MVC Melee Rules

1. When?
Signups open on *TBD*. The competition will take place the weekend of August 7th and 8th from 9pm EST Friday night (the 6th) to 8:59pm Sunday night.

2. Teams
Teams may consist of 1 to 4 people. If you've got an ambitious project idea, it may make sense to recruit a diverse skill set for your team, although the composition of your team is completely up to you. Teams may even be 1 person but not more than 4. F'realz. We have spies everywhere.

3. Use of MVC
Since this IS called MVCMelee, you obviously must use ASP.NET MVC, either version 1.0 or 2.0. Unfortunately we cannot accept 3rd party frameworks such as FuBuMVC (although we think it's RAD), HomeBrewMVC or any other derivative. Maybe next year. You MAY, however, substitute view engines and use something like Spark. We will be validating code so don't try and pull a fast one on us.

4. Use of Commercial Components and Libraries
Generally speaking this is a no go. You may not use any commercially purchased libraries or controls. If it costs money you probably can't use it.

5. Visual Studio
You are free to use whichever version of Visual Studio 2008+ you have access to and whatever plugins you've already purchased. If you don't own Visual Studio you may download Visual Web Developer for free here. You are also free to use SharpDevelop, MonoDevelop, or even Microsoft Notepad if it suits your fancy. Having said that you can NOT use Visual Studio 2005 or earlier because .NET 3.5 and ASP.NET MVC are not supported.

6. Code Repositories
MVCMelee will be partnering to provide a free source control repository to each participating team. Teams are free to choose between Git and Subversion. Once you've made this choice, however, you have to stick with it. Unfortunately we cannot support Team Foundation Server or any other source control mechanism. MVCMelee admins will also have access to each source code repository. This is so that we can properly validate that teams are checking in code regularly (at least every 3 hours) and following the rules.

7. Third Party Web Services & Libraries
You are allowed to use any free web service, library, or component that is publicly available. Weather APIs, Bing Maps, and Yahoo YUI are good examples of these. Again, think free.

8. Qualification & Judging
At the conclusion of the coding portion of MVCMelee, source code repositories will be frozen and locked. During this time an expert panel of incredibly bright and talented coders will validate the projects to make sure all the rules were followed. Any projects that were not started, used any commercial controls, or violated other rules will be disqualified. Remaining projects will be approved and setup for public voting. The public portion of the judging will take place over 5 days. Anyone who registered an account on MVCMelee.com will be able to vote on as many applications as they wish. You can vote on 1 site or 20 but we encourage judges to use as many sites as they can during the open voting period and vote accordingly.

9. Judging Categories

1. Appearance, AKA, the swimsuit round. How nice does the site look? Is it visually appealing? Does it use garish contrasting colors or a nice well-honed pallet?
2. Innovation. How original or innovative is the application? Has it been done before? Hopefully nobody is writing another twitter clone.
3. Completeness. Does the application feel finished? Are there broken links? Are whole sections missing from the site? Does the sign-in system work, if there is one?
4. User Experience. Is the site easy to navigate and use? Does it take 14 clicks to create an account? Do you want to punch someone after you've used the application?

10. Prizes
The top point-getters in each category will be awarded AMAZING prizes. As well, the application with the most cumulative points will be awarded the 1st place prize.