To start off, let’s list some of the essential challenge elements. These are the sort of thing you should specify in every challenge. Consider this a checklist of what to include when posting your challenge:
- What are you looking for people to make?
– Can you specify what sort of cars you want? Econoboxes, luxury sedans, sport cars, utes, whatever. Make it clear and obvious.
– I would caution against making it too set in stone. Your challenge might be “make a perfect replica of a VF Commodore”, but that doesn’t give people too much freedom to exercise their creativity.
– Some challenges exist that allow anything to be submitted, taking anything from utes to sedans to roadsters. Shitbox Rally, Cool Wall and others. Generally, you should still make it clear what a successful entry looks like, which leads us into… - What will be used in judging the car?
– Which stats will be most important? Which stats will you look at, which will you ignore? Selecting these well is an art in and of itself, which will be included elsewhere.
– Will you test the car in BeamNG, or just Automation? Tuning for the two is rather different, and not everyone has BeamNG.
– Will you be judging interiors? They are fiddly and many people prefer not to, but there’s a lot of potential in there.
– How important are aesthetics? - What sort of engineering is allowed?
– What year do cars have to be? There are four years - two engine years, two chassis years.
– What techpool is allowed? That’ll be discussed elsewhere, it’s a massive can of worms.
– Are you going to restrict quality?
– How much can cars cost? You can set a hard limit (binning cars that cost more than a certain amount) or a soft limit (needing a reason to cost that much) or both.
– What fuel is allowed? Consider what was on the market during that era and locale, what would have gone into the car.
– Is a catalytic converter needed? Does it have to be a three-way? (Three-way is almost always better than two-way anyway but…)
– Are particular parts banned for realism or balance reasons? It’s common to disallow race parts, for instance, and also to ban V16s.
– Are you going to force any minimums or maximums? A minimum number of seats, a minimum safety type, a maximum loudness? - What sort of fixtures are required?
– Most cars should have headlights, indicators, taillights, reversing lights, mirrors, a gas cap, wipers, etc. This is practically an unwritten rule.
– Are you going to specify a particular size and shape? Until 1983, the USA mandated a particular size and shape for headlights.
– Do you need to have a particular bumper? This was common in the US too.
– Are aerodynamic fixtures allowed? How many can you have? For 50s challenges, restricting them is common for realism. - What should people name their models and families? It’ll make it a lot easier for you if everything has a consistent naming scheme, so you can spot them in the car list.
- Do people have to post an ad in the thread, or can they just submit quietly?
- When will submissions open? It’s common to have a short gap between posting and opening, to allow for rules changes.
- When will submissions close? Ideally, you should specify a date, time and time zone to make it clear.
There’s more to hosting than this, of course, but answering the big questions makes everything smoother.