Rapid Age development competition

[Lontahv]

EST. I'm around here anywhere from 6pmEST - 12amEST.

~Lontahv

[Grogyan]

Its great to see Aloys take up post, for those entries that are shells .
Thanks also to Lontahv.

With the maintainers too, we have a very good mix I reckon, though I ain't gonna stop anyone else from judging if they want to.


Thanks Dot, for the feedback, much appreciated, but don't forget Trylon, and his hard work on ULM.
And all the plugin developers of the years, without them this wouldn't happen at all.

I lost some time trying to find a feature in Blender, which it doesn't have, so I will submit my entry none the less if its completed.

[belford]

So, looking back, I see that the winner will be hosted in the public ULM. What about all the other entries? Will the public be able to look at them, talk about them, etc?

Speaking as a member of the more-or-less public, I would be disappointed if the outcome of the contest were three weeks of silence followed by one Age appearing.

[Lontahv]

I feel that I can speak for the other judges on this one:

Even if you don't win you sill made an age that can be enjoyed by others. Even if you don't win, you could still have a great age.

The one of the reasons for this contest is losing; so that these already pretty-well skilled writers get even better.

Other Judges>> The ages will get a public score even if they don't win? So a writer can say that "I got 4 stars on graphics-quality for my age". I think that this would be a good way to highlight WHY they didn't win and what they can do to improve their age.


What about scoring the ages on a 1 - 25 system?

~Lontahv

[Dot]

We discussed a similar concern to Belford's over on the GoMa forum. It would be a pity if those ages were not made available to the public in some way: I don't know how though (that might be a techie issue for writers to follow up).

On testing and scoring systems, ametist suggested the following on the GoMa forum:

It's simple and easy to think + and - at first [bullet points for each criteria]. Also to test alone first. Then, ... write a test-report for us all to read. Third step we discuss our opinions together while in age, as with teamspeak or something else.
Maybe we can have a rating system for each category with points, 0-10 at the end. It's an easy way to get the winner, and also to give a 'goldstar' to someone's age in a particular category.

Scoring things 1-10 I probably can cope with, but a 1-25 point system would be mind-blowing (even if it is D'ni compatible).

What about a 1-5 system? D'ni compatible AND comprehensible by ordinary mortals

[Lontahv]

1-5 sounds good. Also, about the ULM hosting the ages that are entered but lose; Let's wait and see. I want to see how many there are first before deciding anything.

Note: If all the ages together are under 100megs I'll host them myself so that they can be on the ULM. (I'll handle the tech side of hooking them up to the ULM too )


~Lontahv

Oh and, has anyone thought this topic looks like "Rabid Age development competition"?

[Grogyan]

I too would like to see these RAD contest worlds to be public, I just don't know how to handle whether Cyan wants us to get a FCAL for each of them, or not, they probably do, so we'll have to play that one by ear.


Next problem, I thought about, is with the shells as contest entries, what do you guys reckon should be the approach to SDL, Python and sum files?

Pack them all into a zip then upload it or each of us that has a shell to update these files ourselves?

[andylegate]

I would just like to point out.......*coughs into hand, Ahem* that if you look at the ULM, right now there are at least 5 Ages listed in our inspection forum over at the Maintainers Forum, and on the ULM itself, 5 Ages, that, according to this list do NOT have a FCAL. Here's a link to the list:

Age Approval Status

That doesn't include my Camp Bravo Ages, as they are NOT on the ULM, though I'd like to put them there, I STILL have not received a reply from Cyan, yea or nay.

I would also like to point out there NO WHERE on this forum, the tutorials, and that includes the Alcugs ones too, is there any explanation about what a FCAL is, why it is needed, etc, etc. We have Kierra's short form letter for applying for one, and that's it.

I think it would be a good idea, for those that are knowledgeable about his subject (IE those that have had to deal with Cyan in getting the FCAL set up), to post about why it's important, why it's needed, how to go about getting one (if it's even possible at this point......still waiting.......), and what you can and can't do until you DO get one.

[Grogyan]

Its important, that it could help to keep lawyers off our backs.

Fan Created content was TWICE not on Cyan's list of things to implement, yet it is the main focus of every major game on the market, so we have to dive and duck to be sure a bullet doesn't hit us.

Cyan though wanted fan content, and they were really trying hard to get it off the ground, in the end, its limited to Jalak columns and jpg's in our KI's.


With that off my shoulders, I have another problem I wish to discuss, and I only really thought long and hard one night several nights ago when I couldn't fall asleep.
Like myself, i'm sure some other people are using their Ahra Pahts Shell as the entry, but there are 2 main files of concern and 1 minor.

The minor is the Pahts.sum file, that could have to be "Re-Sum" for every Shell.

The two major are Pahts.SDL and Pahts.pak.
The Pahts.pak can have the .py files added relatively without much of a problem, but you cannot overwrite it.
The big one is the Pahts.SDL, where the Judges/Maintainers/and us could very easily accidentally overwrite someone's global, and cause their Shell not to work. To get over this, I would like to suggest that when we come to upload our entries, that we rename a copy of the Pahts.sdl to s###.SDL, that way the judges/Maintainers/and us can copy and paste from one SDL to another with less worry of wrong deletion of variables.

What do you guys reckon would be the best course of action, zip up all our Shell files and upload that, or upload every file to their respective places, but not the Pahts.SDL and Pahts.pak, instead we would upload our shell sdl eg "s119.SDL" and python files with extension ".py"?

[Lontahv]

I'm sure that we'll sort something out with aloys about the ahrapahts shells. As for the fcal... we'll sort something out with cyan. I'm sure they'd be happy to give these ages a visit themselves, and at the very least grant a batch fcal to them. I think there's watching us closely. I bet they're thinking: "Let's see the best of the best from the fans. Let's see if they can make high-quality ages. ".


~Lontahv