This is definitely pre-Beta. There are still non-fatal errors that I know about that show up on the screen. There is still debugging info that shows up. The server gets knocked off line occasionally when I do something else on the machine. The formatting is … well, not right. The interface may be confusing.
My goals are to get some suggestions, find bugs, get this project to a place where I can leave it for a period, work on some other projects and then come back to this with some stuff to work on.
I have a sample game up on whoisyourwalrus.com which will be seen by people who register. The game takes 2 players. There are only two categories. If you do sign up for the game you should probably PM me here. We may need to discuss things live - in which case we’ll get on the secret slack channel, which we can ask gregorio to put you on if you aren’t.
I have some test games up on whoisyourwalrus.com if you want to take a look - start a new game - explore the wide world of walrus (that would have been a good domain name).
Ok so a few people have expressed the idea of something akin to a “grab bag Walrus” and I figured I would use this thread as a means to hash out the approach. If there is interest in a game I can take the lead on organizing. Of course if anyone else wants to do so, just lmk and I am happy to hand over the reigns.
The general idea is that each person is responsible for hosting and revealing one category.
Pros
No burden on one particular host to deal with everything.
Results will be a lost more mixed as everyone has different preferences and rating. Therefore if your picks are very unlikely to gel with one host, the next round might be better. Unless you are Pyatnitski.
It is a chance for some people who would not like to commit to running a whole Walrus to just run their own category. Much less time investment.
Cons
It is going to require a little more up front organization. Every participant will have to post their category, and if they like then some of their music preferences to give people hints.
More people having a responsibility increases the chance that something will keep them from doing their reveal in a timely fashion. (We can plan for this by just saying "all reveals to be done by X date. If you havent done yours by that time we will just award no points for that category and you will be removed from the overall competition).
The number of submissions you need to make is going to be <Total participants - 1>. If we have 15 entrants, you will need to submit to 14 categories. To account for that we should add a solid week up front for everyone to get their entries together, and we should purposefully make sure our categories are not too hard to find. I would suggest more general categories, and that we say its fine for multiple people to use the same category if they want to. For example if there are two or three “songs you like to listen to at the gym” categories, then so be it imo. We can also consider general things like “A song released in the 90’s”, etc. Basically just avoiding categories that are a little more obscure for the purpose of this format.
These are my initial thoughts. Throwing this out to other people for ideas or input. Then I will write some templates people can use, and start a new thread for people to sign up and will @ some of the OG Walrus people since I know some of us have missed seeing them in the game.
Your idea of kicking people out who don’t finish their reveal in time works, but I think we should make it clear that flaking is bad form and should be reserved for exceptional circumstances.
Should say my like meant I’m up for it. As you say, with 14 categories I could maybe rack up a new record in last place finishes!
The rules sound pretty solid. The only addition I’d make is perhaps we could schedule the reveals given everyone only has to do one. Once entries are closed and categories selected we could rand the list of names and then say it’s one a day from e.g. a week past the submission deadline. Obviously if anyone knows that wouldn’t work then they can ask to swap or say they’ll be a day late, but it should be doable. The reveal could even be prepared in advance then PM-ed to a neutral party.
It’s a good question. One I rejected for mine was “the last thing you bought, no cheating”, which I worried people might revolt against but as one among many maybe it would pass, and I think it would be fun.
I would be happy with an entire walrus of fusion, but I did also reject “Jazz” as a category because I didn’t want people moaning they can’t think of anything. Sadly a lot of jazzphobes here, I think.
About the scheduling reveals - I was thinking we could leave an appropriate amount of time depending on how many entrants we get that allows a few days at least for people to get a reveal ready, but then we just allocate a block of time that everyone has to do their reveals by, and just try and give a bit of notice in the reveal thread if you can so you don’t reveal at the same time as someone else. It allows a little more freedom for people if they have their schedule open up (or close up) but we still have a deadline.
For example if we have 10 entrants total, I would probably think a deadline 10 days from the reveal start is reasonable. If we get it done faster, then great.
With trying to schedule for each person it might be challenging to have everyone know in advance what day specifically they will be able to do it.
This is just my intuition - things I have organized previously, the more specific a time you need to give a large group of people the less likely it is to work out.
If anyone thinks it won’t work, feel free to say so in the next few hours. After that point I am going to put up a registration of interest thread, and pre-register everyone in this thread who said they were in.
I would suggest that we send the lists to at least two different people so that everyone can get blinded to the submitters.
Like person #1 can accept submissions for categories 7 through 12, and person #7 can accept submissions for categories 1 through 6.
Then persons 1 and 7 can distribute the songs to the relevant parties. Judges then submit rankings back to persons 1 and 7, who then give the “key” of who submitted what to the judge. Then the category can be revealed.
Yar agree. I was originally thinking we could have each person receive the submissions for one other person, but more points of failure there. Having two people (I will be one) receive and distribute all the submissions is a great idea.
