Re: Fall Hack Contest

[Cpt.Glitch]

Alas, i don't post meaningful things often unless it's ZM or Fusion related. However, I have a complaint with one rule. This one "Publicly available ASM is fine to use, self-made custom ASM must be made public along with the release of the hack to be qualified for judging."
First, I want to say I understand the reason for this rule. This makes it more fair to every hacker, whether they know ASM or not, so an advanced Metroid hacker will have less of an advantage over a newcomer wanting to try to win. In that aspect, I respect the rule. However, it places quite a limitation on ZM and Fusion hackers alike, due to the limitations of the actual game. Simple things such as, making Kraid's door unlock after he dies, or making a room lock until all enemies die, require ASM for these games. Requiring all custom asm to be shared publicly is not only not useful for the community (because these codes are hack specific), but also a deterrent to all ZM (and Fusion, but I doubt we will see one of those entered) hackers, new and old. If the rule was altered to allow minor code changes that don't add entirely new mechanics then I'd be satisfied with the rule. If that's not an option, I am VERY familiar with how Zero Mission works, and I could judge whether a code was added that does such things.

Tl:dr
Don't like the "Must use public asm" rule. Impedes ZM hackers from making entries. Change it please.

[SpoOkyMagician]

So... No bosses required? This is very tempting to enter... I am not really prepared though... I wanna do some tiles and stuff but, that will take time... Plus, I have other things to do... But, only 10 rooms... That is pretty simple... must end with escape/ending credits... I could do the escape I suppose... I will think it over. It's the opportunity I have been waiting for too. (theme wise.) Most like if I made one, it will just be a very mini hack... But yeah, I will get back to you on this.

~ SpoOkyMagician

[Cardweaver]

It makes no sense at all to require custom ASM to be released along with a hack for it to qualify. The issues I have with this rule are as follows:

• It doesn't make things more fair to newcomers. If it did, then it assumes that people are so protective of their SWEET&LEET custom ASM that they won't use it in the contest. In that case, then it seems that getting people to release their ASM would be the cause of that rule. However, I think that those people (if any) that are highly protective of their code would just not participate in the contest given this rule.
• There's a blurred line between hex tweaks and custom ASM. What's to stop someone from not using an assembler and writing my ASM straight in the hex editor? Especially if it's a tiny piece of ASM, say only 0x19 bytes? Note that the hex tweak for speeding up elevators going down before room transition is exactly 0x19 bytes. Does this mean that all hex tweaks used must be public as well? You can achieve some very drastic change with a few changed bytes.
• It doesn't help ensure that code written for the contest was written during the contest.
• Circling back to my first point, even if the person writing the code doesn't mind sharing it, perhaps they might want to improve upon it before releasing it publicly but didn't have time before the contest ended? I know, it's unimaginable that people will be working on their hacks up until the deadline. Pure crazy talk.
• I think Glitch's point about the code not even being useful stands for all games. It's very possible that someone would repoint things in such a way to make their code changes not at all useful to anyone else.

Tl;dr
I also don't like the "Must use public asm" rule. Please explain why the powers that be feel it is necessary to be part of the contest rules.

[SpoOkyMagician]

• It doesn't help ensure that code written for the contest was written during the contest.

I would say that's the reason itself. (They could check existing asm/code.) To be sure it's not new asm/code but, I do agree that it should be removed from the rules honestly. Although, I would like to hear more if I am wrong.

~ SpoOkyMagician

[Cardweaver]

• It doesn't help ensure that code written for the contest was written during the contest.

I would say that's the reason itself. (They could check existing asm/code.) To be sure it's not new asm/code but, I do agree that it should be removed from the rules honestly. Although, I would like to hear more if I am wrong.

~ SpoOkyMagician

To clarify: it doesn't ensure code was written inside the timeline of the contest because people could be sitting on code they haven't revealed yet and use that, then claim they wrote it during the contest and it would be nearly impossible to prove otherwise.

[SpoOkyMagician]

Oh right. Nevermind.

~ SpoOkyMagician

[Crashtour99]

-Publicly available ASM is fine to use, self-made custom ASM must be made public along with the release of the hack to be qualified for judging.

This rule is stupid.
If I were to make a contest hack and also use it as a test for the core mechanics of my main hack, you'd be demanding I publicly release hundreds of thousands of lines of code developed over several years, before it's actually ready for any kind of real release.  And that's in addition to the fact that only skilled ASM hackers are going to be able to understand it because it's so convoluted and integrated with multiple engine functions within the game, so ASM newbies aren't going to understand it at all. 

If you want people to release code and resources, find a better way to incentivize people to do it.  This rule is fucking retarded and will keep the most skilled ASM hackers from releasing anything new or interesting.

[Quietus]

I had a reading failure, and wondered how on Earth people were expected to create a full hack in two months.  :oh:

[MetroidMst]

So other than one of the rules being retarded. . .

How is the winner decided and can it be chosen from any hack that doesn't follow said retarded rule?

[OneOf99]

The asm rule is really going to be tedious to gbatroid hackers because of the amount of single byte tweaks that we have in our roms. I've already lost track of the amount of changes I've made to my personal rom, and for a contest hack we won't have the time to document everything like that.

[benox50]

That rule should only apply to big ASM and not all lil changes

[Quietus]

It would probably be better to remove the rule altogether. Those that are capable of creating .asm shouldn't be penalised for the ability, and it's still possible for others to create a perfectly good hack without it.

[personitis]

I was asked to post my thoughts on the rule to generate some more conversation (I guess), so I'll just copy&paste what I've said elsewhere about it:

[6:36 PM] personitis: I feel that line was put there to level the playing ground as much as possible.

[6:47 PM] personitis: Though I do quite like the idea of discouraging people from using a resource they've been holding onto.
[6:47 PM] personitis: It's gaming the system on principle of time.

[7:32 PM] personitis: Likewise, I think drawing a fine line through ambiguity is a pretty tall order.
[12:34 PM] personitis: I'm pretty sure everyone is on board with the idea of having any and all entrants on a level playing field, but it seems realistically impossible. Especially given the way we could deliberate aspects of the rules with terms and the ambiguity those terms have.
[12:34 PM] personitis: It's contest, not a court room, and we're suppose to be having fun.

[1:16 PM] personitis: There's a potential point of conflict (in my mind) where contests are suppose to be fun and encourage people to Make More Hacks (TM) but at the same time if you allow people to game the time limits by using things they've had before or not limiting people based on the advanced stuff they know, you end up discouraging people from joining and partaking.
[1:52 PM] personitis: It's totally possible that the whole situation is just a case of overthinking the matter though.
[1:53 PM] personitis: We may not need these limitations at all unless they are specifically geared toward the theme of the contest, like you mentioned limiting specific types of code or even graphics.

/lazyresponse

[thedopefish]

I'll simply add that I highly value having useful resources made available to the community.  If you've got some world-endingly-good ASM that you've been working on for 5 years, and you're scared by the prospect of having to make it public before you're ready, then maybe you shouldn't be putting it in a contest hack.  But that's just my personal opinion.

At the end of the day, we're just trying to encourage as many people as possible to participate in the contest, and hopefully come out of it with some cool new stuff for everyone to enjoy.

[Cardweaver]

[6:36 PM] personitis: I feel that line was put there to level the playing ground as much as possible.

Possibly, but it only levels the playing field if you assume that people either won't write asm or those who would won't want to write it because of the rule. It in no way stops someone from writing amazing asm and submitting it on the last hour of the contest. In that scenario, the people the rule supposedly benefits receive no such benefit and the playing field isn't leveled at all. If that was the intent of the rule, I feel like it is misguided.

At the end of the day, we're just trying to encourage as many people as possible to participate in the contest

I don't see how restricting what qualifies as a valid entry based on whether or not assets are made public makes the contest more accessible or encourages people to participate.

I do appreciate that there is now some conversation both ways on the rule rather than a one-sided piling of complaints with no staff response. Any rule changes (or official statement of no changes) should be dealt with swiftly given the time limited nature of the contest.

[Miranda Gemini]

Hi.
I mentioned why I think this rule is bad on Discord:
[spoiler]

[/spoiler]
But no response was elicited whatsoever from staff there. So I'll post a more comprehensive, better-thought out argument here instead.

Firstly, it seems like the rule is made exclusively to punish people for having more hacking skill. While I understand wanting to "level the playing field", I don't think that's what the rule does - rather it simply discourages people from putting in what could potentially be cool stuff.
The way I see contest hacks are as a testing ground for features I might want to put into a "full hack". Notable examples of this include a vast number of tilesets I've experimented with over the years, that were all being toyed with and refined to put into Sunshine. Key word being "refined" - I would never have released the stuff from Sunshine Oddity in the state it was in at the time of the hack, because it was still experimental. I'm sure ASM can be argued in the same way, perhaps on an even greater scale as the changes are much larger.
On the subject of tilesets, there's no rule stating that I can't use stuff I've been sitting on for years in this hack without releasing them to the public. Why put the restriction on ASM, and not on graphics?

And that's before we even get into the specifics of ASM. What constitutes ASM, rather than simply hex tweaks? Theoretically, anything that can be done in hex can be done with ASM, and vice versa. Must I release a patch containing all of the individual hex tweaks used?
What about things such as custom enemies/bosses? Things that would be pretty useless to anyone not making something specifically to thematically fit this contest. Plus, I don't have to release the graphics for said boss, only the ASM that makes it work.
On that note, do I have to separate my ASM into individual files, or can I just dump a giant file that says "here's my ASM. I won't tell you what it does or how it works, but it's here". Sure, it's petty, but I made this cool ASM to test it out for a real hack later. What if I don't want people nicking off with it?

Finally, I'll go back to the point of "punishing people for their hacking skills". Why are we exclusively punishing this single aspect of ROMhacking? Why not set a rule that says I can't exploit layering to create rooms that appear to use more than two layers? That's not fair on new people - they're sure as hell not going to know how to do it right off the bat. Do I have to make a tutorial for them before my submission is counted?

Now, for direct responses;

[6:36 PM] personitis: I feel that line was put there to level the playing ground as much as possible.

[6:47 PM] personitis: Though I do quite like the idea of discouraging people from using a resource they've been holding onto.
[6:47 PM] personitis: It's gaming the system on principle of time.

See above but the TL;DR is that it's exclusively targeting one aspect of hacking in an extremely ambiguous way, for no obvious reason.

I'll simply add that I highly value having useful resources made available to the community.

All the rule seems to do is discourage people from using this ASM, as opposed to releasing it into the wind.

If you've got some world-endingly-good ASM that you've been working on for 5 years, and you're scared by the prospect of having to make it public before you're ready, then maybe you shouldn't be putting it in a contest hack.  But that's just my personal opinion.

I'll once again bring up my point that these contest hacks are often used as a testing ground for these things, so that responses can be garnered from the public to have them refined and perfected. They're not meant to be stunningly good hacks, they're meant to be fun little experiments. I think putting in janky ASM adds to that feeling.

At the end of the day, we're just trying to encourage as many people as possible to participate in the contest, and hopefully come out of it with some cool new stuff for everyone to enjoy.

Basically what card said; it seems that ruling out hacks just because they didn't release some sort of ambiguous asset to the general public seems more likes it's doing the opposite of encouraging participation.

To me, it seems like the rule was basically thrown in as an afterthought, which seems to be pretty fitting for a contest that we don't even know how/on what it is being judged.
I also find it interesting that the two "official" staff responses we've had so far (not that I am calling them out) don't actually have the reason as to why the rule was included, only their speculation on why it exists. Given that it doesn't even seem the person who posted this contest knows why the rules for the contest are as they are, and they aren't even the person who announced a contest was happening in the first place, perhaps I shouldn't be surprised by how half-assed this whole thing seems. (I mean really? 3 weeks of buildup for a "Fall" theme?)

[thedopefish]

To be clear, the rule was discussed by staff ahead of time, and there were 2 express purposes for leaving it in:
1) To encourage people to make more stuff public.  After the contest is over, everyone gets some neat new hacks to play through, as well as some resources to use or learn from for future projects.
2) To try to level the playing field.  Note, this not about hacking skill, but about timeframe.  It is not "fair" if one person starts today with a blank slate and takes 2 months to build an entry, compared to someone else who starts today and piles in a whole bunch of stuff they've been slowly working on for their magnum opus hack over the last several years, and then wraps a small hack around it for their entry.  Obviously this is not a perfect solution, there are plenty of ways besides ASM you could cheat the system here, you could always lie, etc. etc. we get it, but that is the intent.

The goal is not to punish the more talented hackers so that newbies can compete.  The ideal outcome is one where people put crazy ASM and tilesets and whatever into their contest hacks and then also make the interesting bits public afterwards.  In any case, we've gotten a lot of good feedback and will try to address it.

Now I shall close out of my personal thoughts.  I am sympathetic to the complaints that this rule adds additional work on some hackers.  I am less sympathetic to the attitude that "I want my ASM to be completely perfect before I release it, therefore I'm scared to put a beta version of it in my contest hack", because you can always improve it later.  And I have no sympathy for the people being ultra protective of their precious ASM who want to have their cake and eat it too--if it's really that impressive and you're really that worried about other people stealing your thunder, then keep it under wraps until you use it in your own big project, this contest will survive without it.

[Miranda Gemini]

To be clear, the rule was discussed by staff ahead of time, and there were 2 express purposes for leaving it in:
1) To encourage people to make more stuff public.  After the contest is over, everyone gets some neat new hacks to play through, as well as some resources to use or learn from for future projects.

I understand this, but it also seems to me that the existence of said rule mainly discourages people from wanting to put said resources in. This doesn't really address the point about contest hacks being a great place to test out ideas, especially when it comes to the potential for massive changes as with ASM.

2) To try to level the playing field.  Note, this not about hacking skill, but about timeframe.  It is not "fair" if one person starts today with a blank slate and takes 2 months to build an entry, compared to someone else who starts today and piles in a whole bunch of stuff they've been slowly working on for their magnum opus hack over the last several years, and then wraps a small hack around it for their entry.  Obviously this is not a perfect solution, there are plenty of ways besides ASM you could cheat the system here, you could always lie, etc. etc. we get it, but that is the intent.

And once again, the fact that it is only targeting one particular aspect of "advanced level" hacking and not a bunch of others makes this "levelling the playing field" argument really weak. Why are we calling out ASM in particular, and not any and all resources?

The goal is not to punish the more talented hackers so that newbies can compete.  The ideal outcome is one where people put crazy ASM and tilesets and whatever into their contest hacks and then also make the interesting bits public afterwards.

This seems like a nice idea in theory, but honestly expecting it to pan out in such a manner is really, really wishful thinking. Putting in a rule like this isn't going to change people's ways of hoarding their fun ASM things. It just means we won't get to see them played around with.

...I am less sympathetic to the attitude that "I want my ASM to be completely perfect before I release it, therefore I'm scared to put a beta version of it in my contest hack", because you can always improve it later.

But that's not what the rule does. It simply means that people will, if they decide to include it, be releasing their untested, potentially unfinished, and probably very janky resources, which adds absolutely nothing of value in terms of resources being released.

And I have no sympathy for the people being ultra protective of their precious ASM who want to have their cake and eat it too--if it's really that impressive and you're really that worried about other people stealing your thunder, then keep it under wraps until you use it in your own big project,

Not so much aimed at you as it is at the forum in general, but this really seems to go against the general attitude around here of calling people out on using other people's resources without permission. I mean, how many times did we ban Physix, or call people out for using Redesign's assets? Forcing people to release their resources to the general public seems to be a really fucking hamfisted way of saying "lol you released it yourself of course people can take it"

this contest will survive without it.

This seems to go against what you were saying before about wanting to see "neat new hacks to play through", as really, what you're saying is "if you're worried about people using your things, don't make a hack".

I apologise if it sounds like I'm directly calling you out Dopey, but yours are the closest things to official responses, and it still seems like you're not sure why the rule was put in, as your "reasons" are contrived at best and "I don't actually know why the rule exists but here's why I like it" at worst. Also, these responses are still dodging all of the (valid) criticisms being raised about this rule.If those are genuinely the reasons the rule was included, then surely you can see why it seems like a poor, or at least poorly thought out rule? It doesn't at all encourage people to make more stuff public, nor does it effectively level the playing field in terms of timeframe, as it exclusively bans one kind of resource, while allowing for god knows how many others.

[PHOSPHOTiDYL]

Aww I was saving a custom boss just for this so I could distract the judges from the vanilla map with a few spikes thrown in. I guess now I'll have to make a hack based on level design, item progression, & enemy placement.

[PHOSPHOTiDYL]

Also can I reshade red crateria's palette & still qualify for the other award, or does it have to be vanilla red crateria? I would like a darker red...

[Quote58]

It's got to be true red crateria, so no modifications to the palette of that tileset.

Also, I'm locking this topic for the night, because I'll be rewriting the post and responding about the rules tomorrow.

[Quote58]

Alright, I moved this into it's own thread so it doesn't distract from the main contest thread, and it is once again unlocked.

Now, with regard to the infamous rule:
There has been a lot of arguing about the rule within the staff, between the staff and the community, etc. But in the end, the rule had good intentions. Regardless, it's clear that the community doesn't want that rule to be part of the contest, which I completely understand, so it's been removed from the updated contest post. However, I want to acknowledge that the rule was not meant to make things more annoying or frustrating for anyone, it was meant to encourage more resources to be made and posted. Regardless of whether or not it would have done so, it's important to remember that we all just want more awesome stuff from the community.
Now, the issue of a lack of response from the staff is another matter, and it's being addressed.

Feel free to post any other issues you have with the contest here, but the 'new asm must be posted after submitting for a valid entry' rule is no longer a thing, so please don't continue that discussion here.

Thanks for the patience while I got things sorted out.

[SpoOkyMagician]

I do have 1 question I need to clarify before continuing... When you wrote: (in the new rules) "boss rooms don't count toward room total", does this apply only to rooms like kraid, ridley, miniboss rooms only or does custom boss rooms not count either to the room total? I am thinking about making a custom boss room and I just want to clarify this before I accidentally only have 9 rooms in this case...

~ SpoOkyMagician

[Cpt.Glitch]

I do have 1 question I need to clarify before continuing... When you wrote: (in the new rules) "boss rooms don't count toward room total", does this apply only to rooms like kraid, ridley, miniboss rooms only or does custom boss rooms not count either to the room total? I am thinking about making a custom boss room and I just want to clarify this before I accidentally only have 9 rooms in this case...

~ SpoOkyMagician

I think it's safe to assume that if something is used as a boss in your entry and it has a dedicated room, then it's a boss room and does not count toward the total.

[Quote58]

I do have 1 question I need to clarify before continuing... When you wrote: (in the new rules) "boss rooms don't count toward room total", does this apply only to rooms like kraid, ridley, miniboss rooms only or does custom boss rooms not count either to the room total? I am thinking about making a custom boss room and I just want to clarify this before I accidentally only have 9 rooms in this case...

~ SpoOkyMagician

I think it's safe to assume that if something is used as a boss in your entry and it has a dedicated room, then it's a boss room and does not count toward the total.

That's what I was thinking