eytanz
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Ok! Poll time. It's time to judge the entries for the Ortho Square Mod Pageant. Here are the rules:

1 - Judge entries by one criterion - how much you'd like to see them as the actual ortho square in the game. For reference, I've included the original DROD ortho square in the poll. Please rate it under the same criteria (but it can't win).

Warning - the rating associated with each entry is found below the entry's name. The first rating is for the unmodified ortho square. Make sure you vote in the right place!

2 - Entry authors should give their entry/entries 10, but should judge all other entires fairly.

3 - I'm including a quick-and-dirty hold I created so I can see how the ortho squares look like on multiple floor/wall types. If anyone wants to create a better hold for this purpose, they are free to share it.

5 - The poll will last for two weeks.

6 - Other than that, just normal contest etiquette, please.

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Technical instructions on how to view the entries in the game:

1 - Download the zip file with all the entries below, and unzip it in the "data\bitmaps" directory in your DROD installation.
2 - With DROD closed, open the drod.ini file found in the "data" directory. Look for a section that looks like this:

General=GeneralTiles
Style1=Style1
Style2=Style2
Style3=Style3

And add lines after each "Style" line so it looks like this:

General=GeneralTiles
Style1=Style1
Style1=oc_entry1a
Style2=Style2
Style2=oc_entry1b
Style3=Style3
Style3=oc_entry1c

This will let you use the ortho squares for entry 1.

3 - To view another entry, close DROD, and modify DROD.ini to read the lines to read "entry2a" (or "entry2b" or "entry2c") in the appropriate places, and so forth for the other entries.

(For consistency's purpose, all entries are treated as if they have varieties for each style, whether or not there really are differences like that).

4 - To return to the unmodded ortho square, just delete the lines you added in step 2.

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[Last edited by eytanz at 01-28-2007 07:02 PM]

eytanz
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File: Ortho contest.zip (44.1 KB)
Downloaded 148 times.
License: Public Domain

Here are all the entries in a zip file

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eytanz
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File: Ortho_testing_ground.hold (877 bytes)
Downloaded 72 times.
License: Public Domain

And here is a testing hold.

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eytanz
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Note regarding entry 6 - After I posted the poll, I noticed two things about this entry -

A - It is the only entry that screwed up on the transparency.
B - I'm not even sure if it was meant as one, 3-style entry, or 3 separate submissions (it came in a zip file with 3 files and no instructions).

Because the transparency issue probably trumps everything else, and it arises from not paying attention to a very clear warning in the instructions I posted (i.e., that if you don't leave at least one corner tile transparent, transparency won't work at all), I'm going to leave things as they are for the purposes of the contest. But if the entry author wants to submit a fixed version I'd encourage him to do so since I think that it is one of the more original variants out there.

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Tahnan
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I know it's by and large against policy, but can an appeal be made to Erik to allow screenshots to be posted for this? I mean, I just downloaded 102 files, and the thought of all that moving-and-renaming makes my head hurt. To say nothing of people like Elfstone, who are hesitant to do any such mucking around with files.

eytanz
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What moving and renaming? All you need to do is to modify the ini file.

I'd be hesitant to use screenshots because screenshots for 17 entries over 3 styles = 51 screenshots. Which is a lot of screenshots, and not really time-saving or anything like that anyway.

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Doom
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I think that screenshots would be fairly time-saving, actually.

With one huge picture (maybe a [3-4]x[3-4] -tile area for each entry and style showing a few different situations with the new tiles), you could see what each entry looks like in-game without downloading any of the files or changing the ini file repeatedly.

Stefan
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I found it easier to modify the ini once, and then copy the png-files (changing the name at the same time) to the correct location. Didn't take too long (all mods checked in about two hours). I suppose you need UNIX commands to do this efficiently, though.

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Briareos
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Stefan wrote:
I found it easier to modify the ini once, and then copy the png-files (changing the name at the same time) to the correct location. Didn't take too long (all mods checked in about two hours). I suppose you need UNIX commands to do this efficiently, though.

Yeah, but with decent screenshots you could vote here in five to ten minutes, tops - without having to edit the file, run DROD, play some hold that shows the ortho tiles and quit DROD again, over and over.

Sorry to say it, but I know I won't participate in this poll because it's far too much work for too little improvement.

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Stefan
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Here's my quick comments on each entry. My vote was based on choice of colours (how well the colours fit in with the other elements), how easy the squares are to distinguish in a checkered or irregular pattern, and general look (Is the square too invasive (hard to see what's beneath it)? Does it visually show its function? Does it look nice? etc.).

Unmodded: It's difficult to distinguish these in a checkered/irregular pattern.
Score: 4

Entry 1: An interesting concept that mostly works pretty well (it gets in the way sometimes). I can't say I like the colours, though.
Score: 7

Entry 2: The colours go quite well with each theme, but the squares get too crowded.
Score: 5

Entry 3: Same as entry 2 - Colours ok, but they take up far too much space.
Score: 4

Entry 4: I liked this one. The colours go pretty well with nearly everything, and it's pretty easy to distinguish checkered/irregular patterns.
Score: 9

Entry 5: Not very different from entry 4. Pretty easy to distinguish and neither the size nor the colours are invasive.
Score: 8

Entry 6: Very difficult to see on some elements (Foundation and Deep Spaces walls, for instance).
Score: 5

Entry 7: Colours relatively ok, but it takes up so much of the square that it makes the room look really crowded and some elements hard to see.
Score: 4

Entry 8: One of my favourite entries (and also quite similar - if not identical - to mine). The Foundation colours should be changed a little, though.
Score: 8

Entry 9: Seems to be made by the same author as entry 8. The colours are similar (and thus the Foundation color is a bit off here as well).
Score: 8

Entry 10: Colours are such that it blends in with some floor types/elements.
Score: 6

Entry 11: Too large, and the Foundation colours are, like entry 8 and 9, a bit off.
Score: 6

Entry 12: The concept is quite good (although it's a bit crowded), but the colour makes me want to claw my eyes out.
Score: 3

Entry 13: Works in most cases (both colours and concept), although it blends in with some elements (checkpoints, for instance).
Score: 7

Entry 14: My entry. The colours are the same as the unmodded one. I'd give it an 8 or a 9 (it's perhaps slighty too large).
Score: 10

Entry 15: It's really difficult to see where you can move if you're in a checkered or irregular pattern of these.
Score: 4

Entry 16: A bit too invasive, and the colours clash with some other elements.
Score: 6

Entry 17: Suffers from some of the same problems as entry 15 (difficult to see in checkered/irregular patterns), but is slightly better. The colours are ok, but not with all elements.
Score: 5

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Stefan
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Briareos wrote:
Yeah, but with decent screenshots you could vote here in five to ten minutes, tops - without having to edit the file, run DROD, play some hold that shows the ortho tiles and quit DROD again, over and over.

No you couldn't, or at least I couldn't. The total time spent changing mods was somewhere around 15 minutes (about 50 seconds for each change, including exiting DROD and re-entering the level editor). The rest of the time was spent evaluating the entries.

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coppro
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maybe a shell script...

eytanz
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Stefan wrote:

Briareos wrote:
Yeah, but with decent screenshots you could vote here in five to ten minutes, tops - without having to edit the file, run DROD, play some hold that shows the ortho tiles and quit DROD again, over and over.

No you couldn't, or at least I couldn't. The total time spent changing mods was somewhere around 15 minutes (about 50 seconds for each change, including exiting DROD and re-entering the level editor). The rest of the time was spent evaluating the entries.

It didn't take me any longer than that to do any of the switching - what I did was keep notepad open on the ini file, and I would enter DROD, evaluate the tiles, leave DROD, change the ini file (3 seconds), save it without closing notepad, and re-open DROD. Opening and closing DROD was the only time consuming part of this.

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Stefan
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eytanz wrote:
Opening and closing DROD was the only time consuming part of this.

Same with me. Edit: That is, opening and closing DROD was the only time-consuming part of switching mods.

coppro wrote:
maybe a shell script...

I used the one-liner

for i in `seq 1 17`; do for j in a b c; do cp -fv ~/drod/ortho/oc_entry"$i""$j".png ./Ortho_"$j".png; done; read; done

Perhaps not very pretty, but it works. Pressing Enter changes to the next mod...

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[Last edited by Stefan at 01-29-2007 04:42 PM]

Elfstone
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Tahnan wrote:
. . . and the thought of all that moving-and-renaming makes my head hurt. To say nothing of people like Elfstone, who are hesitant to do any such mucking around with files.

Thanks for your consideration Tahnan

I have to say I couldn't cope with the idea of fighting my way through the instructions for inserting them - I wasnt even sure if the instructions given applied to Macs. For all Syntax's comments about me being Terminal-savvy, ( ) . . .well, I'm not! I didn't want to do anything that might risk messing up DROD again and I didn't think it significant enough to try the patience of people here by getting them to 'talk' me through the process.

So, I confess I have voted without seeing any of the mods in situ. I tried hard to imagine them on the various floors and voted as fairly as I could. If that is considered inappropriate, I'm sure someone here must have the power to remove votes and I'll happily PM a list of my votes.

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igusarov
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Talking about the screenshots, I would suggest judging the entries not only by how they look in some synthetic hold, but also how they look in some real hold.

I find the following rooms useful when judging the entries:

piderman
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I found it a bit unfortunate that there were several entries that I found quite well done, but only had one style. So they looked very good in one style but horrible in the other. That was too bad since with a little effort for two other styles they would have gotten even higher scores from me

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[Last edited by piderman at 01-29-2007 09:55 PM : typo]

Tahnan
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Stefan wrote:

coppro wrote:
maybe a shell script...

I used the one-liner [...] Perhaps not very pretty, but it works. Pressing Enter changes to the next mod...

I admit, I ended up using something similar (specifically a Python script: when I hit enter, copy the next three files to 'ortho-a, ortho-b, ortho-c'). It's particularly handy to know that if you don't modify the .ini, you don't have to quit DROD; quitting the editor and going back into the editor suffices to reset the image.

A few notes on how I voted:

Interestingly, I used nearly the full range of numbers this time around; "3" was the only rating I didn't give.

My lowest scores went to #7 and #12 (2 and 1, respectively); I had experimented with a + shape running through the center of the cell, and decided that it ended up being incredibly misleading as to where the squares were. (#12 had the added disadvantage of being the "Mr. Yuk" color.)

In general, I preferred things that were less intrusive towards the center of the cell. For instance, #16 just came in too far for my taste. A corollary, I think, is that the farther something came in, the more its meeting at the corners looked like a square instead of a corner (see above). At the other extreme was #5, which I liked because it defined the corners as corners.

Other than that, no hard and fast rules; just, did I like the color, did I like the shape, etc. I thought #6, though broken, had some particularly nice aspects (the pinwheel-symmetry of the ice mod, for instance); and I'm not positive I wouldn't prefer walking across featureless grey floor (without knowing whether it was tile or trapdoor) to looking at Mr. Yuk crosses.

UrAvgAzn
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Grr... I accidentally clicked View Results without voting... Could an admin undo this for me? Thanks..

Keep posting,

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eytanz
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1 more week of voting - if you are like me and tend to forget to vote if you don't do it right away, I hope this will serve as a good reminder

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eytanz
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This your "there's just under 2 days left and there's a tie for 1st place" voting reminder.

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eytanz
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And... Results are in!

First, I thought the contest went really well - we got 17 entries, and all were really good. To give you a general impression, 14 out of the 17 entries rated higher than the original DROD 2.0 ortho square! This was partially because the original author of that square didn't follow his own instructions and rank it a 10, but that would only have bumped it up one space, if that. So, great work all around.

And, without further ado - I'd like to congratulate the winners of the 1st (and probably last) Ortho Square Mod Poll. And the top three winners were:

1st place tie - Entry 2, by piderman
1st place tie - Entry 14, by Stefan (tie)
Runner up - Entry 4, by Watcher

pidermand and Stefan will get 25 rank points each. Watcher gets 10, and everyone else who participates gets 3 rank points. Since they're getting them from me and not a real admin, they'll also get mod points to go with them.

And I'm also happy to announce that Mike has decided to use entry 14 as the new official ortho square for DROD 3.0! So hopefully, when playing TCB, a lot less squinting at the screen to look for gaps in ortho square fields. (Disclaimer - even though the entry is public domain, if Stefan has any objections to the use of his entry in DROD 3.0, it won't be used).

Note also that I'm leaving up the entries above, so if you want to use any of them as a mod while playing - feel free.

Full ranking table follows:

1 - Entry 2 (piderman) 7.25
1 - Entry 14 (Stefan) 7.25
3 - Entry 4 (Watcher) 7.17
4 - Entry 9 (Tahnan) 7.08
5 - Entry 5 (Watcher) 6.91
6 - Entry 8 (Tahnan) 6.83
7 - Entry 3 (piderman) 6.33
8 - Entry 1 (igusarov) 6.08
8 - Entry 13 (UrAvgAzn) 6.08
10 - Entry 11 (Elfstone) 5.83
11 - Entry 10 (Coppro) 5.66
12 - Entry 15 (Beef Row) 5.59
13 - Entry 16 (Kevin_P86) 5.5
13 - Entry 17 (Jason) 5.5
15 - DROD 2.0 Ortho Square (eytanz) 5.3
16 - Entry 7 (Christine83) 4.66
17 - Entry 12 (Larrymurk) 4.41
18 - Entry 6 (Dali) 3.41


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Stefan
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eytanz wrote:
And I'm also happy to announce that Mike has decided to use entry 14 as the new official ortho square for DROD 3.0! So hopefully, when playing TCB, a lot less squinting at the screen to look for gaps in ortho square fields. (Disclaimer - even though the entry is public domain, if Stefan has any objections to the use of his entry in DROD 3.0, it won't be used).

The image is and continues to be in the public domain, so I've legally given up my right(s) to complain. I just find it pretty cool that it'll get used, especially considering that I whipped it together in about 15 minutes...

A stroke of luck/genius, I guess.


As an aside (and I probably shouldn't say it at all): had there been a tie-breaker, I would have expressed my general dislike of entry 2 by telling people to look at The Palace of Puzzles - JtRH Remake : Upper Floor : 2 South, 2 East.

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eytanz
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Stefan wrote:

eytanz wrote:
And I'm also happy to announce that Mike has decided to use entry 14 as the new official ortho square for DROD 3.0! So hopefully, when playing TCB, a lot less squinting at the screen to look for gaps in ortho square fields. (Disclaimer - even though the entry is public domain, if Stefan has any objections to the use of his entry in DROD 3.0, it won't be used).

The image is and continues to be in the public domain, so I've legally given up my right(s) to complain.

True, but the point was that Mike was extending the courtesy of asking anyway. He's allowed to use it without your permission, but prefers not to.

Still, I must confess that we would have been rather surprised had you actually said no.

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Kevin_P86
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Stefan wrote:
As an aside (and I probably shouldn't say it at all): had there been a tie-breaker, I would have expressed my general dislike of entry 2 by telling people to look at The Palace of Puzzles - JtRH Remake : Upper Floor : 2 South, 2 East.

I must say I agree - the images do look good, and they tile nicely, but I think they're just too ... busy, I guess, to be actually useful as an ortho square.

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piderman
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Stefan wrote:I just find it pretty cool that it'll get used, especially considering that I whipped it together in about 15 minutes...

As an aside (and I probably shouldn't say it at all): had there been a tie-breaker, I would have expressed my general dislike of entry 2 by telling people to look at The Palace of Puzzles - JtRH Remake : Upper Floor : 2 South, 2 East.

I must admit, mine took a bit longer to make but it was done at 3 am I was just bored and decided to make something for the contest, and was more than a little surprised that it came out a first place tie
You are right about the crowdedness but the idea was to make them hard to miss while still being (somewhat) aestethically pleasing. By the same token that in a room full of the squares mine would look crowded, if you have only 1 or 2 yours might be missed (though less so than the original ortho square ).
Anyways grats on having your art used in the game

Watcher
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eytanz wrote:
And I'm also happy to announce that Mike has decided to use entry 14 as the new official ortho square for DROD 3.0!

That's an excellent choice. It was definitely one of the best entries.

Two remarks on the contest:
It was quite difficult to find a good color for the Foundation variant. The other two are easy - blue and dark blue for Iceworks and orange and red for Deep Spaces - but the various Foundation elements have so many different colors that it's hard to find one that goes well with all of them. At one point I considered a green variant, but I ended up settling on light blue. Some other entries used purple, which I really didn't like.

My favorite design idea was actually the orthocross, as used by entries 7 and 12. Unfortunately both of them had issues with the colors (12 moreso than 7). The idea took a bit of getting used to, especially with large areas, but it actually looked quite neat. I particularly liked the look of serpents in an area covered with orthosquares.

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