Just to be absolutely clear about this: Any art that is found to be submitted in violation of copyright will be immediately disqualified. We want to add a body of art to the commons so people don't have to rip art from other places. :)

Nothing at all, really. :)

That said, you'll probably need to "post process" it in a pixel editor to make it consistent with the art theme (since art entries are being judged on consistency, among other things).

Funny, they don't force the artists to use GIMP over tools they are familiar with. Sometimes people just like using a game competition as an excuse to make a game and not as a platform for some idealogical political crap. Why else would so many people enter into game jams where there aren't even winners?

As has been stated earlier, it is perfectly fine if your game runs on any of those proprietary platforms listed. It just needs to also run on a free-as-in-freedom platform, since that's the point of the contest. To be clear, it's not about restricting developers, it's about not restricting users. If your game requires a proprietary toolkit such as XNA, you've limited yourself to people who have purchased Windows. If you build your game out of free libraries, as long as you do it correctly, it will run very happily on Windows, Linux, and Macintosh.

Can we also assume that the judges are savvy enough to compile and install my game on Linux (and it's dependencies)?

The rules address this question:

Ease of use: Your game should be easy to compile and run. You won't be disqualified automatically if a judge is unable to run your game, but it will count against you. You are advised to avoid having large numbers of obscure dependencies or requiring bleeding edge (unstable) libraries.

I think it's pretty clear from that that the judges are willing to compile your game in order to run it, but would appreciate if you stick to relatively common libraries and make sure compilation is a smooth process.

Can I require them to have working OpenGL even if that means they need to install scary proprietary GL drivers?

Your tone here is unnecessarily rude. For the record, there are non-proprietary OpenGL drivers that work just fine, so you don't need to worry about OpenGL support.

The way these GPL people push their ideals really tick me off sometimes. I've sort of jokingly thought that I should change my open source projects from a BSD license to a modified one that doesn't allow static linking with GPL libraries. Seems fair right? Why shouldn't I also punish developers for using restrictive licenses (such as the GPL).

In the grand scheme of things, allowing contest entries to use any other license (even CC0) in addition to the GPL is a pretty poor way of "pushing" the GPL on people, don't you think? We're requiring it for licensing consistency, because it provides a level of freedom that we deem necessary for the contest. If you wish to grant your users additional freedoms by releasing your code under other licenses in addition to the GPL, that's completely fine.

If this goes over well, we're discussing moving in different directions next year (and that may very well include 3D).

In the meantime, I'll plug a similar contest that might interest you on behalf of a friend of mine, that's going on right now. :)

http://tempestintheaether.org/index.php/news/133-open-tempest-3d

Just want to set the record straight on a couple of things:

The FSF considers art to be non-functional data that does not trigger the GPL's linking requirement:

Data that has an aesthetic purpose, rather than a functional one, may be included in a free system distribution as long as its license gives you permission to copy and redistribute, both for commercial and non-commercial purposes. For example, there are some game engines that have been released under the GNU GPL, and have accompanying game information—a world map, game graphics, and so on—released under such a verbatim distribution license. This kind of data can be part of a free system distribution.

Source: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html

Secondly, the art will be dual licensed as CC-BY-SA, so even if you happen to not like the GPL, you need not use the art under that license. Also, while the contest requires your art to be CC-BY-SA and GPL for the sake of consistency, you are also entirely free to license it under a less restrictive license as well.

Finally, your assertion that the game has to run only on a 100% free platform is false. Your game can run on any platforms you want it to. It's just that those platforms must include a 100% free platform.

We don't want to restrict what you do with your code and art. However, we do have a set of standards for entry -- as long as those standards are met, you can do anything you want with your work.

I'll be honest. I agree with this guy and I most certainly do not have aspergers. :)

High school level English consists of reading dull books and then writing character analyses and other crap about them. Unfortunately, at least in my experiences, being able to analyze characters and plots wasn't a skill that I gleaned by suffering through 1800's romance novels, it was a skill that I learned from writing fiction on my own. I started out very bad at writing, as most people do, because in all the time they spend forcing "classics" down your throat, they never teach you to write -- they just expect you to. (Sure, they teach you grammar and syntax and how to structure a paper, but they don't teach you a damn thing about how to write fiction, which is ironic since English classes focus on it so heavily.)

Interestingly, if I went back and took those classes now (with a mind for the teacher as my audience) I'd be an A student, but not because of anything I learned in English classes.