2011 Time Trials - Awards Ceremony and Postmortem

Discussion about MARP's Time Trial Competition
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2011 Time Trials - Awards Ceremony and Postmortem

Post by gameboy9 »

It's time to hand out awards for our time trial.

Gold Medal - TheBSM (Italy)
Silver Medal - Potante (Spain)
Bronze Medal - El_Fumador (Spain)

Sportsmanship award - I'm awarding joint winners to Innuendo (Brazil) and CrazyKongFan (USA).

Congratulations to all of our winners! =D> =D> =D> =D> =D>

And now... my postmortem entry. My personal feelings about this is that this was a good tournament. This being said, nobody needs to tell me that this was perfect. This was a totally new format for everybody and there surely were some bumps along the way. Let me address each topic:

GAME SELECTION: I personally think the game selection was strong. I picked two games that are very well known in Joust and Galaxian, two games that were sorta known in Joy Joy Kid and Knights Of The Round, and one game that really wasn't known at all in Vs. Slalom. I think that's a perfect mesh of games. As far as Giro-X's two game "Golden Era" discussion, I will raise a point that nobody complained when I pulled a 1991 game in "Knights" and a 1990 game in "Joy Joy". This being said, I wouldn't pick more than two games in one era, that much is certain.

DIFFICULTY: Something Giro-X pointed out is that a lot of games were too difficult. I think he's got a very solid point. Four of the five games were very difficult indeed... Knights Of The Round was finished by 2 / 16 (12.5%), Joy Joy Kid was finished by 11 / 16 (68.75%), Joust was completed by 3 / 15 (20.0%), Vs. Slalom's Mt. Nasty was completed by 4 / 15 (26.67%). Quite a lot of people got game over's in Galaxian before time expired too. Part of this is me picking difficult games... but another part of this was that I made the games too long. There would have been a lot more completions had I ended "Knights" after 2 stages, Joust after 12 stages, and Vs. Slalom after 6 stages. I probably was making them this difficult thinking of how terrible of a player I am... and that wound up being a bad assumption on my part. This is something I will need to work on for the next time trial.

FORMAT: I think the format worked well, but there can be some improvements. In reflection of what Sawys said, instead of a maximum bonus of 150% greater than the base time when all four games are combined, I probably should aim more toward 100%. This will give more people an opportunity to win. (although this, granted, could have been an effect of the final game) Additionally, I think I might remove the qualification requirement. However, those that participate in all four games would get far greater opportunity to win than those who participate in less. It's something I'll have to think about. Additionally, I should improve my scoring systems. They're basically there so everybody knows where everybody stands at the current point in time. But I easily could have done xxffffff, where x is the stages completed and f is the frames the stages was completed in. Then nobody has to do any converting.

So, again, it was a good time trial. Not perfect, but good. And so, after answering final comments/questions in this thread, which are fully welcome, especially if I missed something, it's time to say goodbye for now. I will return in early August to set up the Olympiad... of course... you could hop over to the Home Action Replay Page in May and June for the HARP championships... :) Take care everybody.
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Re: 2011 Time Trials - Awards Ceremony and Postmortem

Post by INNUENDO »

Thank you very much, Gameboy9. I´m so glad about this.

Congratulations for TheBSM, the champion and Potante and El_Fumador. They are very good players and deserved this result.

Also, congratulations for all the competitors.

Very special congratulations for Gameboy9, the coordinator. Was a very hard challenge and I like this kind of competition. I had no lucky with the games, and Galaxian was the best choice, but, was very hard to go farway playing with only 4:51m. No problem, this was the rule and I think was good accept for the other players. I liked this a lot. :) Very original.

Well, see you in the next Time Trial or another Tournament. Bye!! :)
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Re: 2011 Time Trials - Awards Ceremony and Postmortem

Post by RAX »

Great congratulations to TheBSM, Potante and ElFumador :!:

My opinions about this TT:
-You already noticed that, when few players reach the goal there is no real timing improvement. In fact the only game (out of 5) we can say there has been a great timing race is JoyJoyKid. We could say that in fifth game too, but it's difficult to compare scores when they have more or less available time.

-To balance a difficult game you can lower the goal or ease the difficulty. There are no score purpose in a TT, so you could say "easy settings". I say this reading your comment about VsSlalom (would have been better to complete 6 stages instead of 8 ): the point is that no-one passed 5th 99% of the times. I guess that on easy settings 5th stage would not have been the Omaha Beach it has been

-Rule 5d "If there's a tie in the final game, whoever had more bonus time after the first four games will be given the higher position." I think it's not good, I didn't notice that before the beginning. If in the last game Potante scored the same as TheBSM I would have said "Potante wins". Same result in less time is the spirit of Timetrial.

-Too high the bonus for first places respect 3rd and lower. In a well fought turn, winner is supposed to beat others by little difference, we cant' give him twice the bonus that third player earns.

Finally I am a bit disappointed by my skill, but we cant' all be like BBH or Destructor...
I really appreciate your motivation GB9 =D> , but I must say that the last three games have been a real pain for me :(

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Re: 2011 Time Trials - Awards Ceremony and Postmortem

Post by CrazyKongFan »

Thanks for running the tournament! It was pretty fun, even though I really stunk at a couple of the games...was beginning to worry if I'd even qualify on Vs Slalom ;) As a fan of classic games, I was definitely happy with the selection of Joust and Galaxian...didn't really expect to come in first on any round, so winning Joust was a surprise :mrgreen: Anyway, congrats to the top 3, and especially to TheBSM for winning! =D> =D> =D>
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Re: 2011 Time Trials - Awards Ceremony and Postmortem

Post by TheBSM »

... so I won! Hurrah! \:D/ \:D/ \:D/

First, a thanks to all the players who made this tournament possible and obviously to GB9! =D>

Of course, congratulations to Potante and El_Fumador for the excellent result, and Innuendo and KrazyKongFan for the "Sportsmanship Award". =D>

I agree with the comments of Rax and some points contained in the "postmortem" entry by GB9, so i skip .. but I would say a few words about this TimeTrial..

About the games chosen .. well, as always is a personal matter! Except the first one due to lack of time I could not investigate, my favorite was JoyJoyKid (maybe because I love the puzzle game! :D ) while the last 3 were really tough (for me especially Vs Slalom), probably because i'm not more used to play old classics. However, it remains that it is virtually impossible to agree all the players.

I find it's a good idea even the score system (the time bonus to "spend" in the final game) and I find very appropriate the choice of the last game (genre). Perhaps a minor differences between the bonus won by the firsts classified of early rounds would make more interesting the fifth.

The only regret is that there was not a lot of participation: at the beginning there were 22 :| , after the first round only 16 :( and just 10 finished the tournament :cry: . I would say a few! Perhaps with more players there would be a "distribution" of the time bonus more balanced, maybe .. :?:

However, having won, I have to be satisfied with this Time Trial! :D

Thanks again GB9, I hope you will be able to organize it again next year, perhaps improving it in some details, but this is up to you! :idea:

See you, friends!
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Re: 2011 Time Trials - Awards Ceremony and Postmortem

Post by TRB_MetroidTeam »

Congratulations to all the players, including Innuendo and GB9! A different and good tournament!

TheBSM deserves congrats, mainly because I remember his match against RedStar on pbobble2j, losing but with a good score enough to win in many of the other matches of that round. What a pity! But now you won dude, congratulations again!
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Re: 2011 Time Trials - Awards Ceremony and Postmortem

Post by INNUENDO »

TRB_MetroidTeam wrote:Congratulations to all the players, including Innuendo and GB9! A different and good tournament!

TheBSM deserves congrats, mainly because I remember his match against RedStar on pbobble2j, losing but with a good score enough to win in many of the other matches of that round. What a pity! But now you won dude, congratulations again!
Thank you, my friend! I missed you in this great Time Trial. I hope you´ll join the next one.

Congrats to TheBSM again!
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Re: 2011 Time Trials - Awards Ceremony and Postmortem

Post by gameboy9 »

Thanks, all. I think that I will narrow the time bonuses for next time around. Maybe... something like 60-48-40-35-30-25-20-18-16-14-12-10-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 or something like that. Hmmm... perhaps 5D should be "if there's a tie, the least bonus time wins"... I have to think about that one. I guess I have 11 months to think about it! :)

The other thing I was thinking about for next year: bonuses. So you would get a small time bonus for possibly maximizing the number of stages... or advancing to a certain point beyond the maximum stage. Again, I have 11 months. :)
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