So I did a dumb and posted an illegal entry in Winter Chip. However, I can't remove it, so I changed the description to implore all voters to give it straight 1s. Still, that's a waste of folks' time come voting season . . .

Is there a way for me to remove my illegal entry?

you can always resubmit with a new entry
you'll lose points but at least you won't have that illegal entry there anymore

Normally that'd be my plan, but given some real life stuff I won't have time to do any more computer music before the end of the compo.

Now, I could just whip up a junk entry to get legal again, but that leads to as big a waste of folks' time as just telling them to vote all 1s on the current entry. So, I reckon I'll leave it as is with the note for folks to just give it all 1s and move on.

only because something is illegal by botb battle rules, and will get a downvote, doesnt mean it is illegal IN GENERAL!
what i mean by that: if you submit copyrighted material, and probably only then, it will get removed from the site.
theres a high chance that people will still enjoy your track, even if it gets a low score. dont be proud about breaking the rules, but be proud about the effort and work you put into something.

apart from that, your entry is a grey area and it was still discussed if its really illegal or not, check my comment on your entry

yeah you found kind of this gray area
like the fact that it is "castlevania inspired" is great
covering others is wrong... but this is a self cover
we have nothing defined in our rules about iterating over a work over time in different battles
like, for example, if i had a tic80 game that i just mildly improved each time it fit a tic80 bitpack; is that ok? undefined!
but, then again, would you consider this new work an iterative improvement or just simply a cover?

That's a good question. I'm not sure if I could fairly say that there was iterative improvement to the structure itself . . . it's less muddled than it was, but that's thanks to having less "channels" and also to better mixing. I'd also say that's thanks to better sound design, which was a necessity given that the instruments all had to be created (or sampled in the drums' case) in Deflemask instead of using the same VST instruments the original used. If that qualifies as iteration then I'd say it is an improvement . . . cleaner is cleaner.

It started as an exercise in improving my wavetable chops, and to that end I think it was a success - I learned a lot. However, it may well be that BotB wasn't the right venue for it due to the aforementioned gray area that it lands in (self cover of a work that was never featured on BotB or any other compo). I definitely wasn't trying to pull one over on anybody, which is why I proposed just taking it down once I realized my error. If it is squarely in this gray area (which I will henceforth avoid), then I'm also fine with folks voting on the legality as they please (all 1s if they think it's no bueno legally).

Thanks everyone for considering this situation! I really put my foot in it, but y'all fired back with civil discourse!

I can't believe botb has devolved into the philosophy of the Ship of Thesus.


By the way, there is at least one example of this precedent https://battleofthebits.com/arena/XHB/1375/

Not to mention the officially sanctioned Decade battle which was explicitly covers.