Skin Contest!

yeah! pillboxes can be boobs!


yes, i got to judge the contest and man were there some awesome entries.

hehe

yea, BOOBS!

With 8 judges reporting, here are the results of the Winbolo Skin Contest. Some categories had a clear overwhelming winner. Other categories resulted in a very close race, with the winner winning by only 1 vote. So without further ado here it is:

Original Contest

Best Realistic Wall/Block: Sheeps' CivSkin
Best Realistic Tank: Minhiriath's BoloReloaded
Best Realistic Pillbox: Minhiriath's BoloReloaded
Best Realistic Grass: Minhiriath's BoloReloaded
Best Realistic Swamp: Minhiriath's BoloReloaded
Best Realistic Tree/Forest:Underdog's SnowBolo
Best Realistic X-Tra: Minhiriath's BoloReloaded's Explosion
Best Screen: Suicide's Radioactive

Extended Contest

Best Realistic Sea: Underdog's SnowBolo
Best Realistic Ocean: Underdog's SnowBolo
Best Realistic Road: Sheeps' CivSkin

Winbolo Skin Grand Champion: Minhiriath
Winbolo Skin Grand Wizard: Minhiriath

Explanation: The Winbolo Skin Contest Champion is the one who wins the most categories in the Original Contest Categories. Winning the Wall Category counts as two wins. Minhiriath wins the title with 5 wins vs Sheeps's 2 wins (due to wall counted as two wins), Underdog's one win, and Suicide's one win. The Winbolo Skin Contest Wizard is the one who wins the most categories in the Original Contest and Extended Contest. Although Minhiriath did not win any categories of the Extended Contest, he had such a big lead in the Original Contest that he also wins this title with his 5 wins vs Sheep's 3 wins, Underdog's 3 wins, and Suicide's 1 win.

I thought I'd award an honorary award to those who have won at least 1 vote from a judge for first place in that category.

Honorary Awards
(for those who didn't win in that category, but received at least 1 first place vote from 1 or more judges):

Realistic Wall: Minhiriath
Realistic Tank: Underdog
Realistic Pillbox: AJR
Realistic Grass: Sheeps
Realistic Swamp: Sheeps
Realistic Tree: Minhiriath
Realistic X-Tra: Ky (his mines in BlueReSkin)
Screen: Sheeps (AquaBattle and CivSkin), Minhiriath (BoloReloaded), and Suicide (Sui_bio)
Realistic Sea: Minhiriath and Sheeps
Realistic Ocean: Minhiriath
Realistic Road: Minhiriath

What Judges liked about individual Skins

I asked judges, if they wanted to, to write what they liked about the individual skins. So here is the tally. Some judges only wrote comments for one or two skins, other wrote comments for every skin. There also was one honorary judge, who did not vote, but who did write comments on what he liked about the skins (Thanks Sheeps!).

The "*" separate comments made by different judges.

AquaBattle

I have never played on a mac. but i like the brightness of your screen. it makes all the items easier to see.
*
Pretty nice looking skin, I like what you did with the screen, the original pillbox design, and the original tank design.
*
It was obvious you spend much time into this skin. I really liked how you made the pills and bases. Keep up the good work sheeps!

BlueReskin

I feel that the tint of blue used was very easy on the eyes. when you play bolo a long time a screen that is easy on the eyes is a hard thing to comeby.
*
LOVE THE MINES DUDE!
*
I liked having a blue tank :P It was obvious to me you spent time on the mines, tank, bases, pills.
*
Interesting marshmallow mines (yet screen doesn’t match), and the blue is a good bold color.

BoloReloaded

Beautiful skin! Clearly a lot of time was spent on this one, and I find it very playable. Definitely the best overall skin I’ve seen so far.
*
one of my fav. skins. i use this skin a lot because it looks like a lot of time and effort has gone into the making of this skin. big props to min, this skin is awesome. love the 3D effect u went for on the tanks and the bases. craters were outstanding. since all of us have started out with the default skin we are used to the images, i like how you didn't switch to brand-new images, but instead made the old ones we are so used to better as a whole
*
Phenomenal Skin. Not much more I can say this skin is virtually perfect. I don’t think any of the other judges noticed this but you changed the lgm making his armpits fatter. I had to go to quad view to see this but I notice. Nice job all around with the skin
*
This is definitely the best "entire remake" skin.
*
Min min min min min… This skin was spectacular, where do I start. EVERYTHING was great! I think you just needed a flashier screen
*
Great looking skin, overall best I have seen. Really sharp with good-looking graphics. Blocks are smooth, grass and trees are fun and interesting, pills have great texture.


CivSkin
Outstanding alternative skin. The quality of this skin is excellent, earning a close 2nd place in 4 of the above categories.
*
Nice Walls I like it, reminds me of what pyramids looked like. I like what you did with the outer walls of grass, the yellow lines. The deep, and shallow sea look very good. Nice variation from everything else I’ve seen.
*
This was one of the coolest looks skins I’ve seen in while. I really liked the walls and screen.
*
I really like the idea of putting sand near the water!

GreyWinBolo

Excellent screen, though I’d like it to be a little more clear which box I have selected on the left.
*
I like what you did with the outer walls of grass, the yellow lines. The deep, and shallow sea look very good. Nice variation from everything else I’ve seen
*
I liked the measure of shots. It can be very helpful in games in tight situations to see how many shots you have left.
*
Good straightforward screen, much more interesting then default.

r1p1tup

loved the screen. not too much not to less.
*
Nice work AJR I liked the 3d affect
*
Great 3d texture on pills and bases. Trees feel like Christmas!

Radioactive

Very nice screen. I like what you did with the pillbox icon on the left, the double pillbox with the lgm nice work. The LGM WINBOLO and gauges on the right are nice. Great work with this one.
*
Whoa.. this screen is amazing.. keep up the excellent work
*
I like the hazard icon behind the main window. Nice fun screen and nice placement of lgm with the 2 pills on pill function button.

SnowBolo

This skin introduces some of the more radical changes that actually remain playable.
*
trees! trees! trees! i found the forest on this skin to be outstanding. by far the most original skin i have seen in the contest
*
I really like the pillbox, shallow and deep sea
*
Ud, I know how many hours you spent on this little baby of yours. You treated this like it was your baby :P. I think the trees, pills, blocks, water, omg everything was great
*
Great creative skin, all themed elements fit well together. Realistic trees and bright bases. Sea and Ocean are well made. The tank smiley also adds some fun. Nice sharp images.

Sui_bio_1

I really liked the bio-hazard symbol in the start up of the screen. everything of the screen matched well with the whole bio-hazard theme.
Nice screen. I see that you have changed all aspects of it. I love how you made the headstone and skull smeared with a hint of red looks phenomenal. I can't wait to see your next skin.
*
Whoa.. this screen is also amazing. Keep up the good work
*
Interesting concept, and icon behind main screen is nice. Bases have x-mas feel.

Where to get the skins

Currently, all skins entered into the Winbolo Skin Contest can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.winbolo.us/skins/wsc. The skins entered into the contest were:

AquaBattle v2 by Sheeps
BlueReskinV1.2 by Ky
CivSkin by Sheeps
GreyWinBolo by Minhiriath
r1p1tup by AJR
Radioactive by Suicide
Snowbolo v1.01 by Underdog
Sui_bio_1 by Suicide
BoloReloaded by Minhiriath

Thanks:

Thanks for the judges: Fermat, Fubar, Hawk, Indiana, LRL, Q-mandabomb, Ren, and Wolverine.

Thanks to these judges for providing feedback: Fermat, Fubar, Hawk, Renny, Q-Mandabomb.

Thanks to Sheeps for giving helpful advice at the start as well as throughout the contest, for announcing this contest and its results via the wbn news, and for being an honorary judge who provided feedback on the skins.

Thanks to Ren for the idea of having a #WSC and for registering and taking care of the channel during the three weeks of the entry period and then during the week of judging. This proved to be very usefull and beneficial.

Thanks to Underdog for creating the original Winbolo contest with his Winbolo Map Contest, and providing a very good foundation and framework from which to hold a contest. This Skin Contest borrows very heavily the framework Underdog provided for holding a contest.

Sweet! Yay, I won the screen section :D Glad you like my screens, and congrats to all that won! Jeez Min, from what I heard I just got to see your skin(s). Now to downlaod all the skins! I can't wait to see what you guys have come up with! :D

for those of you wanting to see my skin, and don't wanna get it from the ftp
http://www.cablelan.net/924/BoloReloaded.Build.96.zip
thanks goes out to all the judges for the votes :) ....

Min

I will post this information on my website, along with the virtual awards within a week.

Thanks for putting it up there, Min. For some reason the FTP wasn't working for me. Your skin was pretty cool, my only gripe was that it only worked in double size.

you can fix it, open the skin32 up and resize it by 50% then save as "skin" and put it in his zip file.

I'd much rather have graphics that were meant for normal size than shrunk-down doubles. I'm sure that there would be a few repercussions of me trying to shrink size down. (loss of graphics quality, things start looking wrong, inability to tell PB damage, etc.)

...but thanks for the suggestion, anyway.

Double size should be the standard. Normal size is so small you have a teeny-weeny game in the middle of a sea of PC wallpaper.

I'd be fine with that as standard just as long as I could have single-size, since double-size doesn't work for me.

I did it regular size (shrunk down and it looks pretty damn good, I don't see much lost.

Well, I talked with Min about why he only included double-size, and his point made so much sence I decided to do the same with DesertSkin and MoonBolo and probably all future releases of any skin I work on.

The reason is that double size the way Elvis implemented it allows us to have much more details. On Single size each tile is 16 by 16 pixel. on Double size, each tile is 32 by 32 pixel. You would think that just means twice as much details...? Nope. 16 by 16 equals 256 pixels on single size. 32 by 32 pixels equals 1024 pixels....about 5 times more details.

The skin Min, Underdog, and myself (and others) used that double size advantage to put five times more details into the graphic to render them much better looking. Thus when we shrink them to single size - we lose a lot of details and the graphic looks crapier. So Min, and I say: We worked hard to produce something that looks great (in our humble opinion), so to lose all that work just to use in single size is a huge waste of the effort and time we put into the skins.

Furthermore - I've heard people who tried to play with Snowbolo on 1x, and they though this looks like crap and gave up on it. However, SnowBolo looks really great on 2x.

So the other rational is we don't want people to view our skin at 1x and think it looks like crap when it really looks great in 2x.

Nowadays it's very simple to change the resolution of the screen so you can let double size screens fit the screen.

256*4 = 1024 sillyfi .... :) so .. four times as many pixels, other than that, completely agree with you.

Min

Yes I can see why you want it like that I tried it but I can't have windows run in that (only on a 13in. monitor) so I'm squinting to see everything but it does look better double and maybe I should start doing this too for my screens. But that will wait for when I get my rig and 19in. monitor. Hey when are you going to post virtual awards by the way? :roll:

Min wrote:

256*4 = 1024 sillyfi .... :) so .. four times as many pixels, other than that, completely agree with you.

Min

:)

~suicide~ wrote:

Yes I can see why you want it like that I tried it but I can't have windows run in that (only on a 13in. monitor) so I'm squinting to see everything but it does look better double and maybe I should start doing this too for my screens. But that will wait for when I get my rig and 19in. monitor. Hey when are you going to post virtual awards by the way? :roll:

Ahhh, 13 inch - Yikees!

The screens unfortunately only come in one size. However I have seen min make the screens at double size and let winbolo resize it down to 1x with some interesting effects.

Heh, well I was going to put the virtual awards this week....butttttttttttt, I forgot to pay my phone bill so I can't use the internet from home for a week or so until the company reconnects me. I'm at the local university Library right now...

Hehe, thats sux0r, all well hehe I want my award damn it!!! :D

~suicide~ wrote:

Hehe, thats sux0r, all well hehe I want my award damn it!!! :D

Hehe are you always connected to WBN? It seems whenever I make a post that concerns you, you respond to it...IMMEDIATELY! Not that I mind, it's kinda cool, it's just......curious.

he's stalking you fi, I thought that was pretty obvious ;)

Min

Hehe, I'm a stalker :shock: Lol, I have nothing to do and a 1mbps connection also helps :D

Put that bandwidth to work, dude. Make a sui-bot or something. That bandwidth must be $150 a month...... :?:

$150?!? Acually only $29 :D

Well heres the test result its running a tad slower but ariund the same speed.

Status:
Test completed...
Rate 968.76 Kbps

strange, I can get a 3 megabit connection for 29.95 canadian

Min