It's been a while since Summer Heat and the cold days are upon us. Here is is the official announcement of the Winter Contest 2013/2014! Note that the deadline isn't until the end of January, so you will have plenty of time to build specifically for this contest. Here are the rules:
The Winter Contest has always had a goal to make it accessible to everyone on the forums, so we have a size restriction!
- 5x5x5
This year we will once again go with the classic 5x5x5 grey rod cube contest! Your ride must fit in a cube with edges of 5 grey rods long (5 orange rods for micro k'nex) (including 6 connectors). It is not necessary to build this whole cube, but you can be asked to do so, if it is unclear whether the roller coasters fits or not. Please note that motors should be inside the cube, but power adapters can be outside the cube.
- Limitation on non-K'NEX items
This Winter Contest does not allow non-K'NEX additions, including, but not limited to, Arduino microcontrollers, Lego NXT modules and power drills. In contrast to this, we DO allow rubber bands, surgical tubing and material for adding weight to your trains. If in doubt, ask a staff member.
- Theming
Because this is a friendly contest for everyone to enjoy you get serious bonus points for theming. Even if your building skill doesn't match the veterans or the ones carrying a builder tag you can still make a name by having some awesome scenery around your coaster! Judging will be based on both lay-out and theming! Theming can contain non-K'NEX items, as long as they do not affect the roller coaster's performance. An often used example is cotton balls to resemble snow.
Judging will be done by the staff, not by the users. Instead of voting in a poll, users will be able to post their choice with a reasoning why that model should win. The staff will take the opinions of the users into account and combine these with our own, professional opinions, to decide on the ultimate winner of this contest.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask in this thread.
We give you about 2.5 months to get your models in. The deadline for the SSCoasters Winter Contest 2012/2013 is January 26th, 2014 (Sunday). By then we want all models in the database and added to the entry thread!
Edited by The Stig, 07 November 2013 - 01:24 PM.
Also, VV Coaster Big Loop is not cancelled. I changed the loop into a weird immelman and then a corkscrew. Anyways, this looks like a nice Winter Contest. 
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