[Goober5000]

Well, not yet. Soon, though. Basically, this thread is to build momentum and support for the actual contest, which will be held during the month of July.

Here's the background: Back in the days of VBB, Ground Freespace, Ross 128, etc. there used to be all kinds of contests.  Some of the best FREDders of the day participated in them; see this mission in the VWatch archives for example.

And yet, in the 3.5 years since I've been at HLP, I haven't seen one contest of note. The contests that we have had have suffered from poor participation and lack of any tangible prizes. The prizes have usually been in the form of some abstract title or shiny avatar that never gets awarded.

Well, this time will be different. I've been discussing this with various people on and off the staff, and we've put together a decent contest program.  The official rules and prizes will be announced at the contest launch (and there WILL be prizes this time ) but for now I'd like to see what sorts of categories people will go for.

Thus, this poll.  Check off as many or as few categories as you want, and indicate in this thread whether you'll be participating.

[Axem]

I'd have a go at this.

[Taristin]

Boo! Boo I say!

I can't FRED.

[Black Wolf]

I'll be in that. But first...

*Goes to kidnap Kara and hide him in a basement*
*Blaise too*

There, now I might have a chance

Anyway, for what it's worth, I'm voting SCP, no mods. There's no point to limiting ourselves to the Vanilla sexps, especially given what can be done nowadays with the SCP, but mods open up a whole new can of worms for compatbility, as well as availability, download size, etc. etc.

[Goober5000]

Oh, I forgot to mention that Blaise Russel, karajorma, and I will be judging, so you won't have to worry about any of us submitting missions.

As far as compatibility and downloading are concerned... as long as you provide all required mods and zip it up into one file, I don't think there'll be any restrictions on size.  And it doesn't matter if FRED or debug SCP yells at you... as long as we can load it up and play it without crashes, you should be fine.

[TopAce]

I think the poll has been decided before it was posted...

Anyway, I only voted. I would like to participate, but 4 out of 5 games CRASH on my new HD. FreeSpace seems to have problems with the cruisers(general observation that the missions which do not include any cruisers don't crash). Well, missions are empty without cruisers, they are the backbone of the navy.

I will try installing WinXP and see if that will work... but I need a WinXP CD first.

[Setekh]

I say, for this first FRED contest, you should have all categories without mods. It'd be a cool way to start - and it wouldn't spread everyone too thin to start.

[Primus]

I agree with AWACS.

[Singh]

Count me in as well

[Hippo]

I will endulge.

[Nuclear1]

I... just might do this. Sounds like a lot of fun.

[Slanker_MT]

Excellent idea

[pyro-manic]

I'd be interested. I've no chance of winning anything, but I'll give it a go....

[TopAce]

Originally posted by pyro-manic
I'd be interested. I've no chance of winning anything, but I'll give it a go....

Confidence is a weapon of mass destruction....

[Fergus]

Well in that case I'm sure I can't fail.

[DarthWang]

I want to participate!

[NGTM-1R]

Great...time for a timeskip ahead to the Orientalis mission...

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Black Wolf
I'll be in that. But first...

*Goes to kidnap Kara and hide him in a basement*
*Blaise too*

There, now I might have a chance

Nicest thing anyone's said about me all week

[The Spac]

Sounds like a cool idea.

[Nuclear1]

Originally posted by karajorma


Nicest thing anyone's said about me all week

Does that mean I coud...

*takes kara from BW... and[/i] feeds him*

Frankly, I think we should try it without mods, simply for the reasons stated above--it would be more interesting to see what people could do with plain old Freespace 2 (or SCP) ships and weapons rather than having a bunch of flashy new ships to show off, and therefore make the mission seem more impressive.

I'm guessing that the SCP and Vanilla missions would be judged separately? I personally would find that judging Vanilla and SCP missions in the same category would be a little... unbalanced, seeing as how SCP is lightyears ahead of Vanilla, and some people can't support SCP on their comps in the first place.

With that aside, I'm off to get started on an entry.