TGL Simfile Tourney ($100 Prize) now accepting submissions.

TGLMaxX · 08-24-2006, 12:30 AM

Greetings all.

This is to let you all know that our simfile tournament's 28-day submission period has now begun.

It is possible to win a maximum of $200CAD from placing first in both brackets.

Keep in mind that you must be registered with TGL to be eligible for submission.

If you're interested in joining, please signup with TGL at http://www.teamgwailo.org if you're not a member, read the entire thread on the tournament for all the info you need, and get to making that simfile! Time's a-wastin'!

I'll post the rules from the tournament's thread in our news section here:

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-This thread has been pruned to include only the most important Q&A during the discussions on the rules. Please read through this thread and only post if your question is still not answered by the end of it.

-This thread will be updated using notes at the top of this post, so continue to check back here for any changes.

-THE 28-DAY SUBMISSION PERIOD HAS NOW BEGUN, SUBMISSIONS CLOSE AT 11:59 ON MONDAY SEPTEMBER 25, 2006.

My Two Cents:

As of right now, I don't believe the possibility of having a large pool of original songs and subsequent stepcharts would be possible, I just don't see us having enough people submitting their own music to make an originals bracket a viable option. However, that shouldn't deter people from sending me their originals, because if I do get enough of them, an originals bracket will be opened with prizes and everything.

I would like this simfile tournament to be as large as possible, with as many users submitting entries as I can get, which is why I've set the prize money to such large amounts. This'll be in an effort to really get this board on the map and then, one day, be able to hold original simfile tourneys that will eventually match or surpass those of DDRei.

Entry:

You have to be a registered user of this board to submit entries, so if you know anyone who would be interested that currently isn't signed on with us, or would like to spread the word to others who may not know about this tournament, make sure to do so and let our userbase flourish.

Submission:

To be eligible for submission into the tournament, your simfile MUST have the following:

-ORIGINAL banner
-ORIGINAL background
-DWI/SM(duh)
-Track in mp3 format only
-A Heavy difficulty stepchart. Challenge is optional, but still doesn't merit extra points. If you choose to make both, you must choose one for us to judge, we will not judge both difficulties as one simfile
-README file, citing where you got the track from originally, what album it's on, year, you know, all that copyright mumbo jumbo.

You can submit your finished simfiles to me via the following:

MSN (click my little msn bubble)
E-mail

If you require alternate sending methods for whatever reason, say, if my e-mail bounces your submission back to you and you don't have MSN, let me know via PM and I'll download AIM or ICQ or whatever it is you wish to send the file to me with.

The first date of eligible submission will be made public when this set of rules and regulations is finalized, and will be made aware by a new topic in this forum. After that day, you have four weeks to submit your simfile before we closedown to judge.

Brackets:

The tournament, as it stands right now, will have two brackets, standard (1:15-2:30 duration) and long ver. (2:31-4:00). Everyone will be allowed to submit ONE SM/DWI to each bracket, making a total of TWO possible entries, no more than that.

Standard - Entries intended for this bracket that exceed 2:30 in time will be automatically submitted into the Long Ver. bracket. If the user already has a Long Ver. song submitted, he/she will either have to crop one of the two, or choose which one he/she will keep as their sole entry for the Long Ver. competition. Songs below 1:15 will not be accepted, even if it's 1:14.

We will judge song duration by the second we hear dead-air on your included mp3. If, for example your mp3 is 1:17 in length, but there's 3 seconds of dead air on it before the file actually ends, we will consider that entry to be 1:14 and will discard it, so be careful with your cropping.

Long Ver. - Conversely, if a simfile that is submitted for this bracket ends up being less than 2:31, it will be moved to the standard bracket. Same rules apply as with the Long Ver. bracket when another entry is already in this bracket. Anything over 4:00, even if it's 4:01, will be discarded.

Judging:

The simfiles will be judged under several categories by ten judges of my choosing. I'll be choosing these judges based on community involvement and pedigree when it comes to the entire genre of SM/DDR/ITG and what have you. Expect to see alot of old-timers come into the fray and be total Simons from American Idol towards most simfiles. the judging will be harsh, but not biased at all, the floor is completely even for everyone to do battle on.

After all simfiles are judged, the top 10 from each bracket will be released on this site for the public to download and play. The public will then fillout their own judge cards for each of the songs released based on the five categories that the judges used (categories explained further down) These public judging values will be used to determine the bonus point distribution in the 6th category, "public sway", also explained further down.

All stepfiles will be judged using speed MULTIPLIERS, not CONSTANTS. This is to make sure the judges get the full effect of and actually see whatever slowdowns/speedups or other effects you plan to put into your simfile.

The categories for judging are as follows: (can be altered/added to based on input)

-Creativity - Have we seen these kinds of patterns all too many times before? Are your speedups/slowdowns placed nicely? Or totally predictable? /10

-Flow - Interesting step ideas are nice and all, but do they actually work with the song? Or do they go off on a tangent, leaving the song behind? /10

-Sync - Is the song synced the whole way through? Or does it endup offsync because you set the wrong BPM? /5

-Enjoyment - We love Pink Dinosaur, we really do, just make sure your chosen stepchart for judging, beit on heavy or challenge, makes us go "wow" instead of "yawn". The trick here is to find an optimum balance between difficulty and fun, if we can't pass it because we can't see it, chances are it's not very fun, but rather a mash of arrows streaming across the screen, which does not equal difficulty or fun. /10

-Presentation - Is your banner/bg nice and spiffy? Is it original? Or just a rehash of an already-made banner with inverted colours? Creativity (boring rehash vs. time-invested original) and presentation (the look of the banner itself and its clarity) will be judged out of 2 and 3 points respectively, bringing the total to.... /5

BONUS DURING PUBLIC ROUND -> Public Sway - This will be calculated during the public judging round. A tally of all points received in each of the five categories via the public judgecards will be made. After we have all the values totalled, the simfile with the highest value of points in a single category will get 5 bonus points, making for a total of 25 bonus points up for grabs.

So, lets say simfile 5 has the following point values out of....10 judgecards (I'm hoping to have more public judges than that XD)

creativity = 70/100
Flow = 55/100
Sync = 30/50
Enjoyment = 60/100
Presentation = 45/50

and simfile 7 has:

75
50
40
55
40

Assuming simfiles 5 and 7 had the highest totals out of all the simfiles for all 5 categories, which is highly unlikely, the bonus points would be as follows:

5 to sim 7 for creativity
5 to sim 5 for flow
5 to sim 7 for sync
5 to sim 5 for enjoyment
5 to sim 5 for presentation.

So 10 bonus points to sim 7 and 15 to sim 5. Again, this is assuming sim 5 and sim 7 are 1-2 in each of the 5 categories, which is a one in a bajillion shot.

These bonus points will be added to the total scores each simfile had after the original judging round, which will be kept private from the public to not put favour towards one perticular simfile during the public round, just in case a few are liked much more than others by the judges.

This is a huge point in the tournament, a simfile can either run away with the competition at this point, or a frontrunner can be left hopelessly behind, oh the drama!

PRIZES!!!1one!:

Each bracket will have the following up for grabs, with more prizes pending:

1st place = $100
2nd place = $50
3rd place = $25

We'll have a few fundraising events to try and buildup some of the prize money so it's not all coming out of our pockets. This is to help speedup the process of purchasing more bandwidth and a seperate means of hosting our downloads section.

THE END

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Cheers all.

Juub005 · 08-24-2006, 04:09 AM

Okay, I'll consider entering as long as I'm ineligible for the prize.

That would be another level of illegality that I'd rather not be part of

TGLMaxX · 08-28-2006, 07:10 PM

bump and a headsup that the tournament's rules and Q&A thread, along with other threads have been moved into a seperate forum.

The final date for submissions has also been pushed to Monday September 25th, at 11:59pm.

Please see the OP or visit http://www.teamgwailo.org for more information.

ZanasoBayncuh · 08-28-2006, 08:52 PM

I'm afraid that I won't be entering because, honestly, I have NO SKILLS WHATSOEVER in the area of original background and banner creation. Other than that, I would have had TWO stepfiles in mind for submission, but since it's only $100 and I'd have to alter the background (which I love) of Scars and the banner (which I also love) of Encore (which isn't on this site due to... personal reasons), I'd just rather keep my self-respect and leave the beauty of my works alone. However, it is possible that I'll keep the fact that these are still going on in mind.

Patashu · 08-29-2006, 04:03 AM

I'll enter only if I can put in something I've done previously (because right now I have both a lack of time and songs I'd like to step)

TGLMaxX · 08-29-2006, 11:51 AM

Something entered in a previous simfile competition I'd rather not allow.

You didn't specify whether it's been used before or not, so if not, by all means go ahead.

Zanaso, are those two simfiles you're talking about your creations entirely? Or are those banners and backgrounds taken from somewhere? Because you make it sound like the entire simfiles including the backgrounds and banners are your work with "the beauty of my works".

Unless I'm not understanding completely, if the background and banners were your work to begin with then there's no problem.

ZanasoBayncuh · 09-26-2006, 12:29 AM

Here's the thing, as far as my stepfiles for SNES music go, yeah the banners and backgrounds (if you consider using choice snapshots of actual gameplay) were all me. But in other songs I tend to use what I can and sometimes take a LONG time to pick out the best of the litter. Really, the truth is that sometimes you will find a desktop picture that is actually made based on a single song. Such as my background for X-Japan's "Scars" actually shows the singer and some of the lyrics in english. Other than that, it isn't exactly the same thing that we've seen everywhere, yet at the same time I cannot claim it as my own work. Whereas when I phrase it "the beauty of my works" what I mean is that I didn't pick just any banner/background package that would fit and slap it on (though I definitely need a better one for "Scars"), there is a lot of work in picking out things that would fit, editting them, and choosing which ones to actually use in the end.

I WOULD use one of my tested and proven SNES stepfiles, but honestly, for some reason... I'd rather not. Though my presentation on all or at least most of them (so I've been told in person several times) it's just that I don't feel right hoping that my creation will somehow reward me. Maybe it's... just... meh.

Xythar · 09-26-2006, 02:55 AM

Add text to it or something. As long as you've done something and you credit your original source, it's fine.

Honestly, that's just way too many

over something fairly simple. I feel like you might take this whole hobby a little too seriously, with that "beauty of my works" comment.

alphabet55 · 09-26-2006, 09:21 AM

Two things:

One, when he said "original background" he just didn't want anyone to re-color an original DDR background. A screenshot with text added is perfectly fine.

Two, The deadline has been pushed back to October 14.

ZanasoBayncuh · 09-26-2006, 02:20 PM

Ok, would a simple "not interested" suffice? Yeah, I probably take this hobby a bit too seriously. I like my stepfiles and as conceited as it sounds I don't have a habit of playing much else with the exception of official ITG stuffs.

On the other hand, by request of a good friend, I have decided on one to submit and we'll just see what happens.

ZanasoBayncuh · 09-26-2006, 02:37 PM

"just realized this is a keyboard step contest" nevermind, the "not interested" will have to suffice. If there is no padding what-so-ever then whether my entry would still do good or not means nothing to me. I'll just stick to posting my simfiles here on BemaniStyle.

TGLMaxX · 10-01-2006, 09:53 AM

Just letting anyone who is currently making simfiles for the competition know that the final date for submissions has been extended to Thursday October 14th, at 11:59pm.

I'd encourage anyone who has already submitted a simfile to look over theirs and make sure everything is ok/tweak it as they see fit with the extra time.

Good luck to everyone. I'll post here again when the submitted simfiles become available to the public through our site so that anyone interested can submit judgecards to give us more input for the public judging round.