It's been my intent to run one of these annually, but last year we had a somewhat busy schedule with other contests. As is usual with two week contests the purpose is to make a new quest from scratch in just two weeks! The point here is to try and make a fully complete quest in that amount of time, so obviously the focus should be on making something on the shorter side.
I'd like to encourage anyone, no matter how new they are to quest making, to take part in this contest. It can be an excuse to just make something, as well as an avenue to try and make a new smaller project, far removed from grandiose ideas. Think of something bite sized and sweet. For a very classic style quest (in the classic tileset), maybe set the aim at a very tiny overworld and four dungeons? Or maybe something even smaller if you're working with a more complex and detailed tileset. Truly, the sky's the limit, so it's up to you to accurately determine how high you can reach in just two weeks!
Now for the details:
Run time: 18th of April to 2th of May 9th of May (Contest got extended)
Rules of Contest:
Produce and submit your quest within the contest time frame.
Teams are allowed, but a score modifier is applied depending on size. (Details further down)
Quest should run in either the latest 2.55 build or the latest 3.0 build.
Quest should follow PureZC's general content rules. (should go without saying).
Your entry should be submitted as a thread on this forum and should include all relevant files (quest, enhanced music, etc). Pure will host your entry but you'll need a temporary host when submitting.
Judging Criteria:
Gameplay: 0-30
Aesthetics: 0-10
Scope: 0-10
Judges:
Mani Kanina
Deedee
Twilight Knight
ryu
As we've done with previous contests here on Pure, you're welcome to start all your prep work as soon as this announcement has been made. That means you can prepare your quest file with loading in any tileset, loose tiles, scripts, or similar that you desire. The actual development time starts on the 18th, as mentioned earlier, so you can't start placing combos or making the quest itself until then. Though do feel free to plan things out on paper, be it physical or digital.
What about making new graphics or scripts? Well, as with level design that's to be done within the time of the contest itself. We are running this on a honour system here, anything that constitutes making the quest itself should be done within the two week time frame. But naturally we can't particularly easily moderate this. If it feels like the thing you're consider doing is making the quest rather than prep work, then please put it off till the proper time!
As always, if you're new to quest making or otherwise have any questions on how to do particular things within the editor or similar, then you're encouraged to ask those in the ZC-General channel on our discord server! There's always usually at least someone who knows the answer and can tell you, even if they might not be around right when you ask.
On top of entries being judged by a board of judges, there will also be a community voted favorite. So look forwards to play and share your thoughts on the entries even if you yourself don't plan on making an entry.
If there's any questions, feel free to field them in this thread and I'll do my best to answer! (Though please check the Q&A below first, the answer might already exist!)
Scoring and Team Size:
Spoiler
This contest exist to encourage as many people as possible to throw in their own gauntlet into the ring and make a quest. The reasoning why is that a two week deadline is very strict, so you're already heavily encouraged to think optimally about scope and what you could feasibly make within that time frame.
Some times you want someone to work with though, maybe even multiple people, it turns out. We allow this, but in order to make judging fair for everyone involved, score modifiers are used. After all, if you're multiple people you've got a lot more of an advantage than someone working solo. As such, consult this table below for details for score penalty depending on team size:
Every additional team member beyond the first six adds an additional three point penalty. Furthermore, it will be at my discretion as host if I allow any teams that large. If you want to enter with an extremely large team first please consider the purpose of the contest, and second should you still want to do so then get in touch with me beforehand and get the OK.
Naturally, any score penalty only plays into account on the judging side of things. How the community feels they'll have to sort out on their own.
Q&A:
Spoiler
Q: I wish to judge this contest! A: Sweet! More help is always wanted here. Simply say as such in this thread or DM me (Mani) either on the forums or on Discord. You'll be expected to play all quests submitted and judge them fairly by the form of scoring. Written feedback from judges is also encouraged, but not required.
Q: When can I start doing prep work? A: As soon as you finish reading this post!
Q: Can you go into more details on the judging criteria? A: 'Aesthetics' is how good the presentation of the quest is, everything from graphics to music is considered for this. 'Scope' is how well the project is suited for a two week contest. Like I mentioned earlier we want to encourage people to set a reasonable scope for their ideas here, something that is feasible to make in two weeks. So if something seems incomplete or is full of bugs or similar it will get less points in this criteria. 'Gameplay' is simply the rest: Is the quest well design? Does it achieve the type of gameplay it aimed for well? Was it enjoyable to play? etc.
Q: Bunnies? A: Yes!
Q: What if I make something for my entry before the contest time and submit it to the database, is that fine? A: No, not really. We can't really stop you from doing this, but it's breaking the spirit of the competition, isn't it?
Q: If I just use a script from someone or some tiles, does that count as a co-author? A: No, it does not. The spirit of the rule is no more than two co-authors, so just try and follow that. Using loose tiles or scripts from someone else is fine, but if they are getting deeply involved with your project then it's another matter entirely.
Q: I don't have a host for my quest, what do I do? A: mega.nz exist and should be fairly friction-less.
Anthus, Twilight Knight, Joelmacool and 3 others like this
I've gotten requests to allow larger teams than two for this contest. After some thinking and stipulations I've decided to allow it, with the caveat that larger teams get a flat scoring penalty per additional member of a team.
I've not settled on the actual numbers for this just yet (I'll keep you all posted), but for the sake of fairness I'm making this known as soon as possible.
This isn't a big deal to me, but I had a question. I don't mean this to be against the grain or a pain in the ass, but why can't we just have the community members vote on the categories and quests? I'm not expecting it to change now or anything, but we have a pretty small community and these contests generally produce between 2-3 quests and they can all be pretty different from each other. I feel like things like "scope" and "aesthetic" are open ended, and rather subjective. In my opinion those should be up to the players, not a select group of judges who might have wildly different tastes.
I look at it like this, if I were new to a community, and saw a contest, I'd want to know the community's opinions on them, not a small panel of judges. Unless of course I'm missing something and there will still be polls for members to use on top of the judges scoring.
Either way, I'm excited for another contest. I don't really plan on entering as my time has been more limited lately, but I'm looking forward to the entries! Good luck everyone.
This isn't a big deal to me, but I had a question. I don't mean this to be against the grain or a pain in the ass, but why can't we just have the community members vote on the categories and quests? I'm not expecting it to change now or anything, but we have a pretty small community and these contests generally produce between 2-3 quests and they can all be pretty different from each other. I feel like things like "scope" and "aesthetic" are open ended, and rather subjective. In my opinion those should be up to the players, not a select group of judges who might have wildly different tastes.
I look at it like this, if I were new to a community, and saw a contest, I'd want to know the community's opinions on them, not a small panel of judges. Unless of course I'm missing something and there will still be polls for members to use on top of the judges scoring.
People have vastly varying opinions and preferences on this matter, is the simple answer.
For some it's actually a force of motivation to have the guarantee of someone looking at their work and providing direct thoughts and feedback on it. Something which isn't always a given to happen if community members just vote on their favourite. If general community consensus is that something is less up to par that tends to be synonymous with simply being ignored outright.
Having both a panel of judges that offer their perspective and a community voted winner is in my mind the best of both worlds, since it's giving more people what they might want out of a contest.
I look at it like this, if I were new to a community, and saw a contest, I'd want to know the community's opinions on them, not a small panel of judges. Unless of course I'm missing something and there will still be polls for members to use on top of the judges scoring.
On top of entries being judged by a board of judges, there will also be a community voted favorite. So look forwards to play and share your thoughts on the entries even if you yourself don't plan on making an entry.
I'd rather guarantee force a select few people to play the quests than gamble on nobody playing the quests or giving feedback.
Yeah that's fair. Tbh I literally did not see this line at the end:
On top of entries being judged by a board of judges, there will also be a community voted favorite. So look forwards to play and share your thoughts on the entries even if you yourself don't plan on making an entry.
Had I saw that I wouldn't have even posted that.
Mani Kanina, Moon, Joelmacool and 1 other like this
Officially submissions for the contest is at midnight on the 2nd (night between the 2nd and 3ed), but since I want to account for all time zones, that means midnight at UTC-12. You're encouraged to submit at midnight your own time, but if anyone elects to sit up late because they got some more time till the hard deadline then that's your elective.
Submissions is due at that time, with the quest and all extra files (music, etc). But since I know we have users that burn both ends of the candle, if anyone wants to make a second submission after the deadline that is strictly speaking presentation for their entry then that's allowed, and you may do so throughout Sunday. But we will be using the first submissions quest package.
