Competition Overview

This programming competition is extremely exciting - not only because it will force you to explore a fun area of coding that you may not have touched before (namely physics), but also because we've got thousands of dollars worth of excellent prizes from our sponsors: AGEIA and BFG Technologies.

It's all about the Physics

Your task is to program a game that uses Dark Physics and the PhysX PPU to the max. Don't worry if you don't own a PhysX card yet as you can enter into either the 'Hardware Enhanced' or 'Software Only' categories.

What sort of game qualifies? Virtually anything! An FPS, a platform game, a puzzler or just a physics game showcase, infact it can be anything your imagination can create. It is important to understand that you do not need to create a FULL game, by this we mean that you can develop just one single playable level, and as long as that level rocks our physics world and is polished to perfection, it will stand just as good a chance of winning as anything else.

The Prizes

For the Hardware Competition (games created specifically to take advantage of the PhysX PPU):

• 1st prize - USD $1000 cash, BFG 7950GX2 PCIe graphics card, $200 TGC software voucher and a Super Goodie Pack
• 2nd prize - 2 x BFG 7900GT SLI or 1 x 7950GX2 PCIe graphics card(s), $100 TGC software voucher and a Goodie Pack
• 3rd prize - 1 x BFG 7900GT PCIe graphics card, $50 TGC software voucher and a Goodie Pack
• 4th, 5th & 6th prizes - $30 TGC software voucher and a Goodie Pack

For the Software Competition (games created with Dark Physics in software mode):

• 1st prize - 1 x AGEIA PhysX card from BFG, $50 TGC software voucher and a Super Goodie Pack
• 2nd prize - 1 x AGEIA PhysX card from BFG, $30 TGC software voucher and a Goodie Pack
• 3rd prize - $30 TGC software voucher and a Goodie Pack
• 4th prize - A Goodie Pack

Goodie Packs consists of: AGEIA PhysX t-shirt, BFG t-shirt, AGEIA PhysX stress-ball and an AGEIA PhysX flashing pin.
Super Goodie Packs include the same as the Goodie Pack plus: AGEIA PhysX soccer shirt, and a C4 Teflon mouse-pad.

In addition to the prizes all winning games have bundle opportunities to be included with future AGEIA PhysX product offerings, and winners will all have their names and games advertised on www.ageia.com for a minimum of sixty days after the contest ends. Other opportunities may include promotion at AGEIA or partner events.

The Deadline

Each category has its own deadline, both started on 1st September 2006:

'Software' Category deadline: October 15th 2006.
'Hardware' Category deadline: November 15th 2006.

The Criteria

Entries will be evaluated on a number of criteria, including: (1) Breadth of use of PhysX features including (but not limited to) rigid-bodies, joints and cloth within Dark Physics, including level and scale of interaction between features (2) Gameplay physics interactions as well as effects physics (3) Playability and novel use of physics in the game design and logic (4) Creativity and 'fun' factor.

In short: Make your game as entertaining and as physics mad as possible.

What next?

Get coding! If you've got a Dark Physics related question, or get stuck when coding, then do ask in our forum and we'll help as best we can - we want to facilitate as many contributions as possible, and we understand that physics coding will be new to a lot of you.

If you don't own Dark Physics then you can download a special trial version of DarkBASIC Professional 6.2 + Dark Physics. This version will expire at the end of November 2006. If you already own Dark Physics and would like to buy a discounted PhysX card then look at our special rebate offer (US only).