News / RCT Olympics Results!

P.S. Ride6... none of the Official Rules for the park making event on any of the sites say "at least 75x75." If your park was 78x78 as you said, that's probably why it was disqualified.  I did see something here where Corkscrewed made "some clarifications" stating "The map must be 75x75 squares at least, meaning you can go bigger (though unless you work at JKay speed, I don't encourage it)." though he then directly contradicted that with:"If you get rid of the border fence and own all land, the total map size can be 75x75, but if you don't and choose to keep the border fence, your map must be 77x77." So I'm not sure how "clarifying" that was, nor where he got that information.

You've done a pretty good job weathering the storm so far, and you know I have nothing but the utmost respect for you and Hawk. However, I must take opposition to that statement.

I very vividly recall reading that OJ's did not say "exactly" 75x75. And in talking to him, he gave the impression that it was the minimum size. Nowhere did it say larger was unnacceptable. In fact, I even posted on the original forums and IM'ed him about it, asking for clarification. The size was what distinguised "Parks" from mini-parks. Minis were smaller than 75x75, while Parks were 75x75 or larger, to my knowledge. Unfortunately, with the original site deleted, I have no written proof. You'll have to take what I posted as "proof." But I would not go and tell someone the wrong instructions.

Secondly, I REALLY hope the park wasn't DQ'ed because it was 78x78. Even if the 75x75 was a real max size rule, going three more squares each way has to be one of the dumbest reasons I can think of to disqualify a quality entry. So I will interpret your post as speculation. For your sake.

He retrived the files from the EMAILS and changed the names so the judges wouldnt know whos they were.

Erm... so that basically means he couldn't have been DQ'ed based on breaking anonymity, especially if the files were renamed anyway, right? Just pointing out a flaw in the argument.



Ultimately, I agree that we should chill a bit. Discussion is awesome, but a few people are getting just a bit too worked up. Ride Exchanger, for example, has come in criticizing us for being haughty and pretentious while himself using a haughty and pretentious tone! I appreciate the masking of humor (in reference to the cap size quip) but most people won't see that, buddy.

Lets keep this civil, guys. Don't get so heated as to stoop to name calling and pointless flames. Those of you who have know who you are.



I think that we can honestly say that most of this fuckup was caused by OJ leaving the scene and burning the bridges behind him. Having seen both sides (judges vs atheletes), it seems like he had left everything intact and clear, we would not be having problems with judging and dumb DQ's and such.

Still, many of our critiques are valid, and just because they sound harsh doesn't mean you should tune it all out and call us jerks (this aimed at those who have reacted immaturely, not those who have responded civily).

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If your park was not posted at the Olympics site (i.e. it was DQ'ed or whatever)

Feel free to send them to me. I will either post them as an update or cull out the great ones and post them as Designs, depending on appropriateness. You can touch them up and/or complete them if you'd like before you send them in.


nedesigns@gmail.com
Please include RCT OLYMPICS in the subject.

As usual, include all relevant information, including name of creator, name of park, and any additional details you want.

Also mention whether you'd like to submit this as a Design or not.


I should note that if I only go with the Designs route, then not everyone may get their stuff featured. If these become Designs submissions, then they will be judged according to NE Design strictness.

Thanks!

If your park was not posted at the Olympics site (i.e. it was DQ'ed or whatever)

Feel free to send them to me.  I will either post them as an update or cull out the great ones and post them as Designs, depending on appropriateness.  You can touch them up and/or complete them if you'd like before you send them in.


nedesigns@gmail.com
Please include RCT OLYMPICS in the subject.

As usual, include all relevant information, including name of creator, name of park, and any additional details you want.

Also mention whether you'd like to submit this as a Design or not.


I should note that if I only go with the Designs route, then not everyone may get their stuff featured.  If these become Designs submissions, then they will be judged according to NE Design strictness.

Thanks!

yeah, that'll be nice, i'd like to see what others submitted and what others thought of my creation.

Now just realex peeps, its over, been done and it failed, lets forget the whole thing and release the good stuff on the fansite's themselfs.

For next time, i think there should be a lil more communication between the site's and the organisation of the RCTOlympics, Corkscrewed gave some good idea's from his side and i think other people will have other things they'd like to see on the rctOlympics, although not everyone's idea's can be used it will give you a good idea of what peeps will globally want, and it might show thing that ware completely overlooked this rctOlympics.

btw, what was your rating system, what elements did you rate ?

They rated things 1-10. Elements varied, but it was pretty much like how anyone would rate a park numerically. How it looked, the rides, what they liked, etc...

Lastly, on a lighter note, wouldn't this be funny if "OJ" was a 14 year old who got his computer taken away by his parents as part of some diciplinary action.

Well, he is 15, so that is possible .

Enough of the bickering already.
MidwestBoy, you already know my feelings about everything that's happened. I do understand now the really shitty situation you were left in, and I do commend you for trying your best to pick up the pieces. I think it would have been better if you just waited to post everything until you got everything organized, and this whole thing would have been avoided. Still, I'm sure it was quite overwhelming from the time you picked it up till now, and I'm pretty sure we've all found a scapegoat that we can crucify if we ever see again . Ride6's park will be released here, since it was pretty damn good. Now let's all kiss and make up.

And ride_exchanger, get your ass outta here. Stop trying to instigate another fight after everyone was seeming to calm down. Save that shit for a place where people actually know who you are.

Ok, the RCTOlympics were a bit of a disaster this year, but I still think it's a good idea.

It just needs to be better known. Advertise like hell, on all of the smaller fansites too. There'd be much greater interest in the games then. Obviously there'd be more entries that wouldn't be up to par with the rest, but thats the way any really good contest is. Rather than throw all of the results out at once, each could be released at a different day. Maybe the smaller events first, and then finish off with the big events. As interest grows, entires would build in quality each year as more of the better parkmakers join in. I don't really think NE will be a great site to host the new games, but maybe a more community friendly site like rct2.com could. Rct2.com could do a good, professional job.

Just my 2 cents. I don't want to see a good idea like this die.

Maybe there should be a commenwealth games as well.

By 'Toon wins', I meant that he got there first with the Drexler comment.

I believe that the lack of understanding of the workings of LL was the worst aspect of this contest - and the lack of effort on the part of those who aren't so well versed in LL in contacting others who are.

Posix's guide is EASY to find - pinned in the 'ask the experts' forum (a logical place to look), and it would have averted the disqualification of the LL entries. Hopefully, in future, this will be rectified.

Thanks Iris, and others. I appreciate what you're saying. I didn't want to wait to post the winning entries simply because we'd promised to publish them on the weekend, and it was already late. Plus with the forums down, I didn't know if we'd ever recover the information for the runner-ups. That's the only reason we announced the medal winners when we did.

As an update to the rest of the bullcrap going on behind the scenes, I found OJ on AIM today.

He and I had a VERY GOOD conversation, and some information was revealed that leads me to believe someone else sabotaged things, including the email and the old forums. I don't honestly know who's to blame here (though I have a very strong gut feeling, but OJ and I are still sifting through the logs and rubble), but OJ claims he didn't delete the emails from the GMail account and OJ didn't even know the forums were down until earlier today. He was very open with me in our discussion and I have little reason to doubt what he's told me.

I've managed to do what I can to get the old forums up (basically working with OJ to rebuild their config files which were erased). However I don't have Admin access to the forums, so I cannot go in and fix the few remaining bugs, however the old forums ARE back online:
http://www.rctresour...php?act=SC&c=14

OJ had to leave before I got them back up, but I've emailed him and asked him to give me admin access (and to remove the admin access of others who could have caused these problems).

A few comments:
1) I have downloaded all the judges notes on the voting. I need to take some time to organize them, and then I will post the runner-ups scores as well as all the judges' comments over at the official site.

2) Corky, I don't doubt you had a conversation with OJ. However now that I can read the old forums, they do not indicate he made that "at least" clause publicly nor did any of the other sites have that information, nor was it amended to the Official Rules. It turns out 2 parks were disqualified due to being larger than 75x75 (ride6's was 78x78 and another was 87x87). Since the judges were not privy to the conversation you had with OJ, and given OJ didn't amend the rules to reflect that, their actions are understandable. The rules did state 75x75. I wasn't trying to discredit your honesty. I'm sure you had that conversation, but no one else was aware of it.

I agree ride6 had an amazing park. I think the judges comments will reflect that as well. It's just an unfortunate situation.

3) I would still like to see the runner-ups downloads made available at the official site. I have not yet received any emails from anyone, though. Given Hawk has the original downloads (and given Hawk seems to be avoiding me... with good reason, cause I'm REALLY pissed at him right now), the only way for me to put the athlete's downloads up is if they send them in.

I understand if you guys don't want to do that, but I'd appreciate the chance to make your entries available to everyone in this manner.

4) I've personally asked Corkscrewed to join the Planning Committee discussions over at the Official site. I hope he takes me up on that offer. However given the recent sabotage an the direction the trail of breadcrumbs is leading, my involvement with the event is seriously up in the air. I don't like being stabbed in the back... twice.

And I agree... ride_exchanger... cool it.

Thanks again, folks.

It's alright. I was just blind with rage that my work had gone uncredited. I realize that the Olympics were a disaster when you took over. Honest mistakes happen.

One other thing, I think I was DQ'd on the name thing since my name was on the file name and on the little message when you first open the park. I doupt someone took the time to count out the the squares that made up the park edge to see what size it was.

ride6

oh, and where are these judges comments. I'd love to hear feedback.

I think it's now blatantly obvious that the RCT Olympics were a complete waste of time, and just to put in MY 2cents, I reckon the judges did a shit job, because there are people out there who SHOULD'VE acheived a better standing than what they did...

Dude... give me some time!! Damn... I just got the files and haven't even had time to do my own job today until about 1/2 hour ago.

And ride6, yes, you were disqualified because of the size of your park. And yes, one of the judges counted the squares.

I'm hoping to post the judges comments tonight, but if I don't, cut me some slack. No one else is helping me with this.

And who the hell do you think you are saying you should get 100% of the medals?

Well DUH. We are New Element. New Element is like, the single greatest RCT site to ever graze the web, as proclaimed by the vast majority of the RCT community. Of course, when I say vast majority of the RCT community, I mean JUST the members of New Element. But who cares, because we are right about everything.


Seriously though, going back to what I said months before when we were just picking our teams, I thought this contest would be a great way to back up what we continually proclaim as fact. No one seemed to take it too serious though. Everyone seems much more comfortable concluding “we have nothing to prove, and the like. Well, surely continuously spouting comments proclaiming “we are the best, end of discussion, no questions asked, ect” leaves some pretty big shoes to fill? Arrogantly affirming our talent convinces no one. And some of you are actually surprised when someone from another site denounces our conceit. They have every right to do so.

To everyone who is saying everything about NE rules and shit, well, you're probably right. And I love to take part in all of the inter-NE contests. But I would NEVER support an inter-site contest put on by the guys at New Element.

Face it, as much as we tend to be very liberal, we are a very conservatively American website, in that we are the equivelent to racist white supremist bigots.

Perhaps within reason, but even so, I have always been uncomfortable with the bias probably originally fueled by NE's creation after the breakup with Danimation.

This post is in response to a post made at the Official Olympic Forums by Hawk, from RCT Depot, located here:
http://rctolympics.c...&st=0

This is similarly my resignation "speech," though I'm not waiting for the new committee to come in for it to take affect. It's effective immediately.

I've done all I can do for this year's Olympics. I posted several messages in the various competitive threads detailing the voting for all entries that the judges received from Hawk after he downloaded the email attachments. I also have posted the judges comments on the entries, where they were available. Hawk is the only one with the downloads, so I've asked him to upload the files so that people may download all of the entries from this year's events.

I have similarly posted some comments in the Organizing Committee section of the forums detailing my concerns regarding 1) How this Olympics was handled, 2) How it seemed that the user "RCT Olympics" was making decisions for the future of the Olympics and 3) asking said user to refrain from making any announcements, decisions or taking any action regarding future Olympics until a full, formal committee could be organized. I have proposed some suggestions for how the Olympics may be run in the future, but have not attempted to make my suggestions official, nor to take any actions based on my suggestions.

I was approached to help rescue this Olympics, and I've done what I can. I worked in good faith with Hawk, despite our sordid history, and believed he was similarly working toward a common goal.

Over the course of the past few weeks it has seemed that I was being misled.

#1) This "new" Olympic site was started up during the same time the events and judging were going on at the old RCT Resource Olympic forums. I approached Hawk and asked him to A) take these new forums offline and to point to the Resource forums, where we had indicated to all participating sites (and judges) that the remainder of the 2005 Olympics would be taking place. Repeatedly the link was changed, or these forums were taken offline, only to have the links replaced and the forums come back online as the "official" Olympic forums. This caused a lot of confusion among not only the athletes, but the judges, who were trying to finish the judging.

#2) Things started popping up at other sites and here at the "official" Olympic site indicating that decisions had been made by an Olympic Committee and that plans were underway to, among other things, hold the Olympics 2x a year and to hire a wide variety of positions for next year's Olympics (recruiting topic here) - something that should be handled by next year's host site, not by anyone affiliated with THIS site at THIS time.

#3) The old RCT Resource forums were hacked/sabotaged the day the winning announcements were to be made there. In fact, they went down moments after I'd finished prepping the winning announcements. When I approached Hawk to find out what had happened, and if he knew where to find OJ, his only suggestion was that we announce the winners at the "new" forums. There was no urgency to retrieve the information (not to mention hours of work I'd spent) nor any concern over the lost forums. He kept asking why we needed them since we knew the winners. His primary objective was to move everything to the new forums, hosted on Hawk's servers and under Hawk's control. To his credit, he did give me Admin CP access so I could clean up the forums and prep them for the winning announcements, which were ultimately made here. Though after I confronted him today, he has since removed my Admin CP access.

Now I'm going to call a spade a spade, here, Ray (a.k.a. Hawk) unlike your veiled references in your post which no one is going to understand.

I am not trying to take over. In fact, I don't have time, nor desire, to run the Olympics. Neither am I trying to influence other's who have posted at the official forums questioning your actions and behavior. I trust that people are old enough to speak for themselves and the fact of the matter is, a lot of people are suspicious of you.

I was finally able to contact OJ today and with my help, we were able to get the old forums back online. It appears that someone had written over the conf_global.php file on the RCT Resource servers thus interrupting the site's ablitity to access the mySql database. At the time the forums went down, there were very few people who had that ability via FTP: OJ, Hawk, and perhaps one other person who used to do backups for OJ at Resource.

In addition the inbox and sent mail box of the GMail account for the Olympics had been deleted recently. Hawk had mentioned this previously in passing, but I discovered this the other day for myself when I was able to answer the password security question and log into the email account directly (access that previously was not given to me, despite us 'working together' on this). Back when Hawk first discovered the emails were gone, he told me OJ must have done it. In talking with OJ today, he assures me he didn't delete them. That leaves only one other person.

Today Hawk requested that OJ delete the GMail account, saying we didn't need it anymore. He also told OJ that we didn't need the information that was in the old forums, now that the winners had been announced. He's either over-eager to move everything to the new forums or he's trying to cover something up, and either way it stinks.

Hawk clearly hasn't been paying attention to conversations I've had on multiple sites (including the Official site) regarding the email account still being in use and my attempts to recover the data lost in the old forums.

In my conversation today with OJ, several things came to light which question just about everything I've been told by Hawk since I agreed to try to get the Olympics back on track. I confronted Hawk on the details of my conversation with OJ and he was unable to answer my questions, instead prefering to play the victim in the face of my "'converted back ended' influence" (??) and my apparent habit of blaming him for everything wrong in the RCT community (largely because he deserves it).

I have copies of my conversation with OJ, but have not discussed the possibilility of releasing that information with him. I plan to next time I see him and suspect he will be willing to back up what I've said here today.

So, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

I've invested more than my share of energy into this. My work is done. Hawk still have a responsibility to the athletes of this year to upload the files for download. I hope he'll do that for them, at least. God knows he hasn't done anything else except tinker with the 'new official RCT Olympic site' the past three weeks.

I've neglected my own life, my own job, and my own site for far too long.

I sincerely hope the Olympics has a future, as I belive it's a good idea that could really be a lot of fun if properly planned.

But as long as it is on servers controled by Hawk or RCT Depot, neither I nor RCT*Mart will be participating and I strongly encourage other sites to boycott until a proper formal committee can be organized on an independent site/server.

I suspect this post will be deleted from the Official Olympic Forums as soon as Hawk sees it, so I will be posting it at all of the participating sites from this year's Olympics.

Thanks, and my best to all of you. Goodbye.

Ironically, I just finished watching 'Mean Girls'

Now that's funny. Thanks... I needed the laugh.

That... pretty much sucks. Although it doubles the number of scapecoats by shifting the burden of half the blame onto another. Sucks to hear about that, but you've done more than needed. So I commend your effort.

for those who actually care, i'm getting my entry done.

I must agree with cork.

You are doing good keeping most of the time so calm with all this critisizm we were giving mostly to OJ.
I do thank you for finishing up the olympics...

lets have a good clean 2006 olympics