Kid of the Hill - A new type of speedrun event!

[tehjman1993]

Hello everyone,

In our never-ending pursuit of fun community events, we believe we may have something to satisfy your need for such an event!

We would like to propose a new 2-month speedrunning event: Kid of the Hill!

Kid of the Hill is a spin on the classic "King of the Hill" style of tournament play.

What does King of the Hill mean?

King of the Hill is a style of tournament play that typically involves the #1 seeded participant vs. any other participant in an effort to hold their spot as #1. If they win, they keep their spot (their "hill"), if not, the one who beats them is crowned as #1. This is a classic KOTH-style event.

So how does this relate to Kid of the Hill?

We want to use this KOTH style of play and implement it into a challenge of speedrunning various fangames. Here's how it will work:

-A pool of 25 fangames is chosen from us, the event organizers. This pool is public knowledge, and will include fangames of varying skill levels.

-A King will be chosen for the first round, and the King will decide 1 week before they race what fangame will be played out of the pool of fangames provided.

-After a fangame has been chosen for the week, that game will be announced to all participants and everyone will have exactly 1 week to run the chosen game and get the fastest time possible.

-Runners are to submit their best times to Speedrun.com at any time during the week, up until the day before the race.

-The runner (that is not the current King) that submits the fastest time to Speedrun.com is chosen as the "challenger" to the King for the race on the next day.

-The race will be featured on a Twitch Channel (TBD) as King vs. Challenger (think of the 2-player races on our fangame marathon layout!)

-If the King wins, they stay King. If the Challenger wins, they become the new King.

-The race is open to all participants, however, only the challenger may knock the King off of the Hill on any given week. So if you happen to beat the King but you are not the challenger, better luck next time!

-Immediately following the race, the King that is determined from the race will pick another fangame from the pool, and we start a new week of racing.

=============================================================

Does this sound like a fun event to participate in? This would require no sign-ups, just show up and play! I believe it both gives our community a unique race feel to it, and promotes both racing and submissions to speedrun.com's fangames.

Let us know what you think in this thread. This thread is solely for feedback and suggestion purposes - all information-related material relating to this event will be posted in a different thread once dates and times are set. We would really like to know if this would have a lot of runners! You can also ask questions about the event at our channels, www.twitch.tv/tehjman1993 or www.twitch.tv/mrssfireball

Thanks,
TJ & Fireball

[Zurai]

What would you think of letting all people participate for the "hill-spot" in the weekly race? Instead a 1v1 race. And the week before is solely used for practice and submissions on the leadboards?

[Denferok]

Sounds neat but I fear the list would just be full of easy games no one runs instead of the more difficult and popular games

[tehjman1993]

What would you think of letting all people participate for the "hill-spot" in the weekly race? Instead a 1v1 race. And the week before is solely used for practice and submissions on the leadboards?

This is definitely an option, but then the question becomes who do we stream? Of course we could stream the current King, but who else would we feature? Or would we keep the same layout, but allow anyone who wins the race to become King?

Sounds neat but I fear the list would just be full of easy games no one runs instead of the more difficult and popular games

I hope that not all of the games are 25 or 30 difficulty fangames. We aim on taking fangames that do have some difficulty in them - like NANG! Of course, this will exclude fangames that are pretty exclusive in difficulty, such as the ever-popular K3. But when it comes to picking a pool of fangames, we'll make sure we have a good spread of difficulty. This won't include super easy (see: Hunyaapunpun) games, but won't include very precise (see: Kill the Needle Game) games.

[Artardss]

What would you think of letting all people participate for the "hill-spot" in the weekly race? Instead a 1v1 race. And the week before is solely used for practice and submissions on the leadboards?

This is definitely an option, but then the question becomes who do we stream? Of course we could stream the current King, but who else would we feature? Or would we keep the same layout, but allow anyone who wins the race to become King?

You could maybe display the king and the 3 fastest people on the leaderboards. This way you increase the chance of showing the winner on stream. I also think it's more enjoyable to watch 4 people race at once instead of 2.

I definitely like the idea of this though.

[tehjman1993]

What would you think of letting all people participate for the "hill-spot" in the weekly race? Instead a 1v1 race. And the week before is solely used for practice and submissions on the leadboards?

This is definitely an option, but then the question becomes who do we stream? Of course we could stream the current King, but who else would we feature? Or would we keep the same layout, but allow anyone who wins the race to become King?

You could maybe display the king and the 3 fastest people on the leaderboards. This way you increase the chance of showing the winner on stream. I also think it's more enjoyable to watch 4 people race at once instead of 2.

I definitely like the idea of this though.

This is possible! No more than 4, however - the game becomes very hard to see on the same screen (and keeping 4 streams active can take a toll on internet!) Personally I would prefer 2, but 4 is viable.

[patrickgh3]

Great idea! I like how it incorporates both the simultaneous race and the practice over the week. I agree there should be more than 1 challenger, but maybe a limit of 3 instead of everyone. I might participate depending on my schedule, it sounds like fun.

[xElectricZz]

I think 3 challengers would be nicer instead of 1, I feel like it would give more incentive to practice during the week because you have a higher chance of it paying off. It really depends on the amount of people participating though, imo. Maybe the number of challengers could fluctuate depending on the number of participants? like, 1-4 participants being a single challenger, 5-8 being 2, 9-12 being 3, as an example. This seems like a cool idea overall, I'll definitely try it out at some point whenever I have enough time.

[aytoms29]

Maybe what we can do is have as many players as possible racing, but only display 4 streams at 1 single time. These 4 people would be the current race leaders. When say, someone chokes really badly and loses his spot in the top 4 for say, a minute, the stream would go to the person who goes into the fourth place. Anyways can't wait to see this happen. Gonna be real good.

[Onynekyu]

I love the idea and thanks for making entertaining events

Otherwise, i can understand that only 4 persons can be stream at the same time, so we could stream the king, then the first 3 fastest times on sr.com since they prove their potential to bop the king (like a reward). Then beside, we could allow everyone as challenger, i mean, the more the merrier, since the main idea is to have fun together.

And i propose FangameMarathon twitch channel for featuring the event. I mean this twitch channel is made for people who may not know about fangames in general. And by showing this event on this twitch channel, it shows the fangame community is active and can make great thing beside marathon. Just throwing an idea ^^.

About streaming multi participants (2 or 4), just out of curiosity, is it possible to add a (tiny) sound icon to the participant where the sound comes out ? I saw it on a last marathon (i dont remember if it is gdq or ESA, i think it's ESA), but as a viewer, it's really enjoyable to know where the sound is coming out.

[SSFireBall]

Maybe what we can do is have as many players as possible racing, but only display 4 streams at 1 single time. These 4 people would be the current race leaders. When say, someone chokes really badly and loses his spot in the top 4 for say, a minute, the stream would go to the person who goes into the fourth place. Anyways can't wait to see this happen. Gonna be real good.

I'm not so sure that's such a good idea. If we were to have, let's say, 10 streams up at once for a race, that'll probably take a huge toll on our internet/computers. Personally I feel like 2-4 people (king + 1-3 challengers) is the max we'll do.

[tehjman1993]

Maybe what we can do is have as many players as possible racing, but only display 4 streams at 1 single time. These 4 people would be the current race leaders. When say, someone chokes really badly and loses his spot in the top 4 for say, a minute, the stream would go to the person who goes into the fourth place. Anyways can't wait to see this happen. Gonna be real good.

This would be ridiculously hard to pull off, and impractical for more than 7-8 racers. While this would be a "true" top 4 race stream, I believe this is too difficult to do.

I love the idea and thanks for making entertaining events

Otherwise, i can understand that only 4 persons can be stream at the same time, so we could stream the king, then the first 3 fastest times on sr.com since they prove their potential to bop the king (like a reward). Then beside, we could allow everyone as challenger, i mean, the more the merrier, since the main idea is to have fun together.

And i propose FangameMarathon twitch channel for featuring the event. I mean this twitch channel is made for people who may not know about fangames in general. And by showing this event on this twitch channel, it shows the fangame community is active and can make great thing beside marathon. Just throwing an idea ^^.

About streaming multi participants (2 or 4), just out of curiosity, is it possible to add a (tiny) sound icon to the participant where the sound comes out ? I saw it on a last marathon (i dont remember if it is gdq or ESA, i think it's ESA), but as a viewer, it's really enjoyable to know where the sound is coming out.

A 4-person stream is the idea we're rolling with now, so don't worry! This would of course be the King vs. the top 3 times submitted to sr.com during the race week.

FangameMarathon's channel was only used for the marathon, and we would like to keep it that way. Also, since this event will most likely lack a RTMP server, everyone who is racing will be live on Twitch anyway. We're still working out the details here.

The sound icon is a great idea on the stream. The race leader's audio will most likely be used (out of the 4 on stream), so we'll be sure to consider this icon on the layout when we have it made. Thanks!

[sharkruisher]

Neat idea TJ, looking forward to it 

I also have a suggestion, that the king could chose to make the next week's game random. In other words, a raffle between the pool of fangames. Could be a fun addition if the king is having trouble to decide the game

[BBF]

I'm most likely joining it, unless the list of games turns out to be meh.

Also in favor of 4 way races for the King title. Makes the King change more often and gives more spotlight to talented runners that don't necessarily have the time to go for the fastest time.

Another thing to consider is removing the current week's game from the pool for a couple of weeks to avoid repeated picks (maybe even swap out games that have been picked with a different game and make a rotation?)

And the last thing I just thought of. Maybe make a "special" week like once a month, limiting game selection to Needle/Aventure/100F/whatever. Might force a long standing King to get out of his comfort zone, or just spice up the range of games being picked. Obviously would need a good and varied selection of the pool.

[Destructor Destroyer]

I personally like this idea myself. But, I have a question regarding what you said earlier "A King will be chosen for the first round, and the King will decide 1 week before they race what fangame will be played out of the pool of fangames provided."

How are we going to elect the very first king to take the pedestal in the first place. I mean the system works very well afterwards. However, I'm under an impression that the top 3 people with the best times in the first random fangame will just race to become the first king. However, I would like to see if you have a special event in mind just for this case.