#monthly modding contest (brainstorming phase)

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

lusty plaza
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Hello, this is a brainstorming thread for a monthly modding contest we want to make happen. Below are other people's and my current ideas, but please feel free to suggest changes and additions.

name

  • balathon
  • jimbofest
  • smeared joker jam
  • mystic modding summit
  • jimbo's carnival
  • monthly balatro modding contest

mode

prompt categories

  • theme
  • mechanic
  • theme + mechanic
  • only art?
  • only code?
  • multiple prompts per contest?

3 phases:

main (stolen from https://www.reddit.com/r/vexillology/wiki/contests/):

  • 1st to 18th of month: Contest Announced and Submission Accepted
  • 19th to 26th of month: Voting
  • 27th to end of month: Winners Announced

misc:

  • one thread per phase (and maybe an extra thread to collect theme ideas)
  • maybe winner chooses theme of next month?
  • solo and teams?

voting

  • through discord emotes in the voting thread
  • through some external app/site

prize

  • maybe no prize at all? (to avoid drama, legal stuff and taxes)
  • split prize 50/50 to a charity of choice?
  • we need prize pool collection tools/apps/sites
  • i'm able to contribute 50€ each month i guess
  • non monetary prizes? balatro merch prizes?
  • steam key of random game

possible themes for july

astral osprey
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sounds sigma

normal crown
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Could do where it would be new mods under a theme of sort to have some way to rank idk lol

lusty plaza
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Pinging all the people that I know were interested or at least participated in the first discussion about it (sorry): @vale oyster @shell crag @lapis onyx @wind trail @stoic hedge @jolly stratus

shell crag
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the prize should be steam key of random game

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mostly because then we can have multiple winners

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and basically if you mod balatro you're guaranteed to have steam anyway

jolly stratus
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i like mystic modding summit as a name tbh

shell crag
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about time we have a joker name for something that isn't a mod

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MMMS (monthly mystic modding summit)

lusty plaza
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after some time or once we get more name suggestions, i should probably start a vote here

shell crag
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most jams have either one vague prompt or two specific prompts you can pick from

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like Resets vs Castle/Forest

lusty plaza
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i still don't know how to actually take submissions btw

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like, if it's in a mod, we need to all install the mod?

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and should they be independent of other modded mechanics?

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like so independent that the submission is basically a code snippet and/or an asset, so that one could put it in a fresh mod, idk

maybe github is a better medium to actually collect submissions then, hmmm

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wait a sec, i have an idea:

each month, we have a new github repo, which starts out as a super basic mod template, like just the metadata file

submissions are collected by PRs, and we use Balatest or just manual basic testing to ensure no submission destroys another one or makes the mod crash at startup etc.

then, when the voting phase begins, everything should be merged and released, so people can try it out

only issue is that content should be presented roughly equally, so that every submission has equal chances

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this would obviously rule out submissions from people that would like to submit something from their mod, but then again idk how to solve this issue in any other way

shell crag
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might have to make a rule saying no lovely patches

lusty plaza
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yes and no - small patches might be manageable

shell crag
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small patches probably should be hooks or not patches

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¯_(ツ)_/¯

lusty plaza
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i'm not a fan of patches as well, but it could be enough to just limit every PR to a folder of lua files and a lovely patch file with max 25 lines or so

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and obviously any asset files

wind trail
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Banning lovey patches would vastly limit some design possibilities

shell crag
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my original suggestion was just 1 joker to combat the inability to rank like 20 conflicting mods at the same time

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also to combat scope hell -- we'd like to have people to join this and have a good submission regardless of business or something

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most of the people i've brought this up to said that 1 joker was reasonable and non-intimidating enough that they would join

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it's already kinda annoying to individually rank entire mods with added mechanics because they all play differently

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1 joker + banning lovely patches seems reasonable to me

stoic hedge
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I'm not entirely sure how one would go about ranking a singular Joker

shell crag
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i think it's still hard to

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figure out how "good" modded content in balatro is

stoic hedge
shell crag
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that's kinda just the same as making one joker vanilla-compatable though

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and really i'd like to encourage seeing more special effects than just Bunco Number 13 ygwim

jolly stratus
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we could always just not have a vote or winners or anything

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i don’t think it makes much sense to have that for a modded joker

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nobody’s going to agree on what makes a joker good/bad anyways, mods most of the time operate in different design spaces

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if you were to limit the jokers to being very vanilla+ then it might make sense to have voting. but that defeats the purpose of having an open-ended mod contest, no?

gentle lotus
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Yeah. Less of a contest, and more of a series of creative or fun prompts.

signal hamlet
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Banning Lovely patches can be worked around with enough copy/pasting from the vanilla source code and/or use of the debug module (which are both awful form)

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as for ranking, I can see that devolving into a popularity contest/pretty art contest. I'd personally much prefer a neutral platform that everyone in a jam puts their collective weight behind (i.e. the "prize" for participating is being in the jam mod/index, which we push to become a thing people want to use)

jolly stratus
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would we have a different mod every month or not?

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it would be really cool if we didn't just do jokers if we had one big mod for all this

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like, a few smaller jams for consumables or blinds to go into the mod would be cool too

shell crag
small vessel
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banning patches seems somewhat arbitrary

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otherwise this is a cool idea

shell crag
jolly stratus
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just reserve the right for whoever's going to merge all this into a mod to remove stuff if it's causing instability or is just a headache to put in

small vessel
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but idk it's not up to me

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it just seems limiting

shell crag
small vessel
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yeah, that would be nice

shell crag
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we can just compendium enough to not have conflicts ig

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and let the rest be seperate

stoic hedge
lusty plaza
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let's just allow them for this first rendition and see how scuffed it gets?

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maybe it won't be that bad

lusty plaza
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also, the submissions don't have to be jokers all the time, btw...unless the prompt says so...

could be a blinds, consumables, editions, whatever

jolly stratus
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yeah

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editions hard i don't like shaders...

lusty plaza
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i forgot that monday is also a holiday for me

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so one more day i can focus on this

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might as well set the repo up

kind crater
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jollu

dense mountain
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hype

celest lava
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Oh these aren’t modjams

weary flicker
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why wasnt i mentioned...................

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am i that bad of a modder

celest lava
celest lava
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I think the ideal for me would be to have 1 week-long 1 Joker Jams with a theme (that could be top-down, bottom-up, etc.)

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which occasionally is a Consumeable or Blind or whatever Jam

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For voting I’d say have a panel of judges or something

rigid swallow
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I’d participate

weary flicker
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i am so gonna lose

celest lava
civic summit
lusty plaza
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sorry guys, i wanted to present something today but don't feel well now - i'll see if i can cook something up in the coming days

lusty plaza
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i hate real life stuff so much bro...

i'll have the company event tomorrow and then surely i have time, thursday is a holiday and friday basically also

astral osprey
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dw as long as it probably happens then ur good

lapis onyx
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The modding contest isn’t dead