Contests & Events Suggestions & Feedback - Public Relations

Do you have a contest or event you would like to either see us run or run yourself in the future? Let us know here, and if it's suitable, we'll work with you and schedule it in.

Did you like or dislike something about the contest or event we just ran? Do you want to make sure we are doing something specific for the next LDC or other contest?

Please post your feedback here. Contests and events are always a fun time and help keep things interesting. The more we can improve these, the better I feel our community can become.

Now please note that posting your contest idea does not guarantee your contest will become officially endorsed by the Staff team. I'll be honest with you; some contest ideas just may not be up to snuff, the may conflict with other events we are running, etc. When your posts here are addressed, any concerns we have about your ideas will be brought up so that we may hopefully resolve them.

Super Mario: Star Seeker

The Stawberry short and sweet was quite popular for an unofficial contest and it died after user-made contests were closed. It'd be cool to see it back as an official contest.

On the subject of user-made contests, I wasn't around on Staff when the decision to close those was evidently made. I, on the other hand, am much more open to the idea of user-run contests, as long as there is some sort of quality control (us manually approving them is fine). Anyway, is SilverSwallow the one who usually ran it? I could shoot them a message to find out if they are interested in running it once more in the future, or someone else could take over.

Super Mario: Star Seeker

Originally posted by K3fka

us manually approving them

That's how it was before. The approval thread was getting flooded with bad contests and frequently the contests were just bad level design contests and died quickly.

The current format is fine, but it would be cool if people could talk to staff if they wanted to run a unique community event.

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You can post ideas for any contest or event here, or send me a PM if it's something that can't be made public (due to the nature of how it works for example). I'll update the thread title to include "Event" as well.

Super Mario: Star Seeker

The 12 Days Before Christmas LDC was interesting and it'd be nice to see it happening again this year or another.

A tournament style hacking competition with each round having a specific theme : vanilla,chocolate, normal level themes or something completely different.
Dependent on the number of users participating it could either be like SMWC Idol or a 1vs1 elimination for each round (with a Tournament bracket and stuff).

How about an overworld contest like the one in 2012.

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Originally posted by Mirann

The 12 Days Before Christmas LDC was interesting and it'd be nice to see it happening again this year or another.

I was inactive while this happened, but I just looked up the thread. Sounds pretty cool and got a decent number of entries. We'll have to keep this in mind and discuss as it gets a bit closer to December.

Originally posted by Luks

A tournament style hacking competition with each round having a specific theme : vanilla,chocolate, normal level themes or something completely different.
Dependent on the number of users participating it could either be like SMWC Idol or a 1vs1 elimination for each round (with a Tournament bracket and stuff).

This could be neat too. Now when you say that it would be like SMWC Idol, do you mean public voting? My fear is that turnout for the voting would be low. It works for Idol since listening to a song is pretty easy and quick. Playing a level is much more involved, however. But if you just mean it would be a free-for-all with a set amount of participants eliminated each round, it could be pretty cool.

Originally posted by G.D.

How about an overworld contest like the one in 2012.

With the VLDC moving to the collab format, we have an annual OW contest already.

Super Mario: Star Seeker

Originally posted by K3fka

With the VLDC moving to the collab format, we have an annual OW contest already.

Yes but it doesn't allow much freedom, since the world themes and levels per world are preset, plus you have to make a hub linking all the worlds together. The one in 2012 was completely free, I think that's what they meant.

And yes, SilverSwallow was always (not usually) the one running that contest.

I like the idea of just a per OW contest and maybe we could roll this into a different contest as well and maybe make a new set of collab hacks, nothing to crazy like a chocolate anything goes contest but like maybe some of the 24H contests that limit ASM use.

I've got an idea that I've shared on #radio; I'd like to speak with you and x-treme about it.

Valentine's Day is next Sunday. The SMWC DJing feature has recently updated and I'd like a promotional event for people to start tuning in. So here's my proposal...

On Sunday the 14th of February, we have a special DJ schedule for that particular day in which each DJ does a short 30 minute set each, playing love songs.

If we have a news post endorsing this, then hopefully users who wouldn't usually tune in will give it a go. The DJs could put on a show for the people. The reason I'm suggesting only 30 minute sets each is to try and have every DJ get their well-thought-out track schedule in the spotlight of everyone reading the news post, before handing it to the next DJ.

The contingency for anyone failing to meet their allocated slot is having an available DJ fill that slot and not let the stream go silent while we're having designated event time. This can be actively managed by the group of DJs on IRC, so we'll all know who's up next, who's not here on time and who wants to cover, things like that.

I'd like the stream feature to get some more love, so how about letting us have a DJ event for Valentine's Day? I think we could put on a show for people to listen to.

- Postscriptum -
And I'd like to throw it in there that I still want the "Tune in!" hyperlink to just play.

I don't think this is a bad idea and obviously there's a lot of romantic songs but the big question I'd ask is how many people want to just listen to love songs for a day?

Really I bet we'd see some stuff like girl at the video game store or less than three but yeah plain mushy stuff gets a little old quick.

Originally posted by ninja boy

I don't think this is a bad idea and obviously there's a lot of romantic songs but the big question I'd ask is how many people want to just listen to love songs for a day?

Really I bet we'd see some stuff like girl at the video game store or less than three but yeah plain mushy stuff gets a little old quick.

Well, perhaps it doesn't have to be exclusively love songs. Perhaps it can just be an event for Valentine's Day with a mix of songs that don't have to be love songs exclusively.

I've got plenty love songs that aren't too mushy, music comes in all sorts of forms; love is in so many tracks that the stream ends up having love songs in it anyway.

I'll definitely be playing love tracks what ever happens, but it's not automatically going to be the same tone for being love related, it's music! Love is just a subject, not a genre.

I suggest that it could be up to the DJs to try and not to be boring with how they choose to spend their 30 minutes on Valentine's Day. The event could even be entitled "Valentine's Day DJ Show" as opposed to "Love-Fest On The Stream" or "Secks On The Dex"; that way the listener shouldn't be mislead with expecting exclusively love songs if it's not what is going to be playing all the time.

The unspoken rules of common sense still apply; streaming is performing for other people, that's the focus. If your tracks are getting old, switch it up.

I suggested this many times, but that was regarding the default annual Vanilla contest. Well, guess I'll do that again, but now the idea is not to change an existing contest, but think of a new one.

Pure Vanilla Design Contest. An strictly limited contest, in which you can't create/mix/merge/recolor GFX, use extra GFX slots, ExAnimation and/or create new Map16 tiles. Basically, you're limited only to what original SMW provides, and allowed to modify palettes.

Plus, the voting system could be something like SMWCI, where users list levels from best to worst (though I think it's too much work for everybody, it'd be insane to play through 50+ levels and list them all in an order), or something like Mosts, in which users would vote for 2 categories: best level design and best aesthetics - maximum of 3 vote entries.

This contest would also allow the possibility of a collab hack (I have an idea, but first I'd like to see if there's any chance of this contest happening).

Some potential contest ideas that sound fun:
-Puzzle level contest (have we ever had one of those?)
-Kaizo contest with a particular theme: participants have to make a Kaizo arrangement of an existing SMW level (kinda like C|C Exit, Gnarly, and Tubular) where you have to loosely base your level on the core idea of the equivalent SMW level (for example, if you were making a Funky arrangement, it might have timer/green berry challenges) and the last part of your entry should appear to be the latter part of the equivalent SMW level, but subverting it by throwing some sort of Kaizo-ish twist at the player. You wouldn't have to make it a marathon level.
-We haven't had a Yoshi's Island LDC in a while. Seems like that would be a breath of fresh air.
I don't think I'd like to run any contests myself tho.

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Here are some of my ideas:

YILDC 2016 - The last one I participated in was the one 2012. It would be nice to see another one. (I know there was one in 2014, but I never participated in that one).

Joke Level Design Contest (I think they had one before) - In this contest, you would try to make the funniest level possible, but it still needs to have decent level design.

Background Design Contest - In this contest, you would need to make the best background possible using only vanilla graphics.

It would also be nice to see 12 Days of Christmas again. I was going to participate in the first one, but I never finished in time.

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Originally posted by Najeraldo

The Stawberry short and sweet was quite popular for an unofficial contest and it died after user-made contests were closed. It'd be cool to see it back as an official contest.

I know this was 4 months ago, but I second this.

Another contest that would be interesting is a graphics contest that involves either copying another game's style or involving 8-bit with the NES's original colour palette.

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I think an 8-bit style contest would be really cool. Copying another game's style is too limiting, in my opinion.

Super Mario: Star Seeker