Rules for ChristmasHack '09

Important dates

Only members of Allegro.cc can register. If you want to participate in ChristmasHack, you will have to get an account there.
During the registration phase, any A.cc member can register and back out from the event at his/hers discretion.
In order to register, each participant has to submit his wishlist - three descriptions of games he/she would like to receive. These descriptions should adhere to the following guidelines:

Don't be too specific. Leave some room for creativity, this is supposed to be fun for the person creating the game too, and coming up with your own ideas is a major part in why creating games is fun.
Don't be too vague. Give your partner something to work with. “A puzzle game” is definitely too general, but “a puzzle game with gameplay based on pushing crates” is just right.
Have the time limit in mind. Before submitting a description, make sure it is doable in an 8-day timeframe.
Make the descriptions different from one another. Give your partners a broad field to choose from. This way it is more likely everyone will find at least one game he/she would like to do.

Your descriptions can be changed at any time during the registration phase, but they are fixed once voting starts.
The administrator reserves the right to change the content of one or more of your descriptions, in order to anonymize you and make it more difficult for other participants to recognize who your descriptions belong to. Changes will be limited to spelling, grammar, and a little rewording. No changes will be made to the idea itself.

All the descriptions are open for voting in this phase. There is no indication as to who submitted each description.
Each description is rated on a scale of 1 to 5, where “1” is worst, and “5” is best. The lowest score (1) should only be used if you deem the description absolutely unfit for the event. Otherwise, try to use the full scale available for best results. If you find your votes tend to be all on the high or low end of the scale, it is best if you change them to use all available values.
Participants are required to cast their votes for at least half of available descriptions.
Participants are encouraged to vote on every single description. Voting on all of them isn't obligatory, but it increases your chances of getting assigned something you like.
You can change your votes for any given description at any time throughout the voting phase.
In order to be admitted to the main phase of ChristmasHack, a participant must have at least one description with an average score of 2.5 or higher, and must have voted for at least half of available descriptions.

When voting ends, each participant is assigned the wishlist of one other participant. The assignment process works in such a way that if participant X is assigned the wishlist of Y, it does not necessarily mean that Y is also assigned X's wish-list (in fact, this situation is unlikely). The assignment process tries to take into account the individual preferences of participants, expressed by votes in the previous phase.
Each participant is expected to create a game which fulfils at least one of the descriptions from his assigned wishlist.
When the participant has his/her game ready, he/she is expected to submit it to the ChristmasHack site. While doing so, he/she can choose if the submission is supposed to be public or not. Public entries are ultimately released on the ChristmasHack site, and are available for download by anyone. Non-public ones are available for download only by the person they're addressed to.
A participant can update his submission at any point throughout the event.
A participant has to make sure his entry abides by all the entry rules stated below.

You have to ensure that your entry can be played on the machine of your entry's recipient. This can be achieved by:

making sure your source code and its dependencies (libraries etc.) can be compiled on the favourite architecture of your recipient, or
providing a universal binary in the binary archive, or another file that will allow to run the game on that architecture (possibly using a freely available „player” application.

Portability to all the ChristmasHack platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X) is encouraged. If possible, choose portable libraries over ones available under one platform only.
Each entry is required to be open-source - this means that anyone with access to the same platform as you can, using only freely available tools and your source package, produce working binaries for his computer.
The specific license used for the source code is left to the participant's discretion.
An entry is submitted as one or two ZIP compressed archives. Those archives are:

is obligatory
must contain all the source code and data required to succesfully compile, run and play the game
does not exceed 2,000,000 bytes in size

files already present in the source archive,
compiled executable files for one or more platforms, or other files that serve the same purpose (running the game) for your chosen framework (e.g SWF files for Flash).
any shared objects those executables might need (e.g. “dll” and “so” files).

Each participant receives a game after the main phase ends. If the person who received your wishlist didn't manage to submit his/her entry, you will receive one of the public submissions, picked on the basis of your votes during the voting phase.
When the publication date comes (specified in the “Important dates” section), all entries marked as public are actually made available for everyone as downloads on the ChristmasHack site.