Unofficial Maggle Discussion thread for the impatient

[Sorel]

THE ANSWERS OF THE PAST POLLS ARE NEXT TO THE QUESTIONS.





I think it's never too early to plan things.


Well, first of all, when do we want the next MAGL to be held? Seems like most people want it to be held next year.

Now we need to discuss which engine (currently SMBX or LunarMagic 'n' stuff) will be used. Seems like SMW won ^^.

Then we need someone who leads this contest (I would like to do this myself... somehow, nobody likes me here, so I guess I wouldn't mind about the shitstorms anyway... but you can volunteer too, no worries.)

Then the judges (I would like to do this too ^^ but if you want to be one, you have to wait until we choose a leader)

And finally, a gimmick (or no gimmick).

Post yer ideas right here, fellas.

[Unaniem]

As raocow mentioned, MaGL being an annual event is what makes it so much fun (to me at least). If we were to have an instance of it just about every three months, not only would it start becoming stale and get turned from its position as "the fun contest we have every year (which is something to look forward to)" to just being about as spectacular as a vanilla Mafia game showing up (still fun, but it's only just that), rao's channel would also start to getting flooded with Talkhaus made projects (of which there are already enough without counting any future MaGLs to be made) as an instance with only 40 entries can already take up a couple of weeks (depending on what upload schedule gets chosen), which, again, can be become stale, but it also shoves other non-talkhaus projects which could be super fun to watch out of the way of being LP'd by virute of simply not having enough time to do more of them.

I love watching Talkhaus made project being LP'd by rao, but the fact that there not super gigantic in quantity plays a HUGE role in that.

By virtue of me choosing to have MaGL rest for a while, I'll refrain from answering the other questions for now.

[Bwarch]

Just gonna dump all the ideas I had in the MaGL X thread that got buried.

I thought it might be neat if the next MaGLx was a collaboration contest.

Basically:

MaGLx II: Duet Edition.

The idea is that you have to get a partner and collaborate on a level in some way. How the work flow goes is up to the pair.

So you could have one person do the level design, and then another person go over everything graphics-wise and make it look nice.

Or you could have somebody make the story of the level, and then somebody make the level.

Or you could have somebody make the music of the level, and then somebody make the level.

Or just both people work together on a level.

Whatever the two partners decide they just have to state (maybe in the level?) who did what. We could just reuse the naming gimmick from this contest (Since it did work rather nicely in my opinion) and make the next one this collaboration kind of thing along with the naming gimmick.

Both possibilities have their pros and cons, of course. If you're paired up with someone you despise, that would certainly make things... interesting. But at the same time, it could be interesting to see how two completely opposite people collaborate on a level. Either way, I find this an intriguing idea that warrants a little more of a chance.

People would be able to choose their partner.

As well, we'd have a thread specifically for people saying "Hey guys anybody want to work with me for MaGLx II?" And they could get a partner that way.

MaGL is kind of a Talkhaus thing so yeah, preferably all entrants would be Talkhausers. I don't think there'd be any disagreement there.

...Oh, can I be a judge too? I'll give everything 80/100, rendering all my votes mathematically null and void.

All jokes aside I think we will need a new judge for the next MaGLx. I don't think many people have problems with Ignoritus and 8flight returning, as long as they're fine with it too. But Horikawa has basically stated how displeased she is with Talkhaus in general so I doubt she'll want to return the judging panel.

Dibs on hosting next MaGLx.

As well, I think that next time we should institute a blind judging system. The idea is that the host will receive levels and then distribute those levels to the judges. Only the host will know whose level is whose.

This removes bias forcefully and makes it to where somebody's level is judged on its own merits without any niggling thoughts of their past work or what their reputation is as a level maker. This allows all levels to be judged on a clean slate. As I think is right.

Honestly wherein "fun" is concerned I think we might need to lock that down to something more tangible, perhaps?

Okay so history lesson: The first MaGL was put on by Argumentable and Limepie, the judging criteria was as so here

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=7066#p127822

Now there's something that really sticks out to me here, "Fun" is located underneath level design, insinuating that fun is dependent on the level design.

Whereas with Horikawa's rubric

viewtopic.php?f=12&t=14334#p182457

Fun is in its own little league and not really defined.

See what I'm saying here?

Also. It's a little bit unfair I think that one judge's opinion will be in the hub, but the other two are reduced to only numbers. Granted word opinions are a bad idea as I said, but in the end I think we should just stick to numbers for future contests, aye?

Having a contest that requires entrants to pair up with someone else will cause the turnout to be lower than having a contest where you allowed them the option to team up but could also go solo. Just give them the option, but don't make it mandatory.

Honestly after seeing a contest with over 100 entrants I think it would be better to have a lower amount of entrants. Makes it easier on the LP and makes it easier on the judges.

I like this ideas since that is a half less levels to play. Also, I would like the judging scale next contest to be more explicit and not open to interpretation.

[sedron]

Can we please do SMW again

I mean, we could do both, no? I'm a lot more proficient with SMBX and genuinely enjoy the engine despite it being SMBX, but I'd love to see more SMW stuff (plus maybe some of us SMBXers could give Lunar Magic an honest try. I know I haven't touched in years, and I can do a lot better than the Youtube-quality stuff I pumped out in Middle School if I actually learn it.)

I don't exactly how doing both would work, though. Hell, could we just allow participants to use whichever engine they prefer? We obviously couldn't do a Tower of Biased-style hub thing in that case, but past MAGL's didn't do that anyway, and it'd be a hell of a lot less work to not make one.

Alternately, holding separate contests for the two engines could be a possibility?

Whichever one we choose, I know I'll give an honest shot.

I'd also like to give MAGL a rest for a bit, but I'll comment on a few of the ideas brought up anyway. I don't see the harm in speculating or discussing, so long as we don't get ahead of ourselves.

Gimmick

I'm up for using the naming gimmick again, but by no means do I think we can't think of a new one.

I'm very iffy about the collaboration/partner idea. It simply comes down to me preferring to work alone in this case. It will definitely turn away a lot of people, which will in turn leave the remainder with less people to pair up with. I'm also of the opinion that this gimmick would make it a lot more difficult for those who enter later to find a good partner. The fact that your level is affected by another party in itself is kind of a turn-off, as well.

Judging and the People Who Do It

I'm totally cool with blind judging being implemented, so long as someone is willing to work as a compiler for the levels. So long as someone will do it there's really no downside to it, no?

As for who will judge, we really need to wait until the contest is in actual planning phases to think about that. I can tell a lot of people want to judge already, and we need a way better system than "dibs," for that.

Personally, I really enjoyed seeing Horikawa's comments on every level, and would have liked to see what 8flight and Ignoritus thought as well. I see no problem with actually voicing opinions so long as whoever's judging can back up their opinions. I'd even like to see something more in-depth than the first thoughts Horikawa used in this MAGL, but that's entirely up to whoever judges and what their workload is like.

I can see definite merit to a more explicit judging rubric. Mind you, we can't make a perfect rubric, but having it be less open to interpretation couldn't hurt.

[Zygl]

Can we please do SMW again

I mean, we could do both, no? I'm a lot more proficient with SMBX and genuinely enjoy the engine despite it being SMBX, but I'd love to see more SMW stuff (plus maybe some of us SMBXers could give Lunar Magic an honest try. I know I haven't touched in years, and I can do a lot better than the Youtube-quality stuff I pumped out in Middle School if I actually learn it.)

I don't exactly how doing both would work, though. Hell, could we just allow participants to use whichever engine they prefer? We obviously couldn't do a Tower of Biased-style hub thing in that case, but past MAGL's didn't do that anyway, and it'd be a hell of a lot less work to not make one.

Alternately, holding separate contests for the two engines could be a possibility?

I'm pretty sure it got eaten in the Talkhaustrophe, but somebody mentioned back in MaGL X's right-after-MaGL-2 planning stages the idea of holding an SMW MaGL in April and a SMBX MaGL six months later (in October, I guess). I don't know if that was an actual plan anybody other than me agreed to, but it was a thing that was brought up. Of course looking at what MaGL X became I'm pretty sure that'd make MaGL literally 1/3 of raocow's video output in any given year, so it may need to be a longer gap than 6 months, but still, it's an idea.

In any case,

Can we please do SMW again

MaGL X has been a lot of fun and all, but I'm pretty sure by the time MaGL 3/4 starts MaGL 2 will be like a year and a half ago. Also ASM > glitchy SMBX layer shenanigans and Lunar Magic > jettisoning your own face into the sun > SMBX's editor, but I guess that's technically a matter of personal preference.

[Bwarch]

Fluffi imo you need to give it longer before you change the poll like that, the original for how long it should be until the next MaGL was pulled after just a day. Not everybody saw it and it had like 9 votes. Not very helpful in the slightest, especially if you don't tell people of the results. (For those wondering, "Wait a year" was winning by a landslide)

For the current poll of whether it should be SMW or SMBX you should have this up for a week at least because it's such an important decision.

The only thing that makes me sad about the prospect of another, regular MaGL is that I have been informed that for music shenanigans you can only use the SMW soundfont with Lunar Magic, whereas you can import anything you feel like it seems with SMBX.

[MrDeePay]

SMBX or SMW?
You just did an SMBX contest, so the next one should ideally be SMW.

Judges?
Who you pick up as judges need to be mentally prepared for any fallout the contest has. As you do not have the luxury sites such as SMWC and SMBXCommunity have of "Maybe some notable LPer will cover this contest", you must do it. Yes, reactions towards the Talkhaus are the most lenient, but you still cannot brush it off either. Anonymous judging could work so any particular one isn't singled out "unfairly" either by anyone. (Then again, if you target one, you're targeting them all.)

However, at least one judge should have some experience with these events.

How many judges... One is asking for trouble. Two is enough if they have enough contrast (yet still similarities) from one another. Three is just right. Four is acceptable, but would require a more cohesive unit. Five or more is spoiling the point.

Results
Revealing the places in reverse order is nice to build up suspense, but some people are impatient and do not want to wait weeks to find out where they finished. That's why you should give entrants the option to find out their judging results in advance as asking them to PM the contest organizer (or CO). In response, ask them not to publicly reveal their placement as to not spoil the experience for anyone else.

Speaking of which, post the judging comments somewhere that's easily accessible instead of fishing through a sea of thread comments. Whether it's in the OP and updated as raocow gets past that level or posted all at once at the end of the contest is up to you.

Ranking and Scoring?
The traditional scoring format is easiest to organize in a compilation, but leads itself the most prone to critical backlash. An "unranked" or letter grade style limits the backlash, but is more difficult to organize for compilations. My personal suggestion is that to use an "unranked" format, but the judges get together and discuss their favorite entries in the contest while grouping those together in a "Judges' Favorites" world. As to get the audience more involved, allow them to vote on their favorite entries and any levels that don't overlap with the judges' faves are put in their own "Crowd's Favorites" world. Just be sure to put a disclaimer stating that there's no guarantee that the crowd actually played through all of those entries.

Regardless, if you wanna roll with SMW, don't bother with trying to make a compilation if you want it done in a timely manner.

Theme/"Gimmick"?
I personally rather you don't, but if you want to include a "Gimmick" to the contest, use a theme that all entrants must adhere to (such as SMWC's 24hr contests) as opposed to "broad, yet individual" themes that MAGL2 and MAGLX did. The reason for it is mostly due to intricacies that can't quite be explained here. (Note: The naming theme still beats out the box gimmick.)

[Grounder]

snip
Theme/"Gimmick"?
I personally rather you don't, but if you want to include a "Gimmick" to the contest, use a theme that all entrants must adhere to (such as SMWC's 24hr contests) as opposed to "broad, yet individual" themes that MAGL2 and MAGLX did. The reason for it is mostly due to intricacies that can't quite be explained here. (Note: The naming theme still beats out the box gimmick.)

MrDeePay, if you don't want to be "that one guy who's always a grump and a contrarian" and taken seriously, you're going to need to explain your thoughts better than "because I said so", which is what you are essentially doing here.

[MrDeePay]

No gimmicks or a broad theme gives all of the entrants an equal playing field to work on and nobody has a distinct advantage over another. The box format in MAGL2 was too restrictive (plus a "bad" box could really screw you over). The name format is better, but a "good" roll could still give an entrant a major advantage.

[Bwarch]

No gimmicks or a broad theme gives all of the entrants an equal playing field to work on and nobody has a distinct advantage over another.

Except this would inherently be giving people the opportunity to have a major advantage over all other entrants because then you can just enter a level you've been fiddling with for three months.

There is a reason we switched to gimmick contests after the first MaGL.

[MrDeePay]

No gimmicks or a broad theme gives all of the entrants an equal playing field to work on and nobody has a distinct advantage over another.

Except this would inherently be giving people the opportunity to have a major advantage over all other entrants because then you can just enter a level you've been fiddling with for three months.

There is a reason we switched to gimmick contests after the first MaGL.

Lazy entrants using premade levels is always going to happen no matter how hard you try to stop it. It's just best that you don't worry about it. No format is full-proof.

[Bwarch]

No gimmicks or a broad theme gives all of the entrants an equal playing field to work on and nobody has a distinct advantage over another.

Except this would inherently be giving people the opportunity to have a major advantage over all other entrants because then you can just enter a level you've been fiddling with for three months.

There is a reason we switched to gimmick contests after the first MaGL.

Lazy entrants using premade levels is always going to happen no matter how hard you try to stop it. It's just best that you don't worry about it. No format is full-proof.

It hasn't been a problem since we've done gimmick contests. With MaGL2 it was literally impossible to premake a level, it's harder to tell if a level was premade with MaGL X but I somewhat doubt we had any premade levels in there.

Foolproof there fella.

The existence of the gimmick makes it to where even if somebody wants to change a level to fit they still have to do SOME amount of work at least.

[Sorel]

About the poll being one day long: It was 10/1 after one day only, and the MAGL contest were held once every year, so I thought it was "obvious"...

I think I'll keep this poll about a week.

[MrDeePay]

It hasn't been a problem since we've done gimmick contests.

A benefit of being a smaller community and smaller entrant count.

With MaGL2 it was literally impossible to premake a level, it's harder to tell if a level was premade with MaGL X but I somewhat doubt we had any premade levels in there.

Foolproof there fella.

The existence of the gimmick makes it to where even if somebody wants to change a level to fit they still have to do SOME amount of work at least.

It's as simple as swapping graphics and plastering some sprites/blocks into the level, replacing a couple if need be. And then you have people that ignore the gimmicks altogether (and take whatever penalty is imposed). Including premade levels into contest or making some necessary adjustments is very easy to do.

[ano0maly]

I agree with Unanium here. MAGL competitions should not dominate over everything in talkhaus. It's not fair to other talkhausers and to raocow's viewers. Other people want to suggest or watch other interesting games to LP besides Mario/collabs/contests; raocow likely feels the same to an extent about games he's playing. And if MAGL is having a constant monopoly on contest activities, you're splitting/siphoning attention needed for people running other contests, and not allowing participants of those enough time.

The MAGLX let's play is barely finishing up and already we have this thread and the Kaizo contest. Learn from what happened in A2MT due to the impatient and hyped start. I don't think even a planning thread for MAGL is very appropriate right now, since we're leaving out of the process people that would be drawn in once the contest is formally open. You know, the actual participants.

That said, there are some things that I want to recommend for future contests:

• Judges should better show that they judged with good intention/discretion. I think this is a problem of communication; viewers can get legitimately frustrated when it looks like judges/managers are trolling on purpose. So try to show that you're not intentionally trying to antagonize contestants or viewers. The judges can put a bit more effort in demonstrating that they have some reasoning behind their scores. If people are still complaining after that, then shrug, you tried.
• Show care towards constructive criticisms. This is related to the above point. I understand that scores and judging can be subjective, and that this is "just for fun", yada yada. But don't use that as an excuse to be hostile or apathetic to criticisms and flip out. Don't have an "it's only subjective/for fun so shut your yaps" attitude when someone brings legit objections/critiques of judgments, rubric or levels. That isn't a defense against an insult; it's an insult itself. Don't do that.
• Emphasize actual scores over rankings. This has been something I wanted to remind for many contests. Scores show a basic blueprint on how well a level did, looking at merits of that particular level. Rankings are relative; they only show that one level "beat" another, not how or by how much. When people argue about rankings, they are caring more about competition than about the different values of various levels.
• Blind judging. I'm in agreement with Bwarch and MrDeePay. It's best to avoid an impression that someone gave a high score because the judge is a fan of raocow or whoever. Remember in SMWCP when some people were heavily critical of Rupture in Reality (see here), and then promptly changed their minds after finding out raocow made it (see here)? I'm not saying this to blame Slit08 etc., but I remember Youtube comments that were explicitly doing this (and then yelling at those who pointed this out).
• Rotate the judges per contest. I think it's fair to say that contests in succession generally shouldn't have same judges consecutively. If the three MAGLX judges take another shot judging the very next contest it's not going to do good, either for the judges or for participants and viewers. These games aren't something where we need to depend on particular experts to manage; they're pretty much open knowledge to talkhaus community. We have more variation in how the contests are handled and have people try out different roles.

[Bwarch]

The MAGLX let's play is barely finishing up and already we have this thread and the Kaizo contest. Learn from what happened in A2MT due to the impatient and hyped start. I don't think even a planning thread for MAGL is very appropriate right now, since we're leaving out of the process people that would be drawn in once the contest is formally open. You know, the actual participants.

The Kaizo contest doesn't matter in the slightest in this argument since rao is going to avoid it like the plague and lighten up Anomaly.

There is NO REASON we can't get discussion and planning out of the way, especially since as we're coming off the heels of MaGL X we'll know what needs to be improved for next time, whereas if we wait a year people will forget the details of this contest and how everything went.

[Leet]

there was like a year between magl2 and maglx i know its just some idea tossing around but hold your yoshis geez

anyway im voting smw because it will produce not as long a contest

[ano0maly]

That's a pretty good idead 8flight!

The Kaizo contest doesn't matter in the slightest in this argument since rao is going to avoid it like the plague and lighten up Anomaly.

There is NO REASON we can't get discussion and planning out of the way, especially since as we're coming off the heels of MaGL X we'll know what needs to be improved for next time, whereas if we wait a year people will forget the details of this contest and how everything went.

Quite the opposite. If you hold a discussion now, peeps will say a few ideas and then forget about it months later, and once the next one stats there will be a planning phase all over again. Chat about this if you want, but you're certainly not going to get it "out of the way" in advance.

We don't need to depend on just MAGLX; it's a precedent, but not the only one, and not the only good suggestion out there.

And the next contest doesn't belong to us or to the three past judges; it belongs to people that will manage and participate at that contest. We shouldn't be making decisions for them.

[Bwarch]

Quite the opposite. If you hold a discussion now, peeps will say a few ideas and then forget about it months later, and once the next one stats there will be a planning phase all over again. Chat about this if you want, but you're certainly not going to get it "out of the way" in advance.

Except that the ideas will all be in a thread which the host can use to go over for ideas and figure out how the next contest should go whenever they feel like going for some ideas.

You know.

The reason this thread is happening.

Currently.

At this moment in time.

[ano0maly]

The reason I said MAGLX wasn't the only precedent was because we were able to learn from past contests even if we didn't immediately make a planning thread. No reason why the next host is incapable of that in this case.

Like I said, if yoh think this will get all preparation out of the way you're presuming what the next host will do instead of peaving their contests to their time.

[Sorel]

Well, I made this thread for 3 reasons:

1. To gather some ideas for the next one

2. To share those ideas with the others

3. To see who's impatient.

You don't have to discuss if it's really important what's happening in this thread, since it's, exactly what it says on the tin, UNofficial.

[cheez8]

Disclaimer I've barely skimmed the thread

As somebody who likes SMBX and struggles with Lunar Magic, I still think the MaGL for next year should be a SMW contest. We've had a full two months of SMBX from this, and we're going to have another 1-2 months of SMBX from A2MBXT a few months down the road. Taking into account how SMW things never really even begin to approach being that long, SMW will probably be the more welcome change of pace.

Although it's really hard to say what engine we might need a break from eight months from now.

[Sandwichman]

SMBX because in some ways it's easier to make super cool things with it.

[Tenlade]

lots of big long posts in here, so illl jut give the opinion that if magl is a yearly thing, then anything that gets planned now will likely get thrown out for whatever people want when it comes time to actually do it.
I wonder if instead of a huge drama contest, i wonder if like some monthly romhack challenge would suffice. just some monthly or biweekly for really small silly challenges as an excuse to make levels in whatever editor is used that time. Is there something like this already or would anyone care if i made a suggestion thread for it?

[Mabel]

gonna read the thread after posting lel.

so I propose:
-every 6 months would be coul.
this time we do it in SMW
uh, some other stuff I forgot like gimmick or whatever