Preliminary thread for STGT Gaiden 2

[KennyMan666]

(working title: STGT Gaiden 2: Doujin Re-Label: Doujin Harder)

Note: Everything in this post is preliminary and is subject to change based on feedback.

So!

Me and nasty_wolverine ran STGT Gaiden: Doujin Label last summer. It had issues. A lot of issues. Issues that, more than anything, we've learned from.

So, thusly, we intend to take the lessons we've learned and run a much improved STGT Gaiden 2 this year!

Early posting of the thread here is to figure out when we're going to run it. I said I wanted to shoot for early summer. And not collide with TRP-STGT. I heard that might be in April though, so we should be safe. What we're looking for here is when to start the first playing week.

Definitely out is any period that includes June 26th-July 7th, as I'll be at ESA then. My last day of university this semester is June 5th, so as for myself, I would want to run it after ESA. So, mid-July-ish. (signups should probably start 2-4 weeks before the first voting starts I guess) The length of the tournament I would assume to be 5 playing weeks, add some time for the initial voting and stuff, so let's be generous and say 6 weeks in total from closing of signups to end of tournament.

An improvement from last year we'll be trying to enforce is a more rigid week structure, so that voting always starts and finishes on the same day every week. Voting and playing will overlap a bit, but there's always be at least 24 hours between the closing of one playing week and the starting of the next.

Voting system will be patched. It's still one vote per team, but here's what I'm going to do with it - to avoid a situation when a captain is unresponsive, every player on a team can send a vote, and the team's vote will be for what the majority of players on that team sent. So, you can vote just like last year, just send one vote for the full team. In the case of multiple players on the team sending votes and there's a tie, the captain's vote will be the tiebreaker. But closed teams will be treated differently during signups this time too so w/e

Speaking of ties, we had a few last year. To reduce that this year, the number of games to vote for each week will be reduced from five to three. We'll also be testing each game better than we did last time.

So that's the basics of it. Opinions on date is what we want right now.

[BulletMagnet]

I'm not aware of anything offhand that would keep me from participating at any particular time, but I'll find a substitute figurehead for Team Loser Gaiden if something comes up.

[beatsgo]

In terms of what doujin games are available, you guys should test them a month or 2 ahead of time. This way, you can sift through the ones you believe won't be suitable for STGT Gaiden.

[Iori Branford]

We should make sure all games are playable out-of-the-zip, and only one zip. Whenever that isn't the case, we could create a ready-to-play package.

If the most readily available package is out of date, we provide an already-patched one.
If an emulator is needed, we provide a bundle with emulator + ROMs + the most playable and compatible configuration.

[BPzeBanshee]

If an emulator is needed, we provide a bundle with emulator + ROMs + the most playable and compatible configuration.

Not only is that against forum rules but defeats the point of this STGT to go with emulation-based games. If we *really* have to go this way we leave the ROMs out.

[Chaos Phoenixma]

Well when Blade Buster came up for STGT, it had the ROM distributed. But that's obviously a bit different since that was a legal ROM IIRC.

[system11]

We should make sure all games are playable out-of-the-zip, and only one zip. Whenever that isn't the case, we could create a ready-to-play package.

If the most readily available package is out of date, we provide an already-patched one.
If an emulator is needed, we provide a bundle with emulator + ROMs + the most playable and compatible configuration.

Yeah, you can't do that.

If you're going to go with games people probably don't actually own, and lets be realistic with arcade stuff that's the majority of them, what you can't do is link to ROMs.

It's that or stick only to purely free games.

[KennyMan666]

We're not going to do emulators wtf

Me and nasty have discussed briefly having non-freeware doujins, but at the moment I'm leaning towards no on it as we'd kinda be telling people to pirate. Okay, so, sure, regular STGT does that with everyone playing in MAME, but it's a tad different. But, like, one game I've been considering is a game that was sold, but I can't find any evidence for the circle that made the game even existing anymore and I'm fairly sure the game can't be bought anywhere at all anymore - would it be fine to upload that game, f'rinstance?

[Despatche]

getting the roms is a LOT easier than figuring out emulators and configurations

why not use emulators? that excludes pc-98 and x68000 games like kotsujin and scorpius, kinda lame. if you can run a recent doujin, you can run those games for sure

no, mame is not even remotely better, and i wish we'd realize this already. if anything, mame is worse because the whole thing about doujin is that most developers aren't really expecting profit or copies of their games to ever be for sale after a year or two. some developers now think there's mad money to be made with some touhou thing, and steam is supposedly helping certain people to actually make small profits, but none of this applies to older doujins.

[BrooksBishop]

If a game like Aeternum is something you're considering, you can hit me up over email and we can probably work something out.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Why not have an STGT for commercial doujins? As long as the list is published in advance, or maybe only have a couple commercial ones and not the entire game list, that'd give people time to get them working as well as get publicity for them to buy a copy. It doesn't always have to be freely accessible games or emulation. Most commercial PC shmups are only a few bucks, a very worthwhile entry fee.

[nasty_wolverine]

As system11 mentioned, we will not be linking roms or downloadables for commercial games, against the forum rules. any exceptions will have to be made by system11 himself, or if the creator agrees to distribute a few copies to the participants.

getting old dos/nec/x68000 games to run well on everybodies machine is going to be extremely painful. we can configure the emulators to our machines and then distribute that, but there is no guarantee it will work on your machine on first boot, again, if the game was commercial, you have to go and find a copy yourself. the freeware ones, i dont mind distributing emulators with the game, no guarantees it will work on eveybodies system.

as for commercial games, i am all for it. we will not be giving out downloads, you are free to find a copy for yourself. but the game has to be easy to find, and possibly purchase. this depends on mostly how interested the participants are for commercial games to be included. Because I would love to include a few really great doujins that are available on steam and elsewhere.

[KennyMan666]

There is now a poll question. Give your opinions.

(17:51:06) (nasty_woW) well, make it clear in the post, that if you guys do want commercial doujins, dont whine about how to get it

Edit: And I'm pretty sure we'll try to make sure that no matter what gets chosen, at least one game every week will be completely freeware. One week will also be entirely freeare, given what the theme of it will be (and it's the only week theme we're sure we're going to do, at this point).