HOTM NOTICE- EVERYBODY LOOKIE HERE!

[giradialkia]

Alright, so as everyone has probably noticed, there was no Hack of the Month competition for June. Here's why:

1. Simply could not get around to it, as both colcolstyles and I were run off our feet with RL for the month.
2. There is somewhat of an issue with it anyways;

Quite frankly, if we keep going with Hack of the Month the way it is, we'll run out of hacks to include each month. As it stands, pretty much every hack in the Hacks Showcase has won something, be it HotM or HotY. And in Progressing hacks, it's becoming increasingly difficult to pick three hacks that will actually provide competition to one another- ie, one of them might be clearly better than the other two, and so on.

So this thread is here to explain that, if anybody was wondering why there was no HotM for June.
However, it is also here to serve as a suggestions thread. Yesterday, colcolstyles and I decided to ask for your input. Anyone who's listened to the ROM Hacking Podcast may have heard Manipulation's or DrFuji's suggestions- such as having the moderators select one hack and sticky it for a month (so getting rid of the voting element, obviously), or having the current HotM format stay the same, only every two months. Those are just possibilities- post your suggestions here!

(But please, if you do post a suggestion, try to think logically about it, weigh up the pros and cons, etc :P)

 

[Banjora Marxvile]

Well, getting the mods to decide would work in a way, but then it doesn't perhaps reflect what we all think. I think holding it less often, like every 2 months, or possibly every 3 (so it occurs 4 times a year), as then it provides the time for new hacks to begin and develop, and then compete more, as then there will be some that won't win it, as at this rate, every hack will win it due to the lowering number that hasn't and how common the voting is.

 

[NurseBarbra]

Every 4 months, and if you compete and lose, you don't get that retry thing till next year.

 

[Sawakita]

Honestly I think that the whole Something of the Month contest system is not only prestige-less but also detrimental.
It doesn't lead people to improve their hacking skills and hacks' quality, it just takes people, who care too much about awards, to rush their hacks and especially the act of posting their hacks (thus causing another bad side-effect: overload mods' job, that have to get rid of all the newbies trying to be famous and awarded by posting rushed and barely scrapped hack-presentation-threads).

I'm not trying to advertise or anything, but if you check Skeetendo there's nothing like people trying to out-do each others; I know, a reason of this is that that community is small, but another is that there's not detrimental competition.

There are two reason, I suppose, because HOTM exists and was created originally:
- motivating users/"hackers" to create good hacks;
- awarding successful hacking efforts;

About the first reason: ROM hacking is supposed to be a hobby, thus it doesn't need contests or similar motivating system. If people don't feel like diving into ROM hacking, they don't have to be convinced with these methods. And if they're discouraged by the difficulty of the task, the solution is in writing helpful and instructive documentation (and tools), which is something that 3rd gen hacking certainly doesn't lack.

About the second reason: as I said at the very beginning of this post, monthly contests don't have (or have lost) prestige. This is because, as you also said, lack of competitive good hacks has caused:
- the contest to be pointless/predictable, since there is one high-level hack vs. two low-level hacks;
- the award to be over-supplied among the hacks (easily observable by checking the ratio between awarded hacks and existing hacks). In fact, after all, the formula for the prestige of an award is something like:
[awarded elements] \ [award-able elements]. The nearest to 1 the value, the lowest prestige has the award. (And let's not forget the general quality level.)

So, if it was for the prestige, the HOTM should be removed. In my personal point of view you should create an award that is assigned not periodically, but only when you think that a hack is outstanding and deserves a special mention. So you could create a sticky thread where you list the specially-mentioned hacks; also make the chosen hack sticky for the time it keeps being outstanding (= being developed) and/or until another worthy hack appears.




tl;dr: the problem with HOTM is it being peridically assigned. Change it to an award assigned by a chosen judge/jury when they find a deserving hack. Or remove the award completely. HOTY can be considered sufficient.

 

[Chimchar 9]

I agree with Sawakita.

Remove the HOTM, and give the hacks a special mention. Something like the RomHacking newsletter did. (I think.) It will also give Rom Hacking users motivation to get a special mention from the Moderators, cause I think everyone looks up to them, because most of them think that they're good hackers, which they are. xD

 

[E.C.]

Honestly I think that the whole Something of the Month contest system is not only prestige-less but also detrimental.
It doesn't lead people to improve their hacking skills and hacks' quality, it just takes people, who care too much about awards, to rush their hacks and especially the act of posting their hacks (thus causing another bad side-effect: overload mods' job, that have to get rid of all the newbies trying to be famous and awarded by posting rushed and barely scrapped hack-presentation-threads).

I'm not trying to advertise or anything, but if you check Skeetendo there's nothing like people trying to out-do each others; I know, a reason of this is that that community is small, but another is that there's not detrimental competition.

There are two reason, I suppose, because HOTM exists and was created originally:
- motivating users/"hackers" to create good hacks;
- awarding successful hacking efforts;

About the first reason: ROM hacking is supposed to be a hobby, thus it doesn't need contests or similar motivating system. If people don't feel like diving into ROM hacking, they don't have to be convinced with these methods. And if they're discouraged by the difficulty of the task, the solution is in writing helpful and instructive documentation (and tools), which is something that 3rd gen hacking certainly doesn't lack.

About the second reason: as I said at the very beginning of this post, monthly contests don't have (or have lost) prestige. This is because, as you also said, lack of competitive good hacks has caused:
- the contest to be pointless/predictable, since there is one high-level hack vs. two low-level hacks;
- the award to be over-supplied among the hacks (easily observable by checking the ratio between awarded hacks and existing hacks). In fact, after all, the formula for the prestige of an award is something like:
[awarded elements] \ [award-able elements]. The nearest to 1 the value, the lowest prestige has the award. (And let's not forget the general quality level.)

So, if it was for the prestige, the HOTM should be removed. In my personal point of view you should create an award that is assigned not periodically, but only when you think that a hack is outstanding and deserves a special mention. So you could create a sticky thread where you list the specially-mentioned hacks; also make the chosen hack sticky for the time it keeps being outstanding (= being developed) and/or until another worthy hack appears.




tl;dr: the problem with HOTM is it being peridically assigned. Change it to an award assigned by a chosen judge/jury when they find a deserving hack. Or remove the award completely. HOTY can be considered sufficient.

Exactly what he said, sticky a hack for how good it is, and how much it has progressed through the time it was posted up, most progressed hack of the month sounds pretty cool.

 

[destinedjagold]

I guess it's the end of my little giving-awards to HotM winners, eh? :P

Anyway, I think it's good for the HotM to be put to rest for the time being.
Bringing back the newsletter? I think making a newsletter is more of a hassle than picking three hacks for a HotM though. =/

 

[esperance]

I think that the mods should chose one hack each month, and sticky it just to show that it was the best that month, but with no awards or anything.

 

[Crimson Stardust]

Hey there,

There is one thing i was you know not really think it is bad in any way,
but it is better like most people say have it once in 3-4 months so that people after the award is given out will have few months time to prepare for the next competition..

This award give you know like a sense of achievement for us hacker's like it make me myself feels as though my hack is like by others and i am doing a great job with my hacks.It will keep the hacking spirit lively.

Not all hackers are vying for this award but it still give hackers a good feeling during the voting..

I also have another suggestion, you know when you guys choose 3 hacks, i always think why they choose this hack instead of that one?

And most people will say, it is okay we can wait for next month to try again,
but since my idea was having the award 3-4 months,

i was thinking of you[ MOD ] select 6 hacks then get some people you trust and most people trust to be a judge and choose the 3 hacks that can rival each other for that particular month or just ask for people opinion..

Just what i think anyway..I still think it is a good idea to have this around.

{ Don't mind the bad english }

 

[Darthatron]

Was against it from the beginning. If anything have a HotQ (Hack of the Quarter) and then have those 4 hacks battle it out for HotY at the end of the year.

But I like the idea of having just the HotY, personally. Frankly, having so many awards makes the HotY seem a lot less awesome.

 

[marcc5m]

I noticed you guys were running out of hacks to choose from over the last few months when I saw my hack one month and then saw Light (which was only posted about a week before it was in hotm) the next. 2011 imo has not had many good hacks yet. I'd go with the idea in the OP. You, Colcol, and maybe a couple of other people (Manipulation) choose what you think is the best hack from the first page of Progressing hacks and the Showcase. Hotm was just really bad. A lot of the votes were based only on graphics, and people could easily vote for their friends. This way, we'll have more experienced and mature hackers deciding on which hack they think is the best of that month.

 

[sab]

I say snuff it out all together. What purpose does it serve? HoTY 1sf 2nd and 3rd places help to point out the best hacks that clearly go above and beyond, so what need do we have for something like HoTM anyway? All (I feel) it did was to give members a something to do, and slightly improve the moral of the creators to make them feel that they had made something worth while.

 

[Kevin]

Hm... I don't like the idea of having a HotM every two months. That would mean only specific months would have it, and it wouldn't be even without the other months.

If you guys are going to choose to sticky a hack each month, that sounds kind of worthless as you might as well have voting take place, but I dunno. Let mods vote for a hack for each month but don't let the members vote? Kind of unfair-ish. I say to forget the whole HotM idea and let's just have the annual HotY.

Maybe you guys can bring HotM back once lots of good hacks come.

 

[Satoshi Ookami]

Everything has pretty much been said... I'd agree with the concept of putting HoTM to rest for the time being.
Though I like the Darthatron's idea of having 4 Hack of the Quarter and then the victors could compete in HoTY with one or two wild cards to some exceptionally great hacks that did not win HoTQ.

 

[Spherical Ice]

Hm... I don't like the idea of having a HotM every two months. That would mean only specific months would have it, and it wouldn't be even without the other months.

If you guys are going to choose to sticky a hack each month, that sounds kind of worthless as you might as well have voting take place, but I dunno. Let mods vote for a hack for each month but don't let the members vote? Kind of unfair-ish. I say to forget the whole HotM idea and let's just have the annual HotY.

Maybe you guys can bring HotM back once lots of good hacks come.

Um, the mods choose which three hacks are in HOTM for us to vote, so...it wouldn't be that different, really. Also it'd be much more prestigious imo.
But HOTQ, despite a bad name, looks like a good idea. :3

 

[giradialkia]

I'll be honest, this Hack of the Quarter idea (name and all) is looking pretty appealing to me. Still, decisions are yet to be made, but I'm just saying, it's something I'll definitely discuss with colcolstyles :)

 

[Kevin]

Hack of the Quarter? That sounds like a nice idea, except for its name. HotQ doesn't sound appealing but meh, I like the idea. Especially using those four hacks as the nominated ones for HotY.

 

[Satoshi Ookami]

But if we were to do this don't you think the quantity of hacks would greatly decrease?
If we had only experienced hackers, yes, we would have great hacks but not the quantity we would like.
Imo most of experienced hackers don't have so much time they would need for making awesome hack.
But on the other hand less experienced hackers have more time and even though their hacks are not on the top level we at least have some...
If we forced them to undergo some training program I don't think everyone would like that and I'm sure not everyone would complete it and they'd probably lose motivation due to that.
However I agree with you. This is just my point of view.

 

[Platinum Lucario]

Knowing that many of the ROM hacks in the Hacks Showcase have either won HOTM or HOTY, I've decided to come up with some suggestions to give a helping hand to everyone here in the ROM hacking community and to the hosts of the HOTM and HOTY.

We originally had an unofficial HOTW (Hack of the Week) made by Zel back in 2008, that thread eventually got closed and it was about the Progressing Hacks being voted on many of the different people on PC. Alot of them got a chance to win and all that. And we still have another one today, but it's over a month old and it's last reply was back in January 26th, 2011.

Then of course... after reading some of the posts on this thread has given us an idea that some have already agreed to, which is none other than the Hack of the Quarter (HotQ), which Darthatron had come up with as a better idea than HotM. Something like that would actually give people alot more time to think about their designs of their ROM hack and vice versa. And every four months was something that many were thinking about agreeing with and sticking to Darthatron's idea.

But then after a while, I actually had a think about it. Then I suddenly thought... "what's really the point in having a competition every so often?". So then I realized that even having Hack of the Quarter might still lessen the ammount of hacks being entered. Because how often does a ROM Hack actually become moved into the Hacks Showcase? Not many. So that is why I think we should only have Hack of the Year (HotY), because how often does a video game get an award? Once a year of course! ;) Both video game development and ROM Hacking take alot of time to be completed, it needs alot of creativity, ideas and several bug checks for it to be finished, in other words... "Rome wasn't built in a day". So we do need less competitions so that the ROM Hackers can work on their ROM Hack and not rush it. Because I have not seen many ROM Hacks with customized music with totally different textures.

So yeah... let's just only have Hack of the Year so that us ROM Hackers could at least have the time to fix anything that they're missing in a ROM Hack. There are people who are gladly explaining in the hack threads about what is missing in their ROM Hack and what they need to do to improve on it, and some may also be able to help along with that as well. What most of us ROM Hackers have... is creativity and it's the key to creating a brillient ROM Hack. I can tell you... some ROM Hackers have made hacks that are way much more better than the original ROMs themselves. We can all show how much we can all conquer the DS generation, we will create more DS generation ROM Hacks. And we can show how creative we can be. After all... with ROM Hacking... anything's possible and is not about who can create the best hack of all. We possibly need something like the ROM Hacking Newsletter we used to have, which kept getting brought back up before losing it again, something that can help others on what they can improve on a ROM Hack with someone else's suggestion.

So with Darthatron's idea... sorry to say... but I don't think it's gonna be worth it. D:

Unless... we can make the Hack of the Quarter being something that will have four winning hacks up for Hack of the Year. And this will totally revolutionize what Hack of the Quarter and Hack of the Year works. So I've changed my mind, I'm agreeing to it with a twist.

Here's how it's gonna work out: Everyone votes for Hack of the Quarter like what Hack of the Month does, then whichever hack wins Hack of the Quarter will be one of the top 4 ROM hacks up for Hack of the Year. Once Hack of the Year comes around, everyone votes for the 4 different ROM hacks that have won HotQ, and it works in the same way as HotY except there's only four hacks that will compete in it, which are the ones that have won HotQ, from there... one of the ROM Hacks will be voted upon the PC members judging on the graphics, music, storyline, maps, scripts and gameplay, but there's another difference; you can vote for the same hack in each catergory. But as for HotQ, you can only vote one per catergory. That is because in HotY, there'll only be four hacks in there, you can't vote one per catergory, can you? Because it's virtually impossible. xD And that is pretty much about all of the suggestions and helpfullness I can think of.

EDIT: Oh and by the way, I actually inspired this idea after watching MasterChef Australia with the "Top 4 ROM Hacks" idea, because they have the Top 24, Top 10 and all that. Did I forget to tell ya that I like watching that TV show as well? xD

Click here if you like this post:

~Davin (aka Platinum Lucario)

 

[RHIOneAlbum]

But if we were to do this don't you think the quantity of hacks would greatly decrease?
If we had only experienced hackers, yes, we would have great hacks but not the quantity we would like.
Imo most of experienced hackers don't have so much time they would need for making awesome hack.
But on the other hand less experienced hackers have more time and even though their hacks are not on the top level we at least have some...
If we forced them to undergo some training program I don't think everyone would like that and I'm sure not everyone would complete it and they'd probably lose motivation due to that.
However I agree with you. This is just my point of view.

I see your side too... But it shouldn't be forced, maybe optional, but at least an option to be taught. Because right now new hackers have to read through many tutorials and watch poor videos on YouTube to learn, don't you think that we should give the option to people that they can be taught different aspects of hacking? Just my opinion though.

Knowing that many of the ROM hacks in the Hacks Showcase have either won HOTM or HOTY, I've decided to come up with some suggestions to give a helping hand to everyone here in the ROM hacking community and to the hosts of the HOTM and HOTY.

We originally had an unofficial HOTW (Hack of the Week) made by Zel back in 2008, that thread eventually got closed and it was about the Progressing Hacks being voted on many of the different people on PC. Alot of them got a chance to win and all that. And we still have another one today, but it's over a month old and it's last reply was back in January 26th, 2011.

Then of course... after reading some of the posts on this thread has given us an idea that some have already agreed to, which is none other than the Hack of the Quarter (HotQ), which Darthatron had come up with as a better idea than HotM. Something like that would actually give people alot more time to think about their designs of their ROM hack and vice versa. And every four months was something that many were thinking about agreeing with and sticking to Darthatron's idea.

But then after a while, I actually had a think about it. Then I suddenly thought... "what's really the point in having a competition every so often?". So then I realized that even having Hack of the Quarter might still lessen the ammount of hacks being entered. Because how often does a ROM Hack actually become moved into the Hacks Showcase? Not many. So that is why I think we should only have Hack of the Year (HotY), because how often does a video game get an award? Once a year of course! ;) Both video game development and ROM Hacking take alot of time to be completed, it needs alot of creativity, ideas and several bug checks for it to be finished, in other words... "Rome wasn't built in a day". So we do need less competitions so that the ROM Hackers can work on their ROM Hack and not rush it. Because I have not seen many ROM Hacks with customized music with totally different textures.

So yeah... let's just only have Hack of the Year so that us ROM Hackers could at least have the time to fix anything that they're missing in a ROM Hack. There are people who are gladly explaining in the hack threads about what is missing in their ROM Hack and what they need to do to improve on it, and some may also be able to help along with that as well. What most of us ROM Hackers have... is creativity and it's the key to creating a brillient ROM Hack. I can tell you... some ROM Hackers have made hacks that are way much more better than the original ROMs themselves. We can all show how much we can all conquer the DS generation, we will create more DS generation ROM Hacks. And we can show how creative we can be. After all... with ROM Hacking... anything's possible and is not about who can create the best hack of all. We possibly need something like the ROM Hacking Newsletter we used to have, which kept getting brought back up before losing it again, something that can help others on what they can improve on a ROM Hack with someone else's suggestion.

So with Darthatron's idea... sorry to say... but I don't think it's gonna be worth it. D:

Unless... we can make the Hack of the Quarter being something that will have four winning hacks up for Hack of the Year. And this will totally revolutionize what Hack of the Quarter and Hack of the Year works. So I've changed my mind, I'm agreeing to it with a twist.

Here's how it's gonna work out: Everyone votes for Hack of the Quarter like what Hack of the Month does, then whichever hack wins Hack of the Quarter will be one of the top 4 ROM hacks up for Hack of the Year. Once Hack of the Year comes around, everyone votes for the 4 different ROM hacks that have won HotQ, and it works in the same way as HotY except there's only four hacks that will compete in it, which are the ones that have won HotQ, from there... one of the ROM Hacks will be voted upon the PC members judging on the graphics, music, storyline, maps, scripts and gameplay, but there's another difference; you can vote for the same hack in each catergory. But as for HotQ, you can only vote one per catergory. That is because in HotY, there'll only be four hacks in there, you can't vote one per catergory, can you? Because it's virtually impossible. xD And that is pretty much about all of the suggestions and helpfullness I can think of.

EDIT: Oh and by the way, I actually inspired this idea after watching MasterChef Australia with the "Top 4 ROM Hacks" idea, because they have the Top 24, Top 10 and all that. Did I forget to tell ya that I like watching that TV show as well? xD

Click here if you like this post:

~Davin (aka Platinum Lucario)

Well, I like your way of explaining it :D then instead of unofficial hotw, we could have an unofficial hotm :D