11 replies to this topic

[Anthus]

Hey everyone, I wanted to ask the community, and participants about a few things going forward. SotW will continue as is until the end of this year, but for 2026, I'd like to hear some feedback on two potential changes. Don't worry, these are not major earth shattering changes, but they are still changes nonetheless. The last thing is about how SotY should be posted.

 

1) For starters, we are supposed to be using a banking system for SotW entries. If we got more than four entries for one contest, the later entries would go towards the following contest. This was something that I frankly completely forgot about when I posted SotW 860 which is why it had five entries. This is a product of a time when the contest, and forums were quite slow, and I don't feel like we need to do it anymore. This first question pertains to this:

 

Should we get rid of the four entry limit on SotW contests?

 

 

2) The second thing has to do with how Screenshot of the Month is posted, and this is the larger of the two changes. Currently, it is set up so each SotM contest uses SotW winners from that calendar month. This can lead to some variable outcomes for SotM. Some months have five Mondays (there are four months in 2026 that will have five Mondays). Some months, we might only have three SotW contests, or less. This way would in theory make sure we have 12 SotY entries, one from each month, but that also isn't always the case if SotW does not happen concurrently in January with SotY. For example, this year we are on track to have 11 SotM winners/ SotY entries.

 

The proposition is this, should Screenshot of the Month stick to SotW contests held within that calendar month, or should they be the last four SotW contest regardless of when they go up? The proposed way also has potential oddities. At the end of the year, the final SotM will likely not have four entries if we have missed weeks, which is almost certain to happen. This will however ensure that basically all but one SotM will have four entries. We might still end up with an odd number of SotY entries, but at least the SotM contest would mostly all have four entries. There's also a very rare chance the year's final SotM could end up with one entry. This is very unlikely, but if that happened, they'd be a fifth entry in the last SotM. This is probably the most contentious quirk of this, but I think overall it would be easier, and more consistent overall.

 

Should SotM remain tied to the calendar month, or should it be every 4 SotW contests?

 

 

3) Lastly, is about how SotY will be posted. I thought about making this its own thread, but it can fit here too. So, for SotY, we usually try to have three-four brackets with three-four entries each, then the final contest for SotY. It looks like we will have 11 months worth of entries which as you can see is an odd number, and not super ideal for a nice even split into brackets. I have three ideas on how to accommodate this going forward:

 

Option 1: Just do four, four, three. Then have the winners of each bracket go onto the finals as normal, giving us three entries in the final contest. This is probably the most ideal and fair way to do it. These would all require SotM 216 being finished of course, the one held at the beginning of January, so we can have all 11 entries for SotY of this year, which would go up the following week.

 

Option 2: Do three, three, three, two. This would give us four entries in the final round, and I think that is better, but then you'd have one bracket with only two entries, and I'm not sure how people would feel about that.

 

Option 3: This is sort of the radical option, but I figured I'd mention it anyway. Just have two preliminary brackets, with five, and six entries, then have the final SotY be those two winners. Again, idk about this, I'd rather have more than two entries in the final SotY bracket.

 

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and voting. I will leave this open for another week or so, or until it looks like no one else is gonna vote. Feel free to leave comments or feedback about any of this too.

[Shane]

Statistically, how many times have you had to bank entries? I got the impression you usually got four entries in roughly a week or so, just in time to post a SotW. I'd say have the banking system be opt-in, it might end up being obscure, but SotW already has some obscure requests you can make like not allowing any comments on your entry. 

 

I wonder the logistics of having a message personalised when making a thread for the SotW Dropbox that can mention these obscure requests you can make. 

 

I'll be real, I never really cared or paid much attention to SotM or SotY, I just enjoyed seeing new content. I do think per four entries makes the most sense, has there ever been SotMs where we don't have a full month's worth of entries? That's the only flaw I can think of with the current system.

[Anthus]

Statistically, how many times have you had to bank entries? I got the impression you usually got four entries in roughly a week or so, just in time to post a SotW. I'd say have the banking system be opt-in, it might end up being obscure, but SotW already has some obscure requests you can make like not allowing any comments on your entry. 

 

I don't think it's happened much at all actually. Technically, 860 would have had six entries, but I completely overlooked Autumn's, which went into 861, but other than that? All the ones I've hosted so far had four entries. That's why I think at this point it's kind of a pointless limit for now. It's from a time when SotW really struggled to get entries.

 

 

I wonder the logistics of having a message personalised when making a thread for the SotW Dropbox that can mention these obscure requests you can make. 

 

They should be posted somewhere, for sure. I didn't even know about the "no comment" thing. I've put "no comment" on my entries before, but I literally meant that I had no comment for it, not that it told others to not comment lol.

 

 

I'll be real, I never really cared or paid much attention to SotM or SotY, I just enjoyed seeing new content. I do think per four entries makes the most sense, has there ever been SotMs where we don't have a full month's worth of entries? That's the only flaw I can think of with the current system.

 

It's uncommon but it does happen. SotM 205 had three entries, and so did SotM 204. If we had a SotW every week in 2026 (which is unlikely) that would give us 13 SotM's (if we went with every four weeks). I'd rather have this potential extra because I don't think we will always have entries every single week. Sometimes you just have off weeks and that's fine. Also, I'm not sure yet if I'm going to do SotW concurrently alongside SotY this year. We'll just have to gauge interest, but it almost seems like too much SotW lol. Like you'd have the yearly brackets on top of normal SotW and SotM. We'd have to miss three, or seven weeks etc to end up with a SotM that had one entry this way (worst case scenario) but I'm willing to play those odds and just roll with it.

[nicklegends]

I don't think there needs to be a weekly limit on entries. Ideally we'd all have a bunch of shots to look at each week, and though we're not seeing that regularly, enacting a participation cap would ensure we never experience the contest at its best.

 

As for SotM, I'd say just do it every four contests regardless of the calendar. You can easily get desyncs between the calendar month and the contest schedule, and sure, you might not have 12 SotM winners each year, but it doesn't bother me all that much. The alternative of having 1-v-1 SotM contests during slow periods doesn't sound good either. (Keep SotY on the calendar years though.)

 

No strong preference, but I would go with Option 1. It keeps all contests to 3 or 4 competitors whereas the other options have at least one head-to-head contest. I think the contests are best when there are more than two participants.

[Anthus]

I don't think there needs to be a weekly limit on entries. Ideally we'd all have a bunch of shots to look at each week, and though we're not seeing that regularly, enacting a participation cap would ensure we never experience the contest at its best.

 

As for SotM, I'd say just do it every four contests regardless of the calendar. You can easily get desyncs between the calendar month and the contest schedule, and sure, you might not have 12 SotM winners each year, but it doesn't bother me all that much. The alternative of having 1-v-1 SotM contests during slow periods doesn't sound good either. (Keep SotY on the calendar years though.)

 

No strong preference, but I would go with Option 1. It keeps all contests to 3 or 4 competitors whereas the other options have at least one head-to-head contest. I think the contests are best when there are more than two participants.

I agree with all of this tbh. Especially the bit about not having contests with only two entrants (unless you have to). I feel like it's more fun and interesting when it's at least three for sure.
 

[Twilight Knight]

enacting a participation cap would ensure we never experience the contest at its best.

I fully agree and I believe this cap was even subtly keeping people from submitting. It did a little bit for me at least, thinking my screenshot might be banked for the next week, then perhaps I could come up with a better screenshot by that time, so I didn't put any effort into submitting.

 

Now I know that my screenshot will always be featured in the upcoming contest, I will be motivated to try to submit something every week.

[Chris]

I have a different (likely very bad) idea that would require more moderating but would also mix things up quite a bit.

So I really like the thread were people show off their screens for feedback (not sure if it is still active or what the exact name was) and as far as I know, discord has something similar (I'm not active on discord at all).

How about having a weekly feedback thread for all kind of ZC content. It isn't a contest at all and the thread stays open until the end of the next month to give plenty time for feedback. Content that is already discussed stays in the active thread, but new content is put into the new thread when the next week starts. The content is also not added by the mods, the mod simply opens a new thread each weak (unless not enough content was posted) and maybe posts stuff with a discord link for people only active on discord.

2-3 months later, a monthly showcase is posted (to put a bit of time between the showcase thread and the feedback thread (and to allow time for communication between creator and mod, though I assume just adding rules for the feedback-thread and adding roles for discord might be easier for mods to know which content they are allowed to use).

For the showcase, each creator adds a post to the thread before it goes public, with all the content from the feedback threads from 2-3 month ago he wants to show off, like a summary. Screenshots, Maps, Sprites, Scripts, Enemies, whatever. Additionally, all quests, tiles or tilesets posted 2-3 month (2 or 3 month) ago get their own post, either from the creator or from a mod.

The first post now includes a screenshot for each of these posts (to give something visual) and a link to jump to that post to make navigation easier. Based on the amount of content, the contest gets it's own post or the contest content is posted on top of the post.

First screenshots, each creator that posted screenshots in the feedback threads chooses 1 screenshot to represent his new content. It is still possible though to sent a screenshot to the mods just for the contest if the creator does not want to show off the screen before the contest. Creators are able to select more than one screenshot for the contest if they are based on different projects/tilesets. Based on the amount of screenshots, people can vote a 2nd place and 3rd place, too.

If there is enough other content, that can result in other contests as well. Like enemies or scripts. It is not strictly bound to the monthly formate, like the enemy content could be showcased in one thread and the contest in a later thread with a link to the showcase that first showcased the enemy.

Disadvantages that come to mind:
- A lot more work for the mods.
- Mods having to wait for the content creator to make a post for the showcase thread.
- A more vague setup and likely some content creators not happy with it, which will result in even more work for the mods.

Advantages I see:
- A monthly showcase with (hopefully) enough intersting content, also for the front page.
- A summary of the work and multiple screens (if it includes screens) the content creator did instead of scrolling through multiple posts of multiple different people with a lot of text talking about it which honestly isn't all that interesting when you just want to take a quick look what people are up to.
- Multiple showcase threads over time that should be more intersting compared to contest threads that only include a few entries (as interesting as they may be).
- Similar to quests, the member page could have a list of showcase threads the member/creator was part of?
- A single post summarizing your work, maybe without any text at all should be easier for users on discord compared to actually partaking in the forums if you only use discord?
- Contests based on the amount of content posted and if not enough content was posted, it is simply just a showcase.
- The option for the mods to showcase other stuff if not enough content was posted. For example older quests from the database (that are unlikely to be picked for the quest club), posts that tell a bit of the history of ZC, cool content that is kinda buried in the forums (like abondened quest projects that already have a good demo or a post that shows off the multiple different screens/tilesets of a member long gone that are buried in old SotW or so. A post with multiple of Sheiks (is that the right name) maps could be interesting, for example.)

[Anthus]

This could be an interesting approach for a more discord-focused contest of sorts, but I think it's a bit outside of the scope of this thread. The biggest issue is I don't think we have the activity for it, or the mods for it. There's really only a handful of people who currently submit to SotW as it is, and the discord is already used a lot for posting screens and gaining feedback in real time.

The main issues with hosting contests solely on discord is stuff can get lost. We don't know if discord will be around in another five years, we don't know if they will change how images are hosted, things like that.

There have been some talks of moving SotW to discord, but I kind of don't like that idea at all for the above mentioned reasons. This is mostly my personal opinion, but it feels like it cheapens it in a way. I like having it on the forum where it can have a sense of permanence. We also have the archives on the forums, and I don't think you could really do something like that on discord currently.

 

 

Edit: I think I misunderstood your post a bit, I thought you meant moving the whole thing to discord. You seem to be talking about doing this on the forums. I still think it's outside of the scope of this thread, but you could propose it to staff. I'm not actually staff, and don't really have any authority to give the go ahead on something like this. I'm all for new ideas though, so do feel free to propose it to the staff if you want to.

[Taco Chopper]

I fully agree and I believe this cap was even subtly keeping people from submitting. It did a little bit for me at least, thinking my screenshot might be banked for the next week, then perhaps I could come up with a better screenshot by that time, so I didn't put any effort into submitting.

 

Now I know that my screenshot will always be featured in the upcoming contest, I will be motivated to try to submit something every week.

The cap was mostly there to ensure we'd have a contest every week, especially in 2023 when there was that initial burst of energy around the contest; aside from that, you'd have more weeks than not where you'd be getting last minute submissions either on the day of, or the day after the contest was meant to go up.

 

Aside from a few people who took advantage of it by submitting bulk shots, I'd say you'd be lucky if we ever hit the issue of having too many screenshots more than ten times in the nearly three years I ran it. But yeah, put the blame on that, rather than people not submitting despite asking or telling me about how they were going to submit.

 

That said if the cap goes, it goes. I don't think it's going to change anything around the state of SotW for better or worse ^{(but then this is why I don't run the contest anymore, among other things, after all)}.

[Twilight Knight]

But yeah, put the blame on that, rather than people not submitting despite asking or telling me about how they were going to submit.

I didn't put the blame on that. I just mentioned how at least for me that subtly made me submit less and I could imagine it affected others. That's exactly what I wrote.

 

I don't get the sour attitude really. I've always been supportive of your lead in SotW and a frequent submitter...

[Anthus]

I didn't put the blame on that. I just mentioned how at least for me that subtly made me submit less and I could imagine it affected others. That's exactly what I wrote.

 

I don't get the sour attitude really. I've always been supportive of your lead in SotW and a frequent submitter...

 

I don't want to speak for anyone, but sometimes, behind the scenes stuff can be dumb with how these decisions are made at times, people get burned out, etc. There's also the fun of file hosting on PZC when you aren't actually staff but I digress. 

I wouldn't take it personally. Fwiw, I'm glad you submit often, almost weekly tbh

[Anthus]

Thanks to everyone who commented, and voted. I will be posting the results of the decisions made from this in the Announcement Thread, and closing this thread/ poll. If you have any other comments or feedback, feel free to post it in the Announcement Thread.