Submission & General Commentary Thread

[Lifthrasir]

I think PotW / UeSW / VotM need :

• more visibility / more "com" to make members aware of it
• to ]offer some sort of incentive to attract and keep competitors

Mundusbellicus, a French website about strategy games, organize a competition equivalent to Unedited Screenshot of his own and following these rules :

• competition is open to all games ;
• monthly basis ;
• strict rule : only unmodified pictures of available (eg. released) games and mods, only resizing is allowed ;
• annual ranking system :
  
  • winners of each competition receive "points" (10pts for 1st, 8pts for 2d, 6 pts for 3rd, 4pts for 4th, 2ptt for 5th, 1pts for others) ;
  • competitor cumulate points on an annual basis ;
  • a 1st, 2d and 3rd winners are nominated after the last competition of the years based on their rank (numbers of points earned) ;
  
  

I like the annual ranking system as I see it as an incentive to compete on a regularly basis.

• Each (weekly/monthly) competition winners could earn points : 1st = 10 pts, 2d = 6 pts, 3rd = 3pts, others = 1 pts.
• Competitors cumulate points on an annual basis.
• After the last competition of the year, 1st, 2d and 3rd ranked competitor receive an award (badge + some Rep points) as UeSW winner of the year

Maybe the weekly basis is too short and, at least for some times, a monthly basis would be more suitable.
Then, if the system is successful, it could be possible to return to the weekly basis.

I'm bringing back this topic because we're suffering of the same issue for the Monthly Graphics Competitions. I support the idea of having more visibility, especially if we can get a CMS article for our competitions.
I've started to make blogs for the GC's. The 1st one stayed on the main pages for a while and attracted quite a lot of views. On contrary, the 2nd one about the GC #222 didn't stay on the front pages more than a couple of days and I can see that there a lot less people viewing the competition thread.
I think that if it's possible to get a specific location on the main pages (like for CMS's) for our competitions, it would give a lot more visibility and may increase the amount of submissions and/or voters.

[Conclamatus]

True, and I wholeheartedly support the idea. Moreover, what drew me to these competitions was the front page announcement of the POTY one. As a result, we could really use more monthly specials or thematic competitions based on recent events, celebrations, etc. and of course, all should be visible on the font page announcement.

[Noif de Bodemloze]

POTY is in good hands, but only thing remain is that I need get an answer by few members about their POTW winner works that they want present in POTY. So it will take some time.

Me and Hader had talk about this forum section moving. It is still question mark for him that does it really help us to get more people here if we will be moved up. It is only about him now, when he do that but I will remind him soon what is his decision.

[Noif de Bodemloze]

Ladies and gentlemen!

Picture of the year 2015 will begin at 1st February. I still haven't contacted with two potw winners (because of long inactive). I decided to give deadline for them till 31 January and Monday 1st February I will working on a thread and start vote, where will be about 16-18 already won POTW pictures from 2015. Every TWC member can vote 3 favorite pictures, no more (if anybody is going to vote more than 3, his votes will be disqualified) and you can't vote your own picture. Top 3 winners will be announcement at Monday 29 February.

Rewards will be revealed on 1st February.

Good luck for all people, who are received my message and are in POTY 2015!

Noif de Bodemloze

[spiderknight]

Did i miss something or are these contest no longer weekly?

[Noif de Bodemloze]

Did i miss something or are these contest no longer weekly?

POTY is only content that takes only near a month. POTW/UESW are weekly, but if it lack of submissions then it will delay. Right now there are enough submissions that I will launch new round today when I get off from my study.

[Noif de Bodemloze]

- New content is now started here: GPOTW (Game Picture of the week). There you can add your unedited and edited screenshot from other games (Remember: No TW-screenshots to GPOTW-thread).
- Rewards is same like in current POTW (1 point and +reps).

Now is time to pick up your good screenshots from other games to their own content! Have a fun!

Noif de Bodemloze

[Conclamatus]

Yay! Great to hear this new!
Edit: Should we provide the game's name as well?

[Araval]

Maybe you should make a sitewide announcement about the GPOTW and POTY?

[Noif de Bodemloze]

Maybe you should make a sitewide announcement about the GPOTW and POTY?

POTY is done at Monday and tomorrow will come GPOTW announcement to frontpage.

[Araval]

POTY is done at Monday

Ok, but it can't be seen in the Announcements section nor the sidebar, so I totoally missed that one.

[Noif de Bodemloze]

Last days are going and POTY 2015 is near to end! Go to vote your top3 pictures before Sunday afternoon if you haven't voted yet!

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...5-TIME-TO-VOTE!

[Noif de Bodemloze]

POTW 439 still need more submissions, before I can start new round!

[Noif de Bodemloze]

Good and bad news:

Lets start about good news:

- I renamed this thread as " Submission & General Commentary Thread". While I looked this thread and compared to very old posts here, I decided rename this thread for Submission & General Commentary. People can still give praises about submissions and now days to give general comments about Picture of the week.

- If you are noticed, I also added couple more thread (For general submission, GPOTW and POTY) and old rules (POTW, UESW and VOTW threads, but it is still ongoing so old information are not updated.)


then... Bad news:

- I have been confused with some submission on UESW thread and I have tried figure out with myself and my studio colleagus. I have also talked with these guys about agreement of rules and remind them.
To make easier for me in future: I will forbid all UESW submissions, who use GEMFX or any renders in their submission (Because it is cause confuse, which submissions are edited or not.) To avoid further this kind situation. I recommend disable your GEMFX or other sweetfx before you take a screenshot. Also beware of using strong gamma/lighting changes in game settings. The new rule will come to effect on UESW 347.

I apologize, but we do this that all get fair chance in UESW and avoid rules breaks in screenshots.

If anybody have a word to say about this, post here or PM me. My ears are open...

Have a good week!
- Noif de Bodemloze

[spiderknight]

I am of the opinion that excluding sweetfx from uesw will hamper participation greatly. If participation in voting and entrys is already lacking why this change? I wont be participating anymore if thats the case....(perhaps thats your intent) And once again i did not break the rules and find this unecessary.

[wangrin]

GEMFX are other "sweetFX" are "externals" to the game itself and user can easily disable it.
But what will happen for mods heavily changing gamma and/or lightings ?
User doesn't necessary have the possibility to revert to vanilla parameters.

[Diocle]

I'm extensively using GEM for Rome 2 (IMO it's impossible playing the game with vanilla lighting, it's simply horrid!) so, sadly I won't be able to post anymore my R2 screens, this is sad but I can survive, anyway this is my situation: I do not use Gem for Napoleon, RTW, and Shogun, while I consider GEM mandatory for Empire and Med 2.

For me these are bad news, anyway I will follow the rules, let me say just one last thing: I find this decision understandable from many respects but IMO it's also unfair towards the GEM, it's the first case and the first time in which a Mod is discriminated in this way on Total War Center, this new rule may push some guy to disinstall GEM from his games and this is not a nice thing towards a modder who have done one of the most useful and beautiful Mods for all TW titles, yes, sorry but this rule is unfair.

[mikea4]

you've probably already considered this, but couldn't some sort of compromise be made? Maybe those who want to post GEM enabled screenshots in the UESW competitions could be required to label their pictures as having been taken with GEM? If it is clearly obvious that GEM has been used and the poster does not properly signify that their picture was taken with it, maybe the picture could just be disqualified.

One problem with this though, as far as I can tell, is that someone could get around this rule by editing the picture and claiming it was taken with GEM. However, I think this is unlikely to happen because at that point, they could have just posted it in the POTW section where edited screens are allowed and there is a chance of getting both points towards a POTW medal and rep. If they posted an edited picture in the UESW competition meanwhile, the most they could get would be rep. (unless I'm mistaken, and wins in the UESW counts towards your total win count for medals.) Also, this might increase the amount of work required for moderating the competitions a small amount.

Either way, I can see why you would consider disallowing GEM enabled screenshots because it would make it harder to tell if a picture has been edited or not. However, I fear that this type of rule might negatively impact participation in at least the UESW competitions.

[xHolyCrusader]

I dont really see where the difference between GEM and editing a screenshot is, you can tweak your GEM settings just the way you tweak your colour correction when editing a picture in photoshop. Imo screenshots with GEM enabled should just be submitted to the POTW and a possible compromise could be no original screenshot is required then.

[spiderknight]

I dont really see where the difference between GEM and editing a screenshot is, you can tweak your GEM settings just the way you tweak your colour correction when editing a picture in photoshop. Imo screenshots with GEM enabled should just be submitted to the POTW and a possible compromise could be no original screenshot is required then.

yep this would work. make it so we dont need an origional screen and this issue would be resolved. I dont understand why the decision was made to change the rules and then the community was asked what we thought....heck why dont we have a poll/vote and see what people here think?