::|CONTENTS
- History
- BotB 1.0
- BotB 2.0
- BotB 2.5
BotB, shorthand for Battle of the Bits, is the site you're on right now. It was created back in 2005 by
puke7 as a way to host
25 Samples 48 Hours-Battles and has grown a lot since then. It offers digital art competitions with an RPG feel in the form of
battles. Register to become a
BotBr, level up, and unlock more features.
To learn more about this site, check out the articles
1 I Registered-Now what and
Home Bunk.
History
It began before this site was initially created. Veterans of hip-hop band Cloud Nine Music, Mike Blank and Justin Brewer challenged each other in the summer of 2002 to compose a better track in an hour with a computer. The following year,
blank and
puke7 were hosting a compo called "Ann Arbor International Electronic Music Composition Competition" (A2IEMC2) in May 2003. It was held locally in the former 555 spot in the technology center/perf net.
The second compo was 6 months later in November of 2003. Originally planned to be at the 555 newer headquarters in Ypsi, hence the name Ypsi-Arbor International Electronic Music Composition Competition.
Unfortunately, due to a flyering incident invovling Spaghetti the clown, the 555 had to cancel all events.
The YAIEMC2 was moved to the basement of
blank's neighbors on third street.
The third Compo was held at the Blind Pig in may of 2004. Again called the A2IEMC2, the current magazine reporter called it the Battle of the Bits. The name stuck. The compo was a huge sucess with 33 entries and over 200 people in attendance. Composers had 48 hours to compose one track no longer than four minutes and 44 seconds, using only 25 sound samples provided by Blank.
In the following year, 2005, puke7 created this page and the battle engine to make it easier for everyone to submit samples and songs and also to vote on them.
Detroit I was the first compo to be held on BotB and
Ann Arbor IV followed in the same year.
Around Winter 2006, the first
Winter Chip battle was hosted, which started an annual tradition of chiptune battles which are still a thing up until this point with no end in sight.
End of 2006, BotB made it possible to host One Hour Compos (now called
One Hour Battles), which are small themed battle where you have to create music or art within the given hour. The community of BotB devolped.
# To be continued
BotB 1.0
The early days of BotB! The page was launched in May 2005 and it was just enough to start hosting the first Detroit Compo with user signup and sample uploads. The rest of what was needed to finish the battle was rolled out just in time. Take a look at how the website looked like back in
2005 or half a year later when it had full battle support
here.
[If you're an old User, please insert more useful information about early BotB here!]
BotB 2.0
A complete rewrite of BotB made in 2008 and launched in 2009. The idea was to recreate this website from scratch to improve the page loading speed and make developing new features easier. BotB started to use AJAX for slot loading. It also added
Boons as it's own currency to move another step into becoming a role playing game. Because the rewrite was made public step by step and the OHB-Engine took some more time, there were no OHBs in most of 2009.
[More information soon!]
BotB 2.5
In early 2013, due to some
events involving bug abuse and similar uncool behaviour, a bunch of new admin features were added to the page to make it more secure towards troll behaviour. New ailments were added. The OHB Hosting Concept was revised. You can read a lot about this
here.
