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We'll I equally agree and disagree with Trace. Although having demos evaluated on those 3 aspects is interesting, I agree that it is not better that judging the demos as a whole. Each scener I know thinks that different aspects of a demo (gfx, mzk, code) have different weights. For example, I think music is much more important that code & graphics in a demo.

This said, I have to add that I don't like Petroleo by Boah at all. Please don't take this as me defending our production; I think I'm the one rgba member attender that has less opinion on our prod :)

But, come on, there are tons of much better demos than Petroleo. Really. I think some of the entries in BCN party where in fact better than Petroleo :)

ahá, perhaps the best way can be to have:
1) Best demo soundtrack
2) Best demo gfx
3) Best demo code
4) Best demo
:D

but IMO the party was so good that didn´t concern the results to me (because I don´t have a entry in this compo perhaps :D)
I really think that RGBA deserved to win.

Hello guys, Enhorabuena to bcnparty organizers for the original and great idea of granting prizes to best demo soundtrack, best demo gfx and best demo code.

bcnparty awards rulez :))

I'm not a big fan of this year's voting system for demos either. I was with a non-scene friend at the prize giving ceremony and after it was over he asked "so, who won then?" and I couldn't really tell. I tried to explain but I was just adding to his confussion (and mine). It just feels "weird" to not have a "winner". Maybe it's this western philosophy of "winner takes all" playing tricks on me, but it just feels odd.

I think RGBA's and/or Spontz demos were worthy winners as a whole and I think the fact that they didn't rank better discredits BCNParty, not RGBA nor Spontz.

As a side note, alienating those who present productions to your party isn't a good idea. You can easily run into the risk of people not presenting prods next year.

BCNParty was a great party, and although the demo ranking system didn't even come close to ruin the party it just left a few with a "weird" feeling. IMHO, it was worth trying as an experiment, the results were non the less interesting. But it should be reexamined for next year's edition.

ps: you quite like polls, don't you? :)

So bcn really didn't have an overall winner? Well, the prizes for gfx, sound and code is a really great idea, but an overall prize is surely needed as well. Having great gfx, zik + code doesn't necessarily make it the best demo too. So how about 4 prizes next year?

psonice: yup! that might work, just like tolemaC proposed above as well.

sin: oh yeah :)

Well, might be nice to have a quick poll of people who were at bcn right here, see who is the 'unofficial winner'...

As a matter of fact, there were FOUR categories in the democompo, three of them -audio, video, code- were prized. The last one, the "best demo" it wasn't.

Normally there's three prized -when I say prized I mean monetarelly rewarded- positions: third, second and first.

Demo Compo
1st .- 300€ / 2nd .- 150€ / 3rd .- 75€.

With the traditional system we have three winners. At BCNParty we thought that voting each category separated would potentially throw NINE winners, so we chunked each prize in three.
100€ for first position in each category, 50€ in second position and 25€ in third position, like that:

Demo Compo - Best Graphics
1st .- 100€ / 2nd .- 50 € / 3rd .- 25€

Demo Compo - Best Music
1st .- 100€ / 2nd .- 50 € / 3rd .- 25€

Demo Compo - Best Code
1st .- 100€ / 2nd .- 50 € / 3rd .- 25€

Then, if your demo is SO good that deserves the first position in graphics, sound and code, you win all three categories and you actually win the original 100€+100€+100€=300€ first position prize, and the verbal acknowledgment of "best demo". You get "best demo" and your deserved prize.

But what if your soundtrack is no that good and there's a demo with a clearly better music? Your demo ranks -let's say- third in music and your final prize is 100€+100€+25€=225€, but STILL get "1s best demo" because the demo that ranked 1st in overall doesn't rank as high as yours.

The idea was to apply the system to other compos, like gfx (technique, originality, style) et al. So there would be probably more winners, the thridsecondfirst would still be there -no money unless your really deserve it ;-)- and with the extra possibility of checking where your flaws are.

-arf, sorry for grammar, syntax and all that-

Horray! Poüet lost my previous message. Anyway:

There actually was a final ranking (1st RGBA, 2nd Sector Omega, 3rd Spöntz?) and was
based on the individual section results. People wasn't paying much attention anymore so
maybe you skipped it.
The demo voting system was nice as an experiment (prize giving was a bit more interesting),
but it doesn't work well as an effective system IMHO. Tolemac's solution would improve things a bit but I'd rather stay with the old demo ranking system.
Why? First of all having to pay attention to every single aspect is insane especially if
there's only one single showing. And it kind of distracts you from seeing the demo as a whole, which should be the most important thing. There can be demos with awesome graphics and music, innovative effects but if these things are not put well together it ruins the overall feeling. On the other hand there are brilliant demos that are not specially good in any of the individual aspects but are definetly worth watching. There's no way to evaluate the synching.
And there's one more thing: People usually don't give the same weight to gfx/code/music when giving a final result. That should be taken into account too since there are many different tastes.
Anyway the final ranking was more or less as expected, so fortunatly it didn't fuck up the results :)

And about the party itself I think everything has been said already. There's no way to describe to non visitors how much the second stage rocked. Just imagine a dark room full of pillows, with it's own proyector+sound system and djsets with live visuals, cool people etc... I hope to see it next year too.
My only complaint would be that there was no holiday just before or after the weekend, as previous years, and it made the party very very short. I know it isn't something you could've fixed but it's just a pity everything went too fast.

Congrats to all bcn orgas and see you there next year.

PS: Spite, I just finished reading your message and prizes were actually bigger, we placed 3rd on 2 categories and that meant 60€ for each of them.

like i said, it's a good idea but it misses the important point that a great demo is more than the sum of it's parts. now and then theres a demo with great graphics, code, and music, that just doesn't go together welll, and there are demos with shitty music, sound and code that still rule. So i think that you need to vote also for 'overall', and have a separate prize for that.

Still, big respect for moving the voting system forwards :)

ithaqua: "There's no way to evaluate the synching." that kind of evaluation counts as "design". Now, what kind of metric people uses to evaluate design that I don't know.

Ithaqua, the amount of the prizes I used were ficticious. All af them can easlily be divided by three :-]

How many people think that demos with shitty music, sound and code that still rule should rank higher than the most worked ones? There's many demos that have won big parties appealing to the audience with funny messages or references, overtaking better demos. That's the story of every party in the world, so ... why don't try to change it?

spite: that's why i think you've moved the system forward :) But with your system, a demo with bad design, syncing etc could still win, and a demo with a little less quality, but perfectly put together would not. I think that's the weakness.

Also, don't forget people are there for a party, not to just the quality of the work. All those demos that sucked totally but made the crowd happy won for a reason ;) I think that's a good thing too, as it makes the party more fun.

So by having prizes for gfx, sound, code and an overall vote, you'd be keeping everyone happy. If the best quality demo is also the most liked by the crowd, it will still get the full prize, and if a demo sucks but makes the crowd happy, it will get a small reward too.

SiN: My point is that you can't put it in any of them.

Spite: I understand that but it should be no problem for BCN since there's no audience voting. Only a jury of participants plus handselected sceners if the number of participants is low.
Usually the problem you mention happens at big parties (Assembly f.e.) where everybody can vote, including the whole gaming ("wow! was that matrix? cool, let's vote for it") area.

it was jury voting? ahhh :) Ok, that explains a lot.

'overall' score is not so important then, although i still think it should be taken into account somewhere. For audience voting, it's much more important i think.

psonice: the jury at BCNParty is composed by the very same people that presents competing entries but they can't vote for themselves. Should there be not enough entrants (i.e. two entries in 64Kb category) the remaining members of the jury are hand-picked sceners with a proven track record. All in all results are normally very fair, and I think it encourages people to compete.

You should drop by next year and see for yourself, it's heaps of fun. ;)

sin: next year is possible, but i probably can't get to more than 1 or 2 events, so i'll have to choose carefully :)

That system sounds pretty good actually, although i can one disadvantage which is pretty funny. If you can't vote for your own prod, then if you down-vote all the other prods, it gives your entry an extra advantage. Of course, all the groups will know that, so all the entries will get low scores :)

The votes are public, and the productions are ranked from best to worst, without points.

Jury members do not give competing productions a score (numeric score or otherwise), they simply sort them from prefered winner to least favoured, so the trick you explain above cannot be done.

As far as I can see the only way to rig the competition would be to convince other jury members to put your prod on top of their lists. But then again, all other jury members are competing in the same category as well, so you are going to have a tough time fooling them.

Either that, or you get them all drunk. ;)

psonice: come with me to breakpoint and bcnparty, and let's do a party in london ;) 3 in a year isn't bad ;)

bcnparty always had perfect votesystem and totally fair (imho), this year, the new ideas have problems with "synching","design","idea","demo feeling" factors.

I agree with tolemac words, but it's the same problem as we have in all the charts. The demoscene isn't only code, gfx and music.

I'm not a coder, I don't draw 1024x768 gfx with photoshop or 320x240 pixelled gfx, I don't make 3dcharacters, I'm not a musician.

What the hell I am? What I am doing here?

trace: i'll be at the party in london (if i have nothing else too important anyway) :) breakpoint would be good, although asm would be good too. Well, i'll have to see :) I'd want to release something anyway, so that will be a big factor. And a smaller party, maybe, if i get chance to get to 2, i'll do a big one and a small one. Bcn sounds good, but so do many others... we'll see anyway.

About the voting, 'design' could be taken as part of the graphics, as it's really just the composition of what's on the screen. Sync is a big problem, so are ideas and feeling, which is why i still think an 'overall' vote is needed, since that covers those parts well enough.

sin: hehe, the problem i described wouldn't affect the rankings at all, the best demos would still win, just all the demos would be rated as bad :) But just doing best - worst clears up all the problems, yes, except getting the other groups drunk :) (or the usual tactic of kidnapping the coder's pet one week before the deadline)

robbed on mmul i was i tell yah.
next year you'll eat non compo friendly track instead.
hope you don't forget the earplugs.

photos from the party available at slengpung.com

enjoy.

btw wheres the party report 17kb .txt SCY???