Ordinate said they wanted an AHX battle in a very descriptive manner. And I was wondering with all the enhanced activity as of late if maybe increasing opportunities is in order? So who is in favor of there being a monthly major single-format battle on top of our regular schedule? Any suggestions on what formats we pick? I don't think the super rare ones are good tho ;)

OMG!

I WANT!

+1

format selection ideas:
- make it a funny live event where u choose 12 random formats for a year (lets say there should be no formats appearing twice in a year)
- make a poll with 10 random formats and see which gets the most votes every month
- just ask in chats and see which reply is first
- ask barack obama
-

public abusable strawpoll imminent

my suggestions:

AHX -- sequel to hivelytracker compo (2007)
lgpt -- sequel to hexawe compos (2006-2015)

0cc -- in loving memory of hertzdevil
panda -- in loving memory of setrodox
ntrq -- in loving memory of tadpole, maker of the only good ntrq song

renoise -- i want a gold renoise medal i dont want to wait once a year for spring tracks

Sounds cool, I have suggested majors for AHX and SN7 in the past! Monthly remix battles would also be awesome.

I like this idea.

Heck yeah, I'd be in favour of that.
Im just throwing it out there if maybe double format battles would allow for a blend of standard and non standard formats?
Like allgear/wildchip/famitracker/remix and aym/sunvox/renoise/etc.

In support of the idea regardless; Im driven by allgear and wildchip, so naturally Im biased to see those formats included in some way. But just generally, its a good idea :D

okay some more stuff:

single-format-major battles dont give out format trophy medals @ordinate, so you wont get a golden renoise if renoise is the only format and you win :o

i dont really support double format battles, since they defeat the purpose of single format battles? it sounds like the single format battles are meant to create interest in a format that usually get less recognition in larger major battles. allgay/wildchop/remix are always on the page anyway, with ohbs, themed allgear majors etc - i dont see the reason why you want even more major battles with them, especially when botb has over 60 more formats to offer. i understand youre an allgear-person etc, but we have a lot of allgear-battles happening every fall, i dont think it would be good to make it even more present

another format suggestion: chipbattleart
yes. only the battleart. i think that would be funny

That sounds like a great idea.

My 10c:

- Formats should be random. Rare formats should be included: Encouraging people to try out new things and learn new tools is A Good Thing, and a month seems like a good amount of time to get comfortable with some new platform/format.
- Battles should include a battleart format with additional restrictions that mirror the main format. Eg. if the main format is NES-based, then the battleart would be restricted to the NES palette and resolution. Now, I'm not sure what would be an appropriate art format for bytebeat or HTML5, but I'm sure some creative, botb spirited solution can be found for those.
- The following formats should be excluded:
1. Game formats like tic80. I feel these are too work-intensive, and Game Jams are a better battle type for these.
2. Graphics formats, because those will be covered by battleart.
3. Allgear and wildchip. I think those would be boring when the format is the theme.

I think of the double as a side-tourney. Sure you could have all the glory of playing Street Fighter V and mostly everyone at the event came for that.

But if your main game is 3rd Strike and there's otherwise no 3S events in your area, then you came to kick some ass in 3rd strike.

i fully support and agree with irrlicht project's comment

there's a lot of good stuff here

I think having chipbattle_art along with single audio format might be the way to go. Otherwise I'm just going to make a very generic 2-color cover art with helvetica in the corner. People will still get trophiez.

Also now considering a cover art major that can inspire/be-used on future majors!

Ya, I think so too Xyz. The only downside there I guess, is the more popular format will be the one that gets most attention, but that also doesnt guarantee you'd have any less submissions on the less popular format, if it was single or a double; I like to think they'd be a sizable quantity of submits either way.

I dont disagree necessarily Kleeder (even though Im disagreeing wtf). It seems like the primary goal here is to support the growing amount of interest in battles generally.
Ohbs are common, and I love them to bits, but the time to submit an allgear/wildchip submission is an hour, which isnt too long.
There are only really a few matches per year that allow for allgear/wildchip submissions, where its legal to work on said music for longer than an hour, so I think it would have purpose.

My only fear really is if it'll be too complex to have one art and 2 battle formats simultaneously, each month But there are defo a sizable amount of people rn that are pure DAWists. And like you said, it might dissuade people from trying new formats, so there are pros and cons.

I agree with Irrlichts proposal being a good potential option.

starting with cover art sounds cool!
what if we use different voting cat- and overall-trophies for these battles? (too much work to implement? idk)
will the voting cats be the same every time or not? will we have 5 cats as always? (i guess its yes and yes, dont mind me im just brainstorming)

I like this idea, and irrlichts ideas make sense to me. There’s still formats I haven’t done and plenty others still where I haven’t ‘done it justice’

doom map + game jam major?

oh btw how long is entry and voting period?
is it like 2 weeks entry/2 weeks voting?
3 weeks entry / 1 week vort?
or is it 4 weeks entry and 2 weeks vort while the next battle already started?

oh yes, my format suggestions

fsound
ahx
ted
hes
fsound
sid
sap / sap2
fsound
sgen
vic20
fsound
channelf


oh and maybe fsound

I think you might have typed fsound twice

here's my format suggestions:
game boy
game boy
game boy
game boy
game boy
tic-80
game boy
game boy
game boy
zxbeep

formats suggestions: 👍

kleeder, i 'm not sure about the timeframe. 4+2 sounds most the most attractive option to me personally (or better 1 month + 2 weeks, so battles always start on the 1st), but if enough ppl dig this battle format then 2+2 could work as well.

needless to say i am indeed very reluctant to NOT having these battles! ok, so resisted the urge to reply before reading the thread and tried to organize my thoughts!


double format battles

belong with the trilogy battles imo. they're cool, like instead of nintendo trilogy we could have an amiga dilogy (you get the idea .MOD & .AHX) for instance, or a bit dichotomy (ie tia vs vcv). but for monthly battles, single format is the most appealing to me. double/triple format battles twice a year sounds good though.


included formats

it's ok for me if rare formats are included, not sure i want to see them pop up often though. allgear or whildchip: NO NO - what kind of restriction is "allgear only"? there's the whole rest of teh intrewebs for allgear btw.
some have started to suggest formats, maybe we can just look at the stats and assume the most popular formats for past battles will be the same for these future battles, in which case there would be no need to all start posting desired formats...


cover

i'm not sure i like the idea of having a cover battle added to each battle. maybe there could be an art battle at the beginning of the year, to provide a base artwork that would be then modded accordingly for all single format battles of the year?


voting categories

we could have generic voting categories that the host could occasionally replace if funnier cats are found. i would personnaly like a category specifically dedicated to downvoting entries made with converters as these spoil the fnu imo and defeat the purpose of the formats. it's great that people code converters but it's the coder that should get the rewards, not the user. my 2 pence nobody will agree with! :)


time

are the battles supposed to start/end on a specific day of the week as the majors do? because if we plan 1 battle/month AND want the battles to end on sundays, february will have fewer weeks to be dealt with. not sure if you guys are thinking monthly battles or n-weekly battles. maybe it's best to be flexible in the beginning?


battle status

haven't read anything about battle "status" (or have i? to lazy to reread the whole thread). are these going to be major? minor? intermedior? omb's? i like intermedior but that would require codage...


medals/trophiez

i think ideally the battles should provide medals of some sort, if they're not majors then maybe not the same medals as a major... why not voting categories medals only (15 medals per battle, maybe that's too many?), or format medals only (3: maybe that's too few?), or if that's not too much hassle to implement, OMB medals that would be displayed right above OHB medals on the profile? we all want shiny rewards for our sweatings!


last and least

on a sidenote, just in case there's an aym battle at some point, please know that i can provide help with maxYMiser. native trackers on ST emulators will take your sound palette much further than vortex tracker can!
also i would love to make a ST music disk out of a bigger-than-ohb aym comp but file formats other than sndh would not be included.

eh.

but what would the vote categories be tho?

[chip/format] power
[chip/format] magic
[chip/format] heart
[chip/format] brainz
[chip/format] pants

i guess, unless we find something better

possibly could have modular trilogy (pd vcv sunvox)

I would actually like voting categories to become a bit more clear/meaningful. But then again that wouldn't be very botb like, so... eh.

Regarding downvoting converters, I agree with the general sentiment here but I would frame it a bit different. I think there should be one voting category that represents the idea of "This entry makes good use of the format's features and pushes it's limitations." So, $format squeeze, basically.

The thing is, using a converter can be a challenge in itself. Think about those high-speed xm2tritone tracks - definitely wouldn't call that the easy route to beeper*. On the other end, yes, sometimes converters are simple the "lazy" option and don't unlock the format's full potential. I usually take a couple points off of brain tech or bleep squeeze for those tracks (if I ever get around to voting which is sadly not that often).

_{* That said, I do think these are getting old and ppl should explore other beeper engines more.}

i think a voting category for downvoting converted tunes is actually too much. there's always a category that one can interpret as technical skill, so that fits there. ideally converters should be mentionned and registered, and the botbr who's made the converter should get his/her share of the points and boons that converted tracks generate. but that's a lot of work for a minor fix so... let's add it to the ever growing list of not-to-be-added improvements!

Hehe, I like the idea but personally I don't mind not getting "toolist" points for my stuff at all. Plus, my impression is that when I release a new tool, people do upvote tracks I submit around that time anyway, so what goes round comes round.

How about a toolist battle though. That could be like a 1 year long battle that kinda always runs on the side, where people who are into developing converters and stuff can drop their output. Hmm idunno, just a random brainfart.

a feature battle to code features to the website! first feature battle is to code the feature battle feature to the website

oOOOOH THIS IS EXCITIIIING 8D
okay okay i think i have a few suggestions

VOTING CATEGORIES - i think reducing the categories from 5 to 3 for these battles would be suitable. now, i know, i know, 5 categories is the standard across all battles and it would take you some time to code a 3-cat battle. i get that, but i believe that (considering that these'll be monthly and notably not as major as battles like summer chip, graph-x, etc.) it'd be more fitting to have the time be put into a new voting set for battles than have the standard set be implemented. it'd fix the medal problem yqn mentioned by reducing the medals to an appropriate amount (if you only give gold formats) and suitably give a defining meaning to the phrase "minor battle".

aight now formats

html/css - obvious reasons if you know me. it'd also be fuel for more html entries as well, and bigger ones at that. i know that graph-x had html but considering that this'll be a single format battle, it could work for those who like doing html/css.

tic-80 - tic-80 deserves some love recently, it's a neat concept that's been executed very well. that and we've hosted plenty of it in the past, so it makes sense to have a standalone battle centered around it.

html5 - not for games, mind you; just html5 coding in general. think demoscene. i think this'd get the coding juices flowing and active within botb, especially with the added activity the site's gotten lately.

allgear/wildchip - no. just, no. this is wrong and shouldn't be a thing.

might update with more suggestions in the future, who knows, just hoping this is a thing that actually becomes reality >:3c

having 3 voting categories makes sense

thanks to everyone for pitching in with ideas
i'll have time tomorrow to really focus on this
creating a new tier of battle style would probably be more than i can handle with any efficiency. but i've been thinking maybe we should have a long cover art battle so each format isn't also giving out cover art trophies while the focus of the battle is supposed to be another format.