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No (Regular) Competitions?

#1 User is offline   Giel Prime 

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Posted 12 December 2019 - 01:22 AM

The DoZes seem to have stopped after 2014, while there's still BKZXes going on. What happened?
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#2 User is online   Lachesis 

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Posted 12 December 2019 - 03:29 AM

Here's a few reasons why there hasn't been a DoZ since 2014:

  • The number of DoZ team signups had steadily decreased over the years.
  • Same with the number of teams to actually submit anything.
  • Fewer people have actually been willing to judge DoZs due to the complexity of the scoring system and the high level of scrutiny scoresheets receive.
  • Most interested judges are from the same small pool of people who would potentially participate, meaning fewer signups (since judges can't submit games without them being DQed).
  • Every DoZ score system was inherently incredibly biased towards technical achievement, meaning the same few teams were dominating the last several DoZs and few had any chance of matching those teams.
  • Ongoing plagiarism despite the rules clearly forbidding it.
  • Yearly drama over scores souring interest (though this happened less in later years due to fewer participants).
  • Decreased interest in actually hosting a DoZ, particularly since the role pretty much mandates also being a judge (due to fewer willing judges).


There was an updated scoring system proposed in #mzx on Discord to try to account for some of these issues. It was generally positively received but I couldn't get a willing host in time to prepare a DoZ for the 25th anniversary. I'm just not sure the interest is there anymore.
"Let's just say I'm a GOOD hacker, AND virus maker. I'm sure you wouldn't like to pay for another PC would you?"

xx̊y (OST) - HELLQUEST (OST) - Zeux I: Labyrinth of Zeux (OST) (DOS OST)
w/ Lancer-X and/or asgromo: Pandora's Gate - Thanatos Insignia - no True(n) - For Elise OST
MegaZeux: Online Help File - Keycode Guide - Joystick Guide - Official GIT Repository
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#3 User is offline   KKairos 

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Posted 12 December 2019 - 05:52 AM

^^^ This.

Re: Judging, I never felt like the backlash for bad judgments was too bad, but I only remember making one or two truly bad calls and owning them decently enough after the fact. But the rest of them have been problems and that one hasn't exactly been a picnic for anyone, except maybe Wervyn (feel free to jump in with whichever story I'm forgetting, if there is one, about Wervyn judging.)
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#4 User is offline   GetDizzy 

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Posted 12 December 2019 - 03:38 PM

Bit of a moot point but if I were not currently taking college courses I would gladly host and judge a DoZ. I've certainly enjoyed doing so in the past. Maybe if I get some time off in the summer.

I don't remember the proposed new scoresheet so I'll have to ask Alice to point me to it in Discord.

I think other than time problems, my biggest issue with hosting a DoZ personally has been that given participation trends, we might end up with fewer teams than judges. :)

That said, I feel like the general level of activity in the MZX community is more supportive of non-competitive events like the sort of anniversary game jam we have ongoing atm.
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<@Tixus> Anyway, I set the year to 1988 for some reason.
<@Tixus> And set the microwave to run for a minute and 28 seconds.
<@Tixus> But it failed to send me back in time, and I was disappointed.
<Insidious> Tixus accidentally microwaved the 80s
<Insidious> that is my takeaway from this
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#5 User is online   Lachesis 

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Posted 12 December 2019 - 06:04 PM

There were a couple variations of the revised scoring system proposed. The main things were to make judging less intimidating, to encourage broader theme interpretation and usage, to allow games to safely ignore the theme, and to rebalance scoring so games doing the former would have a similar advantage to games doing the latter. They had the following in common:

  • Standardize the scoring categories to 0-10 (use decimals if you need more precision). Generally, the score weightings being rolled into the sheets kind of makes things more intimidating than less. Risu had a good point to add to this that 0-100 tends to be associated with an average of 75, whereas 0-10 tends to be associated with an average of 5. Many judges were approaching scores by giving each category a percentage score and then scaling it, so 0-10 scoring cuts out that intermediate step for the judges.
  • Remove the theme scoring category as it currently exists.
  • Remove the theme DQ (because it doesn't work almost as much as it does).
  • Loosen judge writing restrictions somewhat (really like a short paragraph for each category and a summary is enough for most games).
  • Encourage more broad theme interpretations, both for participants and judges.
  • Replace the current scoresheet weighting system with something that 1) has the option to weigh theme scores much more strongly than the scoresheets currently do, and 2) doesn't rely on judges to apply the correct scoresheet (this was an issue in Summer 2012 despite the rules being clear on scoresheet choice).


The base score system would look like:
  • Gameplay: 0-10
  • Graphics: 0-10
  • Technique: 0-10
  • Story: 0-10
  • Sound: 0-10
  • Total: sum of above


Where there wasn't really a consensus was how to implement the theme score. My idea was to give each category a technical score and a theme score, and to have the judge sum both individually. Then, each team would be able to choose a weighting before the scores are released to produce the final score. So, a game's scores could look something like:

/*
Gameplay (Technical: 7/10, Theme: 5/10)
(justification for both scores)

Graphics (Technical: etc, Theme: etc)
(etc)

Technique (Technical: etc, Theme: etc)
(etc)

Story (Technical: etc, Theme: etc)
(etc)

Sound (Technical: etc, Theme: etc)
(etc)

(summary)

Technical: 37.2/50
Theme: 12/50
*/


Each game gets a total technical and a total theme score by adding the totals from each judge. Teams choose from the following weighting systems: Technical-Heavy (technical x3 + theme x1), Balanced (technical x2 + theme x2), and Theme-Heavy (technical x1 + theme x3). These are applied by the host after the sheets are turned in to calculate the final scores. The benefits of this system are that it makes teams and judges both think about the theme applying to mechanics it may usually not be thought of applying to (e.g. sound, which is usually just a bonus score for whoever brought in the best composer or free-use music source). The downside is that there are now ten scores per game instead of six, but ideally that'd be offset by 0-10 being much easier overall.

An alternate option suggested by Risu was to keep a single theme category like the current sheets have but to treat it like a multiplier, i.e. Final Score = (theme total / theme max) * (technical total / technical max). This would simplify things from the above system but it'd be a lot more punishing to teams that can't both make great use of the theme and make a technically impressive game, which I think might lead to the same teams winning again.

An alternative to having judges that was mentioned by KKairos and I think a couple others was having the teams score games instead. This works for BKZXes, but the main concern with this approach was that the judge writeups are explicitly a reason some people are willing to spend 24 hours making a game in the first place.

edit: Note that with either theme scoring system previous DoZs could be reweighted or rescored to preview what the new systems might look like in practice. I haven't tried doing this yet, but if there's interest I could look into it.

edit 2: Another thing brought up in the original conversation is that the Technical/Theme split works for most categories except for "Technique", where a Technical score sounds redundant and a Theme score feels kind of awkward. "Technique" could possibly be renamed to "Discretion" or "Panache" (Lancer's idea) or something else.

This post has been edited by Lachesis: 12 December 2019 - 07:52 PM

"Let's just say I'm a GOOD hacker, AND virus maker. I'm sure you wouldn't like to pay for another PC would you?"

xx̊y (OST) - HELLQUEST (OST) - Zeux I: Labyrinth of Zeux (OST) (DOS OST)
w/ Lancer-X and/or asgromo: Pandora's Gate - Thanatos Insignia - no True(n) - For Elise OST
MegaZeux: Online Help File - Keycode Guide - Joystick Guide - Official GIT Repository
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#6 User is offline   Giel Prime 

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Posted 15 December 2019 - 04:13 PM

I bet "Quantum Hell" had something to do with the demise of DoZes due to the plagiarism...aaargh...
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#7 User is online   Lachesis 

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Posted 15 December 2019 - 04:58 PM

it was really mostly the other things i listed tho
"Let's just say I'm a GOOD hacker, AND virus maker. I'm sure you wouldn't like to pay for another PC would you?"

xx̊y (OST) - HELLQUEST (OST) - Zeux I: Labyrinth of Zeux (OST) (DOS OST)
w/ Lancer-X and/or asgromo: Pandora's Gate - Thanatos Insignia - no True(n) - For Elise OST
MegaZeux: Online Help File - Keycode Guide - Joystick Guide - Official GIT Repository
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#8 User is offline   GetDizzy 

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Posted 17 December 2019 - 03:00 AM

Just wanting to come back to this thread and say that if I end up doing a DoZ in summer (which is looking pretty likely, though it will probably be in late August), I'll be using the above proposed scoresheet system pretty much as written (with the Technical/Theme break for each category, and probably use "Panache" in place of Technique, and the suggested team-selected weightings). Obviously any tweaks suggested (especially by those who came up with the system) before then will be taken into consideration, but yeah, it sounds like a good system as written atm.
- Your Jumpy Neighborhood Admin

<@Tixus> Anyway, I set the year to 1988 for some reason.
<@Tixus> And set the microwave to run for a minute and 28 seconds.
<@Tixus> But it failed to send me back in time, and I was disappointed.
<Insidious> Tixus accidentally microwaved the 80s
<Insidious> that is my takeaway from this
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