Originally posted by TheBiobOriginally posted by RPG HackerIt's a typical case of "mode 7 for the sake of mode 7".
It was actually more like "mode 7 for the sake of it already being set up and me running out of ideas that I could finish in time"
Fair enough, I guess.
It's as I said, some more limitations for the contest would have actually been helpful. Less limitations allows people to be more creative, but it also makes it harder to come up with ideas, and an ASM contest shouldn't really be focused on creativity in the first place, it should be focused on the solution to a problem (since really, that is what programming is mostly about).
Ideally, an ASM contest should look something like this:
- Get a very concrete problem/task with only very few variables. To get back to the boss idea, the task could be something like "create a boss that does [bla bla bla] and uses either an attack that does [bla bla bla] or an attack that does [bla bla bla]". This sounds like it's not very flexible and leaves little room for creativity, but first of all, that's kind of the point, and secondly, it's not even really true. It does still leave room for creativity in places where it really matters. For example: how fast are the attacks, what do they look like, how are they animated, what sound effects does the boss use, how does the boss battle begin and end etc. The creative factor is in the details, and really, that's how it should be for a contest like this.
- Now after the task is given, people actually start coding. With a clearer task in mind, they can probably start right away and don't have to waste time on actually getting ideas.
- Now for the actual voting. If you can even call it that, cause I'm not sure if there should be a voting in the first place, or if anything, the voting should only making half the score, and the other half should come from judges. Here is the reason: there are a few factors that should really influence the scoring of an entry in an ASM contest that can't be considered by "public voters". Things such as: how clean and readable is the code, how efficient is the code (does it was some performance or memory in obvious places?), is it easy to use/modify the code, how is the code's compatibility with other patches. You know, stuff like that. Now there are still some factors that I consider important for the scoring and that public voters could actually have influence on. Things like: how polished, playable and fun is the solution (the boss battle, in this case). Even with all people having the same base task, there would still be a lot of room for variable scoring here. For example: a boss with proper animations and tells and attacks that a player can reasonably react to would naturally score higher than a boss with no animations and unpredictable, fast-as-shit attacks, and a boss with a reasonable amount of challenge would (probably) score higher than a boss that was either too hard or too easy. At the end of the day, we might only get a single boss in many different variations, but that one boss would at least (probably) have a version that is very polished and could go right into your hack.
That's how an ASM contest should be done, in my opinion. Make it about the solution, not about creative ideas (which can still be used for a solution, anyways). Really, having too many very different results just makes scoring harder, anyways.
Feel free to visit my website/blog - it's updated rarely, but it looks pretty cool!
