Staredit Network

Well, there is some map league going on and they are doing weekly competitions and points are being gatherd among other stuff. Now, I have come up with an idea, should we have for instance every 2 weeks entrys are due? Or 1 Months? Or should we just stick to our occasional Modding Conests? I see several benefits from this:

~ENcourages Mod Makers to come out and make more mods.

~Can attract more people to the modding community in general.

~More mods for Mod Night

NOw, I do see some bad things as well:

~Many Low-Effort Crummy Mods are entered every contest.

~Time Period is so Rapid People want to just stop modding because they feel "rushed".

Well I beleive we should discuss making more Mod Contests. We need some more competition.

I feel that it wouldn't do much, most people just won't bother.

Well... 2 weeks is around enough time for me to come up with a decent mod if I put my mind to it.

I think we should do mini contest focusing on a specific part of modding. Here are some examples that we cold focus on. One week could be new grp files, Spell effects through iscripts and dats, or making crazy new units using dats and memgraft. Then once the winners are chosen we could combine the 3 winners to make a new unit all together using new spells/weapon affects for it a new image for it and all new buttons and stats. Thats an idea what do you think?

Or maybe create a single unit for one race that must not ruin the balance of the game, but still be cool in its own right.

I sort of support this idea

Personally, I think that 1-unit contests would be great. Another option may be creating a 'task-force' of 2 or 3 units, designed to fulfill a certain goal (theme), within certain limits of course. Small-scale modding is what the contests should be about, that's what, in my opinion, would make many people join them. Heh, even I would join one such contest

Sounds good, I would agree with broodkiller, or killer_kow.

Maybe have it changing every month or so, like the map contests, but allow people to make super high quality units, including .dats, .grps, .bins... etc.

Maybe have one week the concept be: a new zerg ground unit, or, a high speed light unit... etc.

NOw that a good portion of the modding community supports this idea, who do you think should host the first contest?

not me!

What would I do? make 1st prize 300 mins, 2nd 200 and 3rd 100? wouldn't get many contestants that way. And I wouldn't have many mins left.

ADDITION:
you know, come to think of it, I think a challange mod would be a nice idea, like you have a map with numerous gaps, and missile turrets, or something and they gotta pass the obstacle course... etc..

ADDITION:
nvm, it wouldn't

I would just make a small unit with 655535 health, 9999 range, super high speed and acceleration... etc...

It would have to be judged by quality. Actually, I think that might be possible with JUST an iscript or memgraft patch. I think the judging thing is best.

Of course the mods should be strictly judged by competent people, but even I can't see the way an obstacle-course contest would work. Theme-contests - fine, but that's all we can do, really, because modding is TOO powerfull, in a way:)

What should the first contest be? A GRP contest? I wouldn't mind being the judge for that

Just a GRP contest would not really be a mod contest, IMO. It should go together with Iscripting and maybe some 'fun-factor' done also via Iscript.

Hmm... I really like the idea of a "task force" kind of competition.

You could have for example 2 (or 3, but not more than 4 I think) team members, and each would have to fill a special role: blocker, blitzer, support, spellcaster or something like that (yeah, I stole the unit types from Dungeon Keeper, but who cares:)), and they would need to perform well on their own as well as in group. This is my concept of such a contest.

How about like someone suggested, adding a unit to one of the races without ruining the game balance. Or building a small task force, or Mini-Race. I wouldn't mind hosting the first contest, I have enough minerals.

I've got quite a few minerals too, we could both host the contest... But would I be allowed to enter if I were to help host?

<<minerals to waist

PS SubFocus go read your messages

This may be uber hard, as SC stands for the ideal of balance in RTS games I wonder, maybe we should introduce some sort of limit to the actual properties of a unit, one that could be calculated? For example, you would have only 10,000 'points' to make a unit, and different changes would 'cost' you a certain amount of these points? This way, we could have 5,000-points contests, 10,000-points contests and even 100-points contests

O man dont bring in the calculations, youll get my motor running BK. Aww man too late I already started calculating different points values and importance values for units grrrrr My inner Math crap comes forth NOOOO.

That's the way the cookie crumbles mate

Not only DAT modifications but also GRP changes, Iscript changes, grafting etc. should also have a specific 'cost' of their own, I think. Thus, the contests would have a completely new and interesting perspective, because some people would e.g. concentrate on Iscripting, others on grafting etc.. The question remains if each category should have limits of their own, or should the count into one global point limit...I think both options can be worked out succesfully, depending on the contest author's view on the matter

That would be a cool idea. And should we put the unit(s) or building(s) up for download?(Or the MPQ with the files in a ZIP)

No! Let's all keep it secret and let no one benefit from it! What if someone *grasp* realized how good you are at modding?! ;)


Contests with only changes to a handful of units would be fun. Maybe even I would find time to enter :)


BK: The problem I see with this is: What if you spend all your points? You can make your mod even better, but you don't, because you have no points left.... Not a chance that I'd care about those rules in that case :P

Well, the thing is what do you understand by "better"? If by this you mean changing a units' stats to higher (which will stand for the most part of the cost I think) then the only result here is a "5up4H B4TTL3KR00Z4H!!!!1111". If you've spent all your points on stats, then the problem is not that you can't make your mod better - the problem is that you're a lame modder (j/k) Stats mean very little in modding, at least in my opinion.

Of course, let me state here that for example contests may be oriented towards units with e.g. higher HP, like it's in WC3, but then I think it is enough to say that "HP changes cost is 10x less" and voila.

ADDITION:
Also, if you can make your mod better - then do it. It's just that the contest sets a limit of things that you can put into, and everyone would have equal chances now.

The only problem that I see is the calculation if the modder has actually meet the limit. We can avoid this either by launching only small-scale (1,2 units) contests, or by requiring the participants to present the listing of the changes they made. The latter option means that I would probably have to implement such a feature into DatEd though

This is like having a speed-programming contest, you get crappy stuff and good ideas, but you waste peoples time they could be using to make pwnage stuff.