I liked the appearance and interface of the new forum, but I too had a hard time telling what was happening when. For example, I didn't get a chance to watch my game get played on the livestream since I didn't know when it happened. Also, it seemed like the most popular games overshadowed the less-hyped entries - regardless of quality or completion - even more than in previous years.

There's a lot of good and useful feedback here- thanks everyone. I haven't responded to everything yet because I'm pretty sick at the moment, but as soon as I feel up to it you'll likely get a more detailed response. Once again though, thanks for taking the time to share all this with us, it's going to help a lot.

Btw, I want to point out something good. Regardless of low attendance, this convention was still a fantastic way for people to discover all kinds of new and amazing fangames. There's nothing else like this on the internet and you did a lot of awesome things this year. (Like the livestreams.)

(10-29-2011, 02:23 PM)gookum Wrote: You should do it when most people have breaks, like around Christmas or even Thanksgiving - that way there would be so much more time to get things done and to have cool events and competitions.

probably not during major breaks, because people tend to be doing... well, Christmas stuff during Christmas, and Thanksgiving is on a different week for Canadians and other countries than America and... other other countries

but those were just your examples - other dates could be suggested in this topic

Wiiboy Wrote:1. I didn't like how the main site and the forums correlated almost exactly. I was confused several times such as me thinking I'm on the forums when I'm on the actual site, since they look almost identical.

Correlation is exactly what was intended, as it looked tacky and unprofessional in previous years to have the forums and main website look different. And it's really not that hard to distinguish between the main site and forums - you just look in the top right corner and see that you can't see booths or such... plus the fact that the content of the forums and main site look completely different, anyways.

If anything, I'd say it would have been great if we were able to also get that main site menu on the forums as well.

Wiiboy Wrote:Discuss more about the radio and livestream. I didn't have a clue what those meant and I still don't now.

I'd agree with this, but like just little mini-statements. I can kind of understand that the word livestream is a bit of an odd one, but honestly, the word "radio" is really tripping you up?

Wiiboy Wrote:More explanation about NCFC in general. I was lost the minute I joined here. :( but again, this is probably a fault on my part.

Well, the About page sums it up pretty nicely - it's just too bad it didn't show up until close to launch.

Doctor M64 Wrote:It would be cool to have the talent of DJ Yoshiman and the visual entertainment of the livestream all together in one centralized stream.

That would be cool. But not really possible in my mind, unless you have some sort of suggestion.

Let me give some notes on the Livestream.

1) I initially decided to enter it in without knowing much of anything else that was happening in NCFC. I did not have any of the games pre-arranged for me prior (Except for the ones which I submitted myself), and thus the scheduling pretty much ended up being "when I was ready" or "When someone else wanted to stream a game".
Next time, (Yes, I'll be back. Too many people enjoyed the Livestream for me not to be back!) I hope at least a -couple- of streams are pre-scheduled. I also hope there's some major things on the stream besides fangame plays - in particular I was disappointed that I didn't get to do anything akin to Skype interviews, major guest cameos, or, well, much of what gives SAGExpo it's "fun" atmosphere outside the fangaming scope.

2) All of my streams are archived on my Youtube page:
http://www.youtube.com/KiddoCabbusses
And all the other streams are saved in the Livestream's own internal archive.
http://www.livestream.com/ncfc2011/folder
EVERYTHING that I know of has been recorded.
We played as many of the games as we could fit into the schedule for this year, and to the best of my knowledge all of them were covered.

3) I apologize to anyone who might've been confused about how the Livestream setup worked, so I'll explain it for next time;
a) Anyone who wanted to simply watch the Livestream can either visit the Livestream page or watch the embedded version of it on the site.
b) Anyone who wanted to stream on the Livestream would have to contact me for information on how to do that.
c) There were no pre-established rules. Eventually when we got a slew of streamers I made ONE rule: "Don't override other streams in progress." So far, this has been the only rule we needed to apply.
d) If you were watching trailers or pre-recorded game footage, then no one was streaming at that time. (Notable exception to ah who pre-recorded his Time Walker play for... some reason.) I handled adding all those trailers myself. Most of them were submitted to me in the trailers thread. There were some which I actually went out of my way to fetch. The Sky High fangame playing to the Daytona USA game "Sky High", I made myself. The Four Swords Online trailer was made by ah with footage from both himself and myself.

Now, moving on to comments about the "Best of Show" event.
I generally agree that it swung too far into the direction of a "Popularity contest" at the expense of games that deserved a fair chance of winning or at -least- being given notable attention.
This is ESPECIALLY true in the Misc. category. MMBN: Chrono X may have been a good MMBN clone, but it was just one really good demo amongst a whole category of really great demos! Final Fantasy: Essence and Fire Emblem: Immortal Sword were also great examples of copying a game engine down to the subtlest details and Xeno Fighters R... Dang, how the heck did everyone neglect Xeno Fighters R so badly? All three of the games I mentioned should've been contenders that gave the awards a sense of suspense, not just throwaways to be ignored! Also, ROM Hacks seemed to be completely neglected, regardless of quality.

I think one good way to solve this next year (Going along with some other suggestions, such as limiting severely how reviews affect the results) would be not basing the "Best of show" categories on the game categories, but instead organizing each "Award category" based on highlighting what can be objectively viewed as a set of fangames' "best" qualities.
For example, let me pick out some examples I would've thought out for this year.

BEST COMPLETE GAME: (Only for game that are called "Complete" that are not mini-games, can be played start-to-end, and have no plans for an update)
For this, since there weren't a "lot" of examples of this, I went with every example I could recall;
- Psycho Waluigi
- Highway Trouble
- Paper Mario
- Super Mario RPG: The Seven Sages

BEST MINI-GAME:
- Super Mario: Red Scare
- Mario's Deadly Flight
- Sky High
- Kirby's Ballin' Adventure

BEST ENGINE - Game Accuracy: (For Game engines which most closely replicate their "Official" counterparts)
- [Insert Hello Engine Mario demo here]
- Supernova Mario World Engine
- Mega Man Battle Network: Chrono X
- Final Fantasy Essence
- AM2R
- The Legend of Zelda: Horn of Balance

BEST ENGINE - Technical Ability: (For Game engine which do highly impressive things outside the scope of their "Official" counterparts. Also, since I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess that this was the first year with online games, these go in this category by default)
- Gravity Goomba
- Xeno Fighters R
- Pokemon Mystery Universe
- The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Online
- Earthbound 3

BEST ROM: (Because ROM hacks and homebrews are fangames too, y'know!)
- BS Zelda Map 1+2 Lite
- Fire Emblem: Elibian Nights
- SMW2+3: The Essence Star
- TSRPR
- Rendezvous Delano

BEST SOUNDTRACK: Currently no segmentation between original compositions and simply "Good soundtrack use" here.
- Final Fantasy Essence
- Xeno Fighters R
- Highway Trouble
- AM2R

BEST SIMPLE FUN: (Because some games just don't need all this overly complex engine stuff or fancy-smancy graphical craziness to be good)
- Bowser's Last Stand
- Super Paper Bowser World
- Danger, Bob-omb! Danger!: Handle with Care
- Metroid Defense
- SHPDMBGWL4 Sunshine

Notice how I have some categories in which the popular game still has a good shot at winning, while I have others tailored specifically so that said popular games can't even qualify - just to give the other fangames a fair chance to shine.

(NOTE: If you disagree with my category choices, then, uh... don't take it too seriously. It's not like this is being implemented retroactively anyhow.)

As for combining the Radio and the Livestream in one; We'd probably need a volunteer who'd -constantly- be playing Winamp through the Livestream when everyone else is off - preferably one who can somehow do it while still having some kind of video relating to NCFC playing, possibly audio-less trailers.
It wouldn't be technically impossible, but it WOULD require a pretty dedicated volunteer - who'd also be willing to sign off as soon as an actual streamer is ready.

(10-30-2011, 02:21 PM)DJ Yoshiman Wrote:

(10-29-2011, 02:23 PM)gookum Wrote: You should do it when most people have breaks, like around Christmas or even Thanksgiving - that way there would be so much more time to get things done and to have cool events and competitions.

probably not during major breaks, because people tend to be doing... well, Christmas stuff during Christmas, and Thanksgiving is on a different week for Canadians and other countries than America and... other other countries

but those were just your examples - other dates could be suggested in this topic

well typically christmas/winter breaks last longer than just the week of christmas - i'm sure the week after people would be done with all the holiday stuff

similarly we could do it around spring break/easter, which might even be better since its a bit of a lesser holiday

I am not sure if I actually want the radio played over the livestream. However, I would like to see all of the chats unified. There should be one place to chat where everyone is talking together whether they are listening to the radio, or in the livestream, or just hopping on to say hello. (I don't know if that is actually possible though.)

Ideally what you'd want is a radio, livestream and IRC chatroom merged into one single entity.

Most of the time you'd have trailers running, with the option to switch between trailer audio and the radio. When Yoshiman or whoever arrives to review games via the radio, the livestream would be hijacked and you'd be able to see what was actually happening.

And you'd have various little things like that. So if there was some fancy workshop scheduled, the tutor would hijack the livestream and turn it into an interactive whiteboard or something to get points across.

The downside would be this would be incredibly complex to implement and would need both strict scheduling, automated features and staff training. That being said... there's an entire year until the next NCFC!

could probably just embed the livestream next to the mibbit widget and i guess have a radio bar under the livestream too or something... not as fancy but nearly functionally equivalent

Also take into account that this was my last year being radio host and DJ.

(11-02-2011, 03:48 PM)DJ Yoshiman Wrote: Also take into account that this was my last year being radio host and DJ.

:'(

Oh dear. Would I have to double-duty, then? I got my Satellaview archives at hand...

Actually, double-duty like that would probably be very difficult, but aye.

DJ Hedgie will probably take over next year, as he expressed interest in doing so and already was a DJ this year.