[Approved] GT Challenge

[Janp]

Just creating a thread for me and Loomie to discuss our event.

We were talking about running either classic map event (example from the last year) or try something new, like one shared save file per team. For the map event, I think we could do a variation and let people "claim" parts of the map for their team for points. But there seems to be a problem with sprites right now, which breaks the maps. For the other idea, I would love to try it and hopefully there would be enough people to pull it off. I think each player could get like a set of rules that would affect not only their part, but also parts of other players.

Regarding the points, I'm not sure in which category this event falls in. If I recall correctly, I gave out points only for completing the event (beating at least 4 gyms) in previous years. And based on the last year's thread, I gave out 100 points for beating 4 gyms and 200 points for beating the whole game. How would that work this time?

 

[gimmepie]

Regarding the points, I'm not sure in which category this event falls in. If I recall correctly, I gave out points only for completing the event (beating at least 4 gyms) in previous years. And based on the last year's thread, I gave out 100 points for beating 4 gyms and 200 points for beating the whole game. How would that work this time?

This would be considered a long form event. So you could do the 50 participation points for everyone who participates, upping to 100 for beating four gyms and 200 for finishing the game. Or skip the participation and just do as you did before.

 

[Eleanor]

Guess I can just infodump my idea for a shared save file challenge! I've been thinking about more challenges that could be done as a group lately and of course, the obvious problem was that, in order for multiple people to play the same save file, an emulator is required. But seeing how the Egglocke challenge (which also requires emulators) went, I feel like this idea wouldn't be as bad as it originally seemed.
So, without further ado...

The Baton Pass Challenge
name may be subject to change ;)

Although one save file per team sounds like an interesting idea, that would mean just a lot less work to do for our participants - in all of the other big challenges, they were meant to beat the whole game by themselves before the deadline, and if we want to keep this a big event with lots of points, I feel like that has to be mantained to a certain degree. Having one save file wouldn't really keep track of how many people contribute to it (or at least I can't seem to think of ways to make it work).
Because of this, I feel like every player who signs up can start their own savefile. Every player will also get a set of rules, as usual... simple enough I guess. Players of each team can agree together on which game they should be playing, too... but that's all we need to start things up.

Now here's the interesting part. After each segment, as the name implies... people from within each team can start swapping save files between themselves. I'd say we should, at the very least, force the swap to occur but you can maybe decide together as each team who plays which segment. To avoid some people playing all the segments in spite of others not doing much, I thought about giving each player the ability to play 9 segments (1 save = 9 segments, if we also count the 8^th Badge to League as a separate one), plus a few more, say 3 or 4, just so that people leaving or being unreliable doesn't hinder the progress too much.

If, for example, someone completes their first segment but then disappears, and there's only 3 people participating, 4 bonus segments for the other two players means 4+4=8 segments that they can play in addition to the ones that are technically coming from their savefile. Those 8 segments plus the one that the "missing guy" played equals 9, which is a full playthrough.​

Obvious problem with this system is, if there's not a lot of people playing for each team... because bouncing the save file around 2 or 3 people gets boring! And so, another thing that we could think about is... swapping between teams! And so, maybe for just one segment, you get to sabotage other teams's save files by... idk, being slightly reckless while playing with nuzlocke rules, use a lot of pokemon that you think the other team can't really use (leaving them behind on grinding), or spending way too much money on random stuff. If we can give this some degree of balance (ex. don't release all the pokemon but 1 bidoof because that's just evil) it might be... even dare I say, fun. Definitely not easy to organize but we're all here for the GT so maybe that helps too with all the save swaps.

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So that was the idea for the collaborative challenge. Could probably turn some people off because of all this discussion going on and it could be a bit... too much (looks like I learned nothing from the Valentine's Day Challenge haha) but I'm putting it out there anyways ;)

I definitely would support a "map" kinda event too, though, and I'm confident that we can find ways to sort out some of those sprites issues too! I don't really have a good idea of how you imagined it to go though - all I can say is that it sounds a bit like Pokémon Conquest and we could take some ideas from that too if we go down this path! I may also add that I've been thinking about postgame-only events (with things involving the Battle Subway / Tower / Tree for example) but that might be better for a different moment and for a longer, less hectic period of time~

 

[Arcaneum]

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Hihi.

Looking at this, I would agree that a collaborative challenge is better for this. Otherwise, people can easily just pick up a save, beat the first two or three easy Gyms and then grab 50-100 points and call it a day... which defeats the point really as it'll hyperinflate everything.

Either way, if you go with this collaborative event then I think splitting it into like:

3 Badges - 50 Points
6 Badges - 100 Points
8 Badges + League - 200 Points
Post-game - 300 Points

I think you will be surprised firstly with how many people will want to participate and how quickly people will blast through the Challenge, so I think a post-game would be acceptable here!

Would it be possible to sort of summarise exactly what you're suggesting, Loomie? There's a lot to take in here that might not even be happening, so a concise summary of the Baton Pass challenge would be good. Things I'm thinking about are:

- How will you determine when people need to swap?
- How will more than 9 players (based on each person doing 1 Gym and one doing the League) be able to compete?
- If multiple runs are started due to lots of players, is it just the first team to reach the end winds it for their Team?

If anything else pops up I'll make sure to post!

 

[Eleanor]

Oops, I knew I had to get the ideas out there and didn't quite write them too well. I'm sure I can make it easily understandable for the Challenge event proper (of which hopefully I can create a draft soon as well) but... let's see if I can explain how it works through some examples :')

✔️ What do we need to start everything off?
Well... each person who signs up will start their own save file, and will be given one or more rules to follow every time they play - no matter the savefile they're using. I can make an example with 3 people: there could be me (Eleanor) with the rule "Only use Pokémon from your current game's generation", Clover with the rule "Only use Premier / Poké Balls to catch Pokémon" and Janp with "Each time a Pokémon faints, it's considered dead until the end of your segment".
These are just random rules and there could be more than one for each person, I still haven't figured that out.
✔️ So what do we have here?
3 people, 3 different save files. Each Save file, if we count in the postgame segment too, is 10 segments (0 to 1, 1 to 2... 8 to League, League to Postgame). If we want both Clover, Janp and me to complete our save files, we will need to play 10 segments each. Add in a bonus for people who may not be available and we'll go up to, say... 12 or 13.
Every person can therefore play up to 13 different segments from any save file they may get their hands upon. More than that is... kinda like cheating and not working as a team so we can't be too lenient ;)
✔️ Now that each player has their rules and their segment number, we start playing. I create a Platinum save file, Janp creates a X save file, Clover creates a White 2 savefile. Everyone of us follows the given rules until we get to badge 1 but then, we are forced to swap save files. No need to follow an order or do it randomly, although it could be an option - all I'd like to have is to force a swap at every segment.
What happens is, I get Janp's X savefile and continue from there with my own rule of - in this case - only using Gen 6 Pokémon. Clover gets my Platinum save and catches stuff in Premier balls. But!
✔️ Now, let's say Janp is not available to get the last save file, the White 2 one. Clover played that one first, and so if we want to continue, I'd have to play that segment too. I get to play the White 2 segment and get badge #2 on that game too - this is where those 3 bonus segments added to your total can come in handy. If people run out of those, well, they have to kind of accept the fact that they got an unreliable person involved and that we value teamwork enough to not forgive something like that? =))
✔️ I will say, it may not be the best idea to force swaps at every segment if people aren't available or something like that. But if we're more than just 3 people per team, things should get much easier. We should maybe think about allowing people to play segments consecutively if there's no one available to keep going OR denying that opportunity, saying "should've planned things out better as a team". Also, see below :)

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To visualize:

Eleanor's save (Platinum)
Eleanor (0 to 1) → Clover (1 to 2) → Eleanor (2 to 3) → Janp (3 to 4)...
In this case I have played 2 segments out of my 13 available, leaving me open to play 11 more from whichever save I get.

Janp's save (X)
Janp (0 to 1) → Eleanor (1 to 2) → Clover (2 to 3) → Janp (3 to 4)...
Optimal situation I'd say, we all take turns as if making a circle. Extend this for at least 10 players and we could really have each person play, in sequence, 1 segment per save file. Then again, give or take the different length of each segment across different games (4 to 5 in Emerald is nothing, 4 to 5 in BW is already longer), the effort required from each player is basically the same as playing one game from start to finish. Same number of segments more or less!

Clover's save (White 2)
Clover (0 to 1) → Eleanor (1 to 2) → Clover (2 to 3) → Eleanor (3 to 4)...
Technically this could still be a thing, no rules prevent this from happening unless we really say something like "every person in each team has to play at least one segment of ALL the savefiles that you have created for the challenge". It could also be a strategy thing though, where... you find some of the people with the least impactful rules for the game they're playing and just go for it. It's not like they can do much for other savefiles - in this case Janp's - and they still have to be careful, because there have to be people "available" to accept a swap. What I mean is... you can't really have this back and forth if you run out of segments and force Janp, the only other person left, to play 2 segments in a row. Right?

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This should answer your first two questions, April! As for the third though... yeah, I'm still not sure how to handle that. Or scores in general. So far I like your suggestion, but I'm also not sure whether those points should be individual (thus rewarding teams with more players participating), one-time (meaning that if anyone from a team gets to 3 badges they get points, something that could be more fair but also doesn't reward teamwork) or... like... once all the save files a team is working on get to a certain objective, then they get points. So I'll still be asking for input on what's the best way to deal with this.
This would also be the same way we utilize to decide who wins. The first team to complete one save file? The first team to complete all savefiles? Still not sure about it.

 

[gimmepie]

This make sense to me for the most part. I still feel like having unreliable people or people having to drop unexpectedly could be problematic though.

 

[Janp]

I really like Loomie's idea and I don't think I have anything impactful to add. Maybe just that we'll have to consider how well can this be done on regular consoles and if average PC user knows how to export/import save files.

I would rather not include post-game, because of its vague definition. Does it include completing the dex, beating Battle Tower (and its clones), collecting every item, shiny hunting... There just way too many things that could fall in this category that I would rather avoid it. And while it takes approximately the same time to beat each game's main story, there is a huge time difference between beating gen I and IV post-games.

 

[gimmepie]

I really like Loomie's idea and I don't think I have anything impactful to add. Maybe just that we'll have to consider how well can this be done on regular consoles and if average PC user knows how to export/import save files.

Maybe include or link to a guide?

I would rather not include post-game, because of its vague definition. Does it include completing the dex, beating Battle Tower (and its clones), collecting every item, shiny hunting... There just way too many things that could fall in this category that I would rather avoid it. And while it takes approximately the same time to beat each game's main story, there is a huge time difference between beating gen I and IV post-games.

I agree with this. It makes a lot of sense.

 

[Mewtwolover]

how well can this be done on regular consoles and if average PC user knows how to export/import save files.

It can't be done well enough on regular consoles. Switch and 3DS requires CFW and a homebrew application (Checkpoint) so it's likely too hard or even impossible (Switch Lite and newer Switch consoles can't be softmodded) for average PC user. NDS requires a flashcart so it isn't an option as well.

 

[Eleanor]

I really like Loomie's idea and I don't think I have anything impactful to add. Maybe just that we'll have to consider how well can this be done on regular consoles and if average PC user knows how to export/import save files.

I would rather not include post-game, because of its vague definition. Does it include completing the dex, beating Battle Tower (and its clones), collecting every item, shiny hunting... There just way too many things that could fall in this category that I would rather avoid it. And while it takes approximately the same time to beat each game's main story, there is a huge time difference between beating gen I and IV post-games.

I'd have to agree with Mewtwolover here. Even if we would allow save swapping between consoles, it would still be difficult enough to turn away many people that could otherwise play (I know I'm one) and I don't know if it's allowed for us to link to guides and resources about home-brew stuff and flashcards :))
Post-game is also vague, that's true. It's also more than we've usually asked of challengers during this kind of events!

I still feel like having unreliable people or people having to drop unexpectedly could be problematic though.

For the unreliable people thing, well... that's why I planned to give people more than 9 segments - in fact, we could up that number to 4 segments, meaning that if there's a team of 3 and one person only does one segment, the other two could complete that person's game by themselves by using their 4 bonus segments (4 + 4 + 1 from the one who disappeared = 9 = 1 entire playthrough). I wouldn't be too kind with this sort of thing either, though, simply because we'd like to see more teamwork and more activity from everyone involved! I feel like the problem is even less impactful now, because we're doing this during a GT - if this wasn't the case, there would definitely be a higher risk of people leaving!

 

[Janp]

Fine with me. We have guides on how to set up saves on emulators ready from our previous event, so that's taken care of.

So, how would people swap saves on a technical side? Would they use attachments here on forum or Discord? Or something different? I would rather have everyone use the same service.

 

[Eleanor]

Fine with me. We have guides on how to set up saves on emulators ready from our previous event, so that's taken care of.

So, how would people swap saves on a technical side? Would they use attachments here on forum or Discord? Or something different? I would rather have everyone use the same service.

Oh right, about time I get to it! I think the easiest way for this would be to use Discord: this would let people from each team also discuss about their challenges together and decide who should do which segment - and that sounds amazing for building up engagement! We'd probably have to make it obligatory for people to be active over there though, and I'm not sure if everyone will be up for that :)

 

[Janp]

Oh right, about time I get to it! I think the easiest way for this would be to use Discord: this would let people from each team also discuss about their challenges together and decide who should do which segment - and that sounds amazing for building up engagement! We'd probably have to make it obligatory for people to be active over there though, and I'm not sure if everyone will be up for that :)

Yeah, I have the same concerns as you, especially since I'm not active Discord user myself, but also think Discord is the best for save sharing. We would probably need special channel for this event, just to make everything more organized.

 

[Eleanor]

Yeah, I have the same concerns as you, especially since I'm not active Discord user myself, but also think Discord is the best for save sharing. We would probably need special channel for this event, just to make everything more organized.

I can support the additional channel yes, if anything it can be useful for us since we can go by what people say in there to give points and see at which point everyone is in their save file. Forum updates are cool, yes, but they do take a while to make if you want to narrate everything that happened and make them look interesting - so if we want to decide who finishes the run first or something like that, then ofc Discord is the better way. We could probably allow some private discussion between the members of each team as well though, something that can be done in their own general chat probably. Maybe a specific role for our event could also be good for updates and such... for people who aren't very active and don't check discord often, pings could be actually helpful, is what I'm guessing ^-^

 

[Eleanor]

hopefully it's good this time :)

The Baton Pass Challenge
PokéCommunity Get Together 2021​

Brought to you by Eleanor, Janp and the Event Organizers team!

This is a collaborative challenge, where you have to work alongside your team members to get everyone in the Hall of Fame. Team planning, discussion, and engagement is wholeheartedly encouraged.

Rules
💧 This challenge can be completed on any main series game, as long as you can extract your save file and share it with people. Usually this requires an emulator, and given the current state of the art, this rules out Sword and Shield as relatively difficult games to work with and get support for. As explained shortly, the whole point of the challenge is to swap save files between players in your team, so this step is important!
💧 With that said, please talk with other team members about what games they can play even before signing up and remember, sharing the game files themselves over PokéCommunity is not allowed by Forum-wide rules.
💧 It's strongly recommended to also use Discord and to join the PokéCommunity Discord server, as that's the best place to share your save files and keep each other updated!
💧 This challenge will run for the entirety of the Get-Together event, from July 5^th to July 19^th, 2021.
💧 For the sake of this challenge, each game will be divided into nine segments that correspond to each badge, plus the League challenge. First segment is from the moment you start the game to the moment you get your first badge, and so on. A certain run is completed when all of the nine segments are completed, the League is beaten, and the credits roll.
💧 For games set in the Alola Region, segments are obviously different since there's no Gyms! In their place, each segment's end is marked by every Grand Trial, as well as after four specific Trials: the Trial of Verdant Cavern, the Trial of Wela Volcano Park, the Trial of the Abandoned Supermarket, and the Trial of Vast Poni Canyon. And the League of course~
💧 Trading between games is not allowed. Legendary and mythical Pokémon are also not allowed to be used in battle.

💧 Each player will have to start a save file of their own, on their game of choice.
💧 Now, the interesting part! Each player can play a total of 12 segments from any game, and will be assigned a set of rules that they have to follow every time they play. 12 segments instead of the usual 9 means a bonus of three, which is meant to provide a satefy net if someone is unable to continue playing the save file they started.
💧 After each segment, the save file must be passed onto another team member, who will play a new segment of the save file that they have just received. The only thing to keep in mind, and that needs to be avoided, is that a single person cannot play two consecutive segments of the same save file. Anything else is free game, feel free to discuss this as a team!
💧 By signing in, you can access an opt-in, dedicated Discord channel for this challenge. This is the place to let everyone know about your progress and about your save file exchanges - also great if you have any question for the organizers or need help with anything! Use command !addrole GT Challenge in either #gt-general or your team's channel to get access to the channel.

Points and technicalities
🔥 Some information for finding your savefiles: for games up to Generation 5, you'll want to make sure that the Game file (.gba, .nds) and the Save file (.sav) have the same name, and are in the same folder (for VBA and most other emulators), or that the save file is in the "Battery" folder (for DesMuMe). Said folder should be located right where your DesMuMe.exe also is.
🔥 For Citra, you have to open up the emulator, right click on the game that you want to play, and then "Open Save Directory". From there, you'll need to replace the "main" file inside with the one you get from here, while also making sure that the name stays the same!
🔥 Sword and Shield could be played with Yuzu, for which the documentation is found here. Keep in mind that it's still a new emulator and most people may not be that familiar with it yet.
🔥 Having to share your save file means that... you have to save with the in-game menu! States (which is an emulator feature usually) are fine to use if you have yet to get your badge, but they work a bit differently. It's better to share a standard save file rather than a save state for this event!
🔥 As for how to share your file, the best way is to just upload it over on Discord, either in private message or inside the GT Challenge channel. In case that doesn't work out, though, other services such as Dropbox or Google Drive can provide another option to share files.

🔥 Points will be awarded per save file, and are as follows:
50 points when a save file reaches 3 badges;
100 points when a save file reaches 6 badges;
200 points when a save file is complete!

Sign up sheet
☘️ Name:
☘️ Team:
☘️ Trainer Class (optional, just aesthetic):
☘️ Games that you can play for this challenge:
☘️ Game of choice:
☘️ Player name (in said game):

☘️ To summarize, what you will need to play along is at least one emulator and one game file. You will also need a way to share your save file, preferrably Discord as we mentioned above.
☘️ What you will get once you sign up, instead, is your set of rules and your 12 segments to spend. Please wait until you receive your rules, either in this thread or in the Discord channel, before starting to play! Unlike with other challenges, the rules are active ever since you start the game for the first time!
☘️ Oh, also remember to have fun <3

 

[Eleanor]

Leaderboard​

Caelum
0 Saves started
0 Points​

Aecor
0 Saves started
0 Points​

Solum
0 Saves started
0 Points​

Players and rules:​

← CHANGE THIS WHEN SIGN UPS HAPPEN

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❌ Collapse​
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Caelum
[tab=c1]💧 Player 1[/tab]
Aecor
[tab=a1]🔥 Player 2[/tab]
Solum
[tab=s1]☘️ Player 3[/tab]

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💧 Player 1
Available for playing:
Save file:
Rules:

🔥 Player 2
Available for playing:
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Rules:

☘️ Player 3
Available for playing:
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Waiting for players still!