Contest idea thread

[TheGreatSatan]

I come up with a lot of contests, but there's always more that I'd like to hold. I already know the theme of the next art contest so that's secure.

Help me come up with the other ones.

[rendermandan]

Well, I could think of one where the active members (And I say active because it would weed out usavory characters from creating fictisious accounts and voting, Not that there is anyone out there like that...) But the active members would vote on Mod of the year. That mod would then make it into the "Hall of Fame" -Which kind of brings up the question, what are the requirements to be in the hall of fame and how do you get into it?


There could be a nomination period in which members could nominate someones mod for MOTY. Members cannot nominate themselves. Then take the top 10 and have a voting period for a short time. The votes would have to be private via PM and each member would only be allowed 1 vote each for 1st, 2nd and 3rd. that way no one would be able to "Stack" the voting.

Prizes would be determined by the staff of course.

What do you think?

[Pointy_Stick]

I like rendermandan's idea. How about trying to organise some tournaments in the TBCS Steam community? Perhaps CS:S and Team Fortress 2 as they're both pretty popular. Depending on numbers, arrange it by teams of tow or four with a prize for each member.

Set aside a week or so for people to organise teams and get some practice in before the main event. Then the teams register and receive a tournament number and get set for a match at a specific time. Match times will be worked out so as not heavily favour any one timezone so that everyone gets equally shafted.

I haven't played much of these games (or much online at all) so I'm not sure about how to host the matches. If anyone has any experience in what's required for this please pipe up.

Not much idea for prizes, perhaps a gift voucher on Steam just to keep it related to the contest. Anyway that's my idea, anyone up for it?

[nevermind1534]

Sounds good; I'd be willing to participate in it.

[jdbnsn]

As for the MOTY idea, yes we have considered putting together this type of contest (just like every other modding site, and even some recent self-promotional corporate sites) but we have our reservations. For one, we just don't want to go with public voting because there is no way possible to make it a fair judge of merit. Even if we screened for duplicate votes eliminating cheating, we still have the issue of popularity and "vote trollers" tilting the scales. So the only fair way to judge it would to have a panel of impartial, critical, and honest judges who know all of the different facets of madding and could handle making fair comparisons. We do know of such people, and the idea is still on the board, it may happen, but not just yet.

As for the Hall of Fame questions: We have put the HOF on hold for some time now, and are not certain whether or not it will be kept. I won't go into all of the reasons because they are mostly technical and boring. The only way to get a mod in the HOF is to be chosen by TBCS as being among the very best, no votes, no criteria, just our opinion. The current list is nowhere near complete of course, we just put it on hold. And being a member of TBCS was not required to be placed, we had planned to feature modders who chose not to join just as easily as those who did.

I'm going to defer from answering the question about tournaments because frankly I don't know enough about those things. We were actually planning on installing a Battlefield 2 server for TBCS members at one time but I think the idea got scrapped for security reasons.

[TheGreatSatan]

I wouldn't hold a contest based on gaming because I don't do it. I have considered a Mod of the month or quarter maybe. The winner I would post on my site and issue a prize.

[phen0m]

There should be programming challenges. Just little contests split into difficulty levels. See who can do what first.



Create a loop where Hello World is printed in any language.
Make text move back and forth in any language.
Have text blink in different colors, again in any language.
Simple things for easy.


Make an endless loop of windows appear in C++.
Make a maze game in BASIC.
Moderate things for medium.


Create a Pong clone in Java. (I know not that hard but still a challenge)
Make a user friendly application that performs at least one operation of some sort (EX.-Calculator) in any language, BUT VB.
As you guessed, difficult things for hard.


If this idea became an actual challenge then it would need to get way more in depth, with rules for everything. Like, maybe a certain amount of rep for each winning. Who can participate in each difficulty level. When is a member too good to be in the easy or medium level? And, other things like, prizes for easy, medium, and hard programmer of the month/quarter/year. I am not sure how many people here are programmers and who is advanced, etc, but if a good bit of people participate and not everyone's job is programming then I think this idea could really take off.

[phen0m]

Sorry for the double post but I figured I could add some more stuff into this post anyway.



Maybe first and second winner could receive something for the win. Like, 2 reps, and 1 rep. Or, maybe there could be points going toward being programmer of the month/quarter/year. Like, first prize in easy gets 2 points; second gets 1. First in medium gets 3 points; second 2. In hard- 5 for first; 4 for second. At the end of the m/q, the person with the most points in each section is then named the easy/medium/hard programmer of the m/q. And then, at the end of the year, the one/two/three people with the most points wins the title 'Programmer of the year, overall'.

But, before the contests, all members would have to be placed into the difficulty levels where they could only compete in that one and above. A person in easy could compete in all of them and one in medium could only do medium and hard, and finally a person in hard could only do hard contests.

I am not sure what a person should get for programmer of the quarter or for programmer of the year but I think there should be something for them.

I am not sure who would decide on what the contests would be but not anyone could choose because they could of cheated by working on it before announcing it for everyone. And of course, there would be a deadline. If only one person competed, then first place would be awarded to him.

The person who finishes first would not automatically be in first place. There would be 10 credits available for finishing first and 5 for finishing second but there would be 10 credits for the quality of the program where the any one of the programs made can get up to ten even if they didn't finish first or whatever. If there was a tie, then both are awarded first.

A moderator of each difficulty would be chosen who chooses the contents of the contests and decides on the credits given, and therefore who wins each one. If a person feels the judging is not fair however, then they could ask for another moderator from a different level to judge with the regular moderator.

I think that the contests would be held one after the other. Of course, the difficult ones would be longer and the easy ones would be shorter and therefore there would be more of them but thats okay since the easy people don't compete against the hard people.

If this idea was put into action, I would write the constitution for it and it would be very very lengthy and descriptive. I would help put everything into place and blah blah blah.




Tell me if you think this is a good idea and if you think it could work.
Also, I feel I deserve a rep or two for writing all this for possibly nothing.

[simon275]

I like phen0m's programming contest idea.

[TheGreatSatan]

:rolleyes:hmmmm

[phen0m]

hmmmmm. I like the sound of hmmmmmm :]

[DonT-FeaR]

usb modding comp like what i talked to you and ovride bout :)

[TheGreatSatan]

Yeah that's still on the larger TBCS table