Mega Roundup 250 - Winners Show Your Glowies!
Judging criteria
There are 3 main aspects we are evaluating for these contests:
Quality of the coaster(s)
Quality of the scenery
Quality of the presentation
For our first installment we'll talk about Quality of the coaster(s).
Quality of the coaster(s)
First and foremost, while the quality of the coaster or coasters you show in your video is very important, we are NOT looking for absolute perfection. We can tell when much care has been put into ensuring the track is free from pumps, sudden harsh radius changes, wobbly transitions, unintentional over/under banking, and other errors in construction.
We're also looking at the quality of the support structure. This encompasses how realistic looking the supports are. Could your coaster survive the forces? Is it adequately supported? Is it over supported? Are there angled supports in the right areas to deal with turns? Would it collapse under it's own weight?
We look at how realistic the coaster is. Note that this does not mean we are looking for purity of any particular manufacturer. Some of our fans on forums like to debate the exact angle of a B&M old school inverted lift hill, but we don't. We only care if what style of coaster you're going for looks realistically represented.
Finally we're looking to see how much fun/how thrilling/how unique the ride experience is. This can bleed over into the scenery column, but generally the pace of the ride experience and the excitement it builds up is purely in control of the coaster's design.
Quality of the scenery
For our next insightful installment we'll explain what we're looking at for Quality of the Scenery.
Building a smooth, properly supported, and operationally sound coaster is only 1/3 of the equation. The surrounding scenery is just as important for your ride experience. NoLimits 2 gives you a square mile of build area. If your coaster is surrounded by empty, flat, plain grass, you need more scenery. And in this contest, trees and rocks alone are not enough.
We're looking at everything riders can see while on the ride. Empty flat terrain (aka green field) is viewed as essentially unfinished or ignored empty space. This does not mean you have to build a city that stretches to the horizon...remember this is all about what you can see while on the ride and what you show during your video. Consider that the back side of Expedition Everest that isn't visible from the park is bare walls. You can't see any of that area from inside the park or while on the ride, so no need to finish that. But, if you can see it, and it's undeveloped, you need more scenery.
Quality of the scenery looks at how well built the scenery is. A poorly made or poorly textured building that has been copied out to infinity won't do well, even if there is no green field. All animating scenery, rides, lights, objects, special effects, and other scripted elements are also evaluated for their quality and impact on the ride experience.
The most overlooked part of the quality of the scenery is story. You have a few minutes to leave your riders with some kind of emotion or impression, and the best rides manage to tell some kind of story through the visuals seen during the ride. Your story concept should come through during the ride. Everything in this category helps tell your story. Most videos featured in Roundups 100, 150, and 200 go well beyond just decorating a coaster to include story or superbly executed theme elements.
Quality of the presentation
At it's heart, the Roundups are as much a video editing/producing competition as they are a contest to build coasters. You've spent months working on beautiful scenery and meticulously ironed every unwanted wiggle out of the track. Now it's time to show your work off.
This can be summed up by one word: compelling. There are unlimited ideas/thoughts/concepts/inspirations for creating a video. No matter how you go about it, your video must be compelling. You want to grab the attention of the viewer and pull them in for the ENTIRE video.
Generally we recommend 2-4 minute long videos set to music with creative cuts/editing. Also be sure to include enough POV footage of your coaster for us to see what the ride experience is like. A wide variety of shots, creative camera angles, and interesting pacing all help keep the video compelling and attention focused squarely on your coaster. You can also add post-production effects/editing/layering.
Music is an essential part of your finished video. Music will set a tone and give your presentation a feeling and impression. Music makes scenes lighthearted, dark, intense, serious, somber, scary, suspenseful, angry, whimsical, wondrous, humorous, fantastical, and/or magical. Your music choice(s) set the scene and emotion for your presentation. Yes you can use your favorite electronic wub wub wub music, or an orchestral score, or country, or rock, or rap, or polka, or pan flutes, or drums, or adult contemporary, or show tunes, or a chior, or a car alarm set to a beat, or gothic shred thrash death metal. But before you choose music that you like, ask yourself: does it fit the imagery and the emotion of your video? If it doesn't and you just chose the song because that's what you like to listen to, try again and pick music that supports the presentation you are making. If it doesn't fit, it won't be compelling and we'll notice.
"Does my video have to be 2-4 minutes? Can I make it longer? Shorter?"
You can make your video however long you like. Long videos in the 7-8 minute range and short videos in the 2 minute range have all been honored previously. The key once again is to make it COMPELLING. It's extremely difficult to come up with 8 minutes of compelling footage that you can't look away from. Err on the shorter side and cut out the boring parts of your coasters that have nothing to do with the themed ride experience. Look at previous winners to see what they showed, and more importantly, didn't show.
Any additional questions? Feel free to ask away below!
Aw man, I had started a project that was meant to be for that, but I'm not 100% sure anymore, as I'd kinda taken long breaks from it. Actually kinda waiting for a certain update that people are anticipating (I'll leave that to your imagination).
I’ve got ideas but little work done and little time. Hopefully I’ll be able to top Ten Speed from last year...
Last year I didn't have anything to enter. This year I might. Nov 18. I think I can do that.
We have announced the prize for Roundup 250: Custom Acrylic Plaques with remote controlled color changing LEDs!
The art for the plaques is being designed now. Production of the plaques will be done by an outside vendor and all will be in my hands before the end of August. I'll share photos of the finished prizes when they arrive.
So what are you waiting for? 15 weeks left! Get building, make something amazing, edit an awesome video, and compete to be featured in the amazing Roundup 250!
-Ride_Op
Think that I'm just going to change the ride experience of Expedition Escape a lot, haven't published it yet. Or when I get inspiration I'm going to make something new (and when I have the time for it).
For the video: It may be published at Nov. 18 or?
After the announcement of the winners you can make your video public. Until then the video must remain unpublished and hidden.
When we get closer I'll post a link to the entry form.
-Ride_Op
Who has something in the works? Remember you can post all the still images you want! Show us what you're working with!
-Ride_Op
I've got something that could be pretty sweet for the contest. Its a side project I'm doing aside from my book. I'm hoping to get it done in time to film it and submit it.
I have an idea at least
I have two ideas, and two coasters. Still have to decide which coaster and which theme to take and I need to learn myself some video editing
This is coaster 1
marathon, is that you?
I just need to make a choice between this and the one with the castle tower (^^^)
Great to see some projects in motion! This year's prize will be the most expensive custom prize we've ever created and I hope there is good competition to win one of these!
Reminder: YOU DO NOT HAVE TO MAKE TERROR TRACKS OR STRATHMORE TO GET 10TH PLACE!
Making a good coaster with good scenery and a great video with good music and some kind of theme or story is all you need for a shot at the list. Put your best effort out there and see what happens!
-Ride_Op
^The thought of that made me want to come out of my cave and take a shot at another heavily detailed project. Will it get anywhere? Probably not! But always worth the shot :P
Go for it dude! Mine isn't Strathmore level, but I think the story line is fairly decent.
Go for it!
-Ride_Op
Is there any guideline considering optimization? Because I'm planning on making an incredibly detailed forest and I don't know if there might be any rule on sco objects?
Optimization won't matter for a video. When capturing video using the built-in video capture, the system will take as much time as needed to perfectly render all 30 or 60 FPS (depending on what you set, 60 is best). You'll end up with perfectly fluid video no matter how long it took to render each frame, even at maxed out detail levels.
-Ride_Op
Ok thanks!
This is the theming I've done so far..
I think this will be a RoundUp 300 project
Can recreations be entered if they have decent video?
Hi folks,
Well we're 18 weeks away from Roundup 250, let's get a thread going! I'll post official rules as soon as I have time to write them. In short, the high bullet points are the same as every year:
Prize: The Glowie! Color Changing LED Acrylic Plaques!
All 10 will be produced and shipped to me before the end of August.
The Wheelies for 150 and 200 are still pending (yes, we know we're behind, we're working on them and they will happen).
Roundup 250 was revealed Wednesday, November 21. And the winners are:
All Roundup 250 Entries
Roundup 250 Honorable Mentions
Roundup 250
Questions? Ask away!
-Ride_Op