TUGS \\ Second Round \\ Rankings

[Frario]

Oh well, I have to say it started off well. Tugs made me visit the forums again, longer than usual.

We clearly established that school-work, any other labour an lack of free time are the main obstacles for TUGS. Try and look what works effectively, such as Shawn's sprite challenges. You could try to organise each TUGS-round in a different period of the year. Surely, this means TUGS will spread across a couple of months or a year. You get he idea. Another benefit would be "evolution". If Tugs takes quite a time, you can easily compare the spriters evolution throughout the competition. You know, a summer-round, mid-terms, Christmas. But then again, that's all arguable. Even during holidays people are quite busy.

[Shawn]

I think the main problem is the actual themes for every round of this tugs were unbelievably complicated. I think even art school assignments are simple and easier to accomplish than the stuff you gave for this TUGS. You want to make the themes have a clean balance of simpleness and depth, to give people the ability to understand what to do, finish it on time and show their skill. Another thing is that you shouldn't be judging it based on completion, if someone shows great skill but doesn't finish as opposed to a mediocre entry that IS finished and the mediocre entry ranks higher than the skilled one, it's just throwing the whole tier thing off balance.

tl;dr, the themes(especially the prelims) need to be something that doesn't take 50+ hours to do and can display a persons skill without going into all sorts of deep and intricate techniques and methods.

edit: ALSO HOLY CRAP THIS THING DRAGGED ON. one week for a round is plenty of time if you don't do the stupidly complex themes.

ROUND 1: ONE WEEK LONG, SPRITE A MYTHOLOGICAL SEA CREATURE IN UNDER 150X150 USING 3 COLOURS FROM THE NES PALETTE. YOU'RE DONE

you dont need a theme like

ROUND 1: 2 AND A HALF WEEKS LONG, SPRITE THE AWAKENING OF A MYTHOLOGICAL SEA CREATURE AS AN EXPLORER DISCOVERS IT IN IT'S UNDERWATER CASTLE OR DOMAIN, IT MuST BE 150X150 EXACTLY AND USE THESE 3 OBSCURE COLOURS I PULLED OUT OF MY ASS AND NO MORE.

[Cshad]

If you have to have a two week long challenge, add something else to it.

The mock-up challenge consisted everyone pulling something out of their ass to fit the theme. There should have been a piece of writing elaborating on the back story, game play mechanics, character, etc. since it was supposed to be a mock-up for an actual game.

[Frario]

Shawn nailed it.
It's the basics of giving a task or teaching: Concise instructions.
It's when playing a video game, you want the tutorials to be short and clear. If it's too long, people will take longer.

But yeah too late, this is only relevant to the next organiser. But this was already mentioned in the 'Organizing Tugs'.

[Chris2Balls [:B]]

I think the main problem is the actual themes for every round of this tugs were unbelievably complicated. I think even art school assignments are simple and easier to accomplish than the stuff you gave for this TUGS. You want to make the themes have a clean balance of simpleness and depth, to give people the ability to understand what to do, finish it on time and show their skill. Another thing is that you shouldn't be judging it based on completion, if someone shows great skill but doesn't finish as opposed to a mediocre entry that IS finished and the mediocre entry ranks higher than the skilled one, it's just throwing the whole tier thing off balance.

tl;dr, the themes(especially the prelims) need to be something that doesn't take 50+ hours to do and can display a persons skill without going into all sorts of deep and intricate techniques and methods.

edit: ALSO HOLY CRAP THIS THING DRAGGED ON. one week for a round is plenty of time if you don't do the stupidly complex themes.

ROUND 1: ONE WEEK LONG, SPRITE A MYTHOLOGICAL SEA CREATURE IN UNDER 150X150 USING 3 COLOURS FROM THE NES PALETTE. YOU'RE DONE

you dont need a theme like

ROUND 1: 2 AND A HALF WEEKS LONG, SPRITE THE AWAKENING OF A MYTHOLOGICAL SEA CREATURE AS AN EXPLORER DISCOVERS IT IN IT'S UNDERWATER CASTLE OR DOMAIN, IT MuST BE 150X150 EXACTLY AND USE THESE 3 OBSCURE COLOURS I PULLED OUT OF MY ASS AND NO MORE.

I don't see how grossly misquoting and exagerating round 1's theme explains anything. I would appreciate it more if you reformulated my original text rather than obnoxiously. Round 1's Expert theme was basically: mockup/aquatic boss/two zodiac signs/ larger than 320x240. I think my instructions were more concise in that round than in the second one, but I also think I gave too many criteria to the assignments, which made them complicated.

The palette for the Intermediate's first round belonged to the Amstrad CPC, which I felt had a nice array of colours for the challenge.
A factor which also contributed to incompletion was being over-ambitious on the contestants' behalf, especially in the Expert's tier.

Completing is also a skill,

so I consider it normal that those who do manage to finish when a majority don't get gratified for it. You can maximize the display of your skill by finishing, of course.
I'll take for example Omega's piece for the second round: he started very well, but he hadn't even finished half his work when he stopped and disappeared. I can't judge somebody equally or fairly when it's like that, so he penalized himself.

I tried to rectify this kind of issue in the first round

by extending the time so that everybody had a better chance of finishing, but it only made things worse in the long term in my opinion.
Besides, as I've already said, the judges decided on what they saw, not on what they thought they'd see when the piece is finished. If part of the piece is very refined and technically excellent, sure, it'll play in the judgement, but the rest that's empty/not done will weigh it down.

It's extremely subjective,

as you have to take in count the other entries (with their state of completion and quality) as well as the one you're judging, plus you have to decide how good and complete it is and compare it with the others, which you have to go through several times as you judge a tier. Judging isn't straightforward in practice, and using completion as a criteria for ranking helps.

Now as for why I chose such obscure and complex themes for TUGS.
I didn't feel like I knew a lot of games or anime (I don't know that many of each) that everybody would know, or at least be different from the last TUGS.
I did ask for suggestions for the rounds before TUGS started but I didn't get many suggestions.
I guess I worried too much, because Neorice did his own research for Evangelion when he did his entry for the last TUGS.

[Ever]

Hope it is more game related, something like a theme and create a mock up with it or create a character sprite sheet with given element. I know Expert got a mock-up and Beginner got to do a aquatic character, but Intermediate only get to do scene, which is not really what I had in mind when I agree to take part in this. But I do have my fun with it, however not entirely satisfied. Look foward to next year, if I'm still around.