Topic: VGMaps.com's 20th Anniversary - PROMO VIDEO CHALLENGE!

[JonLeung]

CONGRATS TO NESATLAS/ATLAS VIDEOS FOR WINNING THE PROMO VIDEO CHALLENGE!



And thanks to the two other participants as well; here are their awesome videos:

Verneri Kontto / Raccoon Sam


VGCartography


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ORIGINAL POST:

It's 2022!  This May marks the 20th anniversary of VGMaps.com!

I have a couple of things in mind to celebrate the past couple decades - one of which is a VGMaps.com PROMO VIDEO CHALLENGE!

VGMaps.com: The Video Game Atlas has over 37,000 maps for over 50 video game platforms, including consoles, handhelds, computers, and the arcade!  Mostly retro, but we do have maps of more recent games too.  Mostly stitched-together screenshot maps, but also have some reconstructions of polygonal games, and other visual guides.  And yet, I feel there is probably a way to present what my site is about to others, in the form of a video.

So, take note, people who are skilled in video editing.  What I am looking for is a video about VGMaps.com.  Any kind of promotional video, to showcase what VGMaps is all about.

The one who provides the best video (as determined by me) will win $2000 (USD)!

Rules/Guidelines:
- The point of the video is to promote VGMaps.com: The Video Game Atlas, so it has to be mentioned or shown in some way (obviously).  You can and should use the logo; you can even animate or remake the logo, as long as it is recognizeable as the VGMaps.com compass.  You can download them here: https://www.vgmaps.com/temp/VGMapsLogos.zip
- It has to be uploaded to YouTube so you can share the link with me via email or direct message.  It can be published as "unlisted" (so no one can see it except for those you share the link with) or "public" (if you don't mind anybody searching for it and viewing it) - as long as I can see it - whether or not it is visible to others before the contest is over won't affect how I judge the video.
- It has to be appropriate for all ages.
- Do not use copyrighted music that YouTube would have issues with.
- If using screenshot maps in the video (which you likely will), acknowledge the mapper(s) and the original game developer in the description of the video.
- The deadline for submission is before midnight (Mountain Standard Time) at the end of May 1, 2022.
- The winning entry will be announced - and the prize awarded - on May 6, 2022.
- You have to have a PayPal account to accept the $2000 (USD) winnings, if you do win.
- After the conclusion of the contest, you have to be okay with me using your video, either reuploaded wholly or in part, on my "JonLeung1" YouTube channel ( https://www.youtube.com/c/JonLeung1 ).  Credit to you will always be given if I use any portion of your video.

Feel free to do whatever you want, creatively!  It can be any length, within reason, of course - I expect these to be short, but longer content is fine if it remains entertaining throughout.

It can be a short trailer, rapidly showing off some of the most impressive maps.
Or it could be a skit about using VGMaps.com to conquer some part in a game.
Or it could be a time-lapse or tutorial video about how to make a map, or how to navigate the site.

Those are just some suggestions, though there really is no limit creatively, as long as it's a fun and entertaining video that clearly promotes VGMaps.com.

Good luck!  Remember - the deadline is May 1.

[VGCartography]

Can you share with us a couple statistics that would be fun to feature if possible?
- number of maps
- number of contributors
- first map(s) you hosted (which one and when?)

Thanks!

[JonLeung]

Good questions!  I'll answer what I can.

I did a map count, and as of today, the number I got is 37,265 maps.

That includes the three .PDF files - the text-only Q&A for Earthworm Jim 2 (Genesis), and the V-Note's Chronicle Guides for Blaster Master (NES) and Ys: Book I & II (TG16).  It also includes the .SWF file for the interactive map for The Legend Of Zelda (NES), but should I keep that up since Flash is dead?  Speaking of interactive/dynamic maps, that doesn't include the 66 dynamic maps for Blake Stone: Aliens Of Gold that we got just a few days ago, since those are linked off-site, on DarkWolf's page.  (I don't know why I have a link for off-site maps for Boulder Dash (NES)... hmmm.)

Anyway, you can get a breakdown by platform here:
https://vgmaps.com/Atlas/MapCount.xls

The top ten are:
6825 - Super NES
6456 - PC
5683 - NES
3303 - GB-GBC
2821 - Genesis
2665 - GBA
2160 - Arcade
1150 - Master System
 942 - DS
 753 - PlayStation

These popular platforms make up 87.9% of the total number of maps hosted on VGMaps.com.

There are 52 platforms, but that is counting Game Boy and Game Boy Color together (which I was thinking about separating, maybe?), as well as Neo-Geo Pocket and Neo-Geo Pocket Color together.  So you could say 54, but I think "50+" is sufficient.

I don't have a count of the number of contributors.  Someone once used something to scrape info off the site and got an exact count, but I don't recall who that is and I'm sure it's been long since it's been updated...

There are 2478 games featured here.  At this time, I do not have a breakdown of them by platform.

The very first map was my map of The Lost Woods in the Light World side of Hyrule in The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past (Super NES).  I don't remember exactly how many maps I had at the start (if I find that I mentioned it somewhere, I'll come back here) but it wasn't very many, and I had to ask around for maps a lot in that first year.  It took a little while for it to pick up steam, so thankfully I didn't give up after the first year (which I thought was a possibility if it wasn't popular).  Hard to believe that was twenty years ago.  The site was supposed to launch at the end of April or the start of May 2002, but due to a technical issue (I think it was something stupid like "index.htm" having a capital letter) the site actually launched on the evening of May 6, 2002.

Hope that helps!  Anything else you want to ask, I'll do what I can to answer them if you think it would help with a video submission.

[G.E.R.]

I don't have a count of the number of contributors.  Someone once used something to scrape info...

It can be counted by using two scripts in Excel, can you show a list of all pages from the atlas?

308 contributors (preliminary data)

[JonLeung]

In the spreadsheet in my earlier post, column B lists all the folders in the Atlas folder (well, without the spaces).

Out of curiosity, who are the top ten mappers?

[DarkWolf]

I don't have a count of the number of contributors.  Someone once used something to scrape info off the site and got an exact count, but I don't recall who that is and I'm sure it's been long since it's been updated...

I had something that did that, but I haven't run it since 2007 it looks like, and it's using a library from PHP that has since been dropped, so it doesn't work anymore.

[G.E.R.]

There are 35136 files in my counter. It looks like I missing some pages.



366 users, full table at here.

[FlyingArmor]

There are 35136 files in my counter. It looks like I missing some pages.

For whatever reason, it looks like only Lüt's maps are being counted on the Genesis page. I don't know if the same is happening with other pages however.

[JonLeung]

I had something that did that, but I haven't run it since 2007 it looks like, and it's using a library from PHP that has since been dropped, so it doesn't work anymore.

I thought the original was yours, DarkWolf!  I should have gone with my instinct and mentioned that.

Good work on the new count, G.E.R.!

366 mappers - one for every day of the year (if it's a leap year)!  However, upon closer inspection, there are some anomalies in that, since there are some maps made by multiple mappers.  There are seven mappers that have zero maps, so there's something else off.

It's cool that you put a tab on your spreadsheet for the total number of maps per mapper and their percentage.  I remember long ago, with DarkWolf's count, that Will Mallia had very close to 1/8 of all maps.  At 12.51% now, he still does, despite not submitting anything for quite a while (until a few days ago, actually).  I guess everyone slowed down at the same time and by the same rate?  Also, he has twice as many submissions as George s at 6.03%.  I recall some statistical thing (probably from watching a Dr. Hannah Fry video - she's my favourite mathematician) about how when you have things like population counts of cities or whatever, there's this emergent pattern of the #1 thing having twice as much as the #2 thing, in this case, we have the #1 mapper having twice as many as the #2 mapper.  Interesting...

For whatever reason, it looks like only Lüt's maps are being counted on the Genesis page. I don't know if the same is happening with other pages however.

That's true.  Lüt's contribution to the Genesis page is due to Lunar: Eternal Blue.  But there are 2031 other Genesis maps.  That'll probably change the numbers around a bit.  I bet those mappers with zero maps are actually here.

I should do some kind of audit.  I already started, the other day, as I was trying to synchronize my maps on my hard drive with those on my backup drives, when I provided the count as seen earlier in this topic.  I found some redundant maps, caused by maps being renamed and then being backed up, but I might have forgotten to rename or delete the backed-up original, causing them to exist twice on the backup.  But I also came across a map for a PC game called "Countdown" that I don't remember who sent it and it doesn't seem to be up, and I don't know if maybe it was or there was a reason to take it down?  Might have to look at older backups or like the Wayback Machine or something.  I'd like to think I'm pretty organized, so I don't think we would have a whackload of maps that have gone missing, but, clearly I can slip up a few times within over twenty years.

All this talk of map counts is intriguing, and I know I should keep a better record myself.  Wonder if I should split this topic (so the map counting and "more-related-to-video contest" stuff could be separate), or keep the conversation going here to keep this topic on top?  I honestly don't know how many people know about this video contest, perhaps every bit of exposure helps.

Whenever I try to promote something, I feel like I'm shouting into a void that no one else can hear.  It's hard to even explain what my web site is to people (actually part of the reason for having a video made to help with that, LOL) but also to expect a particular niche of video editors to know about this soon enough, I don't know...

[Grizzly]

When I read about the promo video challenge, the first thing that came to my mind was an ancient promo video for the Speed Demos Archive created in August 2007 (News post): Speed Demos Archive Promo by Team Zwei (Youtube video)

It might not be the best promotional because the content it promotes is only briefly shown during the fly-by sequences and the composition feels closely tied to the creation timeframe but back in the day I was hooked on the project description and that it took 6000 lines of code to script the choreography. And when I read your start post I imagined that a promotional video for VGMaps might be equally difficult to pull off when a lot of map content would be shown in a video.

[JonLeung]

That Speed Demos Archive Promo video is neat!  Thanks for sharing, Grizzly.

The pacing could have been better - lots of credits in the opening, probably didn't need to be four minutes long (ironic considering it's for promoting speed runs, LOL) - and as you say, the content could be more of the focus - but certainly on a technical level that is very, very impressive.  And it was published twelve and a half years ago (an eighth of a century!), which absolutely would have been a feat to do then.

I'm not sure if I can yet imagine what the winning entry of the VGMaps.com Promo Video Challenge will look like, so don't necessarily take my comments on anything as a guideline for what you should imitate.  I like a lot of things, but as you may know if you've watched my YouTube book reviews, I can always find something to criticize, LOL, and when things are compared against each other, only then will I really be able to tell what the winning idea is.  It's the old "I don't know what I like, but I'll know it when I see it".

One hint I can give: I don't like errors, obviously, but I particularly don't like anachronisms.  As in, things that should belong to a different time.  Here's an example: I've seen a lot of custom arcade machine designs with custom art.  But I hate it when people use the wrong images of the Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong.  Yes, Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong are indeed arcade games.  But people use Mario and Luigi renders that are clearly from the 3D era, or Donkey Kong from the Donkey Kong Country games or later.  Sure, you could have a custom arcade machine that can play the games that the art belongs to, but if it's specifically a retro/classic arcade theme you're going for, those renders shouldn't be used in that case.  It's very irksome, because it's an error that seems blatant to me, but to other people, it's subtle or moot - like, "it's still Mario", so it's good enough for them.  Ugh.

[JonLeung]

Just a reminder that there is now five weeks until the deadline (end of May 1) for this Promo Video Challenge!  If you are interested in this but haven't started, now's the time to do so!

[JonLeung]

Can't believe there's only ten days left until the deadline, which is at the end of Sunday, May 1, 2022.  That's a week and a half to finish off those videos!

[Raccoon Sam]

Intriguing...! Read about this way too late but I gotta try and get something done! 

[JonLeung]

Intriguing...! Read about this way too late but I gotta try and get something done! 

There is not a lot of time, but if you think you can throw something together, go for it!

I honestly don't know how many entries I'll get.  At least a few people said they would do something, but no one's really talking about this anywhere outside of these forums or in response to my few tweets about it.

I would guess in some cases people DON'T want to talk about it and spread the word and have more competition, LOL.  But I imagine the majority of people probably don't have video editing skills, so it's not something that would interest the general public.

What I'm getting at is, if there aren't many entries, then all the more reason to submit something, as you might have a chance to win!  Also, if there are relatively few, I can probably showcase them all, so you'd at least get some views.