Spring RTS Engine

I had an idea floating around about having a yearly competition to award the modders in this community for thier hard-work and also encourage more people to join the modding community. It would be a contest decided by voters within this community through polls open to everyone.


All I need is a team to help organize the event with various catagories and awards, along with general consensus from our community.

Heres a rough sketch of catagories (I need help here as I dont know all the right sub-catagories I should include)

Maps*

-Land

-Sea

-Best use of Textures?

Mods*

(Need sub-catagories)


AI

(Need sub-catagories)


Clans

(?)


I need everyones input if this is going to work. But if we can get everyone together on this, I really think this could turn out to be a lot of fun and something to look forward to.

I have already seen enough animosity from the ota moding community to make me feel like a ginger stepchild. I do not want to have the moders I am already at idle war with to become something even uglier.

For the mods, I suggest that the award goes to the mod, not the maker/s, as it is quite often a team effort.

General:
Helpful person (Does helpful stuff around the comunity)
Annoying Person (The most annoying person (Azu))
Post Count (AF)
Wiki Master (Someone that does lots for the wiki)

Mods + Maps:
Most Played (AA)
Most Inovative (Different from mainstream mods/maps. EE)
Strangest (Nanoblobs, Swarm, Chess)
Best Tool (Best tool for mod/map making: FBI editor, Upspring, Map conv)

Also, while not mods as such, belong under the mods category:
Best New Unit
Best Model (Sinclare)
Best Texture (Sinclare)
Best Script (dinamik, zwszg)

Awards for developers:
Most bugs fixed
Most features added
Cool new feature (SJs Water renederer, Zaphods Map format, ect)

AI:
Best AI (judged by multiple AI FFA's on multiple maps, multiple times)
Best New AI (A new AI (as of the last competiton) that works well)
Best Quirk (AAI's learning, KAI DGunning hawks, NTai with its wierd symbols)

Clans:
Best Clan (as decided by a tournament)
Best New Clan (same as the new AI)

I'm sorry, but I concur with Smoth.

Maelstrom wrote:Ideas

Yeah I definitly agree with you on awarding the mod as opposed to the mod maker. With the best model/texture/script Im guessing we should have whoever wants to enter thier work each send one thing that people can vote on?







But I dont think there should be a most annoying member : p

And Maelstrom... your comments are exactly why I don't want to participate in this, thanks. I do not want to participate in an "award" where I am given the dubious title of "strangest", which implies that I'm weird, as opposed to original.

I'm sorry Flint, but this is a lame idea, and I don't want my mod included in it.

The "reward" here, for those of us who aren't just seeking popularity, is non-existent, and just serves as yet another reminder that the Spring community is incredibly conservative.

I doubt he was serious about that award, but if the rest of the community is as pessimistic as you are Argh then I agree I dont think any contest or event could ever take place here. Hell, why dont we dont do anything at all because someone might get upset about something somewhere somehow.

It takes immaturety to turn something into a popularity contest, if executed well this could raise awareness about modders who barely get any feedback and promote more creative work. I really think this can work, we just need collective effort.

...

Fine. Edit out the part where you reminded me that my mod wasn't made to be popular, and nobody plays it. You and Fanger and the rest can kiss my ass. I work hard here, built something original, and help people, and you disrespect me because I don't compete with the likes of you. Fuck off.

It's on now.

One man's strange is another man's innovative, is another man's both strange and innovative...

either way, I do not mean to sound pessimistic. It is just the nature of people and e-penis stuff. I know it will start forum drama.

I think the idea is nice but it is just too dangerous. For example let's say that for example... gundam won. The realism moders would get pissed and call my mod crap. Generally spreading as much hate as they can. Or for example say... E&E, then a lot of other moders will feel unappreciated. When people label things as best that means there must be a loser. With losing comes resentment it is only natural.

I like the moders all being fairly square same as the mappers etc. I do not want anyone in this community to feel belittled by competition.

Ah, come on. This will work very well if we don't take it too seriously.

Add that to the competition T&Cs - You Must Not Take This Seriously.

Effort needs to be a part fo AI, I myself ahve invested more manhours than possibly all the other AI devs put together with my obsession, yet I could be disregarded for it all because my AI may not match up under a certain mod or another AI has a quirkier feature(I doubt that though..)...

PS:: NTai uses learning too, and the half finished QAI has it in too (but it's half finished ^^)

Argh, i wasnt meaning disrespect towards your mod, infact I love it, and wish I had time to play it more. But you have to agree, out of all the serious mods out there, yours is by the far the most unrealistic and stylised. The TA variant mods all atleast have some basis in reality, as does Gundam (ok, mabey not realistic, but you get my point). Yours is just totally different. Strange was obviously a bad choice of words on my behalf, but I couldnt think of a better way to sum it up.

As this has already stirred up problems, even with good intentions, I think we should just drop the mod side of things. People put ALOT of work into mods, and to have it shot down in a competition like this could not be fun at all.

Sorry again for any disrespect there Argh. I really did not mean to offend you.

If it's done, don't include AA in it. Absolute Annihilation isn't a mod per se, IMO, it's more like a proper OTA port with a few extras and one or two things fixed. I'd be much happier to see other mods get some attention.

The problem is that a lot of the Spring players come from OTA, and they've been playing OTA for nearly 10 years now. What are you going to play, a severely broken quick-and-dirty OTA port, a version of it where all tech levels are accessible at the get-go (not necessarily a bad thing, but I'm saying it's not what people are used to), or something that just feels familiar except with things that always pissed you off fixed (useless units, overpowered units, lacking units)?

I'm amazed at the amount of work that must've gone into EE, for instance. I've only played one game of it so far, but I don't need to play it extensively in order to appreciate how much hard work must've gone into it. Do you realize that a good number of the units are vertex-edited (!!!) OTA units? VERTEX EDITED! That's insane.

That explains why they look so cool...

Also Argh I once played a wird game. It was called...PYSCONAUGHTS! And it was like...one of the best games ever. Just as such Nanoblobs is an awsome mod. Why? Because its wird. But its just not wird for wirdness sake, its wird AND fun!

I'm with Smoth on this. I'm sure such competition would create lots of anger and fight and resent within the mod community.

If you're bothered about people criticising or trash talking you're mod you shouldnt release it to the public.
Its not such bad a idea, if I had a mod and it won it would spur me on to keep adding to it, if I had a mod and it lost it would also spur me on to keep adding to it and improving it.
Most people in this community are mature enough to congratualte a fellow modder/mapmaker/clan who pipped them at the post to win such an award.
And as for those who are'nt, they can go suck lemons from all eternity!
By order of Big Steve ^^

BigSteve wrote:If you're bothered about people criticising or trash talking you're mod you shouldnt release it to the public. simple.

Oh come on steve, when you put TONS and TONS of hours into something and people criticize it because they don't understand it. Ya, that's fucking irritating.

And caydr, not most of the units in EE were vertex edited... ALL of them were vertex edited in 3do builder.

Relating to ^^, if that doesn't inspire soem respect, nothing ever will.

Irritating yes... but nothing you or anyone else cant handle, cmon...

I dont understandthe last bit, are you saying you dont like my ^^ ?

For shame!

BigSteve wrote:Irritating yes... but nothing you or anyone else cant handle, cmon...

I dont understandthe last bit, are you saying you dont like my ^^ ?

For shame!

nope I meant "relating to what I said before".

As far as handling, yes, but it's still annoying.