greetings fellow denizens of botb. i've been thinking a lot about the potential of an Autumn seasonal major here. having that space open on our calendar is usually welcome since we can fill it with other big events (like Very Rare Formats 2 this past year) or have a cooldown season, so i'm not suggesting this has to occur every year. but it could be a cool shake-up.

i'd love to know what everyone thinks about this idea, what they would prefer, etc! i hope for this proposal to be an open discussion really

a few options i thought of:

• option 1: we don't do Spring Tracks one year and instead do Autumn Mix(tm). is this too much of a bummer?
• option 2: we do all 4 but the entry timeframe of the seasonals is somewhat reduced so we don't have all the seasonals brushing up against one another; this leaves some space for taking breaks, for the more dedicated entrants
• option 3: we just do it all normally, fuck it! battles!!
• option 4: we could just do Spring Tracks in the (northern hemisphere) autumn and make our southern hemisphereans happy

ok so, what is Autumn Mix?
you could call it Autumn Tracks if you wanted but i thought it would be cute to try something different. Mix could be interpreted two ways:

• 1) first as a nod to the Mixist class, more directly and clearly a counterpart to Winter & Summer "Chip".
• 2) but also, and this is imo the more interesting concept, it could be interpreted as a "mix" of different format styles. which is to say, we could do whatever. the formats could be more of a grab bag, people know less what to expect, especially if formats get revealed/unlocked gradually.

either of those options would be great, but it would stand out from Spring Tracks more as the latter... if that's something people are interested in. of course with two Chip seasonals maybe a lot of those formats are already getting their time in the sun, i dunno!

with that said, i did put together a list of all the Mixist formats (minus remix) as well as a few others that i think lean in that direction / would incorporate nicely thematically, for a total of 24 potential picks for a more-or-less "Autumn Tracks" style:

allgear
bespoke synth (Signalist but Mixist vibes)
FakeBit
furnace (it's Chipist but there's a mixer! and you mix chips!)
jummbox
klangfreude DIGITAL SINE CRAFTER
klystrack (Chipist, but hey, it has some DSP!)
LittleGPTracker
Mario Pants Extended
🗿 DON'T YOU LECTURE ME WITH YOUR THIRTY DOLLAR WEBSITE
64k tracker module
OpenMPT
musescore
Photograph*
Photomash*
PDF Format*
PxTone
Renoise
classic DOS module
SunVox (also Signalist but Mixist vibes)
VCV Rack (also also Signalist but Mixist vibes)
visuall*
Human Voice
Yamaha XG (it has DSP effects too + is less limited)

* i think it would be cool to include a few visual formats + writist in the form of PDF. these are the ones that fit most strongly with the Mixist aesthetic imo.

Option 1 would be nice, and i honestly wanted to see an Autumn seasonal major become a reality for quite some time.
This seems to be a really interesting and nice idea, to shake things up and all.
see my latest post on this thread x . x

Good idea. I'd vote for option 2 or 1, by order of preference.

My thoughts about option 2 - it might help if we didn't plan on extensions on the seasonals (or minimized if they happen?), and people knew this ahead of time. Like we're trading the typical lengthy extensions on the seasonal majors for having a whole extra seasonal. Pretty good deal, I think, that keeps the calendar from being too stuffed since there are also the monthlies, and we might end up with around the same number of major submissions, although I have no idea on that. It would be an experiment for sure

but the very rare formats :sobglasses:

Great idea, i'm so excited for the return of SunVox :)

The Option 3 is better

I'd go for option #2. #1 is also cool.

leaning towards option 2 which i rly like the sound of, although option 1 is also fine

Fall Blend

Fall Format Festival!

i think option 1 or 4 would be nice. this is a cool idea though!

Agree with dobra!

I'm not on botb since long but to me it seems to be a nice way to bring a fresh wind to the seasonal major battles.

At the same time I like the idea to have a break in the seasonal battles to have some other majors such as the very rare formats battle. That's why I would be in favor of options 1 and 4.

With option 1 I'm just a bit worried that Autumn Mix or Winter Chip could overlap with the Advent Calendar battle.

This is such a good idea, especially as an opportunity to show XG some more love in majors

Hell yeah to this, though I don't really think the rules ought to be any different than Spring Tracks in practice, 'cause then it nicely mirrors the pair of Summer and Winter chip. There's already enough "seasonal variance" on which formats appear in which major anyway, no need to formalize it -- it'll happen naturally.

If we do Autumn Mix, it might be a good place to squeeze in the formats "funky triangle", "think square", "impeach the pulse", etc. as discussed in the other thread!
Edit:
although the more I think about it, I would kind of rather those formats be their own monthly battles. so maybe option 1 or 4 is better to accomodate more battles like that and very rare tracks

I'm not sure how to feel about this. I think BotB already can have issues where the "big" contest (summer/winter chip and spring tracks) kind of eats up a lot of attention that would otherwise go to the monthly battles. So I'm not sure if adding more mega-majors is a good idea. If I had it my way I would probably only do 2 of the 3 current majors per year and rotate them. If people want Autumn Mix in that rotation, then so be it.

I JUST REALIZED I'M ON THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE AND BOTB IS ON THE NORTHERN HEMISPHERE AAAAAAAA
so yeah maybe option 2 or 3 now that i actually thought about it lol

I want it

My Vote Is 3

The non-seasonals usually have a smaller turnout due to being more specific anyway and I've never felt the seasonals "stole" entrants from the more specific majors. In fact, if people can't meet the deadline on a non-seasonal major it ends up in the seasonal if the format is there a lot of times, it can be a nice fallback if you miss the entry pereiod.

I'd be happy with 2 as well. In general I think it'd be nice to have all 4 seasons have a major, it's a common source of confusion for newcomers lol

me when no NES format

okay so I am definitely team "fuck it! battles!", so don't get me wrong here.
BUUUUUUUUT
I am more in favor of unique non-annual/regular battles rather than yet another series that will "be the same every year", ... u get it?
I know dami is that person who hosts over 100 parts of YEA VIDEOGAME so he won't get it, but anyone else maybe? xd

I prefer the excitement of "WOA something NEW!" rather than the "oh yea. cool. the 7th installment of MajorX"-moment.

so that being said. YES let's do autumn mix/tracks/highways
but make it a one-time-event (or a rare appearance every x years) maybe ...

i definitely don't think it needs to happen every year (my post mentioned that at the beginning too!). having free space to do other large stuff is good, this is one option for other large stuff