'[t[1]'[t[b3]What is a OHC?'[/t]

OHC it's an acronym that stands for a One Hour Competition. This means a competition lasting an hour only (exceptions to this further down) OHC's have variants and these depend on three things, which are "the sample pack", "the extra rules" and "the format" to be used for each competition (formats include ALLGEAR, SAP, NSF, S3XMODIT, MOD and Mario Paint) and these three things are planned before each OHC is started by their participants. OHC's are planed on the IRC channel when "players" are willing to do them and a minimun of three players are participating.


'[t[b3]OHC's have 3 stages:'[/t]
1. The Countdown
2. Composing and uploading entry time
3. Voting time


'[t[b3]The Countdown:'[/t]
During this time a Countdown timer is set while the particular sample pack for the competition is prepared by one of the players. This guarantees (hopefully) that no one can be ahead of others time-wise nor that players use a previous work done on their own time (we trust either participant or player doing the parck not to cheat on us :D) Also during this time players should ideally finish up whatever they are doing at the moment (work, food, games, and a long etc) in order to get ready to participate and set up their own tools. The Countdown timer usually is set to thirty minutes at most and once it reaches zero minutes the sample pack is released to the public.'[l[http://battleofthebits.com/ohc.php[linktext]


'[t[b2]Competition time:'[/t]
During this time the sample pack is provided to the users for their tunes. It officially last sixty minutes only. There might be times in which the page or the players have problems or the users need some *little* extra time to finish up their songs and upload them to the BOTB server, time in which a brief lapsus of 2-4 minutes is added.

During this time you're allowed to chat on the IRC channel (of course) but please be aware not to hint people on your songs in order to simply "win."

'[t[b2]The so called *Sample pack*:'[/t]
Means that a pack of sounds and samples will be used for that particular competition. If a sample pack is provided, it *must* be used. They are provided when the Countdown timer has reached zero minutes on the OHC page in either *.ZIP or *.RAR format for each player to use.

'[t[b2]Themes:'[/t]
means that if there is a theme set, each player should make a track (a song) that has something to do with the theme, that relates somehow to the theme set.

'[t[b2]Formats'[/t]
OHC's have various format that ranges from *.NSF (Nintendo Sound Format), *.MOD (Module file format), S3XMODIT (can be either of *.XM, *.IT, *.S3M, *.MOD) or even SNES' Mario paints (zsnes + mario paint rom as a tracker)

'[t[b3]Extra rules:'[/t]
These are defined right before the competition and the players|participants must all agree to them in order to participate. This are usually "limitations" on notes, tones, samples, for a particular system|tracking application and they are very tight and specific.


The following things should be considered as well for OHC's
* You *may not* include *any* others samples on your songs. Only use what is on the the sample pack provided and the features of the tool used (if the special rules allow so)
* Do not include information about you on your song (your name, nickname or other info about yourself) This is done so that players remain anonymous and no votes are given based purely on a name|reputation
* One hour compos last an hour. When time reaches zero minutes, Voting Time begins.
* Covers are not allowed.


'[t[b3]Voting time:'[/t]
Voting time should not be long because it's just a small competition. Also there is no time to listen to each tune 2-4 times or even compare between them all much. Because of this decisions should be taken fast on a scale that goes from 1 (bad) to 7 (Excellent). It's usually agreed that 4 is neither excellet nor bad...just "fine."

High scores are bound to how much a player adhered to the rules set for that particular OHC (format, theme, usage of the sample packs, and any other extra rules set) in order to get high votes besides "just" great and amazing melodies of course. A great melody can only get you so far, but if you didn't follow the theme nor used the sample pack enough or simply didn't follow any extra rules expect 1's and 2's from participants and players.

'[t[b2]Who can vote? '[/t]
Players (people registered at the site who happen to submit an entry for that particular OHC) and participants (people registered at the site who didn't submit a song for the OHC but happened to be around on the IRC channel during the Voting Time)

Also, a player is not allowed to vote his|her own song on any competition.


'[t[b2]Voter Strenght:'[/t]
Voter Strenght is a "level" system among players and participants. This means that if an experienced user on the community gets involved a lot on competitions he|she will have a high Voter Strenght and his|her votes will have more "weight" (decision power if you will) on any competition than those of a player with a lower Voter Strenght. No, votes are not equal among players. If a players has a voting Strenght of x20 and another player has a Voting Strenght of x10 the vote of the player with the highest Voting Strenght will "weight" more than the vote of a player with a lower voting Strenght value.

This system is implemented to stop any given user from having multiple accounts and his|her own songs with high scores and at the same time from voting low scores on other players' songs. The "Voter Strenght" is a simple measurement to control that a new comer (a n00b if you will) to the community vote against every other player negatively in order to make his|her track "win"