3D Palace is running a contest called Guns for Games, with the end-goal of - drumroll please - awarding prizes for the best user-created in-game weapons. The mighty ShockRifle serves as inspiration and the rules are as follows:

Guns in Games. A Staple of the modern gaming industry, what can make a game work where others fail is the guns it uses - the Shock Rifle for example is a well known weapon that is a signature of the Epic Unreal III game engine.

What 3D-Palace STA wants of you is a gun inside a next generation game engine. You can use UDK, the Doom3 engine, the Source Engine, we dont mind at all. There are three levels and three prizes - depending on your level of competence. It doesnt have to be steampunk however it does have to be cool!

• LEVEL 1. You will create your gun model suitable for a game engine and under 10,000 polygons. You will show a screen capture of your gun - textured or untextured - inside the game engine. You will also show wireframes and final renders in the 3d package you created your gun in.
• LEVEL 2. You will create the gun as above in level 1 however you will also create a multimillion polygon normal map which you will apply to the weapon. The weapon will be shown in game with its normalmap applied as well as renders of the normal and low polygon in your 3d application with wireframes.
• LEVEL 3. You will create your weapon as seen in level 1 and 2 however you will fully texture your weapon and have it shown being held and fired in a game engine.

PRIZES.

3rd Place - 3 Months of Sponsor Membership and Bioshock 2 on Steam.
2nd Place - 3 Months of Sponsor Membership and prize TBA
1st Place - 6 Months of Sponsor Membership and prize TBA