Welcome to The Show Floor, an experimental new feature here at C3! Consider this a beta test of a new feature. We may change how this works at any time, so participation is at your own risk. Please be patient.

What is The Show Floor?

The summary is very simple! You can post customs that meet C3’s standards in this forum. C3 authors will check them out and pick some songs to “sponsor”. With the help of a sponsor, your songs can be part of an official C3 Friday release! The details, however, can get a little complicated.

Here’s the life cycle of a Show Floor submission:

1. You create a Show Floor topic for fully-featured customs that you have authored. No one else other than C3 authors can see this topic! There are some guidelines later in this thread.
2. You set a special tag on your topic to let us know that you have a song or pack ready to go. You can only submit one song or pack at a time, but you can also set aside a limited number of “reserved” songs.
3. Your song will get a quick “triage” by an expert. A quick 15-minute review will let other authors know how much work might be involved to bring the song up to C3 release standards. This might also be your cue to put in a little more polish.
4. C3 authors will check it out, and if one of them has time, they’ll pick it up and become your sponsor. You’ll get a PM when this happens. Authoring a song from the Bounty Board greatly increases your chances of getting sponsored! More on the Bounty Board in a bit.
5. Your sponsor will playtest the song(s), identify any issues, and work with you to bring it up to C3 standards. This requires you to be OK with criticism and feedback. None of our authors should be jerks (and please let us know if they are), but you need to be cool with another person’s suggestions.
6. When the song or pack is ready to go, we’ll put it up that Friday as an official release! You’ll be credited, and you’ll get one of the “__ songs” forum badges you might have seen around. If you released one or more songs from the Bounty Board, you’ll get a special badge for that, too.
7. Orphans. If no author decides to sponsor your song after 30 days, then it’s either too much work, or didn’t quite mesh with anyone’s tastes. Please pull the song off the Show Floor and release it in your own custom thread.

Qualifying Customs

Your custom must meet the following standards:

• “Full band” (all Rock Band parts that exist in the audio are represented with charts) (see notes below)
• Sensible reductions for all difficulties (CAT is a good starting point, but is not enough)
• Overdrive and character animations for all instruments
• Practice sections and a venue (an autogenerated venue is fine)
• No egregious errors/problems (you need to have a working knowledge of customs authoring — synced tempo map, correct BPM/time signature, notes quantized to grid, etc.)

Small- or medium-sized authoring issues, especially for specifics like note wrapping in GBK or cymbal placement in drums, will be addressed by your sponsor.

If you can’t do all of the instruments on your own (i.e. if you don’t do vocals), feel free to loop in other authors to help you out before submitting. Just let us know who contributed so we can credit them properly.

Your Thread and Your Reserved Songs

You will only ever have one topic in this forum. Think of it like a “_____’s customs!” thread from our Other Customs forum, but in a more official capacity. No one can see your topic but you and the C3 authoring team!

Your thread needs two things:

1. Up to six songs you have finished and are currently pushing for release. Put these in the subject line of your thread, if possible, so we can see them at a glance. These songs can be part of a pack, but we are limiting packs to three songs so a sponsor doesn’t get bogged down testing a 12-pack or whatever. This may change in the future.
2. Up to ten songs you have not yet authored that you would like to reserve. This does two things. If you reserve a song that a C3 author has already finished or earmarked themselves, they’ll let you know so that no one wastes work; and if anyone else tries to reserve it after you in The Show Floor, we’ll contact them to say that it’s already reserved. This isn’t a perfect system, but it’s the best thing we’ve got. (To prevent abuse, we maintain our own list of your reserved songs outside of the forum. It is updated when you make your thread and every Friday thereafter. Please make sure these ten songs are the ones you REALLY want to author.)

If you have more than six finished songs, you can list them as well, but you can never go above sixteen total songs in your thread. Basically, any finished songs beyond six will take the place of a reserved song.

You have the ability to tag your thread to let us know that you have songs up for consideration. The tag will include the date you set it, and we’ll try to favor people who have been waiting longer. This is not a guarantee you will be picked up! You can increase your chances by authoring songs from the Bounty Board.

The Bounty Board

We want to maintain Harmonix’s tradition of releasing well-known songs that a wide audience can enjoy. To this end, we’re starting a very experimental feature called the Bounty Board. The Bounty Board is a wiki article maintained by the C3 admins that attempts to log “famous” songs we don’t have yet. For more info, see the Bounty Board thread.

Songs from the Bounty Board are more likely to be picked up, and every Bounty Board song you author will get you a special insignia in addition to your “__ songs” badge!

FAQs / Misc. Important Stuff

God, I love bullet points.

• Only submit things to The Show Floor if you think you have what it takes! Please don’t waste our time. If you know that your customs have a long way to go, please stick to our other authoring forums until you’re ready.
• We have a very, very limited number of sponsors, and we can’t guarantee that your song(s) will ever be picked up. This sucks, but it’s the reality of our situation. The entire Show Floor is an experiment. We hope it’ll be a success, but we might just not be able to support the volume of submissions that we’d like.
• Low-quality submissions are less likely to be picked up. Ideally, we’ll give you feedback in your thread about what areas need improvement. We will try to respect your reserved list in these situations, but we make no guarantees. If no attempt is made to improve really low-quality submissions, we may restrict your ability to post in The Show Floor.
• Several excellent submissions, on the other hand, may earn you an invitation to the official C3 authoring team. Then everything becomes a lot easier for everyone. Please do not ask for this; we will contact you.
• “Can I post songs from this forum in Other Customs?” We’d prefer that you didn’t, in order to maintain an air of secrecy, but we won’t stop you. If you submit a song that you’ve already posted here or somewhere else, it will probably be released as “From the Vault”. Once a song has been picked up, however, please do not discuss it outside of this forum. Violation of this rule may result in you getting kicked out of The Show Floor.

Questions / Feedback

The Show Floor is a brand-new experiment, and we expect some bumps along the way. Please use this thread to ask questions or provide your feedback! This OP will be updated as we figure out how all of this should work. Thanks for your patience, and we look forward to your submissions!