Competition Awards (Logos, Categories, Retroactive Awards)

[M_Tee]

I was thinking it'd be rad to have some film festival-style award logos that could be used on websites / packaging / labels / etc. for promotion of games' wins. The conversation regarding Best Multiplayer got me thinking about Best Graphics / Best Sound / etc. Since the judging is already divided by category, we have the numbers to determine best graphics, best sound, most polished, and most original at hand. (No need to have monetary bonuses for the categories, bragging rights should be enough.)

I've designed two different versions of the logo, one light-on-dark, and one dark-on-light:


I designed these to fit within 8x8 tiles comfortably, so we could even use them to spruce up the game selection screen of future volumes of A53.

vol.3 as an example since I had the ROM easily available:


With this layout, we can fit up to three awards along the bottom of the screen, which would be necessary for Project Blue…

Using a copy of the judging spreadsheet, I ran the weighted total calculation on each category, resulting in the following:

Gruniożerca 2: 1st Place; Most Polished
Project Blue: 2nd Place; Best Graphics; Best Sound
Wolfling: 3rd Place
The Alfonzo Game: 4th Place
Miedow (Cheril's Nightmares): 5th Place
Star Evil: Most Original

…and I've got logos for all of the competition years ready to go; if we have access to the raw judging data to determine them, we can retroactively declare these achievements.

Also, I can pull quick vector conversions of these for each year, so we can make the resources available to whomeve would benefit from them (developers making box art, reviewers, etc.)

…oh, and if we want to go with "Art and Style" instead of "Graphics" (to coincide with judging categories) we can:



Thoughts?

[Denine]

These look great as well as idea is neat.
My first concern when I looked at the mockup was if there is enough free space for it in PPU, but after a quick look into PPU Viewer in FCEU as well the fact that awards are 1 bit graphics, it should not be a problem.
All in all, if there isn't much trouble adding it, Im in for the idea.

[FrankenGraphics]

What a great initiative, M-tee! I think they look great, plus i’ve thought we should have a way to visualize the results for the non forum using cartridge buyers.

Maybe a badge for non competing entries would be neat, too?

[JRoatch]

Could work but would have to be placed in the lower-left corner, as the entire right side is used for rendering text to.

if there's anything new at all, it would have to use sprites, and I think most of the sprites are being used for the color overlay of the TV.

[NovaSquirrel]

I think implementation would be fine. I just looked at volume 3 in Mesen, and I think one of the background palettes is completely unused. The right side of the screen is already set up to be a big 1-bit bitmap by displaying the same tiles twice with two different palettes, so you could just put the award logo into the bits that text would have gone in for that area of the screen, and color it with a copy of the palette it would have used but dark gray.

[M_Tee]

@Frankengraphics
I agree. How about just the lower portion without a title at the top for all other entries?

Regarding inclusion on A53, that's just a suggestion. If not possible, these badges could be used for other purposes, such as box art for expanded releases, etc. at the developer's discretion.

If helpful, here are the positions of the graphics within BG tiles:

[M_Tee]

Is there any interest in awarding "Best Multiplayer" awards retroactively?

Obviously, we wouldn't base the awards on previous ranking / score alone, as scores for games that include multiplayer could have been weighted by other factors.

I think the easiest way to do so would be to take all of the games that include a multiplayer feature include them in a ranking-based poll that's something along the lines of "Rank these games based on the quality of their multiplayer experience only." Send the poll out to all of the judges of past competitions and whoever's in the exclusive other-judges group, and have a hard deadline. Whoever votes in that time gets their vote counted. Whoever doesn't doesn't. No pressure to vote for those who don't have the ability to easily play these multiplayer.

Then, take the game that ranked highest from each year and award the category (maybe even send out a late monetary prize for these as well).

It'd be a nice way to maintain consistency in award presence with future years, and to bring some attention back to some of the older competition titles.

[gauauu]

I think it's a fun idea.

(disclaimer: I submitted a multiplayer game in 2016, so I may be biased)

[dougeff]

So, what games are we talking about, specifically?

Alfonzo Melee and Nothing Good Can Come of This?
(and Spacey Mcracey)

[gauauu]

Didn't Super Tilt Bros and Wrecking balls also have multi-player? (Or did they just play against ai?)

Also Light Shields in this year's

[FrankenGraphics]

Wrecking Balls is a up-to-4 players versus game. The original bomber titles could have up to 3 players, so the goal was to make full use of the 4-score adapter. Everything, except the titular balls, is nametable based animation. Also, we elected to remove it from cart inclusion as it didn't feel complete enough. No music driver and at least one gameplay bug.

[M_Tee]

Unless I'm missing some, it would be these:

2011
Thwaite (winner by default)

2014
Dig Deeper
Pong 198X
RHDE

2016
Spacey McRacey
Super Tilt Bro.
Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Sbock
Wrecking Balls

2017
F-FF
Alfonzo Melee
Nothing Good Can Come of This
LightShields

A ranking poll with a question for each year would be a better way to organize than I'd previously suggested.