6th Quest Invitational

[Nightmare]

By Demo I mean like Level 1 and 2, to make sure you understand the rules and don't break them, etc.

Definitely doesn't have to be complete.

EDIT: The participants so far are @bigjoe , @Nightmare , Lunaria, and @Moosh

-James

[Gleeok]

By Demo I mean like Level 1 and 2, to make sure you understand the rules and don't break them, etc.

Definitely doesn't have to be complete.

EDIT: The participants so far are @bigjoe , @Nightmare , Lunaria, and @Moosh

-James

I have decided to redo levels 2, 3, 6, 7, 8. You can have a demo of lv1 if you want but that's about all right now.


Also,
You should give some other people more time to see this (this thread gets buried for periods of time and agn isn't super active all the time), and creating an artificial cutoff point might not be the best way to do it. There's /some/ interest in either an official 6th, or something new as well, which is something. ..I know half the people at purezc are totally against NES spirited ZC things, but in all honesty there are much worse things than having some kind of quest contest for ZC every five years; if anything it just means it's not dead yet.

[Nightmare]

I have decided to redo levels 2, 3, 6, 7, 8. You can have a demo of lv1 if you want but that's about all right now.


Also,
You should give some other people more time to see this (this thread gets buried for periods of time and agn isn't super active all the time), and creating an artificial cutoff point might not be the best way to do it. There's /some/ interest in either an official 6th, or something new as well, which is something. ..I know half the people at purezc are totally against NES spirited ZC things, but in all honesty there are much worse things than having some kind of quest contest for ZC every five years; if anything it just means it's not dead yet.

The thing is Gleeok, we've now got 7 entries (maybe 8 if TK enters) if you get your demo in. Time-wise, I really can't handle any more.

Special cases might be made for AlphaDawg, Imzo, LoveForFire, and HeroOfFire, because of their outstanding contributions, but really, the contest is closed at this point, unless you want it going on another 2-3 years (which no one wants!, lol)

Basically want 2-3 months for dev, like 1-2 months for testing/rev, then voting. Final 2 might get public runoff on all forums, undecided on that.

I said it was an "invitational" for a reason, not an open contest.

-James

[ZoriaRPG]

The thing is Gleeok, we've now got 7 entries (maybe 8 if TK enters) if you get your demo in. Time-wise, I really can't handle any more.

Special cases might be made for AlphaDawg, Imzo, LoveForFire, and HeroOfFire, because of their outstanding contributions, but really, the contest is closed at this point, unless you want it going on another 2-3 years (which no one wants!, lol)

Basically want 2-3 months for dev, like 1-2 months for testing/rev, then voting. Final 2 might get public runoff on all forums, undecided on that.

I said it was an "invitational" for a reason, not an open contest.

-James

Well, what precisely is making it official in any st4anding if it is purely private? If @PhamtomMenace wants to pop in and list some rules for it, or sign off on its standing, that is his business, but you are essentially telling s lead ZC developer at this point that his suggestion has no merit because you don;t have time to run a full open contest. I'm utterly baffled. I have no seen a peep out of @War Lord on it, either. Slapping the word official 'on it and making it a private event smacks of nepotism at this point, where the entire package is s4upposed to be open content.

[Nightmare]

Well, what precisely is making it official in any st4anding if it is purely private? If @PhamtomMenace wants to pop in and list some rules for it, or sign off on its standing, that is his business, but you are essentially telling s lead ZC developer at this point that his suggestion has no merit because you don;t have time to run a full open contest. I'm utterly baffled. I have no seen a peep out of @War Lord on it, either. Slapping the word official 'on it and making it a private event smacks of nepotism at this point, where the entire package is s4upposed to be open content.

I never said it was official. Apparently you missed my last post before I posted it. We never said we were packaging it in or anything.

-James

NOTE: If you want to make it official and open, do it on your time, and spend 2-3 years, I'm not stopping you. But just telling you quite frankly I do not have time to judge 25+ entries and play through them all, and quite frankly, neither does anyone else at this point. If you would like to do it yourself, make videos of everyone, judge yourself, at about 3rd, 5th, or James Quest difficulty, and still do what you want to do with your life, that's totally fine by me. I'm at limit's end as is in getting this done in any type of timeframe with about 10.

I know it might not be the most "fair" and "open" thing to do, but honestly, if we do an open contest, take 2-3 years to get through everything, the landscape might not even be the same honestly. We started the 5th in 2014 and by the time we got done, we had Mario Maker come out, and that forced people to change their way of thinking.

I'm doing my best here, and that's why I didn't promise packaging in. If you so desire, I will turn the reigns over to you, and you will see the issues TSA, DarkDragon, and I had getting things done in a reasonable time somewhat by yourself. I wish you luck if that happens.

[ZoriaRPG]

I never said it was official. Apparently you missed my last post before I posted it. We never said we were packaging it in or anything.

-James

NOTE: If you want to make it official and open, do it on your time, and spend 2-3 years, I'm not stopping you. But just telling you quite frankly I do not have time to judge 25+ entries and play through them all, and quite frankly, neither does anyone else at this point. If you would like to do it yourself, make videos of everyone, judge yourself, at about 3rd, 5th, or James Quest difficulty, and still do what you want to do with your life, that's totally fine by me. I'm at limit's end as is in getting this done in any type of timeframe with about 10.

I know it might not be the most "fair" and "open" thing to do, but honestly, if we do an open contest, take 2-3 years to get through everything, the landscape might not even be the same honestly. We started the 5th in 2014 and by the time we got done, we had Mario Maker come out, and that forced people to change their way of thinking.

I'm doing my best here, and that's why I didn't promise packaging in. If you so desire, I will turn the reigns over to you, and you will see the issues TSA, DarkDragon, and I had getting things done in a reasonable time somewhat by yourself. I wish you luck if that happens.

Ah, fair enough. The tone of the topic, and he title made it seem as if this was supposed to be an official ZC include, when I read it. I apologise for the miscommunication, and I fully comprehend a lack of time to spend doing monotonous tasks.

I am more apt to open up contests for prepackaged quest templates, but we all have differing goals.

[Nightmare]

Ah, fair enough. The tone of the topic, and he title made it seem as if this was supposed to be an official ZC include, when I read it. I apologise for the miscommunication, and I fully comprehend a lack of time to spend doing monotonous tasks.

I am more apt to open up contests for prepackaged quest templates, but we all have differing goals.

If you want to ask @War Lord and open it up, be my guest. But we need to find a host that's willing to play 25+ entries.

Also, I agree if we package it in we have to go open.

It's not monotonius, it's just more work than I can handle when I got other things to do. I heard you hosted a contest once, you know, now imagine that with quests as difficult as James Quest, times 25 or 30 of them..........

-James

[Gleeok]

@Nightmare : For the record, you only listed 4 names. I had thought you were trying to get more people instead of less, which is a little strange, but I can tell you that after the 5th contest you want about 7-8 entries max, otherwise it does take much longer you are right about that.

Anyway, it sounds like there might be around five total, which isn't too many.

[Nightmare]

Well, here's my list:
@bigjoe
@Nightmare
@Lunaria
@Moosh
@Dimentio

Potentials and people I'd let in from past experience if interested
@Gleeok
@TK8305
@Imzogelmo
@Love For Fire
@HeroOfFire
@AlphaDawg
@HeroOfFire
@Shoelace
@Questwizard88

So far QW, HeroOfFire and Shoelace haven't responded, the others haven't been on in a while. And @Chris Miller and [MENTION=39015] @Matthew Bluefox were invited, but are confirmed nos so far.

I will be making a massive update on demos and rules once everything is more set in stone. Right now a lot of moving parts. Right now trying to get a judging system in place and getting people to not be super kaizo with difficulty in Level 1.

EDIT: I think most people will be cool with the top two quests to be on a public runoff between all 3 forums (here, PureZC, and speedrun.com). How we get there and narrow it down I don't know yet. I'm all ears for that one that'll take a reasonable amount of time.

-James

[ZoriaRPG]

If you want to ask @War Lord and open it up, be my guest. But we need to find a host that's willing to play 25+ entries.

Also, I agree if we package it in we have to go open.

It's not monotonius, it's just more work than I can handle when I got other things to do. I heard you hosted a contest once, you know, now imagine that with quests as difficult as James Quest, times 25 or 30 of them..........

-James

(Emphasis, mine.)

Hence, you do not see me chomping at the bit to do it again. :p

That thing turned into a trainwreck because (1) I was too lenient in mediating between contest rules and wishes of the participants, and (2) running into a work-related conundrum that ate away at my free time in December and January, or January and February. (Probably all three.)

Trying to balance all of that was an administrative pain in the arse, but keep in mind that I was not judging the entries. They were community judged, which might give a more fair bias on what to select, or it might lead to general chaos. If I were to host a contest to make a quest pack, i would do it in stages.

Allow four ( to six, based on assets requirements ) months to create all the entries. Pre-designed original assets would be allowed, and this initial time window is purely for submission, so authors who already have custom assets, such as @Aevin, would have an edge toward generating a package if they desire to submit one.

I believe that is sufficient time to create a graphics package, find or record audio, and find music; write or assemble sets of scripts, and generally make it work along with a small playable demo. Add two months to the end of this for general handling of evaluation, rejection, and community evaluation; then one more month for finals, for a total of about nine months. That just...seems fitting for something of this scale.

After authors send packages:

1. Check the entries for general quality, and adherence to the standards set for them. Remove any that violate rules, either rejecting-and-returning them to the author for revision, or simply removing them if they are plain awful or ignored critical rules.

2. Allow authors who did not meet the requirements within the allotted time, a possible a 30-day grace to fix any issues, re-evaluate if the package merits it. This would cover, as an example, rejections because of copyrighted music, or a few loose objects, but not if they simply ripped assets out of a bunch of Touhou games and called them 'original '.

3. Pass the entries into a public voting pool. This, assuming there are enough: perhaps more than ten, or more than two that fit any single theme category. After the community votes on them, go through the user feedback, and decide which to deselect. If a category only has one package, it would become the default. For this, I imaging the following groups:

NES Adventure, 4-colour
NES RPG, 4 colour
NES Sidescroller, 4-colour
NES Metroidvania, 4-colour
NES Puzzle, 4-colour
NES SHMUP (V), 4-colour
NES SHMUP (H), 4-colour
-----------------------------
SNES Adventure, 16 colour
SNES RPG, 16 colour
SNES Sidescroller, 16 colour
SNES Metroidvania, 16-colour
SNES Puzzle, 16-colour
SNES SHMUP (V), 16-colour
SNES SHMUP (H), 16-colour

Clearly, we would not have all of these assets in one contest, but those would be the ideal packages for an editor. I would also like to see a true Gameboy Zelda assets pack, and a true Z3 assets pack, and I have been slowly working on both of these on whatever free time I can allot to them.

4. Weed out entries with a panel of judges, assembled by the developer staff and community site staff, to make final determinations, if any.

5A. Present completed packages that contain generic assets in the editor, using a prefs dialogue in the ZQues editor under 'New Quest', replacing the generic rulessets that we use now.
5B. Feature assets packages that cannot be distributed openly, such as the aforementioned Gameboy assets pack, as 'add-ons ' that you can install into the editor, by loading them, which appends them tot he new quest dialogue menu.

I would expect the administrative overhead of this to require three to five people who can evaluate the assets, and either three or five panel judges. It would clearly be a much larger undertaking, and if I did it alone, I would need an undertaker shortly thereafter.

---------


Back on Topic

@Evan20k, @Russ , and @NewJourneysFire should probably all be on your list of potential contestants (that you would recognise and approve), given their past questmaking experience. I fully anticipate this being a Moosh show though, as his revised classic tileset style fits with the general feel of a 'sixth; quest, without being NES bland, and he seemingly has the time and material to pour into this at will.

I would love to see an entry from @Shoelace , and I should pester him to work on something for it.