These universal contest rules that apply to all No Limits Contests after the March 2005 Contest. In order for your track to be accepted, it must meet the following requirements:

1. Entries must be uploaded to Speedzone as a .ZIP file. Any other file format will not be accepted. A .nltrack or .nlpack can be included within the zip file, the main file uploaded to speedzone MUST be a .ZIP file. If you do not have a program that can create zip files, go to www.winzip.com

2. You cannot resubmit a ride, or submit two or more different entries. "Updates" are not allowed. If a rare situation occurs such as uploading the wrong file or if an error occurs while the zipping the file, uploading the file, etc, talk to a No Limits Contest judge (Matt M, Kyle L, or Alex T) about it and depending on the situation, we may allow reuploading.

3. You must check the "Check this box to submit for this month's NoLimits Contest" button, or else you're disqualified.

4. Must meet all of the contest rules for the month it is submitted.

5. All submissions must be in by midnight Eastern Time (Eastern Time according to NY, not Eastern time according to those in Indiana, where you do not follow daylight savings). We may allow a 5 minute leeway, but that will be on a case-by-case basis.

6. If an entry requires a template, you must download the template for the contest.

Please understand that the moment you upload a track to Speedzone for the contest, the NL judges receive an email telling us who you are, and the ride you uploaded. Usually within a day the entry is judged. It's extremely irritating to have to try to open a file that's not a zip file, which many often cannot do. It's also very irritating to have finished judging an entry, and then 1 week later a "Updated Version" appears, which we have to go through the effort of re-judging.

Future Ammendments may be posted.

so you don't wait until the end of the month and judge them side by side all at once?

No. We have a pretty big rubric that scores your ride out of 130 points. We don't just whip open the entry, say "This is good", and then close it. We grade a ton of different aspects of the ride. This is to ensure that rides with perfect trackwork don't have a rediculous advantage. The only two categorie relating to trackwork are smoothness and track shaping. If the track is shaped right but not smooothed, you'll still get a high mark in one of those categories. You are not getting shammed by turning in an entry early.

> you don't wait until the end of the month and judge them side by side all at once?

Apparently not.. Gotta say, that's pretty bad form there. ...and enough insentive for me not to enter. Enjoy your season pass ej.

May I ask why? I don't see how not judging everything until the very end is a good idea. They're the guidelines No Limits told us to use, so we're using them.

i figured you had some type of rubric, but then i also assumed there was at least a little bit of leeway for you to add/subtract to the scores based on your personal liking/disliking of a ride. if that were the case it would be necessary to judge them side by side. apparently its not though, so i guess you're right that it doesn't matter when you judge them.

Speaking of which, I'm going to start judging at about 11 central, 1 hour after my final dosage of painkillers are supposed to wear off. Didn't want to judge with Vicadin in my system because it makes you kind of woozy and unaware of things.

I guess judging them all "side by side" after the contest is over won't work anyways: it costs way too much time. I don't know how many entries there are, but I guess there're more then april last year .

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SpeedZone Editor
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Yay!...I got a kilopost! (1,000 posts)

So Matt, how many entries do you get on a good month and how many on a bad month
Roughly that is

January - 10 entries
February - 16 entries
March - 16 entries

We average around 15-16 entries, January was unusually slow, guess we came up with bad rules.

Is there any way for you guys to let each entrant know how they "scored" or maybe post a chart showing each entries scores in each catergory?

I.E.

Coaster - parameter1 - parameter2 - parameter3 - etc
ride1 - ## - ## - ## ....
something like that?

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Holy CoW! - another NoLimits project

RIP Geauga Lake 1888-2007
F CF

That would be great in helping us lesser builders become better.

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Im the stupidest genius alive!!!

Im better at something then everyone.

i dont think they will, then the contest would be too hard for the judges to judge if everyone exelled in the judging elements.

it would be like giving the answers to a test.

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Frozen Sky, Midnight, Wooden Steel, OXEgen, T3, Surge

We will look into doing that.

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ThrillNetwork Webmaster/Systems Administrator -- My Official Fansite -- Get Firefox!
Everytime I ride a coaster, it valleys. I've never been on a stalled coaster or had one roll back (except Wicked Twister and what was Superman: Ultimate Escape, which does that by design).

Just because they'd give us the "answers" doesn't mean everyone will do the problem correctly.

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Holy CoW! - another NoLimits project

RIP Geauga Lake 1888-2007
F CF

oh, i have the answers if you want them:

http://thrillnetwork.com/boards/show...=rating+system
*words are highlighted b/c i found this thread doing a forum search.

think of it as a math test with proofs. you're given the answers and you have to show how to get there. really though, its pretty obvious what makes a good ride so doing that wouldn't be unfair at all.

i mainly want to see the judging rubric so that i can see how much emphasis is placed on different areas. but, mods, if you don't want to show it i won't care too much b/c i probably won't be participating in any more contests. i have too many more important things to do, and i don't want to take on any more major projects with nolimits.

Added Rule #6 above, which is:

If an entry requires a template, you must download the template for the contest.