I've managed many projects over the years... some with great success (ST:R), and some not so much (Unification War). Unification War, however, had the distinction of actually being released. The FRED contest is one of the ones I dropped the ball on. You'll notice the board is titled "FRED Contest 2005"; I had originally intended for one of these to run each year. So much for that.
![:nervous:](https://www.hard-light.net/forums/Smileys/HLP/nervous.gif)
A contest was first proposed in 2002 by Black Wolf...
Well, despite the mod contest appearing to fizzle, I'd like to press ahead with the idea of a FRED contest. A FRED contest has several advantages over a mod contest, namely
- It's a far more common skill in the community.
- It's not predominated by a few people (Eg. Aldo, Bobbau, Dark etc. would completely eclipse the competiton in a mod contest)
- Everyone who has FS2 has the neccesary programs, so no advantage is gained by those willing to spend thousands of dollars on expensive programs.
The rules would be simple - the mission must be an original for the contest (not exactly proveable, but we could assume the average person will abide by the rules), and use no mods, FS2s standard ships, weapons, backgrounds only. No voice acting (Increases DL and distracts from the true quality of the mission). Each mission would be submitted as a single Fs2 (or Txt) file into its own poll in Gen. FS, with ten options, 1 -10 out of 10, with a two week limit for voting on it. At the end, of the contest, say a month for submissions, then as soon as the last poll runs out of time, the contest is over (presumeably therefore, it could run to six weeks, but that's unlikely), the person with the highest average wins. In the event of a tie, the winners could submit a second mission to the Admins for deciding (possibly, or we could go through another poll system. All you'd really have to do would be put up an announcement with the rulesand reminding people to consider all the different aspects - balance, story and excitement/fun/interest being the primary ones, but also spelling and grammar, Briefing/Debriefing quality etc.
As for prizes, all you'd need would be to maybe give the first, second and third placers Gold Silver and Bronze FRED symbol Avatars? Or something from GEs store if someone's willing to throw some money HLPs way
.
Anyway, whaddaya reckon?
That got off to
a good start but ended up fizzling out, so I decided to give it another try a couple years later:
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. ![:)](https://www.hard-light.net/forums/Smileys/HLP/smile.gif)
That brought us to the
Official FRED Contest Announcement. This contest had an organizer, judges, participants, mission submissions, and prizes. It had, in fact, everything going for it except the results. Unfortunately, Real Life intervened and the judges were unable to complete all the mission reviews in the allotted time frame. There were several attempts to finish the judging over the subsequent months and years, but as the contest receded into the past, finishing the judging became less and less of a priority.
So I've checked with Karajorma and we've both agreed to simply open the forum to the public. As the organizer, I'm offering a $25 gift card to GOG or Steam for everyone who originally submitted a mission. This is partly because the original prize (a free item from the HLP Store) is no longer an option, and partly to make up for the inexcusable 12-year delay in actually calling time-of-death on this thing. I'll send PMs to each of the mission submitters.
You can download the submitted missions from
here. The completed mission reviews can be seen in the other threads in this forum. Enjoy this look into a slice of HLP's history.
![:)](https://www.hard-light.net/forums/Smileys/HLP/smile.gif)