working on something but I hope I'll reach the 4:10 mark within the given time atm 50s long for one section

I was supposed to close submissions today but I have no way of testing if the current submissions are accepted into the contest anyways so I'll close them in the near future, when I get access to my desktop. Shouldn't take more than a couple days.

Ok, so here's the deal.

As of today, there are 6 entries to the contest. Of those:

• 2 are generic endurance tracks and as such not eligible
  
• One is generic RPG (with horrible wayfinding too) and as such not eligible (it takes place in a single village in its entirety, is there anybody who knows what a road trip is?)
  
• One got hit by a weird glitch that makes the TMPlus menu not load (there's a question in General Help with that problem. Myself, I deleted and redownloaded the pack 3 times to no avail)
  

Even if that one was good for the contest (which I'm actually pretty sure it is), there aren't nearly enough entries for this. It is with great pain that I have to declare this contest deserted.

One is generic RPG (with horrible wayfinding too) and as such not eligible (it takes place in a single village in its entirety, is there anybody who knows what a road trip is?)

horrible wayfinding, ok your opinion...

no roadtrip?
well the name says enought lol:
a normal fishing day, you start next to your fishing poles, then you take a roadtrip through the castle and the village in front, then you go back to start, roadtrip is over ... yey ... you also get the message at the end
"maybe a fish takes biten, lets go gome and check the fishing poles"

maybe a little story is missing..

A road trip would involve getting out of the starting village, for once. Something your track doesn't do.

Maybe I should just ban stadium from the MTC since y'all stadium people never try to do anything remotely resembling theme.

Instead of banning the tracks you could just give the maps a point penalty. Like -5p is it doesnt fit the theme.
It would be so unfair for players that have put in a lot of work for this MTC and then just get banned just because "It didnt fit the theme enough".

The problem is that given the current state of the contest I can't do that either. Back when we had specific judges there was a theme category that went for 10 points, so getting zeroed by all judges pretty much guaranteed that you didn't get far. That's not the case now. Even a 5 point penalty can be overrun by just getting your friends to vote 10 on your map. B got through the newgrounds voting system after all.

Also there's how the theme is part of the rules and if the track doesn't even try to fit the theme I can just say that it doesn't follow the rules and as such is DQ'd. This is one of the cases. The rules specify that there has to be some kind of trip, and no matter what skyslide says, his track doesn't move from a starting location in terms of what a road trip would entail - everything takes part on the same village and the castle right outside it. The generic endurance tracks are closer to the theme (and, as such, more rule compliant) than skyslide's, really.

Disqualifying tracks because the authors' idea of a road trip is different than yours sounds quite harsh to me. People can have different interpretations of this theme, which result in different approaches to the challenge. I don't see the problem having a "road trip" through a village if you can clearly get to other parts of the village and the route clearly shows new areas and discoveries; exploring as you drive. It shouldn't have to be a journey from A to B; the route might as well be a full circuit around the 'world' which returns to its origin. Whether it feels like you're travelling somewhere could be up to the judges to decide if they could take it into consideration. That's where the theme judging criteria comes in handy in earlier systems.

My .5

A journey around the world can be a road trip. An RC car through the neighbourhood is not. It's not that hard.

ban stadium

i was definitly my last mtc
gg