Speccy Tour 2008 Rules

***  8th International ZX Spectrum games Tournament  ***

What's this all about?

The Speccy Tour 2008 is a games playing tournament that will run for 2 months, giving you the time to improve your scores in the games that take part in the tournament. This means that you don't have to rush your scores. There's plenty of time to make a good score.

Start Date: October 19th, 2008.
Ending Date: December 21st, 2008 23:59 London time - 15:59 Pacific Standard time (HARP Time).

Ending date to sign up is November 2nd, 2008.

Rules:

Every player must submit a score for at least 8 of the 10 games to qualify for the final Leaderboard. However, feel free to submit for all 10 games, but in the end its only your 8 best scores that count. Players who don't submit a score for 8 games are disqualified. You can send as many recordings to a game as you wish, as long as they are higher than your previous score. For a complete list of Special Rules on each game, visit the Special Rules page. Here you can also download some instructions for the 10 picked games as soon as the games in this years Tour are announched.

The scores are automatically registered in the server, so they can be submited anytime. However don't submit *lots* of scores in order to keep low the quota in the server.

The last 2 weeks are on 'special regime', as we need to avoid 'score hoarding'. During that time, when recording starts, players have to type 'public key' for that week, and send records within 48 hours.

Point System:

For the first time ever in the Speccy Tour, we'll use another scoring system this year. It's the well known F1 scoring system, that you know from, well the Formula One :).

In our F1 system the top 12 players in each game gets points like this:
1st: 15 Points
2nd: 12
3rd: 10
4th: 9
5th: 8
6th: 7
7th: 6
8th: 5
9th: 4
10th: 3
11th: 2
12th: 1

If two players have the same topscore in a game, they will both get 15 points, but there'll not be awarded 12 points to the second best score, instead he/she will get 10 points.

If two or more players have the same amount of final leaderboard points, its the player with most 1st places that will win the tour. If they also have the same number of first places, its then the player with most 2nd places that wins, and so on.

What do I need to take part?

Following Emulators can be used in the Speccy Tour 2008:

Jonathan Needle's Spectaculator for Windows. It uses RZX files. You can either use the Freeware 5.3 version, or use Shareware version 6.3 or higher. For more information on Spectaculator go HERE.

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RealSpectrum DOS version. It uses AIR files. Ideal if you have a slow Pentium or don't like to manage with large recording files.

RealSpectrum DOS is available at http://www.ramsoft.bbk.org/realspec.html.

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WolfMess 0.127 for Windows or DOS.

Which is available at: http://wolfmess.homeactionreplay.org.

You also need the Spectrum 48K Bios rom.

Put the Rom and the Games in the right directories like this:
WolfMess\bios\spectrum
WolfMess\software\spectrum

Now WolfMess should find it all by itself, and you are ready to go, after checking out the part on how to record and playback.

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GPL FUSE V0.6.2.1. For Linux and MAC OS X platforms. It handles the RZX format. Download Unix or Mac OS.

We are pretty busy preparing the compo itself, so please read carefully the docs of each emulator in order on how to execute/compile it. For help on how to record and playback games go here. If you still have doubts, ask for help in your favourite forum WOS/CSS/ECSS. If you are really new at the Speccy emulation scene, and don't know of these forums, then send a mail to Eduardo Yáñez Parareda (Spanish Players) or to Alexandar Lukic (Everyone else), and we'll try to help the best we can :)

What do I do with my recordings?

1. Choose SUBMIT in the header on top of every page here at HARP.
2. Choose Speccy Tour 2008 under Tournament, and up comes the submit page.
3. Choose the Emulator you used, and the game for which the recording is for.
4. Put in your score. In games where level completed counts instead of the score, you must enter the last level you completed in the Stages field. This means if you get to Level 28, you must enter 27, as that was the last level you managed to complete.
5. Find the recording that you want to upload on your harddisk. You don't have to ZIP the file before uploading, as AIR files are so small, and RZX files are hardly compress at all. Just upload them as they are.
6. In the comment box you can either tell the editors something important about your recording, or tease the other players by achieving the new topscore in that game :)
7. Finally choose Submit recording.

IMPORTANT: Always keep a backup of your recordings, old and new scores. Tour's judges will do their best to verify player's scores ASAP, but... the whole thing is volunteer and 'real life' is... 

I still have one or more questions, what do I do?

Simply contact one of the Tour Editors already mentioned above in the 'What do I need to take part' section, or you can seek help in the ZX Spectrum - Speccy Tour 2008 area on the HARP Board, by clicking the Board link at the top of this page. On that Board you can also talk about the games, or what ever you feel like talking about with the other Speccy Tour competitors.

THANK YOU TO:

Michael Bruhn the founder of Speccy Tour, who started the whole thing.

Aley Keprt for making and creating the AIR feature, and for letting Ramsoft use it in Real Spectrum.

Ramsoft for making RealSpectrum as suitable for the Tour as possible, and for being so friendly and helpful during this.  

All RZX developers, which have worked hard to give alternatives to participate in the Speccy Tour.

Jonathan Needle and Phillip Kendall for providing us with new emulators for the Speccy Tour.

Pete Fifield 'Gameboy9' for all his hard work on adjusting and programing stuff, so that the Speccy Tour here at HARP can be as enjoyable, and good as possible. Also thank you for hosting the Speccy Tour of course.