38 replies to this topic

[Caine]

I rather like how the nominations thread has brought up some hidden gems that I'd never have considered playing before.

Exactly. My attitude to the nominations thread so far has been: "Surprise me". I don't think I voted on any of them, well maybe once.

For me one of the best parts of the ROT is that it solved the "What game to play?" problem for me. For the occasional gem you haven't played yet before, two weeks is a nice period of time to either finish it, get completely bored with it or realize you should play it more frequently in the future.

[edit]
Welcome to the rot ziz! Looking forward to competing against you in the future

Except at this point we do not require a screenshot.

It's a bit annoying that several emulators lack the ability to even do so and binding a key to the screenshot script rarely seems to work for me. Should we ever play for money then some sort of proof would certainly be required as it would otherwise attract cheaters.
Your idea to have "rot rankings" or badges would completely solve this, I think. It's a great idea and also raises visibility of the ROT within the gp32x and openpandora communities.

I like the idea of having a "famous game" and a "wild card" game per round.

Yes me too. It's a good idea.

I also think that instead of 1 round dropped per season, 2 or even 3 should be dropped.

I can certainly understand the idea of quitting the competition once you feel you are unable to bridge the gap between the leaders and your own score. It we drop too many rounds though, then the chances rapidly increase of having multiple people ending up with exactly the same score.
Perhaps we should have multiple skill leagues (bronze/silver/gold). Though, the diversity in games and low player count certainly wouldn't make it easy.
[/edit]

Edited by Caine, 13 April 2011 - 07:09 PM.

[Ziz]

Hm... Wouldn't that invent to cheat, if you don't need a screenshot? Or do you trust in the few participants?
That's one reason, why I am against a price money. Price money makes this cool idea... complicated!

greetings, Ziz

[Prometheus]

I like the idea of having a "famous game" and a "wild card" game per round. Classifying them as such does seem like it could be difficult, I don't know of a site that rates all games ever made.

I love that idea, too.

As far as a site that rates games goes, I know of one that may fill this need for arcade titles (MAWS), which has user-submitted ratings for games. This is a good way of getting a handle on what's popular, as far as I've seen, though.

Perhaps we should start a new nomination thread sorted only by "famous" and "wild card" then just alphabetical after that? Players could just specify which category they are nominating for when they nominate the game. I could always change what category the game is in if everyone agreed it was mis-categorized. This system would be beneficial in the fact that famous games would have a higher probability of player ownership.

Seconded.

@mods, is there a way to put a "rot ranking" in the player's profile so it would show under their avatar? Also what are the chances of getting badges of some kind (similar to the "gp32 xtreme team members" badge) for rot players or as an award for the season winner? A badge that says "ROT Champion" would be a cool prize. I'm thinking community recognition + bragging rights could entice new players, rather than the complication that cash value prizes adds. Thoughts?

I think this would be something for the admins - it's not something that a moderator has the ability to do, as far as I'm aware.

[David Bowman]

MonkeyChops,

I like them all, man. I have a Pliny The Elder clone IPA that I'm very proud of, I just brewed an oatmeal coffee stout on Monday, and I have a few more in bottles. If I could, I'd brew every day! Isn't it a wonderful and magical hobby? Cheers!

All,

I am against adding the complications to this league that come along with bringing money or prizes into it. This is supposed to just be fun, right? How would we handle who has the money, and how would we root out the cheaters. Nah, no good can come of that in my opinion.

Edited by David Bowman, 14 April 2011 - 03:31 AM.

[MonkeyChops]

I've never had nor even seen pliny the elder in store or bars around me. Is it mainly a west coast thing? It looks good and I now have a personal quest to try it as I love IPA's. I'm hoping they have it here: http://www.ixbeerfest.com/ . It's going to be a blast, they finally did away with the ticket system. oatmeal stout? this early? I usually wait till later in the year for that as I associate stouts with winter for whatever reason. Or do you actually have the patience to let your beer age that long, cause I don't. My first all grain beer was an oatmeal stout, what kind of hops did you use. What kind of setup do you have for brewing? hmm, maybe we should take this to the off topic section..


On topic:
It looks like most of us are in agreement that we will do a new nomination list next season with 2 categories. Those being "Famous Games" and "Wild Card Games" or something similar to that, maybe "Hidden Gems" is better than wild card? I also like the idea of requiring all players to nominate at least one game.

However, we still need to decide if we will still have 2 games per round. We could continue with 2 games per round, choosing 1 from each category. Or we could have only one game per round and alternate between famous and wild card each round. I'm leaning more towards keeping 2 per round as that would keep the more accessible famous games in each round.

Voting needs a viable alternative or it will most likely stay the same. I like the multiple votes idea but we need a real world way of implementing it or it's a no go. I think the multiple votes could work in multiple levels also. Extra votes could be awarded for top players, or for other achievements, like not missing a round. Which brings me to awards.

I agree that cash awards would complicate things. If someone was to write a emu that was locked down and un-crackable somehow, it may be possible, but it's foolish to put our hopes on ifs. What could work is forum awards, like badges, rot ranking in profiles, extra votes, maybe even a special "official" Avatars (or avatar backgrounds?) Of course avatars are not controllable but we are going on the honor system here for the most part and anyone who cheats, with fake avatar, scroring, or whatever else would be called out and put on a wall of shame or something. Of course some people may relish being on the wall of shame At any rate, non-monetary prizes seem like they could work and not complicate things too much. We need to think of more ways to award players without over complicating things. Being streamlined is key.

Score submission deserves some discussion also. I think the honor system is great and makes for a relaxed feel to this league. But on the other hand, requiring screenshots may make the league more enticing to the less trusting potential player. As mentioned, there is no easy way to take screenshots in all emu's. My question is how can we make it easier? Is it possible to port a program to do it for us? Would savestates be a possibility or would that just end up complicating things again? Perhaps there is a program (or one can be written) that rips the screenshot out of a savestate? If that's even possible Thoughts?

[edit] I just had a thought. Ziz brought up a good point, there really is no clear way to "sign up" for the league. If we had a sign up topic, with the op containing a list of current players, it would make for a more professional feel and it would make it easier for a new player to jump in and feel welcome. The sign-up topic would double as a "welcome the the league" topic and a "I need help" topic also. We could even have the learderboard combined with the sign-up topic, since we'd already have a list of current players going.

Edited by MonkeyChops, 14 April 2011 - 02:37 PM.

[Caine]

Here is some other idea I have been thinking about.

Seasonal tournaments
These remain mostly unchanged and have two main goals: introduction of new games to the ROT players and determining the season champion for bragging rights.

• 1 (or 2) game(s) per round, selected by a voting process
  
• 6 rounds total (best 5 count)
  
• 2 week deadline for scoring
  
• game specific scoring rules and restrictions
  
• earn batches by becoming seasonal champion and/or getting specific achievements.

The seasonal tournament ensures all (active) players are familiar with all the listed games and playing them competitively which provides context and creates appreciation for high scores.

At the time of the deadline for a specific round, the achieved high score of all players is locked and determines the score for the leaderboard for the running season. However, players who like that specific title can keep competing indefinitely for all time ROT records which are never locked but also don't contribute to the seasonal tournament. This promotes active participation in the ROT as a discovery tool since you can always beat the ruling high score later on.

Score tracking
Scores would be tracked on a simple site which acts as a front for a scoring database. This site and database will:

• list all games featured so far in the ROT
  
• lock the achieved ROT scores at the deadline
  
• allows score submission both according to ROT rules and free scoring (only ROT rule submissions are taken into account for the seasonal tournament).
  
• still tracks high scores even after the deadline
  
• registers players such that each player can update their own score making the life of ROT maintainers easier.
  
• Presents scores in a simple table format:
  

  Tetris DX / GBC / 2011 Season 1 Round 5----------+-----------+---------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------Username  | ROT score | All time high (ROT rules) | All time high (free)| proof (optional)----------+-----------+---------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------Caine     |    171.023|        200.000 (as if <img src='http://www.gp32x.com/board/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tongue.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':P' /> )|             200.000 | http://imageshack.us/...

• Link to a discussion thread with the scoring rules, trash-talk and/or general banter about the game.

This site would simplify the majority of the administration process involved and gives players a clear and direct overview of where they stand in the round (nobody would have to dig through maze of threads).

The main downside is the requirement to develop it first (doesn't need to be feature full right away). In principle it's just a database with some user registration and several web forms put on top. It could later on be extended to auto-generate an up-to-date leaderboard and/or support the voting process, but I see that as future extensions if the ROT becomes bigger and more successful. The site could eventually show player profiles with earned badges which can e.g. be linked to from forum signatures.

I think this idea will lower the threshold to participating in the ROT, since even if you can no longer win the seasonal tournament, you can still aim for claiming the first position in a particular game of your choice (allowing you to make up for missing a round) and discover new games while playing.

Edited by Caine, 14 April 2011 - 03:09 PM.

[Tickles]

I just dropped in to say I haven't quit, I love this league and will be back in due course. My life's been turned upside down recently and I'm in the process of moving across the country and starting afresh. I skimmed this thread quickly and would like to add my two pence:

I'm still against the idea of money prizes. Maybe once it's the world famous ROT that's a possibility, but not now. I'm all for badges of honour though, and don't see a problem with small donated prizes either.

I don't see the point of making screen shots necessary, surely these can be faked/people could cheat anyway?

Another vote for one famous and one hidden gem here, sounds good.

Maybe dropping down to one game per round while there's not so many playing isn't a bad idea, or how about if participants can play both games? That could make things more tactical as well: do you spend all your time trying to top the leader board on one game, or aim for midway on both?

At the moment I'm all for increasing the amount of dropped rounds

@Caine - I like the idea of all time scores that keep going even after the round has finished. I could take my rightful place as King of Willow!

@Levi - I would love another round of Mario Kart without Thwomps! Maybe we could all vote on a track?

I should be back in a month, maybe two, once I'm all settled; I really hope it's still here to come back to

[Caine]

I don't see the point of making screen shots necessary, surely these can be faked/people could cheat anyway?

No, they should not be necessary. Having support for them is fine, but they should not be required.

@Caine - I like the idea of all time scores that keep going even after the round has finished. I could take my rightful place as King of Willow!

The ROT, where rivalries are born

[levi]

If we're going for the famous/non-famous game split idea (yay) then I think that means we need to play two games at a time. The idea being that at all times, anyone can play the famous game they've probably played before, but if they fancy something a bit more leftfield where perhaps the competition might not be as fierce, they can go wildcard. If we play one at a time and alternate, we're saying you have to play games you might not be interested in playing (either played them too much in the past, or not interested in playing some weirdy beardy game on the Colecovision) or you forefit alternate rounds.

I also like the idea of having non-counting rounds, where your lowest scores are ignored for the purposes of final tallying. That fits with the part time ethos - we all have real lives to be getting on with, and if we can only put in a token effort in some round that shouldn't be penalised against someone with more free time perhaps, who can dedicate significant time to each round.

[David Bowman]

MonkeyChops,

To avoid really hijacking the thread:

Spoiler

I don't see the Russian River Brewing Company listed on the breweries list for that beer fest, so no Pliny unfortunately. It's very hard to get anywhere outside of the Rockies / West Coast. I had only ONE when I was in Colorado a few weeks ago because that's all I could find. It's hard to get even out there. It was ranked as being the best IPA on both ratebeer.com and beeradvocate.com for a long time. I think it deserves the respect as it is a delicious beer! I'm very jealous that you're going to that, by the way. I recently went to Brewvival in Charleston, but it was nowhere near that big! One thing that does bug me about that festival is that AnheiserBush / MillerCoors is going to be there. They need not be anywhere near real beer in my opinion. I mean, I'm no beer snob. I'll have a Coors Lite on the beach or in the sun, but if I'm elsewhere and I have a choice, I'm not drinking fizzy, yellow, flavorless beer.

The stout is going to have to age for at least two months before we can bottle it, and then it will still be a minimum of three more weeks before it would really be good to go I think. I actually do not remember which hops we used. This was a cheap ($20!) kit from Austin Homebrew Supply, so we couldn't resist (but we doctored it up a little bit all the same). The Pliny clone had four different kinds of hops in it!

I like all beers pretty much any time of the year, but I probably wouldn't have a stout on the beach or even during the day. We didn't do it as an AG, but we (me and my brew buddies) did do a minimash using a nylon bag. We're trying to get away from using extracts altogether and just do all grain. We use a turkey fryer for the boil and just your basic equipment otherwise. We haven't spent a lot of money on equipment just yet. I just wanted to get into brewing and really enjoy some of my own beers before investing a lot of money in it first. I've really only been doing this since January, but man is it a blast! I think the next thing we will invest in is a wort chiller. We'll probably build it rather than buy one. Temperature control has been an issue for us during fermentation. What do you do to combat that?

Until we can get a better setup, I think we're going to be doing a Brew-In-A-Bag setup for the AG brews. It's really not hard to do, but it still gets that all-grain flavor. Mmmm.

What sort of equipment do you use? What are your favorite styles to brew? Ever post on HomeBrewTalk.com?

Here is some other idea I have been thinking about.
... Lots of text ...

This. Great ideas here.

[john4p]

I agree with levi and David that there shouldn't be any real prizes.

@Levi - I would love another round of Mario Kart without Thwomps! Maybe we could all vote on a track?

How about 3 tracks?

[David Bowman]

So are we dead in the water? It's been over a month now with no chatter.

Is there any interest in continuing the league?

[Prometheus]

I'm just waiting for the rest of you. Hurry up, will you, lads?

[Ziz]

I am still very interested!
Especially if the games run on my .

[MonkeyChops]

Been dragging my feet since I still don't have my pandora back yet. Is it all up to me to get the ball rolling again? I don't mind being admin (although that would be easier with mod abilities for this sub-forum,) but do we still have our 'keeps?

[edit]also, anyone know who to talk to about getting some kind of badge or in-profile ranking system going?

Edited by MonkeyChops, 25 May 2011 - 02:14 PM.