Website Announced!
10 11 2007Today I’ve announced this website at the TMX forums. The first round, hosted at TMX and not here, will still finish before the second round is started at this new website. However, by announcing the website in advance and letting people get to know it I hope people will already know what it’s all about when the second round actually starts.
Here’s a brief description on how the contest will work from now on:
- Contest renamedfrom “Extreme MiniTrack Contest” (EMTC) to “Xtreme Short Track Contest” (XSTC)
- Regular rounds, called “Seasons” - twice a month (first week of a season is for building/submitting tracks, second week is for judging)
- Tracks: Max 15 seconds long - thus the name “Short Track”
- Rule on how to name the tracks(”XSTC - TrackName”, where TrackName is the unique name you want to give the track) - this should make tracks easier to find at TMX and ensure that they’ve been built for the contest specifically
- Three groups to win, based on environment: Original (Desert, Rally & Alpine), Sunrise (island, Bay & Coast) and Nations (Stadium). Additionally there’s a combined winner for each round (the overall best track)
- Occasional themes and special rules - some of the seasons may have specific limitations or themes to build on (but not always), or unique secondary groups to win (for example “Best Name” or “Most innovative”)
Feel free to discuss the rules by commenting this post. For example, is the rule of tracks starting with “XSTC - ” a good or a bad rule?
Please keep in mind though that the website is still under construction and that rules and details may change… Now is your time to have your say 
Naming convention should be “Trackname (XSTC)”, because of the way TMX shortens names in lists.
Consider two builders naming their tracks “Desert Storm” and “Desert Cake”; if they name it “XSTC_-_Desert Storm” and “XSTC_-_Desert Cake”, then both tracks will appear as “XSTC_-_Desert …” in the listings.
Placing the XSTC abbreviation at the end of the name still makes it possible to search for it, while leaving the important thing - the real name - at the beginning, clearly readable.
Also, I suggest two changes:
1) Changing the time limit rule to “Author time must be 15.99 seconds or LESS; 16.00 is too long and will be rejected” — this makes it much clearer.
2) There should ALWAYS be a theme to the season.
Also, I think the following should be added:
A) Tracks must be “one man/woman show” solely; no other help can be used for mediatracking, screenshot, validation, co-building.
B) Tracks must be built for the round; they cannot be existing tracks that are just added to the round just because they fit the theme.
C) Tracks MUST have in-game comment with the URL of this “blog”, and the author comment on TMX MUST state clearly that the track is for the competition.
D) Tracks on TMX MUST have:
i) screenshot according to TMX guidelines (i.e., it shows good portion of the track and doesn’t contain copyrighted material)
ii) author’s replay submitted soon after uploading the track (definitely before judging the track) so that it is certain judges may judge the replay in case they fail to finish the track (trust me, this is BOUND to happen sooner or later).
This is my recommendation based on the two years of miscellaneous competitions on N- and U- TMX.
Yet another idea:
quote: Regular rounds, called “Seasons”
I think the Rounds should have a clear CODEs which would allow anyone to quickly check which round the track was built for; I believe a code of he form YYmonX, where YY is last two digits of the year, mon is the abbreviated month name and Y is either 1 or 2 depending in which half of the month the round was started; example: 07nov1 or 08jan2 . Note: keep in mind months don’t have 28 days, so sticking to the 14-day round schedule is going to cause problems; I suggest unleashing new rounds on 1st and then on 16th of each month, which would make it “half-a-month’ly” competition and builders may easily learn to check the site every 1st and 16th of a month for theme, and every 15th and 30th/31st for results.
The round “code” should be included in the track comment (in-game); I pre-visualize the track comment like his:
xtremestc.wordpres.com round 07nov2 - my track for the theme “Loops”.
Heh, a lot of comments, Alcator
And some good ideas, but I don’t agree with all of them…
1. “Trackname (XSTC)” would probably be better, for the reasons you explained.
2. Changing the limit rule to 15.99 is also good.
3. I don’t agree with there always being a theme. Not having a theme simply means “best track according to the judges” and is a simple aspect. To ensure variations, certain restrictions, themes and special rules may apply occasionally, but not every time. Besides, regular themes would make the contest too much of the same as the TMC MTC.<
4. Forcing tracks to be one-man shows could become hard to check in the long run. Personally I think it’s OK if people cooperate, which is why even official duo tracks are allowed. Who made it doesn’t matter if the result is good.
5. As tracks are 15 seconds or less, there’s a forced name structure required, and one track obviously can’t enter twice, I doubt simply entering tracks because they happen to fit the theme is going to be a problem.
6. Linking to this blog in-game is of course appreciated, but in the long run not necessary to the contest, which is why I don’t think it should be a requirement.
7. Same goes with your “D” suggestion. If a screenshot doesn’t fit TMX rules it’s TMX’s problem, not ours. Screenshots have no importance whatsoever on the outcome of the contest, as screenshots are not to be judged.
8. Some way of knowing which round a track was made for could be nice, but having a round code included in-game would be too much to ask for, I believe. Isn’t there some other solution to this? I was thinking about a full list of all XSTC tracks on a separate page here on this blog, where it’s included what round the tracks were in. If there are many tracks that too might become too much, but I still consider it a better solution than having round codes.
EDIT: Oh, and about the length of rounds and the problem with some months being shorter than others: I’m quite sure this can be altered as needed. A day or two could be added between rounds, a few extra days could be used for submitting tracks (probably the best solution), or the judging process/the time when the results are oublished could be delayed.
Now, what a nice theme
Minor detail: Since the contest is hosted by the blog (well, I think it is), I suggest add a link to this site in the link column on the blog?
I’ll do that when the contest (round 2) starts