All About Contests

[Quote58]

A Message from the metconst staff:

Greetings MetConst!

We are making this announcement to inform you of our new contest format.
Rather than happening at sometimes seasonal, sometimes random times, we will have a schedule and people working on them going forward. The general format right now as of right now:
-3 contests a year
-each contest handled by 1 of 3 committees
-each committee includes multiple members

Contests will be broken up into three month periods, with a month in between each for a buffer. Starting this February, we'll be running our first contest in this format, and the theme and guidelines will be made known in that post. The next contest will begin in June, and the final contest of the year begins in October.

The committees are responsible for planning one contest a year. There are going to be two permanent committees that will be responsible for one contest a year each. There is an open slot for a contest, and this will be filled by you, the illustrious hacker! Each year Quote, as overlord of contests, will be picking from among user submitted contests to fill the final spot. How will he pick? In the near future, there will be a form accessible via the main site for users to submit their contest ideas for consideration. It will have all the details needed, and you can re-submit a contest more than once should it not get selected one year.

We're trying this for multiple reasons. We want a couple of committees to try to develop more interesting themes, and we want to try to get more contests a year as well, without flooding the place, and without burning out one person.

As of right now, we plan the committees to be 3-5 members in total. The members can change as needed. We want some balance between games that are hacked by the members, so they can make more well-rounded rulesets and ideas. Right at this moment the two committees are:

POST HACK Committee:
GF_Kennon
Jordan5
OneOf99

Liquid Crushment Committee:
CaptGlitch
Cardweaver
MetroidMst

If you have any ideas, keep an eye out for the submission form when it is ready. Otherwise, get hype for the upcoming contest(s)!

Feel free to discuss the new format in this thread,
Thanks

[Jiffy]

New contest stuffs, huh? I do like this. I'm a big fan of contests, too.
However, I have a few points to put forward:
- Are the different committees put forward to judge different contests? If so, then that's a good idea; you've kept the balance for SM hacks and M:ZM hacks, but keep in mind that NEStroid still exists, and MetroidMst is the only person (to my knowledge) who /likes/ NEStroid enough to play/judge hacks of it? I say add Snarf to one of these lists.
- What about contests with public voting? Will these still be a thing?
- I think thrice a year is rather frequent for a year, provided the contests are 3 months long. It doesn't give much time for other things such as finishing nature making good full hacks for the community to play. Either you make it less frequent, or reduce the time given for a contest. I say 1 month? Contests have worked with 1 month given in the past.
- Allowing new users (and possibly guests) to suggest contest ideas might be too lenient. Let's say we give them 1 year to be registered before they can suggest anything.

[Jordan5]

- Are the different committees put forward to judge different contests? If so, then that's a good idea; you've kept the balance for SM hacks and M:ZM hacks, but keep in mind that NEStroid still exists, and MetroidMst is the only person (to my knowledge) who /likes/ NEStroid enough to play/judge hacks of it? I say add Snarf to one of these lists.

I'm a big fan of M1 (and M2) so that shouldn't be a problem. You guys just need to hack these wonderful games. :bounce:

[Cpt.Glitch]

I can't quote your relavent statement due to being on mobile, so bear with me here.
@Jefe962

In regards to judging, each committee also chooses how judging will be handled for their given contest, so a public vote is possible given the committee wants it to be judged that way.

[MetroidMst]

As a point, we tried to balance the committees out. Obviously Super is a huge thing here, and rightfully so, but ZM/Fusion is booming thanks to MAGE, and we obviously wanted people dabbling in the dark arts of making bad games good. It would be nice to have more people around who were well-rounded across all the games. There will obviously be a favorite, but as you mention, you weren't even aware Jordan likes NEStroid.

We want balance, and we want all the contests to be able to have entries from any game in the series if possible. To do the best with that, we could use more people. The committees are based on 3-5 members, and as you notice there are only three on each currently. It will likely be that way for this first year, but in the future it's very possible we will look for a couple more people to contribute. Something to keep in mind for the future.

Also finally I want to touch on the user-submitted contest. The actual submission form will help do a lot of the weeding out. The user submitted contest will have to fill in fields for everything, proving they've put some thought into it. If a new user has a great contest idea, there isn't really a reason to not go with it just because they're new.

Keep the dialogue alive.

[liamnajor]

just make sure said contests are feasible to include all of the 2d games(including M2 and {BARF} NESTroid)

[OneOf99]

just make sure said contests are feasible to include all of the 2d games(including M2 and {BARF} NESTroid)

There might be some contests that focus around specific games, but the contest themes will for the most part cover all games. Of course, contests won't have stuff like "Make sure to include at least 10 alpha metroids in your hack" because that would make Super Metroid and Zero Mission hacks out of the question.