Alright, sorry, I came across as too argumentative/confrontational in my previous posts, which made people get defensive and this conversation is falling apart now. I'm just gonna try to explain my position a little better and then I'll STFU after this post
I hope that Balee will consider allowing PX schemes, because I feel there is a lot more untapped potential there. PX isn't necessarily a "different game", it just simply opens up new possibilities. You don't have to put the new weapons, multiple crate spawns, etc, into your scheme. PX can have as big or as little an impact on the game as you want. For example it could be used to add a single new or modified weapon, slightly tweak a single piece of game logic, etc.
I too have seen "off-putting" elements of PX. Cheap-looking sprites, weird physics on things like the bowling ball and trampoline, error messages when you try to kamikaze, etc. The "portal gun" video seemed just a bit too radical at first, but when it's not being shown off like that (in rapid-fire) it's a really useful and cool utility. And there were big (crippling) performance issues on my old Pentium 4 computer.
At first these elements gave me the impression that PX as a whole was a kludgy and unprofessional hack-job. But now, having come to know PX, I realize it is actually very polished and user-friendly, in its main schemes at least. And the possibilities allow for some great new schemes with novel strategic gameplay to be developed. For a scheme to win this contest, it would have to be polished and user-friendly.
I would tentatively say that the most creative bunch of people active in the W:A community are those who are involved in creating stuff for PX. These people and their work could use some exposure and recognition... if not just to boost the player count of PX games a bit.
The fact that there might be difficulty comparing PX schemes with non-PX schemes is just an "apples and oranges" problem for the judges, which makes no difference to the player. But the result will be more competition and better, more varied schemes overall. Which is the whole point, right?
Anyway I'll stop talking now. If this post also came across as argumentative and confrontational, it wasn't meant that way. This is how they teach you to write stuff in High School and I never learned anything different
