My feelings on The Demon Rush
Before I start this thread up. Yes, I took a few things from the viewer's suggestion thread. If you notice I didn't use something from that thread, then that most likely means the suggestion was ignored for a reason.
The person after the dash is the person who came up with the idea. If I forgot anyone, then I'm sorry.
The stream and setup:
Dedicated page for donation bids, prizes, runner info, profiles + their ustreams and youtube channels, also some sort of
listing for types of runs (multiplayer, races, and genre). - Darkwing Duck for the donation bids, various people on IRC for the rest
This should be self-explanatory. Yes, Darkwing Duck you made one good suggestion, don't push your luck.
Also have an faq explaining basic info like where we are, how to put in a chipin comment, explanation of speedrunning terms, etc.
Also self-explanatory.
Multicast on ustream and justin.tv - Josh the funkdoc
We'll definitely have enough bandwidth for this during the day, but at night the bandwidth is cut roughly in half, so we'll have to see.
Bots to inform people what's up periodically - Rakuen
This is honestly a great idea, and one of the few redeeming suggestions from the viewer's suggestion thread.
Commentators have priority on couch - PJ
I know, the couch is comfy, but there were a lot of times when people would just sit on the couch not saying much of anything, and there were people commentating on the run from the back, where it was sometimes hard to hear people. This doesn't mean people on the couch need to get off stream if someone wants to commentate, they merely need to get off the couch.
Commentary chain of command - I think we talked about this before the marathon, but it wasn't really implemented
Basically the priority should go runner > commentators on couch (if they're talking about the game) > person on commentator chair reading off donation comments > everyone else
Have people who set up video tell others about the setup. - me
Yes, Nate and Lag.Com were great at setting up the stream and handling tech duties, I don't think anyone can deny that, but if they told more people how the cables and computers were setup, then we wouldn't have needed to kill their sleep for races and such. A lot of us have experience streaming, so if they told at least 5 people how the cables were setup, then we wouldn't need to rely on them so much.
Cleaning up the console/video capture setup - nate
nuff said.
More UPSes! and power strips - everyone at the marathon
We all know that PEACHES_ UPS saved Chrono Trigger. If there's a big enough surplus fund next year, then I'll set aside a couple hundred dollars for some UPSes and power strips.
Don't mess with the marathon setup while a run is taking place - Carcinogen and arkarian, by accident
Seriously, there's no reason to touch anything near the marathon consoles unless if your plane leaves in a couple of hours. Getting your stuff in between games is fine, but fiddling around trying to find your stuff is what causes accidents like Power-off during YI and video switch during Chrono Trigger. We're just lucky that YI has an auto-save.
Challenge Submission form? - Rakuen
I'm not 100% sure about this being a good idea because of possible abuse, but getting people's challenges heard in chat is only going to get worse, so it probably is a good idea.
Let's have a clock in the marathon room - Uraniumanchor
In a basement room with no windows, you lose track of time way too easily. The marathon room turned into the hyperbolic time chamber/isolation station/speedrunning dungeon after a while because no one had any track of night or day. Putting a clock should alleviate the situation somewhat, until the big question pops up, AM or PM?
Pop-out windows for the streams - me
I know some people had problems getting both streams to stay side by side, so the best way to handle this problem would be to make the streams pop-out windows. This solution shouldn't be hard to implement, since I think I've seen the Desert Bus for Hope people do it.
Basic game history and trivia - Tigger77
This idea was mentioned for AGDQ, but no one took up this responsibility (it shouldn't be mine). Emptyeye said he was willing to write up basic info for every game in the marathon, and I think he'd do a good job of it. It would probably be a good idea if someone split up the task with him.
Schedule
First off, I want to say one thing. Being over time is not necessarily a bad thing, a decent chunk of overtime was donation challenges, it also gave time for moments like stanski's epic turtles 4 donation, and it did give people more time to watch That being said, I will admit that the schedule did go way too far over time.
The big three culprits were
1. Setup time, including prizes and such.
2. People giving me bad estimates for games, or estimates that were way too tight.
3. Donation challenges. This isn't a bad thing, because these brought in a lot of money for PCF.
Every day gets an hour for a game called setup.
It's going to happen, so the best way to deal with it, is just to admit that it happens for at least an hour a day. This won't completely normalize the schedule, but it should help.
Don't make your time estimates so tight - a lot of people, but especially me
There were a lot of people who went under their estimates, but their estimates were so tight they were maybe a minute or two under their estimates at most, and the time for setting up their game cost a greater amount of time.
I will admit, I am guilty of this for Contra 3.
Every run at the marathon gets at least 3-5 minutes added for setup, possibly 10+ minutes for longer games and randomness- me, then 156 other people in the viewer's suggestion thread. :-/
The setup time should depend on the game and whether the system it's being played on is the same as the system before it. Also races get extra setup time. At least one or two OOT racers complained about 1:30 being too long despite a lot of them being able to complete the game in 1:12-1:15, but looking back on it, I think that was a good time considering we had 4 tvs and 4 consoles to setup.
Announce prizes near the end of a game, not in between games - mike89
Honestly, this should have been done this year because mike89 suggested after CGDQ, but I didn't yell at enough people about it beforehand. I remember doing it for some of the games I commentated for, and I know Breakdown did it once or twice, but after a while, we all started announcing prizes in between games. Announcing prize winners in between games slows down time at least a minute or so in between games, which adds up over 100 games.
I know for super short games that are 10 minutes or less, this idea isn't really possible unless if we want to talk over the runner a lot, but we can definitely do it for any game that is 15 minutes or longer.
Have your game ready before the next one - me, dballin, everyone at the marathon who had their stuff ready beforehand
A lot of times, people wouldn't get their stuff until after a game was over, which means they were at least 5 minutes too late getting their stuff.
For some bizarre reason, a couple of people felt like they had to ask for my permission to get their stuff ready. This pissed me off because you already had my permission when I PUT YOUR GAME ON THE SCHEDULE, and asking me only wastes time. If you want to make me happy, get your stuff ready at least 10 minutes before your game approaches.
Tigger77 had the great idea of having a "next game" table for the equipment being used for the next game.
If you're ready to play your game, then play dammit! - me, inspired by watching Tri-Hex's 6 minute wait before his YI run, which sadly, is an improvement over the 15 minute prepation for his CGDQ run
Sorry to put you on the spot, Tri-Hex, but you are the worst offender. No one really needs to be ready aside from the person (or people) playing the game. If the person on the timer isn't ready, it's not a huge deal, they can just start the timer a little late.
There are only two reasons not to start playing right away.
1. The stream is down.
2. Your game has a bidding war for a character or path and we need to know which one it is.
Aside from that, there is no excuse.
The Halo rule - me, I actually had this rule in for the first marathon
Yep, I had a mercy kill rule since the first marathon. I just didn't mention it during this marathon because I assumed everyone would know better and practice their games enough. Well Halo proved me wrong. There's no use trying to deny it, Halo was a bad run, and it should have been killed, especially since Cody wasn't enjoying it, and he admitted on stream that he hadn't practiced in 2 years.
There's no objective way to sense whether a run should be mercy killed or not, it just comes down to common sense. I also don't think this will be a problem for more than one or two games next year, if even that many.
Some other runs went over time, but they were well played for the most part, so there was no reason to kill them.
Yes, I did get permission from Cody to call the mercy kill rule the Halo rule.
Try to account for donation challenges beforehand, and not have them proposed to me the day of the marathon
The donation challenges proposed to me were great ideas. However, the challenges also added at least a couple of hours to the schedule we could have accounted for if I knew about the challenges in advance.
Do realize we will still be behind, even after implementing all of these measures, just hopefully not as much. I also realize what lag.com did to compensate the discrepancy between run time and real-time in the schedule was a smart idea (overwrite the formula with the actual current time), but I was too dumb to realize at the time, sorry.
Prizes
Setup all of the prizes and implement time schedules in advance. (i.e. dk plushies going for dkc series)
Part of this was my fault, because I forgot to account for a couple of prizes, and some weren't scheduled very well. It was, after all, my first time actually putting prizes in the schedule. However, we should set up the schedules for prizes in advance so there's no confusion during the marathon.
We should have some 10 dollar donation prizes, like the newer games, larger perlers, and plushies
Hey, they're worth well over 10 dollars. We should still keep the minimum bid for pictures at 5 dollars so people still feel like they can win something without having to spend much.
Travel
Only one thing to say here, we need a coordinator. Not just a person who keeps track of the forum topic (and the person overseeing the topic shouldn't be me, romscout ), but a person who also makes sure everyone arrives at the center quickly and safely.
4-H Center stuff:
Individual check-in - memememe
I thought checking in for the group would be best, because I'm the guy who runs the marathons, and I thought I would need to keep the rooming under control, but it ended up just being a big hassle. Whenever someone needed a keycard, their keycard crapped out, or they wanted to switch rooms, I had to be there, which is not only inconvenient for me, but it's also inconvenient for the people involved because they had to wait on me.
4 people per room, at the most 5 people - uhhhh nearly everyone
Seriously, the rooming was way too chaotic. Things will be much easier for us if we cap rooming at the 4 it's supposed to be at, for both us and the center, especially since the system at the center is only equipped for four people per room (for fire code reasons).
Don't be pigs - me, Breakdown, anyone with a sense of decency
Seriously, with how lax the center was with us, the least we could do is CLEAN UP AFTER OURSELVES. The people taking out trash should just be replacing trash bags, not picking up after us because someone was too lazy to put their cup or pizza box in the trash. Also, it's just gross to see so much stuff on the floor, especially when ants swarm it.
Chat
Private staff chat channel - a bunch of people
This is something I should have at least suggested for AGDQ, but if someone else sets it up before the marathon, that would be great.
How do we deal with how fast chat is? - everyone
First off, slow mode is NOT the solution - it interrupts the flow and just makes a lot of people post super long messages, which doesn't fix the problem in the long run.
If we have the submissions form then I guess this is moot for donation challenges, but we'll still want to keep chat under control. Like moooh said, putting everything in one super huge chat doesn't necessarily solve problems because it means everything in that one super huge chat scrolls impossibly fast.
Misc
Have someone scout the area for restaurants and take-out places that are close to the center - puwexil
I was going to do this, but then I got sidetracked. I think someone else will do this because I'll probably want to do this, but end up focusing on more urgent marathon matters instead.
In-kind donations - The kind folks at the Prevent Cancer Foundation
During our lunch with PCF, Linda mentioned that we can get in-kind donations (i.e. anything that isn't money) such as furniture or food to be used for our marathon. The example she gave us is that Subway donated 500 dollars for a race for the cure jogging marathon PCF hosted.
Needless to say, Breakdown and I stared at each other and thought this was a very good idea.
I think that covers most issues.
The person after the dash is the person who came up with the idea. If I forgot anyone, then I'm sorry.
The stream and setup:
Dedicated page for donation bids, prizes, runner info, profiles + their ustreams and youtube channels, also some sort of
listing for types of runs (multiplayer, races, and genre). - Darkwing Duck for the donation bids, various people on IRC for the rest
This should be self-explanatory. Yes, Darkwing Duck you made one good suggestion, don't push your luck.
Also have an faq explaining basic info like where we are, how to put in a chipin comment, explanation of speedrunning terms, etc.
Also self-explanatory.
Multicast on ustream and justin.tv - Josh the funkdoc
We'll definitely have enough bandwidth for this during the day, but at night the bandwidth is cut roughly in half, so we'll have to see.
Bots to inform people what's up periodically - Rakuen
This is honestly a great idea, and one of the few redeeming suggestions from the viewer's suggestion thread.
Commentators have priority on couch - PJ
I know, the couch is comfy, but there were a lot of times when people would just sit on the couch not saying much of anything, and there were people commentating on the run from the back, where it was sometimes hard to hear people. This doesn't mean people on the couch need to get off stream if someone wants to commentate, they merely need to get off the couch.
Commentary chain of command - I think we talked about this before the marathon, but it wasn't really implemented
Basically the priority should go runner > commentators on couch (if they're talking about the game) > person on commentator chair reading off donation comments > everyone else
Have people who set up video tell others about the setup. - me
Yes, Nate and Lag.Com were great at setting up the stream and handling tech duties, I don't think anyone can deny that, but if they told more people how the cables and computers were setup, then we wouldn't have needed to kill their sleep for races and such. A lot of us have experience streaming, so if they told at least 5 people how the cables were setup, then we wouldn't need to rely on them so much.
Cleaning up the console/video capture setup - nate
Quote from nate:
no switchers. single set of female rca plugs permanently attached below each tv. everyone knows how to plug their system into that set of cables for that tv.
nuff said.
More UPSes! and power strips - everyone at the marathon
We all know that PEACHES_ UPS saved Chrono Trigger. If there's a big enough surplus fund next year, then I'll set aside a couple hundred dollars for some UPSes and power strips.
Don't mess with the marathon setup while a run is taking place - Carcinogen and arkarian, by accident
Seriously, there's no reason to touch anything near the marathon consoles unless if your plane leaves in a couple of hours. Getting your stuff in between games is fine, but fiddling around trying to find your stuff is what causes accidents like Power-off during YI and video switch during Chrono Trigger. We're just lucky that YI has an auto-save.
Challenge Submission form? - Rakuen
Quote from Rakuen:
Actually, on that challenge front, here's another idea pulled from Desert Bus for Hope. They had a system for viewers to submit challenges for them to do. It's just pretty much a series of text boxes where you can enter your name, some sort of contact, a donation amount, and what you want to be done. Then all that goes neatly into their system, where they can approve or deny challenge as they saw fit. It gets the requests out of the chat and in a single focused area where it's very easy to manage. I think if we have the ability to do this, we should.
I'm not 100% sure about this being a good idea because of possible abuse, but getting people's challenges heard in chat is only going to get worse, so it probably is a good idea.
Let's have a clock in the marathon room - Uraniumanchor
In a basement room with no windows, you lose track of time way too easily. The marathon room turned into the hyperbolic time chamber/isolation station/speedrunning dungeon after a while because no one had any track of night or day. Putting a clock should alleviate the situation somewhat, until the big question pops up, AM or PM?
Pop-out windows for the streams - me
I know some people had problems getting both streams to stay side by side, so the best way to handle this problem would be to make the streams pop-out windows. This solution shouldn't be hard to implement, since I think I've seen the Desert Bus for Hope people do it.
Basic game history and trivia - Tigger77
This idea was mentioned for AGDQ, but no one took up this responsibility (it shouldn't be mine). Emptyeye said he was willing to write up basic info for every game in the marathon, and I think he'd do a good job of it. It would probably be a good idea if someone split up the task with him.
Schedule
First off, I want to say one thing. Being over time is not necessarily a bad thing, a decent chunk of overtime was donation challenges, it also gave time for moments like stanski's epic turtles 4 donation, and it did give people more time to watch That being said, I will admit that the schedule did go way too far over time.
The big three culprits were
1. Setup time, including prizes and such.
2. People giving me bad estimates for games, or estimates that were way too tight.
3. Donation challenges. This isn't a bad thing, because these brought in a lot of money for PCF.
Every day gets an hour for a game called setup.
It's going to happen, so the best way to deal with it, is just to admit that it happens for at least an hour a day. This won't completely normalize the schedule, but it should help.
Don't make your time estimates so tight - a lot of people, but especially me
There were a lot of people who went under their estimates, but their estimates were so tight they were maybe a minute or two under their estimates at most, and the time for setting up their game cost a greater amount of time.
I will admit, I am guilty of this for Contra 3.
Every run at the marathon gets at least 3-5 minutes added for setup, possibly 10+ minutes for longer games and randomness- me, then 156 other people in the viewer's suggestion thread. :-/
The setup time should depend on the game and whether the system it's being played on is the same as the system before it. Also races get extra setup time. At least one or two OOT racers complained about 1:30 being too long despite a lot of them being able to complete the game in 1:12-1:15, but looking back on it, I think that was a good time considering we had 4 tvs and 4 consoles to setup.
Announce prizes near the end of a game, not in between games - mike89
Honestly, this should have been done this year because mike89 suggested after CGDQ, but I didn't yell at enough people about it beforehand. I remember doing it for some of the games I commentated for, and I know Breakdown did it once or twice, but after a while, we all started announcing prizes in between games. Announcing prize winners in between games slows down time at least a minute or so in between games, which adds up over 100 games.
I know for super short games that are 10 minutes or less, this idea isn't really possible unless if we want to talk over the runner a lot, but we can definitely do it for any game that is 15 minutes or longer.
Have your game ready before the next one - me, dballin, everyone at the marathon who had their stuff ready beforehand
A lot of times, people wouldn't get their stuff until after a game was over, which means they were at least 5 minutes too late getting their stuff.
For some bizarre reason, a couple of people felt like they had to ask for my permission to get their stuff ready. This pissed me off because you already had my permission when I PUT YOUR GAME ON THE SCHEDULE, and asking me only wastes time. If you want to make me happy, get your stuff ready at least 10 minutes before your game approaches.
Tigger77 had the great idea of having a "next game" table for the equipment being used for the next game.
If you're ready to play your game, then play dammit! - me, inspired by watching Tri-Hex's 6 minute wait before his YI run, which sadly, is an improvement over the 15 minute prepation for his CGDQ run
Sorry to put you on the spot, Tri-Hex, but you are the worst offender. No one really needs to be ready aside from the person (or people) playing the game. If the person on the timer isn't ready, it's not a huge deal, they can just start the timer a little late.
There are only two reasons not to start playing right away.
1. The stream is down.
2. Your game has a bidding war for a character or path and we need to know which one it is.
Aside from that, there is no excuse.
The Halo rule - me, I actually had this rule in for the first marathon
Yep, I had a mercy kill rule since the first marathon. I just didn't mention it during this marathon because I assumed everyone would know better and practice their games enough. Well Halo proved me wrong. There's no use trying to deny it, Halo was a bad run, and it should have been killed, especially since Cody wasn't enjoying it, and he admitted on stream that he hadn't practiced in 2 years.
There's no objective way to sense whether a run should be mercy killed or not, it just comes down to common sense. I also don't think this will be a problem for more than one or two games next year, if even that many.
Some other runs went over time, but they were well played for the most part, so there was no reason to kill them.
Yes, I did get permission from Cody to call the mercy kill rule the Halo rule.
Try to account for donation challenges beforehand, and not have them proposed to me the day of the marathon
The donation challenges proposed to me were great ideas. However, the challenges also added at least a couple of hours to the schedule we could have accounted for if I knew about the challenges in advance.
Do realize we will still be behind, even after implementing all of these measures, just hopefully not as much. I also realize what lag.com did to compensate the discrepancy between run time and real-time in the schedule was a smart idea (overwrite the formula with the actual current time), but I was too dumb to realize at the time, sorry.
Prizes
Setup all of the prizes and implement time schedules in advance. (i.e. dk plushies going for dkc series)
Part of this was my fault, because I forgot to account for a couple of prizes, and some weren't scheduled very well. It was, after all, my first time actually putting prizes in the schedule. However, we should set up the schedules for prizes in advance so there's no confusion during the marathon.
We should have some 10 dollar donation prizes, like the newer games, larger perlers, and plushies
Hey, they're worth well over 10 dollars. We should still keep the minimum bid for pictures at 5 dollars so people still feel like they can win something without having to spend much.
Travel
Only one thing to say here, we need a coordinator. Not just a person who keeps track of the forum topic (and the person overseeing the topic shouldn't be me, romscout
4-H Center stuff:
Individual check-in - memememe
I thought checking in for the group would be best, because I'm the guy who runs the marathons, and I thought I would need to keep the rooming under control, but it ended up just being a big hassle. Whenever someone needed a keycard, their keycard crapped out, or they wanted to switch rooms, I had to be there, which is not only inconvenient for me, but it's also inconvenient for the people involved because they had to wait on me.
4 people per room, at the most 5 people - uhhhh nearly everyone
Seriously, the rooming was way too chaotic. Things will be much easier for us if we cap rooming at the 4 it's supposed to be at, for both us and the center, especially since the system at the center is only equipped for four people per room (for fire code reasons).
Don't be pigs - me, Breakdown, anyone with a sense of decency
Seriously, with how lax the center was with us, the least we could do is CLEAN UP AFTER OURSELVES. The people taking out trash should just be replacing trash bags, not picking up after us because someone was too lazy to put their cup or pizza box in the trash. Also, it's just gross to see so much stuff on the floor, especially when ants swarm it.
Chat
Private staff chat channel - a bunch of people
This is something I should have at least suggested for AGDQ, but if someone else sets it up before the marathon, that would be great.
How do we deal with how fast chat is? - everyone
First off, slow mode is NOT the solution - it interrupts the flow and just makes a lot of people post super long messages, which doesn't fix the problem in the long run.
If we have the submissions form then I guess this is moot for donation challenges, but we'll still want to keep chat under control. Like moooh said, putting everything in one super huge chat doesn't necessarily solve problems because it means everything in that one super huge chat scrolls impossibly fast.
Misc
Have someone scout the area for restaurants and take-out places that are close to the center - puwexil
I was going to do this, but then I got sidetracked. I think someone else will do this because I'll probably want to do this, but end up focusing on more urgent marathon matters instead.
In-kind donations - The kind folks at the Prevent Cancer Foundation
During our lunch with PCF, Linda mentioned that we can get in-kind donations (i.e. anything that isn't money) such as furniture or food to be used for our marathon. The example she gave us is that Subway donated 500 dollars for a race for the cure jogging marathon PCF hosted.
Needless to say, Breakdown and I stared at each other and thought this was a very good idea.
I think that covers most issues.
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