Opf user mission creating competition...

[Uziyahu--IDF 0]

Sorry.  Read the rules.  Time given for recording one's own soundtrack and sound effects.

What about copyrighted materials where someone wrote a script and put a copyright 200X and their name somewhere in the script?

Or what about quoting source material?  Should we use MLA to document our sources?

Images?

Wait! So as soon as you have 10 judges the deadline falls for having our missions submitted? The rules were just posted!

[DracoPaladore 0]

Personally I'm not in it for the prizes.

No, really!

I can't wait. Just have to do my bio exam tomarrow, and BAM! Summer time!

[Asmodeus 0]

Ok,

I have a mission using custom music that my band made. The only thing stopping me from being able to submit it is this part:

Quote[/b] ]The submitted zip/rar must not exceed 3mb (for the sake of simplicity we're calling that 3000000bytes).

This is absolutely killing me! I have the perfect mission in mind for submission, but cannot make the song any shorter for various reasons. (This is at a bitrate of 80 Kbps) The mission size would be ~ 4 MB.

Placebo or any other person that can give me an official answer on this problem please advise. I'd like to be a part of this but don't want to make my song any lower quality... It'll end up sounding like crap!

Thanks,

Asmo

[DracoPaladore 0]

Isnt it possible to have a zip/rar in a zip/rar? As in, make a zip, put mission pbo in it, then place that zip in another. If you still need size, do it again.

[Asmodeus 0]

Uhm, I might have missed what you're saying there... How in the world could zipping it over and over make the file size smaller?

Asmo

[Jahve 0]

Isnt it possible to have a zip/rar in a zip/rar? As in, make a zip, put mission pbo in it, then place that zip in another. If you still need size, do it again.

If that was possible, why would anyone even INVENT cd burners?

[Garcia 0]

Missions must not contain any copyrighted material. That expressly includes (but is not limited) to music/sound effects.

Dang.

If the winning missions were going to be adopted as official missions, this rule would make sense.  It only serves to prevent our missions from having good soundtracks and sound effects.

At the beginning of this thread, the initiative seemed aimed to stimulate mission-finishing activity and we all know that many fine missions (e.g., TJ's) have already been made using copyrighted material.

Do you actually expect me to record a game-worthy version of any particular song by the 19th?

The rule actually works AGAINST the initial goal of the initiative.  I have some good mission ideas I might be able to whip up by then, but music and sound effects take time to make, and the 19th doesn't allow us that time.

So, I'll probably bow out of this contest because of one silly rule.

If the concern is that a winner might receive something in exchange for using someone else's music or sound effects without permission, then why not allow people to participate using copyrighted material while waiving any claim to the prize(s?).

I'd like to enter my mission and have it judged.  I don't care about the prize.

I don't think it would be good if BIS encouraged people to copyrighted material, since this would hit back on them if someone used i.e a Nightwish song and nightwish then wanted to do something about this, of course, I don't think someone would care. Also, since it would be illegal to use songs and stuff in your missions without permission, it wouldn't look good either if BIS encouraged people to do this. So it's not really a stupid rule, it's a rule that got to be there.

Quote[/b] ]Isnt it possible to have a zip/rar in a zip/rar? As in, make a zip, put mission pbo in it, then place that zip in another. If you still need size, do it again.

If you could just zip it over and over again you wouldn't have big zip files, would you? The thing is, once it's compressed, you can't compress it again, because it's already as compressed as it can be.

Quote[/b] ]Wait! So as soon as you have 10 judges the deadline falls for having our missions submitted? The rules were just posted!

ummmm, no? The deadline is 16th of august or something...

Garcia

[cozza 24]

Holy shit. Full VBS1. Now thats gotta be a prize. Well good luck all I I hope we have a fair compotition. Hopefully I get a signed T-shirt

[Placebo 28]

Would a mission lose playability points if you couldn't save it and load it later? If it did lose points, that would immediately eliminate using UA or large-scale command scripts .

If the mission is insanely difficult and you cannot save then it would be marked down for that, if the mission is well balanced then it shouldn't be a problem. Alternatively you could say that there are two months for some genius out there to come up with some kind of workaround to solve the saving problem  

So let's say someone releases his addons shortly before submitting his mission. What about those addons/missions?

hmm, just thought of one thing, if your addon turns out to be not completely done, and the mission hinges on it somehow... it could be detrimental to your overall score.

I would suggest that people stick to fairly established addons if they're concerned that addon stability is an issue, I don't mean they should use only BAS, only FDF, only CSLA or whatever, what I mean is IMO it would be a risk to include an addon that was released 2 days before the mission is submitted and is not fully tested. If your mission uses BAS and "Fred's Pizza Addon", yet it turns out those two conflict you will be marked down on playability.

Hmm, I would be happy if I just got the signed t-shirt Will you sign it placebo? Anyway, VBS won't run on my computer

Yup sure I'll be signing it, if it's specifically requested I can wear it a couple of days before wrapping & shipping it

One day you'll have a computer that runs VBS1, or you can use it as a great way to meet ladies, there's no greater chat up line than "would you like to see my VBS1 dongle, it's USB"

So, I'll probably bow out of this contest because of one silly rule.

Example: Stanley Richardson of Maine creates a mission using the song Two by Metallurgy, it's a splendid mission, he wins, we congratulate Stanley for winning the official competition, we put his mission on the official BIS website and everyone loves it, then one day the lead singer of Metallurgy "Lance Hullwealthy" (a keen CS player) is told about this mission that won an official competition and hosted on the official website, he talks to his manager, they sue us.

We live in a litigation society, we have no choice but to cover ourselves, I'm sorry if this decision upsets you but as much as this competition is to give something to the community BIS' future must be the most important factor.

What about copyrighted materials where someone wrote a script and put a copyright 200X and their name somewhere in the script?

Or what about quoting source material?  Should we use MLA to document our sources?

Images?

I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know the true legal standing of saying "I copyright this" in relation to a script in a game where all content copyright basically belongs to BIS, if in doubt get the author's permission and you'll be peachy

With regard to images or anything else, if it is copyrighted it can't be used.

Wait!  So as soon as you have 10 judges the deadline falls for having our missions submitted?  The rules were just posted!

Whooaaah hold your horses there Either you read too quick or I didn't write very clear, the competition runs until August 16th, I will accept judges applications until August 16th, unless I have enough judges. Then I will no longer be accepting applications for judges.

I have a mission using custom music that my band made.  The only thing stopping me from being able to submit it is this part:

Quote[/b] ]The submitted zip/rar must not exceed 3mb (for the sake of simplicity we're calling that 3000000bytes).

This is absolutely killing me!     I have the perfect mission in mind for submission, but cannot make the song any shorter for various reasons.  (This is at a bitrate of 80 Kbps)  The mission size would be ~ 4 MB.

The limit was set at 2mb until Bart talked me into increasing it

I can only suggest you either use less of the song and cut just the part you need or use a lower bitrate, I can understand that you want your band to sound good but the focus here really should be about the quality of your mission, not about showcasing your band, if the music can be heard then that's fine, I really wouldn't stress about anything beyond that

Isnt it possible to have a zip/rar in a zip/rar? As in, make a zip, put mission pbo in it, then place that zip in another. If you still need size, do it again.

Yes it is possible but once a file has reached it's maximum compression rate it won't get smaller no matter how many times you package it.

[Uziyahu--IDF 0]

Uhm, I might have missed what you're saying there...  How in the world could zipping it over and over make the file size smaller?  

Asmo

I think compression is basically a system of removing needless bits, isn't it? So if you compress it once at maximum compression, packing the .zip in another .zip won't decrease the size much, if any.

[hoink 0]

Regarding the copyrighted material: Can we use Flashpoint's own sounds? I'm talking especially about the voice recordings that can be found when decompressing the campaign pbo's. Are these sound files usable or do they belong into the copyrighted category?

Thanks in advance.

[MEDICUS 0]

Regarding the copyrighted material: Can we use Flashpoint's own sounds? I'm talking especially about the voice recordings that can be found when decompressing the campaign pbo's. Are these sound files usable or do they belong into the copyrighted category?

Thanks in advance.

Good question. Do they belong to the copyrighted category?

Mfg MEDICUS

[drow 0]

of course not guys, BIS owns those sounds,

what are they gonna sue them selves? :P

[Garcia 0]

Regarding the copyrighted material: Can we use Flashpoint's own sounds? I'm talking especially about the voice recordings that can be found when decompressing the campaign pbo's. Are these sound files usable or do they belong into the copyrighted category?

Thanks in advance.

Umm, Placebo said and I quote:

Quote[/b] ]Example: Stanley Richardson of Maine creates a mission using the song Two by Metallurgy, it's a splendid mission, he wins, we congratulate Stanley for winning the official competition, we put his mission on the official BIS website and everyone loves it, then one day the lead singer of Metallurgy "Lance Hullwealthy" (a keen CS player) is told about this mission that won an official competition and hosted on the official website, he talks to his manager, they sue us.

Since the sound from OFP belongs to BIS, it wouldn't be too smart to sue themself, would it?

Garcia

[xezon 0]

Hi all,

I heard of this competition and read the rules on the BIS site's link. I noticed, that we have to make a mission, which is smaller than 3 MB. I think this file size is too low for a perfect Mission and that won't be work. Let's look at the official mission 02Infantry.Abel.pbo - it's 7,885 MB large! So, if it is not allowed to make missions bigger than 5 MB, many mappers can't make missions on the CWC niveau! And there's something else: keep in mind that BIS uses Music and Sounds, too - in their Music.pbo & Sounds.pbo!

So please think about that and give us mor freedom!

Thanks, xezon

[MrZig 0]

I dunno, what if BIS sued BIS for like 1 million dollars? Then BIS would get 1 million dollars!.... From BIS.

ooh I see

[Poitevin 0]

I love seminara's banner, too bad he submitted it so late!

I was not able to post my submission, I knwo it is too late but here it is anyway (it is a codemater theme banner)!

sorry for being a bit offtopic now as the contest is over!

[m21man 0]

Quote[/b] ]So, if it is not allowed to make missions bigger than 5 MB, many mappers can't make missions on the CWC niveau!

No, missionmakers just have to use custom sounds sparingly.

[ThruYerStErNuM 0]

I can't imagine using 3mb worth of scripts, but if anyone somehow did, I can tell you their mission would probably be so good you wouldnt think about whats coming out of your speakers.

This is also very good for all the 56kers who dont download the large numbers of missions available mainly because of the size.

I would be ok with a 2mb limitation

It should be noted that there is still lots of good free music out there that is not copyrighted.

[xezon 0]

Quote[/b] ]So, if it is not allowed to make missions bigger than 5 MB, many mappers can't make missions on the CWC niveau!

No, missionmakers just have to use custom sounds sparingly.

Sounds boring if every mission based on old things   .

If there's no possibility for larger file sizes I won't take part at this competition.  

Cya...

Edit:

It seems that everyone is crying about large mission files - but big addon packages are still ok! I can't understand this. You want good missions? Then let the missionmakers work! If not, you will get "bullshit" to play. That's my statement.

[vektorboson 8]

Quote[/b] ]So, if it is not allowed to make missions bigger than 5 MB, many mappers can't make missions on the CWC niveau!

No, missionmakers just have to use custom sounds sparingly.

Sounds boring if every mission based on old things   .

If there's no possibility for larger file sizes I won't take part at this competition.  

Cya...

Edit:

It seems that everyone is crying about large mission files - but big addon packages are still ok! I can't understand this. You want good missions? Then let the missionmakers work! If not, you will get "bullshit" to play. That's my statement.

More KBs or MBs don't make a mission good.

And anyway, why don't you make your own sound and voice addon and use it in your mission. I don't see any rule that prohibits this.

[m21man 0]

Quote[/b] ]If there's no possibility for larger file sizes I won't take part at this competition.

Good, for every person who drops out in a huff, up go my chances of winning a prize .

Besides, sounds do not make a mission good or bad. They only serve as icing on the cake.

Quote[/b] ]It seems that everyone is crying about large mission files - but big addon packages are still ok!

Because the cores of large addon packages are detailed models and textures, whereas the cores of missions are SQS, SQF, and SQM files.

[hardrock 1]

I'm a 56k user, but I wouldn't mind if the allowed file size were about 4 or 5MB.

Lately I downloaded mapfact's latest mission, "Mission dream factory", it's 3.5MB but it's definitly one of the best, if not the best mission I ever played. Unfortunately it's only in German (yet?), but it's truly great! And for such missions I wouldn't hesitate a second to download ~4MB if it were necessary!

It was too bad if such missions couldn't participate in the contest.

[MEDICUS 0]

Sounds boring if every mission based on old things   .

If there's no possibility for larger file sizes I won't take part at this competition.  

I always use custom music/sound/voices in my (MP)Missions and never hab a mission bigger than 1.5MB (music is normaly about 70-90 sec).

And m21man is definitly right ... the file-size has nothing to do with quality.

Quote[/b] ]

...You want good missions? Then let the missionmakers work! If not, you will get "bullshit" to play. That's my statement.

Sorry, but his is a strange statements. As i just said ... file-size hads nothing to do with this. I use "original" Soundfiles (like voices out of the campagne), too ... the difference is just the way you use it.

About the 2MB limitation:

I'm (fortunately) using DSL, so i've really no problem to dl big files, but i can really understand all modem/56k users that they don't like it. So this limit of size is no problem for me.

Mfg MEDICUS  

[drow 0]

sound *can* = atmosphere...

limited sound *can* = limited amosphere...

Sound is the key for immersion in my opinion, if used correctly.

I also think its a shame to put the bar so low, 5MB i would say would be a bar that EVERYONE would be able to stay under and still make the best "mission" possible.

Remember... they are only allowed to make one mission (no campaign as far as I know), so they must try to sqeeze a whole movie into a 30 second commercial... its sad that we wont be able to see "no holds barred", "skys the limit" type missions...