game in one month.

Especially if you take into account that a decent game needs to have programming done, graphics created (unless you're just ripping off another game, but for Oddworld based ones this is kind of hard), sounds and music, etc. So that seems like a lot of work to do in one month, especially if it's one person but even for a team if there's people like me who lead busy lives!

So basically, the short version is: No offense, but I don't believe many people can create a decent game in a month.

Minigames it is then. I seriously can't wait for an art contest.

well firstly i cant wait for this to finish!

How is the judging coming along?

I have heard from one judge, today. Still waiting for the rest. Hopefully I should have heard from everyone by the end of the month.

Hopefully.

I should have a bit of free time after work tomorrow to sit down and allocate marks for the stories - I've already read them all through and I have a good idea of what marks I'm going to give them. So that should be two judges marks XD

Hopefully.

Uh, in the PM I sent to the judges I think I wrote 'Total: ( )/10' when I should have written 'Total: ( )/50'.

Sorry for any confusion this may have caused. Especially to Dripik. Sorry.

That's just not good enough! You think you can get out of it just by saying sorry? We're going to have to hold a trial, with President Ultrasafe as the judge with the four rip-off Pac-Man ghosts as the jury. For your defense, you have the option of either choosing Dennis the Molester Turtle, or the Purple Fuzzy Mess with Red Eyes. MicroD will serve as the prosecution.

Anyway, to avoid a completely spammy and pointless post, I just want to say, as promised, my judging is now completed. And regarding the above mistake, I did mark them all with a total of 50 but I think I only changed the first one, so the other three will say ##/10 even though ## is higher than 10 :p

Cool. So... how many more judges need to reply?

Gretin means he has marked it out of 50 without changing the denominator, so ## is any number between 0 and 50,

just a way of representing the numbers without giving away peoples marks

I know. I was making a very poor joke.

Well, I've heard from two; there are two others I'm hoping might get to me even though the deadline was today... So I'm hoping to hear from one of the other two very soon. And if not, I'LL GET MAH STABBIN KNIFE!

Oh, and a big, shiny thank you to Gretin!