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Contest: Second 24 Hour Scenario Contest


Lazarus.

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It's back. Rules are the same as last time. A week will be decided upon that works well for as many people as possible, during which entrants can select any 24 hour block to work on their scenarios. Time will be allowed for testing and revisions, and then judging will begin.

 

I had a lot of fun with this last time, and am looking forward to trying it again and hopefully getting back into my designing groove. Everyone is invited to join, both old participants and new. It's been said that this stunt is a veritable rite of passage for designers-- all I can say is it's guaranteed to put hair on your chest. Don't miss out! tongue

 

Edit: Oh, and the point of this topic is for people to declare whether they intend to participate, and hopefully settle on a week that works for everyone. It won't be fore two weeks at least, I have finals.

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Well last contest it was done twice, for Madhouse as well as the Tales. The circumstance there was that the towns were already drawn, and since the towns were needed the alternative would have been to copy them by hand. I think imported towns are still in the spirit of the contest, as long as you're not drawing towns ahead of time just to save time on contest day (so if it's a sequel and you're importing from the original I'd say fine, ditto if you're using the A2 template like in AVM.)

 

So the consensus so far is that after finals would be the best time (go figure.) My last final is next friday, so I was thinking of starting things on Sunday the 10th. Do I get out early, or is everyone else also out at that time? This date is still very malleable, I just pulled it out of nowhere because it's convenient for me and nobody else has asked for a specific date.

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No data was imported from outside in Madhouse, I used a fraction of my time budget to very carefully reproduce material from Avernum 2. I didn't invent it myself, but I drew every single terrain and floor by hand. tongue (I thought about it and concluded that using the A2 template would be out-and-out cheating, but this was just my interpretation since the rules made no mention of such things.)

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I'll probably be fine as long as it's on a Saturday. 1) I can stay up until midnight, 2) If it's Sunday I lose 3 hours and I can't stay up on a school night. I don't want that big of a disadvantage, because it would count for 6 total hours. And Mon-Fri is a 9 hour penalty. Definitely out of the question.

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Ah, my mistake. Then I was the only one bending the rules-- to be fair I asked first!! tongue

 

I think of pre-existing towns as pretty much the same as pre-existing scripts or graphics. The point of this isn't to make you jump through hoops; if the resource is out there you should use it. I'd say use common sense, and if it's particularly gray then post the details and leave it up to the rest of the contestants to decide.

 

Edit: The previous was directed at Nikki's question/Niemand's response.

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Erm, the 10th sounds alright to me, but I reserve the right to pull a previous commitment out of my ass if I remember one.

 

As for importing towns, I'll take the spirit of the rule to mean "anything made in the 24 hours can be copied, but no external towns can be pulled in". Just because it feels like cheating. Fortunately, this wouldn't matter to me, since any porting I'd do would be self-contained.

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@Duck: The contest spans for an entire week, starting May 10th (if that turns out to be the day we choose.) You can pick any 24 hour span within that week to work on the scenario. You can start at the stroke of midnight on the 9th, or you can start at 1pm on that Wednesday. Doesn't matter. (For some reason PPP doesn't reflect the edit I made to the rules in that old thread. Sorry about that.)

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I entirely agree with Nikki; I held no objection to a designer making as many copies of his own work as he needed. After all, you could in many cases reuse a town at the cost of greatly complicating the coding. The point is to make the designer do the designing during the stipulated time period, but not to make the designing more complicated than it otherwise would be.

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The 10th should be fine. I'm incredibly busy through the 4th and then I've got to worry about packing up and heading home. Then I've got to deal with a commissioning ceremony for the senior cadets, even though I wont have a home anywhere near campus.

 

Incidentally, who is going to be judging this thing?

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Who's judging? Uh, anyone I can get pretty much. And yes, contestants can judge, there's a runoff system to keep contestants from influencing their own scenario's placement. Non-contestant judges are preferred, but usually there aren't enough of them (at least it's been that way for every contest I've participated in.)

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Gah.

 

Okay, so while I've got nothing to my name, I still joined this community with the (misguided) purpose of making scenarios. And I like to pretend that I've got the skill to code a scenario, albeit not the skill to design one. This pretence is dashed every half year or so when I open the Editor.

 

Still, I can't deny that I'm curious about my abilities. I'm sorta maybe tentatively in. Keep in mind how many promised deadlines and promised submissions I've made over the years (Was that plural? Egads!).

 

A big barrier is whether we can divide our twenty four hours into multiple days. If not, I'll be limited to working on whatever Saturday. A repeat of last contest would be very possible (suddenly going out of town halfway through).

 

At any rate, put me down for judging. Time I start pulling my weight.

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In regards to Dintiradan's question: The purpose of the contest is to have fun, and get some scenarios released; the time limit rule hopefully is helping with both of these. It forces you to reassess the way you design. It's a way to challenge yourself, and it's a source of good natured competition amongst the community. But ultimately it's there for fun, and the rules shouldn't keep people from participating.

 

So barring objections, I'm inclined to allow the split-24 hours. I'm not going to come up with a set of rules to govern this exception, I'll leave that up to you. Just keep in mind that the 24 hour limit is for your own benefit and enjoyment; splitting up the hours shouldn't be a way to somehow cheat the system or whatnot, because you shouldn't WANT to cheat the system. If there's any reasonable way to complete the contest in the traditional 24 hour block, you should try to do that. Barring that-- do what you have to do.

 

Ackrovan: That is more or less correct. I'll probably set up a contest email for submissions, which will be posted here. The way we did it last time was:

Quote:
1. Send a message to the contest email saying you're beginning work (Clock in)

2. Send the finished scenario within 24 hours (Clock out)

3. Beta test/revise, and resubmit before the judging begins (Final Copy)

The clock in/clock out is mostly so you're accountable to yourself, we weren't terribly strict about it.

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Eh, the 10th is good. I might have done all my exams/papers by then. So consider me contesting, or contested... Whatever. I got ideas you know. Hold it! You are allowed to have ideas, right? Hold it! Do you have to have talent? I might be in trouble if you have to have talent. Hold it! Can we design with our feet? ... I'll stop typing now.

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Quote:
Half the fun of this is subjecting yourself to an awful and stressful day of couch potato madness.

I completely agree, although I'm not going to say I don't do this anyway. When there's a weekend, you can pretty much count me sitting on an uncomfortable metal folding chair and typing away, mumbling like a madman... 'Oh, the START_STATE isn't working every turn... oh, the boss needs to be at least thirty levels higher—'
I love a good day of Scenario Madness.
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Originally Posted By: Enraged Slith
As much as I think we should allow it, I wouldn't encourage it. Half the fun of this is subjecting yourself to an awful and stressful day of couch potato madness.
Which is a good reason for me not to participate. wink I might be willing to judge, though. I guess that means that I'd have to play all the scenarios?

Originally Posted By: Lazarus.
The clock in/clock out is mostly so you're accountable to yourself, we weren't terribly strict about it.
If you're splitting, do you clock in/out more than once?
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Celtic: I'll leave that up to the person. They should at least clock in once at the beginning, and state that they're splitting the time up. Whether they clock in/out for each design session is up to them.

 

The contest week is being moved back, to give more people time to finish tests/school. Sunday the 24th of May is the new start date, if I don't hear too many objections.

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So what's the theory behind the graphic rule? I don't see how creating graphics is any different than planning any other component of the scenario. Honestly, it's just eye candy, and really has nothing to do with an actual scenario other than to help place the player in the shoes of his heroic adventurers. I suppose that's a reason in itself, but the possibility of finishing any sort of graphic other than those silly little splash screens I make in a 24 hour timeslot is fairly outrageous.

 

I'm just curious what had been determined.

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From the original contest thread:

"As for graphics, anything explicitly for this scenario must be made the day of, but general graphics (like the Louvre etc) are fine."

 

However... I'm sort of torn here. Obviously drawing a new creature from scratch in 24 hours is going to be nigh on impossible, and I think that if a designer wants to make a graphic, upload it to the Louvre/Blades Forge/wherever, and then use it in the scenario, they should be allowed. On the other hand, if the designer just wants to make minor edits to an existing graphic to make it unique to that scenario, that should be done in the 24 hours. I think that keeps with the original rules quite well, at any rate, but I'm not the only person taking part in the contest.

 

Secondly - this raises a second question, namely "is it alright to write a custom data script in advance"? Collecting, sorting, and then writing the damned thing is tedious at best, and eats into time with nothing really to show for it, in terms of scenario, but it is still work that is necessary for the scenario, and so should be done within the 24 hours...

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