UW Gamers

Note: The goal of having this meeting is to have some sort of structure to put on advertisements so that we can have early signups. Having a week's notice is no good for this event.

Event: Thurs July 30th, Great Hall, ?
I think we should meet and get the main details of this set ASAP. The more time people have to do costumes/whatever the better. Last time we only gave a week and a bit of notice.

Massive post about the previous Rock Band tournament can be found here.
Past rules of conduct
Past score sheet

The event is on a Thursday, but it is after classes finish. My assumption is that we're going to run the event close to same way (except now we know how we want the judging to go!) Midterm season is coming up, so it's kind of hard to pick a meeting date. I'm going to say Wednesday June 10th at 5pm sounds good, anyone have conflicts with that?

We have the Great Hall and MPR booked for this event, and 4 TVs.

Non-gaming equipment:
Stage Risers
SLC Barriers (need to be booked?)
Speakers

Now that Ron is not a judge, scoring should go as intended!

Though, the judging criteria is always up for adjustment.

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I'm graduated, and employed!
The club lives without me now!

I think peter mentioned the best way of doing this. We usually have three judges, utilize them.

Have one judge focus mainly on the technical score(Score multipliers, streaks, solo percentages) basically they watch the game being played and judge based on that, with little emphasis on the overall performance.

One judge focuses almost entirely on the performance aspect(How the band looks and feels on the stage, how they act, etc etc)

One judge tries to balance these two, and focus a little on each.

On the whole I think we've got the judging criteria just about down, I didn't see any real problems with the marking sheets last time, and it seemed to give a good balance between difficulty and performance.

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IRC: axion.sourcehack.org, #sourcehack.

I disagree, if we only have one judge focused on the performance, then all bands will be subject to one judge's personal bias.

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Worshipper of the Great Nintendo Gods since 1984
Trust in your Force, and enter the Garden of Madness!

I think I've done son before, but may I suggest a modifier based on number of stars received? This is as objective as you can possibly get with the performance aspect.

1 star = score *0.6
2 stars = score * 0.7
3 stars = score * 0.8
4 stars = score * 0.9
5 stars = No modifier
Gold = score * 1.1

With a different and less harsh rubric based on the difficulty which every team plays (perhaps a score out of twenty, where each member gets five points for expert, four for hard, three for normal, two for easy). In addition, subtract one point from each member for each death they incur.

SO, for instance, an all expert team would get a full 20 marks at the beginning. If the drummer dies twice and the guitarist dies once, and the singer dies once they lose four points total; they end up with three stars; thus their final technical score is 12.8 (rounded up to 13). If the same team does all normal, they start off with a base score of 12, but chances are they won't get any deaths at all, and in fact get a gold, thus giving them 13.2 (rounded down to 13) for technical.

It's a bit of math, and the rubric's probably not perfect (I was thinking it up while writing it), but it's the most absolutely objective way I can possibly think of to measure score for a game where every score is different. Some consideration may also be put into making the star modifier affect their FINAL score, rather than just their technical score.

(Yes, yes, I know that stage presence is important and no one wants to watch zombies or something like that, but holy hell, I don't care what you say, I would NOT want to go to a concert with crappy music because the band has nice costumes or dance around all funny.)

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Actually, looking over the score sheet, it doens't fit well with the other numbers. I stand by my rubric though, if you multiply it by fifty or something like that XD

If anything though, I'd make the technical worth more; either as a larger absolute value, or again, use the star modifier on the total band score rather than just the technical score.

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Maybe a bonus for star values, but we already rate them based on actual play percentage, and a multiplier will make totalling an extra step(especially with those weird non-round values), and the end results messy.

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IRC: axion.sourcehack.org, #sourcehack.

Play percentage doesn't mean much; I could play every song on easy and get full marks. I know you guys say you'll deduct for that, or boost marks for trying harder, but Harold tested this theory specifically; and the result was that as it stands the gameplay part isn't weighted nearly as much as subjective scores for coolness.

The reason for the starting values and penalties for failures is that it objectively does what you guys said you would do. It may not be perfect, but it achieves it quite elegantly: if you choose a difficulty that's too hard, you start with a higher value but will lose points through failure; if you choose a difficulty that's too easy, you'll lose points on starting value. Everything should balance out.

The stars are a different matter altogether. In ADDITION to reinforcing players to choose the right difficulty, it encourages proper use of Overdrive, and to get the really good scores, synergy with the rest of your team. A simple percentage of notes hit doesn't touch this aspect at all, and it's key to high-level play.

Yeah, it's a bit difficult to calculate; but honestly, it encourages a lot of more in-depth strategy and removes the subjectivity from the gaming side entirely.

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I'm all for a bonus for the stars, just not a multiplier(these are messy), an extra "chunk" of points for each(say 10 points per star, plus 10 for gold?) will fit in nicely and still keep the system to "Add all the numbers, quickly in your head".

Just adding the multiplier makes it really messy, about my only concern.

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IRC: axion.sourcehack.org, #sourcehack.

Would Tuesday at 5pm work for a meeting next week? Failing that, there's always Don't Study the following day. I think having an actual meeting would work out best, since there seem to be a few opinions on how we should run this thing.

That's good for me.

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I'm graduated, and employed!
The club lives without me now!

Tuesday works good for me.

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IRC: axion.sourcehack.org, #sourcehack.

Reminder, "next Tuesday" is now TODAY!

Those interested in discussing the Rock Band rules format, converge on the SLC Great Hall at 5pm!

_________________
I'm graduated, and employed!
The club lives without me now!

Rule set as determined by the meeting we just had

Total out of 800
400 Technical points
400 Subjective points

SUBJECTIVE
Costume: 20 per person (80 total)
Stage Presence: 60 per person (240 total)
Team Presence: 80 total

Total (400 total): [Costume per player] + [Stage presence per player] + team presence

TECHNICAL
per song (max 400):
[Star modifier]
+ ([lead percent notes hit] - [difficulty penalty]
+ [bass percent notes hit] - [difficulty penalty]
+ [drums percent notes hit] - [difficulty penalty]
+ [vocals percent notes hit] - [difficulty penalty])

Total (max 400):
([song 1] + [song 2] + [song 3]) / 3

difficulty penalties:
Expert: -0
Hard: -10
Medium: -20
Easy: -30

Star Modifier: (applied to entire band score out of 300)
Gold: +
5: - 0
4: - 20
3: - 40
2: - 60
1: - 80

_________________
I'm graduated, and employed!
The club lives without me now!

someone will put together a spreadsheet that makes it a bit more clear.
maybe that will be me.

_________________
I'm graduated, and employed!
The club lives without me now!