It's back! The yearly edition of Cyanide's stage creating contest has now been launched. Basically, the contest's purpose is to find stage creating talents for the upcoming version of Pro Cycling Manager - so winning this contest could end up with the winner being an official stage maker of Pro Cycling Manager 2007! The main prize, however, is the possibility to choose a game from the Focus-catalogue.
This is what the announcement said: Stages creation contest 2006 There we are at it again...
In order to find out the best designers in the community and the evolutions, we are planning again a stages creation contest.
This contest is open to every Pro Cycling Manager 2006 player (not a judge ). We strongly recommend the different countries' communities to take part in it to be able to discover their talented designers.
The involved will have to do a mountain stage of 2000m of positive height variation. No imposed place.
The stage's length will have to stand between 150 and 250 kilometers. You'll be able to choose by yourself if the arrival will be uphill or not. The limit of time to give back the stages is set at Monday the 1st January 2007 at 23h59.
Stages notation : The stages evaluation will be done by a few people jury : Wawan, Wizaja, Freire and myself.
The stages will be noted and a classification should be published in January. No reclamation will be accepted against the classification. This notation of course won't be objective because of its artistic part. We'll try to be as impartial as possible.
We'll have a strong looking at the following points : - Turns (pins, variety, not too much turns but enough) - 2D profile - the passes summits - « Isolated buildings » utilisation - Cities places - Forest places - Realism and cohereance of the stage (place of beginning and arrival, passes choosen...) - Global render of the stage - Lakes or seas are better, as bridges, tunnels or secondhand roads
We'll strongly penalize the stages including the following points : Non-respect of the little flat zones between downhill and an uphill sections. 3D surcharge which would make the stage unplayable (too many buildings, too many cities, too many roads...) Too high declivities due to hazardous villages or crossroads "Flying" objects over the road
Stages sending : The persons taking part of it will have to send their creation to the following adress : concourspcm_AT_cyanide-studio.com (replace _AT_ by @) The sending will be done by mailing of a .zip or .rar file which will absolutely need the following files : - The stage xml file - the bmp file (the map) (With the same name as the xml file and 512*512, 1024*1024 or 2048*2048 pixels)
Prizes : The contest's winner will be able to choose a game of his choice in the Focus ones's.
The best stage makers may be asking to help for the next Pro Cycling Manager's official stages.
As it says in the last line of the announcement:
"The best stage makers may be asked to help for the next Pro Cycling Manager's official stages"
It's not entirely certain that the winner will be asked to join the stage team, but I'm pretty sure one will be included in the team if he wins the competion.
). We strongly recommend the different countries' communities to take part in it to be able to discover their talented designers. 
