Campaign Creations

Dem0nS1ayer wrote: No, I'm just saying that if you have twice the amount of missions that someone else has, it'll probably take longer to finish them.  If all of the campaigns were the same length, then it would be a good idea to give early entries some bonus points.  Seeing as how some are short (not a bad thing), and how some a longer, you can't really judge it on how long it takes to make it.

Hmmmmm..... An interesting point. To be honest, I'm not sure where I stand on this, although siding with Dem0nS1ayer would be in our best interest. What makes me unsure is the fact that the contest, after a point, was no longer required to cover the full four years. If we all had to cover the same amount of time, it would make sense for more missions to be better considering that SC vanilla and SC: BW were about 50 missions and that was only a little over 2 years in the timeline. However, now that it is a matter of choice, I don't think the mission count means much because we chose to go farther. That was why I was pissy about story seeming to not be taken as seriously as it should (and I don't want to start that battle up again!). If I had it my way, the story judging would serve as a bit of a counter-balance to the "early release" aspect of professionalism. But I don't make the rules and I respect that. If we lose, it's because of me and Tim, not the judges.

In short, meh.......

That may be true, but you can't say that the author of a campaign worked extra hard to get his campaign in a week early when it's only 5-10 missions.

Krazy wrote: More maps does not mean more time or effort.  In fact, the two are often inverse.

Oh, I didn't mean to come off that we somehow worked harder than you. I just meant that, with more missions, one has the capability of expanding the range of their story farther. In reality, you probably worked harder than we did 'cause Tim and I divided the work. 

@Dem0nS1ayer:
I disagree. There can be all sorts of explanations as to why someone can release a campaign earlier and working harder is certainly one of them. I'd say it makes the top three (in no particular order) along with having more free time to work on it and flat-out getting a head start over everyone. But then when the work load seems small, it can be taxing Take Omega20. His campaign was done before the contest even started; he just had to translate the dialogue. A seemingly simple task, but, with whatever circumstances he had, he was unable to finish in time. It really all depends on the scenario and what's on the "to do list", so to speak. I'm not saying you're wrong; simply that you can't judge the workload by its length.

I don't intend to make any debate about it but I do intend to explain my point of view about it :

When I judged the categories, I mostly judged each category by itself with no or minimal impact from the other.

In other words, professionalism is professionalism, triggering is triggering, etc. Pretty much from how the official scoring is intended to be.

Thus, it might look a bit unfair on the surface that I did consider better professionalism for those that are earlier regardless of other details.

However if you did release just before the deadline yet your overall quality is better (implying better in all other four categories and possibly even the professionalism section itself for other details) due to using that extra time spent, logically your overall score gain will be higher than the score drop from not releasing earlier.

It's pretty much by that logic that I go about this specific case.

@Ricky:
It's not less professional to submit a campaign on the last day. It's called being punctual, and is quite professional indeed.

You're basically a teacher giving extra points to the student who handed in their test first. Oh well, good thing Lavarinth is the dean.

is it too late to enter teh contest?

Krazy wrote: Such a bonus would be small, but I don't think ricky was saying this was gonna be a million kajillion points.

Unless the maximum score is a billion kajillion, in which case the aforementioned amount is quite reasonable.

Desler wrote: is it too late to enter teh contest?

Nope! But your campaign must be about Goats.

Krazy wrote: Test isn't really the right metaphor here.  Think of a take home project.  Many teachers would give a small bonus if you turned in the project early.  What it demonstrates is that you weren't waiting until the last minute and rushing the last parts or final touches. Such a bonus would be small, but I don't think ricky was saying this was gonna be a million kajillion points.

That's pretty much the idea I do have about all it.

Personally, I would give you a bit if it's earlier (although on a small scale, a single +1 if it's significantly early such as 1 week earlier) and I would bat you for missing the deadline (on a big scale, like -1 per day) if it was strictly me who made the final scores.

As usual, it's Lavarinth that will decide the final scores so that detail may or may not ultimately influence the professionalism section (although to me, it seems very fitting if it's set that way).

Krazy wrote:So what you're saying is that the people who, for most their maps, were intricate, heavy on triggers, dialogue, voice acting, and modwork--what they really *needed* to stand out was 30 extra missions of filler.

Nah, you misunderstood me quite there.

Anyway, those extra missions of filler would probably hurt you MUCH more than help you in one way or another.

Either :
1) those filler missions would be of less quality vs the rest of your project thus your overall scoring will suffer from that extra content
2) you would try to put that filler content on the same quality as the rest of your project thus leaving you less time to make your main content better ultimately not helping your score and just putting extra work on your shoulders

It might more or less biased in Campaign Creations about it but we consider in much higher regard shorter but better quality content instead of longer but poorer quality campaigns. That's pretty much a tradition here and it does spill into this contest as well.

In other words, the consideration of the length of campaign is minimal (regardless of campaign's quality overall) unless it's ridiculously short in this contest. Thus, it was in your better interest to make a shorter (since a shorter or longer campaign isn't much considered) but higher quality campaign (since not putting time to make lots of low-quality maps means time to put in a fewer but better quality maps).

Lavarinth also said such similar stance fairly early on the contest.

Campaign Creations wrote: - It's not about the quantity, it's about the quality, one map, such as New Avalon II (visit it's page on CC for more info) is an outstandingly long RPG-style map that could take hours to complete, while Legacy of the Confederation is a large set of maps detailing an great storyline.

I do not endorse "extra points" for completing a project early. That was simply time not spent polishing and deemed complete. Crisis diverted.

Lavarinth wrote: I do not endorse "extra points" for completing a project early. That was simply time not spent polishing and deemed complete. Crisis diverted.

Gracefully done, Captain. The enemy never saw it coming. Shall I plot the next course?

Krazy wrote: Tbc, that nose is looking awfully brown.  Want a hankie for it?

Brown, eh? How appropriate. Lulz, it was more of a follow-up to the "Crisis diverted" part, but I can see how it could be interpreted that way. Every little bit counts, right? After all, the contest isn't over. As far as anyone knows, I still have some tricks up my sleeve....... probably not, though. It would have to be something pretty spectacular. Plus, I'm not wearing sleeves.

I can see it now: Beat the first mission of HoP without a single unit on any side dying and you unlock the secret, real campaign! Instant win.

So I have updated the testing logs to move the "Released one week earlier" positive (if you had it) from the professional section to the brownie points section to better reflect the potential final scores after Lavarinth's decision concerning it.

While it won't count for anything even in the brownie points section, I still want to keep the mention anyway.

HADOKEN

I heard a rumor that Blizzard was delaying the release of the beta until the Campaign Creations Campaign Contest was judged and all the beta key spots were finalized.  Is there any truth to this rumor?