Epic's Steve Polge posted a list of the finalists for the first phase of the Make Something Unreal UT2003 mod contest on the

, together with some general information for entrants.If your mod made it onto the list, congratulations!

We've been reviewing the first phase entries for the $1000000 NVidia Make Something Unreal contest and selecting the finalists in each category for judging by the full panel of judges.  One important addition we've made to the competition after looking at the entries is the creation of an additional category, for new game types, with the purpose of rewarding fun new game types that don't have the scope of some of the total conversions being developed, and therefore aren't compeittive in the mods category.  The prizes for the game types category will be similar to the tools category.  We'll be making an official press release containing this news and other important news about the contest, but I wanted to give the community a heads up here.

For entrants, here's some general overall feedback:

• There were quite a few promising entries, particularly in the mod category, that were too early for judging.  We're happy to look at them, and get an idea of where you are going, and look forward to seeing more complete and polished versions in phase 2.
• We were pretty lenient in this round about confusing installation procedures.  Make sure that your entries are easy to install and use in the next phase!  Any entry that is provided as a zip file should include paths information for the files in the zip, so that a user can just unzip into their c:\UT2003 directory and have all the files automatically put in the proper subdirectory.  Also, please provide instructions with your entry about how to play your mod, whether it is in game or through an external executable/batch file.  Also, if your mod has a web page, please include it in your installion instructions.
• We frown on mods that make changes to Epic content.  One mod, Global Warzone, replaced the entry level.  This is unacceptable, because it means that the mod can potentially affect your game even when you haven't explicitly loaded it.
• Using mutators as a way of setting gametype options is confusing, and fills up the mutator menu with game type specific mutators.  Please use the game options menu for setting options specific to your game type.
• If you didn't enter the contest in the first phase, you can still enter in future phases.  The three phases of the $1000000 NVidia Make Something Unreal Mod Contest are independent.  You can enter any category in the second or third phase, whether or not you had submitted an entry in any previous  phase.  The only limitation is that there must be significant improvements to an entry for it to be considered if it had previously been submitted in an earlier phase of the contest.

And now, without further ado, here are the Mod category finalists for Phase 1 (in no particular order):

Riftwar     Sweet Dreams   Marble Mania 2003    UnrealSpeed    Fatal Arts     DeathBall     Domain     Faceoff      Conquest Marines     GODZ     Jupiter Effect: Influx   UT2003 Troopers     Jungle Warfare     UETF Chronicles      

The following entrants in the Mod category were not selected for the final Phase 1 judging in the Mod category, but we felt they deserved honorable mentions:

Proelium    AirBuccaneers    Nali Bricks     ChaosUT    Global Warzone (but don't download this one till they fix the entry level overwrite issue)

Here are the Game type category finalists for Phase 1

Flag Hunter    Boss of the Arena    Roundmatch Pack    One flag capture    Riftwar      Minions of Destruction: CyberSports     DuelGame    Overload    Greed    Duality     V.I.P.    Quad Team Deathmatch    XCTF 2003    UETF Chronicles      

The following entrants in the Game type category were not selected for final Phase 1 judging, but we felt they deserved honorable mentions:

Assimilation    Team False Prophet    VASBioInvasion

We'll be announcing finalists in the other categories over the next several days.  Note that some of the entries that didn't make the finals in the Mod category will be finalists in other categories.