[editing this during discussion for easier implementation later]


== NEW ONES ==

drawring - something that was drawn or drewed
grafxist points

text/write - something that is read; not ascii art
literarist points not happening

photomash - requires a bitpack of original images; a visual remix
grafxist points

live or voice - multitracked long take audio
not mixist points -- maybe performist points?


== OLD ONES ==

ascii art - should be pixelist or grafxist or something else?
disabled from OHBs


I'm still very against an upload anything format.

If we had these, I say screw an upload anything 4mat!

I thought it was weird that there was no text format.

I had previously presumed pixel was a broad category for things that are images, and the actual nature (whether it's true pixel art, low palette, low rez, etc.) should be specified in the bitpack txt. I think it would be find if people just made more specific bitpack requirements, instead of having multiple formats for image.

We've had a few "pixel" battles where several people upload shitty giant mspaint scribbles, though I never saw that as a real problem. Shitty entries can have shitty votes? I dunno.

I look at pixel and drawing the same way I look at chip formats and allgearing -- they are worth different point types. Kind of like a square is a rectangle but a rectangle is probably not a square.

(Sorry about this, I'm on a bit of a ramble today. Tldr: the new formats are fine I guess, I just thought the old pixel format was fine too, and maybe it is kind of hard to become a Pixelist. AAAAA! I think I need a nap.)

Well maybe, but also this is BotB, where begin is "begast" and results are "resluts", so there is a grain of salt here that all names may be presumed approximate, not to mention how English isn't the primary language of a lot of people here.

So... fine distinctions that are only implied by the very specific word choice and not explicitly stated can easily be lost in this environment.

Also, for any given "format" people are going to have ideas for OHCs that are on the edges of them or outside their boundaries, which is another reason I think broad categories might be more useful than very specific ones.

Though pixel is kinda distinct from most others in that the actual format isn't well defined by an existing piece of hardware. I mean, we could have a ZX, NES, or GB pixel category and these would all have different specific requirements due to the target hardware, but pixel is vague to begin with, even if you want it to be only what you think of as "pixel art".

Anyhow, I'm not really opposed to splitting what I thought "pixel" was into more distinguished categories, but I kinda think since we don't have well defined hardware limitations to begin with, these distictions are going to have a lot of grey areas in between.

Splitting the points category though I wonder about. I notice there's no Pixelist section on the Barracks. Are there no pixelists? If you split the category into "pixelist" and "drawist" or whatever, will it be even harder to become these things?

I like them!! The "drawing" (perhaps called hi-res?) and photomash categories should probably give Graphixist points in order to avoid adding more point classes that never get used (e.g. Mappist, WebDevist, Hackist). (The profile pages spell it as "Grafxicist", is this a mistake?)

The separation of ASCII and text cold be a good idea, but I'm not incredibly sure. I see where you're coming from though. If it were to pass, text compos could give a different point class (despite my above arugment) - most ASCII compos hosted previously are only textual (haikus, rumours, etc.) Perhaps it should be called typist or something...

@rainwarrior: Svetlana is our resident Pixelist!!

I believe all ASCII compos give grafxicist points, so that should change, yeah.

i think there is a lack of voice in botb.

a format that could be done is: oral.

your own voice or mouth, and possibly additionally the voices or mouths of people in the same room as you as long as you are using yours, is/are the only thing(s) allowed to express artistically.

the least amount of editing or mixing should be preferred.

some examples of an oral OHB could be: spoken word, barber shop, rap, chanting, throat singing, mouth percussion and popping, etc.

a tibetan throat singing ohc would be fun : )

urrrmuerrrrgursh voice only format?
multitracked and only single takes per channel?
i'm in >:D

we had some live-played OHCs a while back, maybe that could be formalized/formatized... but maybe it doesn't need to since we don't seem to have had any more for about a year

edit: i do like your other suggestsionsnsns too!

BUMP

I updated my first post to show the progress of this discussion.

Further comments, suggestions, quips, queries?

How about a video shooting/editing OHB? Obviously entries that break copyright should be disqualified and/or flagged for deletion. Flagged videos for deletion should deduct some boons and EXP or something like that.

i'm not entirely sure how well this would be received but maybe a 4k or a 1k module format? 8k is a breeze and I managed to make a 1k in 45 minutes on my free time. it probably wouldn't be that popular but it would be kinda fun, especially since a lot of new ways of optimizing module space would be discovered probably.

obviously you would get chipist points for these.

a voice compo would be hilarious

thumbs up for that :p

I'd be up for a voice compo...I guess it just comes down to how many people would actually want to do it.

I have voice compoed several times. I wish more of you would join me.

i'd join


if i didn't have to use a seperate headset just because there's a mic on it

Voices FTW.

I think it should just be vocalist points, duh!

We will have no vocalist points because it sounds too normal.

And it sounds too much like vocaloid! >:(

Voicist.

Mouthicist.

The only problem with a voice compo is that it might ruin the anonymity of OHBs [foolish remark redacted].

why not put a limit on using vocaloid for voice compos (considering that it's all automated/simulated, and is better for major compo entries anyway) and actually use our own voices? O_O

How about a general grafcixc format? Perhaps even instead of the drawrings and photomash formats! The host can always specify in the bitpack if he wants a grafxic compo to be just drawrings or if pixel art and original photoshop effectwank is also allowed.

Interrobang Pie: Not fucking cute. If it were up to me, I'd peel those silly hearts off you. There is no such thing as "foreign" in BotB.

Also, I'm glad even though our community is segmented to oldheads, FamiTracker, International s3xmodit, Remixers, and talented toddlers we can attempt to build and make it better for future generations.

Our next step is learning to get along. Oldheads and toddlers are bumping heads and scaring the others away. Message to the toddlers, you're driving puke7 absolutely batty and there are talks of making BotB very not-fun for the lot of you in the Admin forums. Some of us old heads forget how much fun it is to be young, stupid, almost invincible, and crave attention from our young peers by acts of talent and stupidity. But one thing to learn while growing up is tact. We can do anything we want but there is a time and a place to do it. I've convinced them to give you lot a break and let you show us all how you can be less annoying and easier to get along with. BotB is a one of the few non-corporate communities left over that is free and isn't trying to put one over on you. We are a rare and precious jewel in what formerly was the Internet and is now the segregated, nationally sovereign and bordered, corporate Cloudnet. We show you mercy and hopefully you show us some. You have influence and you're talented, but you may not like the outcome and all may lose. Since nobody is against anyone we should be for one another.

Back on topic...

A vocaloid should not be used for voice compos at all. In my opinion it's just another neat VSTi for allgear compos.

it's pretty easy to recognise someone's voice after the third or fourth time you've heard it anyway, even if they are from BOTB MOTHERLAND UNITED STATES OF AMERICA~~~ FLAWLESSS ENGLISCH

but it's pretty easy to recognise someone's musical "voice" in a lot of cases too. not like we have a cast iron veil of anonymiti anyway

+1 for the things b00daw said about vocaloid

Obviously vocaloid should not be taken as "real voice"!

b00daw: My apologies, it won't happen again.

I'm not sure why Vocaloid was even brought up in the first place? To me it seems like using a colour-by-number picture in art OHCs...

Your foreign accent remark did not offend me, though! I don't think it's anything people should feel offended for~

I think this whole vocaloid thing is just a collective misunderstanding. I won't say more. ;3

Glad we're on the same boat about digital and analog voices being different.

I'm not offended about anything. Hell, I'm an asshole. I offend people on purpose sometimes. The point of the matter is that there may be a lot of silent contributors who could be offended by remarks like that and could potentially use their own voices for remix and oral compos. It's best to be considerate of our competitors and fellow BotBrs. Manners go a long way.

I just hope that if we do have voice compos, they'll be taken more seriously than the writing compos we do on the regular.

The writing compos we have do get some good entries, but the fact is that they have silly compos.

We are just going to have throat singing compos with voice. I personally wonder why we never acted on the idea of having a video editing compo--maybe it's the new-found fear of YTPMVers we have. You know that'd bring all of them here.

recent experience of botb's literary abilities and inclinations convinced me that writing format and literarist points are not really a good idea/ are really not a good idea / are really a not good idea / are a really not good idea

I didn't like what I saw today. :(

Literary abilities has nothing to do with it, that's why we do compos in the first place. I'd gladly read the entry of a novice writer who earnestly tried.

b00daw, you're right though - others may be offended by it. I won't do it again. I just want to be a nice person!! Let's drop this topic now.

On-topic now, wolly was talking about the idea of renaming fsound into a generic PC beep format. But he then went on to explain that Fasttracker II can play XMs through the PC beeper and that strict limitations and that's where he sort of lost me. Perhaps he'd be able to explain it better than I could.

puke, I think you're jumping the gun a bit by deciding writing OHCs simply aren't going to happen. All we need to do is be aware of the circlejerking, and the problem fixes itself.

I solve the problem by not bothering to read any of the entries in an OHC called "50 shades of slimeball".

I dunno, I've really enjoyed some of the results of text-based compos in the past.

Tilde and Beard, I don't think circlejerking and silliness is the issue. More likely the fear that the sexy fanfic lols could very easily spiral out of control in a short amount of time and start affecting the overall attitude and margin of quality that has been steadily rising for years now. But that's only my guess as to what all the passive nodding and nudging is about here.

I think that is an incredibly silly fear, and even with all its merit, the answer is not "no more text ohcs".

I'm not worried about dog ruining the attitude and quality of our music, either.

my take on that:

*the concept that is dog has been a neutral and comfortable thread of the botb quilt for a long time

*out of control text ohc's could both attract more 13 yr old kids with progressively less amounts of self control and simultaneously chase away botbrs, old and new, as well as the many guests we have hanging around and browsing.

edit: aka, noise to signal ratio fellers...nuff said(i think)

Sorry, it just sounds like an utterly silly doomsday scenario to me. If 13-year-olds were going to overrun the site and ruin it for everyone, they'd have done it already, not wait for writing to be taken more seriously on this site.

Tilde, unfortunately I feel like BotB is already overrun with 13-year-olds. They have ruined BotB for some people already, people I've known for 5+ years. At least these 13-year-olds are good at comping music; the bar is already set at a good space there. I have no clue how to raise the bar on visual and text entries. I thought I made a stink about pixel art, of what that format entails, and then this happens. So everyone can say BotB is this or BotB is that, but ultimately it's my blood, sweet and tears that are getting little kid poops rubbed all over them.

And your solution is "let's not have text compos".

The way to raise the bar may be a mystery, but it certainly isn't to excise every feature of the site you feel isn't "safe". Do we expect you to remove the Pixelist category next? I doubt it. That's no fun.

You know what this takes, in my mind? When a compo like that comes up, let's just band together as a community and scorn the shit out of it. That's what'd work.

Sorry if I'm a little pushy/out of line despite only being here for like a month >_>

LOL! Pixel format has been romoved!! jajajajajaj >:P

Me and my big mouth.

To be honest, I had removed it before your post because it's not respected. That's all I want BotBrs to do! Just respect the formats! 'Pixel Art' means something to certain people! It does not mean ANY image made of pixels.

r.e. what ipi said about what we said earlier,

fsound is no longer available and there will never be another entry to this format. why not replace/rename it with a PC beeper format (fsound originally made music for PC beeper)?

suggested/example rules:
- song must be played on PC beeper or emulation of PC beeper
- song must not be PCM samples (st3 and ft2 can both play music back on beeper)

upload format might have to be mp3 with an expectation of source later for the time being?

software that can do this kind of thing: Monotone Tracker, Music Construction Set, Slow Tracker 2, MUSIC.EXE, QBASIC, etc.

this doesn't need to be a new format but i thought we might aswell repurpose an old one which will never be used again to have something fun and cool.

sorry to derail a little bit

It's sad that the pixel and ascii formats had to go, but I perfectly see your point; Puke. I'm not fond at all of "fanfic" compos, and I certainly hated that most of the entries at pixel OHBs weren't pixel art but photo manipulations and MSPaint scribbles.

And I hate to be the one who ruins any potential fun for people, but Puke: There's a certain format still available to abuse for fanfic purposes, and for the time being I'd agree to remove it from the OHB list as well. (In before this post gets lots of hates.)

I've been on the internet for at least a decade, and to some point, I've seen it all (and to some extent, maybe even been part of some of it at the least). On that related account, I've seen many online friends over the years. Actually, being on for so long, I myself have been attempting music for almost as long. Releasing my music starting in 2005 with VGMix was probably the best thing that I ever did. And here I am, many years later, and I'm enjoying myself... I have tolerance for the type of humor I see these days, and more importantly, I have somewhat persisted to the point that I have finally been able to get some of my material on a real game. Actually, for me, the real bonus is that my music is on a few real SNES games. I myself have always seen Battle of the Bits as kind of a musical place at heart. Would have never been able to be on here so many years back because I didn't have the utensils back then... but today, having discovered all sorts of SNES music, has made me finally come on down and enjoy it to its maximum. I've been an Impulse Tracker musician for about seven years, and to me, Schism Tracker (which is what I've been using all of these years) is, to me, the best application I have ever gotten to know. I've gone from playing online games (for free, of course) to making my music in the hopes that one day I can develop something for my benefit... of course, I haven't completely gotten the commercial viability completely together (that one I'm still extremely nervous about), but just releasing my material, no matter how bad it was, is how I made it here...

KFF <3 <3

puke7: You may be going the wrong way about some of this stuff, but I'm proud of you for taking a stand in what you believe in for once. Let's see where it takes us. Love you, sir.

I guess that's how I feel about it. Totally the wrong move...but I gotta give props to an admin that's willing to break a few eggs.

bring on teh future

I would just like to put my thoughts down on this subject, I feel that this site, BotB, is puke7's baby. He created it, built it up over the past 7 years and has lovingly taken care of it over the years. We are only guests of his site and we should honestly respect the rules he put in place and guidelines for each format. I'm sorry I contributed to the madness that took those formats away, I really should have considered if I was contributing anything to the site or not. I really have learned a lot as a composer from just my short time on this site, and I really hope to learn more as time goes on, I've gotten to meet some of my idols, and other cool people, which I greatly appreciate as well. I hope that in my time here I haven't cast a bad image of myself, and I really do just want to learn how to make better music. I commend puke7 for doing what he feels is right for his handywork, and I hope that we can all just move along from this uncomfortable argument and just get back to making awesome music.

Also live/voice OHB's sound awesome

And now I'm probably going to pull a zanzan until I feel I can contribute something worthy to this site.

I have been on both sides of the "old guys vs. new guys" argument in communities before... and the ending result is not fun for either party!!

Being a relatively new member, I feel I am being targeted slightly, but all I want is for everyone to be happy!! I believe that you are all really lovely people, okay? But I just think we need to establish some ground so that we can get along!!

So, after Winter Chip ends let us all work for a happier BotB!! No more troll entries in OHBs!! No more stupid and unnecessary comments everywhere that might offend!! Both old and new members love this site and have something useful (i.e. good music and ideas and fun) to contribute, so let's just get along like super cool friends and have a great time!! And those who like to spam OHBs and threads with useless junk should not have a place here!!

I think we have given the admins of the site a very hard time recently, so I issue my apologies to them. Especially puke7, you are very gracious to keep this site running in your spare time!!

BotB is a great place to be!!

<3 <3 <3

Oh, and if you think you can get away with submitting troll entries in the future, then you can frick off!!

yes, let us all strive to become better people at least here on botb, myself included. I send my apologies to all the admins and puke7.

let us turn to the next chapter in the book of BotB

I haven't been here long but I'm just glad that this isn't another stagnant internet community.

Things CHANGE here.

While I took part in a couple of the text compos, and while my winterchip pixel entry wasn't exactly "pixel" enough to fit in, I can see why you did what you did.

This is a good website, and the more it changes, the better it will be. Even if some changes aren't what some people agree with, most changes are changes that most people agree with.

Some people are gonna complain no matter what change ends up occurring, and there's no avoiding that. But at least you're making the changes anyway.

Right on, Flaminglog.
We are creatures of habit. Change is never easy, even when it's a change for the better, but it's necessary for growth.
I'm happy to be a part of this community.
I've always had, and continue to have, nothing but the best of intentions with everything I do here on BotB. I want to contribute in a positive way only. If I've ever crossed that line, please forgive me.

I love you all!
Moot

There's a difference between a change and just excising a feature completely. >_>

I appreciate everyone's sentiments. There's a difference between a change and just taking the site down completely. =^__^=

fwiw i wouldn't be too sad to see any of the non-music formats go, with the exception of chip battle art, which is useful and important in the context of art for chip battles.

althought this thread started with suggestions for diversification we seem to be going in a consolidation direction towards the latter parts of the thread. maybe we just need to stick to what we are good at ~ the chiptones and the remixings... ?

there isn't a huge amount of room to do offensive/trolly things in the context of, say, an atari 2x pokey song. whereas the human voice format is almost infinitely open to tomfoolery in that regard.

dunno! i like the chiptones and the remixes and i feel that our excursions into other directions (doom wad, html) have been pointless at best.

can't tell to what extent this post is just a kneejerk reaction to people annoying me in irc and to what extent it's a sensible thing to say. oh well. u decide

xx

yes, i would be very sad if music formats got banned, even nsf as i'm finally getting the hang of it. i'd also like to learn some new formats like pokey, adlib, sid, and maybe all the deflemask ones

you can never really go wrong with music because there are so many talented musicians here :)

i don't think music formats are in any danger of being eliminated haha

> I'm not entirely sure how well this would be received but maybe a 4k or a 1k module format?

1k is pretty hard to make something decent with. It's doable, but you end up with stupid-short songs.


also, I would be for making fSound the beeper format

I don't think many people would care if Mario Paint was eliminated. :X

My heart breaks for pixel OHC.

mario paint is great

there's ways to make music other than mario paint?

If you talk shit about Mario Paint it is instant ban.

Mario Paint has a special place in my heart. Christmas 1992. First SNES console and that game. Life-altering stuff. I love the fact that we have that format here!

mario painted me in the nude, strobe. then he fucked me in an old car on a boat. i cried when i had to drown him afterward.

mario painted my boomboom shed and did a terrible job. i didn't pay him a dime.

mario-paint me like one of your french girls

not a fan of the new rule. makes it harder / impossible to branch out and be interesting

there are far too many s3xmodit / nsfplus entries already. now there will be lots more

baby / bathwater

just my £0.01296 :(((

I do see the idea puke7 had implementing this. It is clever, but perhaps a little too prohibitive, I agree.

What if it was a little less restrictive for the less popular (not NSF, NSF+, S3XMODIT or pixel) formats?

Or less restrictive for mighty BotBrs / proportional to level?

This will be rather interesting for me... I just made my tenth s3xmodit entry. This is going to take me a few years to be able to host anything else if I don't participate in OHCs hosted by others... not to mention there are some formats that haven't seen enough appearances to have OHCs hosted by anyone.

Admins can host any format. If you want a less popular format for an OHB, request it from an Admin! :D/

I am at a loss, here... I don't understand what problem is being addressed. Were less common formats a problem for BotB? Is the goal to make these formats more rare?

If you want to stop me from abusing the chipbattle format to protest the removal of pixel format, well, I wouldn't do it again, but if you want to punish me for it, you can ban or parasite me. I am alright with that. If there is a problem with specific people, isn't there a more specific solution that you can apply directly?

Telling me to bug an admin if I want to battle in a format I haven't already done 10 times is kind of... it's a big barrier to entry for a number of reasons. Aside from reducing the number of people who are available to host from many to very few (hosting is a commitment to be available for about 90 minutes), you've eliminated the hostist point incentives, but most importantly you've eliminated the battle host incentive.

I dunno, run your site how you please, but I think this will only make OHCs less enjoyable in the future by reducing their variety, and that variety is one of the big things that drew me to this place. I love to battle in formats I haven't done much, and they were so rare already, and more than half the time I'm not available when they happen...

Yeah, i honestly agree with rainwarrior. I can understand raising the boon deposit and the parasite feature but with this new restriction, most of the compos we have will just be sexmod/nsf. I mean asking an admin is nice but it seems like it would be better to have control of your compo rather than just giving it to someone else. I think adding the parasite ailment is probably the best solution for preventing hosting misbehaviour and even raising the boon deposit but I honestly can't agree with "you have to do 10 compos with this format before you can host it" feature. It just narrows down the variety of compos we could have and takes the incentive to host away.

Increase boon deposit = good idea
10 entry prerequisite = ouch

I think the only thing I have reached that prerequisite with in the year and a half I've been here is NSF and maybe Remix/Allgear, maybe.

How about 6?
:)

I'm not sure what doing it by category even does.

I barely ever post in these threads but I do agree, and I voiced it since it was implanted, that I hate the idea of 10 entry prerequisite. BotB has changed a lot since I first came, and I like that, and most of the new rules are good. But this is too limiting, and I'm too used to the non-stop s3xmodit or nsf compos to bear it more. BotB's life is the members and they shouldn't have to rely on an admin to do what the purpose of BotB is; which is arguably to create music on various hardware.

I suggest this: cleaning up the formats, which is being done quite well, thanks for that. Changing the OHB entry cap into a level cap, but then again since the boon input is higher a new member wouldn't have the boons to start an OHB anyways...wasn't this the point of making the new boon cost?

I'm sure we can't make every good member perfectly happy, but we can try.

So we were sort of discussing this in the IRC channel but I think we should have some sort of programming format. Like the bitpack would be "make a program that does this" and maybe there would be a rule on what language (or just have a bunch of programming languages as different battle formats).

I mean it would really fit here, there are a lot of experienced programmers here already (and n00bz like me could learn how to program) and we already have other aspects of the demoscene here like music and art, so why not coding? I think it would be a fun experience to test out others' programs and voting could probably be which is the easiest to use and how well a program works.

Maybe the points you get are codist points or programmist points?

Actually, that gives me an idea. I propose a "trial format" compo type, where the file format and rules are to be specified entirely by the bitpack. The goal being a trial run of a new format type, or a one-off of a format that is only going to be done once but still is worth doing.

Of course, there is potential for abuse as a "submit anything" format, but people who do this can get parasites. Or actually it might work pretty well as an admins-only format. (I don't feel this way about established formats, but something like this I think is fine to restrict to admins; since the subject format is unbounded, it might be good to have oversight.)

I dunno what kinda points you'd get, maybe "experimenalist"? Actually, since Doom WAD will probably never come up again, and was basically a trial format in itself, you could rename "mappist" points to "experimentalist" and carry on from there.

Hey guys, I think you've started talking in the not appropriate thread. :x

He started it!

I was thinking about expanding Doom WAD into a format that allows maps for any game that has map modding functionality. The game to be used would obviously be specified by the bitpack (no "submit anythings" allowed!!) Then it might get used a bit more!!

Imagine if we had Hammer compos.

Impersonate Jan Hammer compo