Map 1 Round 2
Wednesday, June 6, through Wednesday, June 20 at midnight in your timezone.

Click to download the Round 2 base VMF (filefront)

Round 1 was a great success, great work everyone, and congratulations to Finger for the winning entry. His entry displayed a good balance of story building scripted sequences, fast frenetic gameplay, and outstanding visuals. A tough act to follow, yes, but also a very solid start to this chain map, I'm eager to see what everyone has in store for round 2!

General Info
[*] The goal of this competition is to end up with a complete, playable single-player map with contributions from several mappers.
[*] Each round lasts two weeks, and the entries from that round are put to a forum vote to choose the winner and the base for the next round.
[*] There won't be a predetermined number of rounds, it'll simply run until the map is done or close to it.
[*] After the map is done or close to it, the winners are welcome to polish it to a finished state (or close to it :wink: ).
[*] Judging will be based on Aesthetics, Craftmanship, Creativity, and Game Flow, keep those in mind when working on your entry.
Guidelines
[*] You're free to change any part of the map, but try to assess the amount of work it took to create something. People don't like to have their time and effort wasted. If you nuke something that someone spent hours toiling over, have a damn good reason.
[*] Don't add miles/km of new blocky dev textured map area, think about where the player just was, where they are now, and focus on where they're going in the immediate future. Target five to ten minutes of gameplay.
[*] Put everything you add into visgroup(s) with either your forum name or a shorthand of it. See existing visgroups for examples.
Custom Content
[*] You're welcome to add whatever you want; Textures, models, sounds, faceposer scenes, etc. But put them in hl2\<asset folder>\snarkpit_mfb so people don't have stuff in 48 different folders all for the same map.
Submissions & Filenames
[*] Replace "base" in the file name with your forum name or an abbreviation/ shorthand of it. For example, I would use 'snark_mfb01_round2_bvs'
[*] Send a zip archive containing your entry, a text file explaining your additions and changes, and any other needed files (in proper forder structure if custom content) as an attachment to snarkpit.chainmap (at) gmail.com
So what are you waiting for? Pick up the Round 2 base VMF and get mapping!

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Yeah! :biggrin: congrats finger, hope i het my entry done intime, i'm such a slow mapper :biggrin:

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Hell, is an half-filled auditorium

I'll download the vmf and see what I can do, but I may not be able to finish an entry, as my gameflood map is taking up most of my time.

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Also change the texture of the dock. Docks are rarely tile. -Facepunch
As I Lay Dying

You can always just enter an 'idea' instead of a finished map for otheres to build on if you don't have enough time ;P

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Hell, is an half-filled auditorium

Im reinstalling all my steam/HL2/SDK stuff to try and make a map for this.

Question:

When I upload my entry, is it alright to contain all of Finger's map but with a tweaked ending so that it can have a nice level transition leading up to my new addition? Would it be alright if we were expected to play through the first map again to get to the new second map?

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Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202

BTW... the ending in my map, with the zombie breaking through the wall should probably be removed. It was meant as a fun joke, really.

Riven, I would imagine that we do want to include the previous map with the new maps so we build a nice clean progression with each part of the contest. My map should transition cleanly into yours... I would consider that part of the challenge; sewing things together nicely.

Lol, I figured as much but i kept it anyway.

How many entries are we going to have this time? I'm in.

OK good, I already removed the zombie; just wanted to make sure that the maps were supposed to transition together rather than be separate.

I'm in.

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Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202

I was wondering, should we do separate BSPs at some point or should all this stay in one map? I think what I plan to add would very well fit into the current BSP, but it would help performance and loading times and also help keeping order with each mapper's part if we do separate BSPs.

[I know there already are detailed explanations on how this contest is supposed to work, but I might have missed or misread that part so I didn't catch the info)

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Why snark works.

If i win (right) i already know wear the load point will be. just before the out side becomes visible . vis leaf wise that is.

Heh, I just finished Finger's entry (was out of town for 2 weeks) and he did some pretty nifty stuff that I didn't even think about. I'm going to try to get something in for this round.

Nothing is stopping you from heading to a new if the current one is running out of resources.

Its until the storyline is done, not the bsp has no more space/resources

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Signature? What signature!?

OK, logical, but it's good to see it confirmed :wink:

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Why snark works.

Ah, well due to recent events, I won't be able to complete my entry in time, so count me out this round.

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Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202

Cool stuff ... keep it up.

I wish I had more time :smile:

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:: Forceflow.be :: Nuclear Dawn developer

deadline in two days...

is anybody even remotely close to completing a map? i know im not :/

I've kind of added some details to Finger's section... I'm going to try to tack a puzzle onto the end or something.

Nope...

Worked on mine pretty much non stop this weekend and last, but don't think I'll be able to make the deadline with the amount of polish I want....and I hate to release something I'm not happy with.

Part of the problem is that round 2 inherently calls for more level construction, since there is no base map to use as a starter.

I wonder if we could vote for another week extension? Why not be a little flexible....especially if others are facing the same reality.

How many people feel the same?

Hmm, well I might be able to find the time to complete mine if given the next week to do so, that is having until the next Wednesday. So if that's possible, then count me in again! :biggrin:

Good thing you said something Finger, I was about to post a WIP pic to make my time on the map worthwhile, but I'll keep it a surprise since now given the time to complete it!

I'm in for a week extension.

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Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202

Well I'm not expecting there to be a huge influx of entries besides the four of you who have just posted concerns about the deadline, so I reckon an extension would be a good idea. Baron's contest though, so it's his say :smile:

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

From the looks of it, extending by a week was already voted upon and won in a landslide. Everyone's cool with Wednesday the 27th?

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o

Thanks Baron! BTW, I'm having alot of fun with round 2.

WOOT! go Baron! Thnx!

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Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202

Three weeks is a lot of work to cast aside when you lose... but god do i need it.

lol, I've been speed-mapping to get this done by today. But 27th sounds good. No more excuses for the lack of polishing, though. Damn!

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Why snark works.

Same here, not even nearly done with my idea, too busy trying to work 2 jobs and working with 2 bands, hopefully i'll be able to do a bit more in the summer holidays.

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Hell, is an half-filled auditorium

I just finished putting a bunch of cool crap and detail in this big room only to realize that the solution to a 'puzzle' I have will probably be used to get outside of the normal level bounds and get stuck in all my awesome detail.

Damn the world.

Well I hope this goes well, and I hope I can squeeze in some time for this in round 3 when I'm done with my map for the gameflood contest. I'll still play and vote, though. :biggrin:

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Also change the texture of the dock. Docks are rarely tile. -Facepunch
As I Lay Dying

It's been a while since I had so much fun mapping. Not that this has anything to do with the quality of the outcome...

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Why snark works.

Hmm, I was thinking the other day, and discovered, that once everyone submits their maps for round 2, they will also be submitting their own previous version of Finger's map. Each version will be named the same, that is: snark_mfb01_round1_finger.vmf. Each time someone wants to play that person's version of Finger's map, they won't know which version to play due to lack of a personal name for it. Even if they did, they would need to re-write over whatever version they did have existing in their maps folder.

I propose a conventional method for renaming Finger's original map to fit with that contestant's version of the map zipped with their own.

My idea would be for everyone to name their edited version of Finger's map: snark_mfb01_round1_finger-riven.vmf. Of course, you would use your own name, but the hyphen would denote that the first name built the map and the second extended it to fit for the next map. Simple enough I think. I do realize the name is even longer now, but once this whole mfb competition is over, it won't matter because each map will lead to the next with level changes so no one would need to enter console and type in each map's name anyway.

What do you think of that?

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Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202

"Replace "base" in the file name with your forum name or an abbreviation/ shorthand of it. For example, I would use 'snark_mfb01_round2_bvs' "

When this BSP is finalized it will be something along the lines of snark_mfb01.bsp, and lead into snark_mfb02.bsp. At least that's how I was thinking of doing it.

mfb01 - the first BSP
round2 - the second round

Guess I should have made that clearer.

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o

As we start tying different parts together i think i would be better if we labeled them by number and letter because in the end no one person created a section all by them self. Besides, i think it would be easer to refer to a section as a1 or b3 rather then our names.
i personally will be naming my next entry snark_mfb01_round2_redwood.vmf (unless we decide other wise)

EDIT: BVS posted while i was afk. Right right that sound good.

Well, my entry for this round will be titled: snark_mfb01_round2_riven.bsp but it will also be combined with my version of Finger's map that I would title: snark_mfb01_round1_finger-riven.bsp. So I will have two separate maps included with my upload. But before the BSP is finalized though, everyone's map will be in a .zip for people to download and play to vote on. How will we know which version of Finger's map belongs to which contestant? If they're all the same name, they will be rewritten over each time someone wanted to play a different version.

I must make it clear that I realize some people are not uploading a totally separate .bsp, but rather are adding their new portion to Finger's map within his current .bsp. I however, am building a separate map for round 2 that will lead from the end of Finger's first map, but I took out that zombie at the end and added something else along with a trigger_changelevel to make a seamless switch to my new map like in Half-Life 2. So I would need to keep Finger's map but give it a different name from what he originally called it to denote that I edited the end to fit my own need. We would change them at the end of this entire compilation competition in order to make them a lot "cleaner" but for now, we need a system to denote EVERYONE'S version of the same map.

Perhaps I'm talking about something different here, but is this making any sense?

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Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202

I imagine it should be

snark_[color=blue]mfb01_round2_riven.bsp [/color](this would be your edited version of map 1)

snark_[color=blue]mfb02_round2_riven.bsp[/color] (this would be the new map you transition to)

seems like it should work fine....we definately need a format everyone follows.

I think the "mfb01" part of the name signifies this is the first "map from base" contest. So if there is a second one, it will use the "mfb02" prefix. Instead of messing with that I'd suggest Riven use...

snark_mfb01_round2_riven1 (Riven's edited version of the round 1 map)
snark_mfb01_round2_riven2 (Riven's entirely new map)

If Riven, or anybody else who uses a second BSP, wins this round, then the maps could be renamed along the lines of...

snark_mfb01_1
snark_mfb01_2

...and so on.

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

Ok, sounds good. Besides, I just realized you can't build cubemaps in a map with a hyphen in its title. :rolleyes:

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Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202

Baron, I sent you a PM, because I'm afraid this could be the last chance to get this out by the timeline. Maybe you get an updated version tomorrow, but probably not. Hope it works -_-

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Why snark works.

Entries are due at 12 am today right?

Yes, in your time zone.

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Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202

Submission sent.

This one was quite a bit more work, and could potentially have a few bugs, but I 'think' it turned out pretty good. You will find various visual bugs around the level which I am probably aware of, but didn't have time to fix for this submission.. I'm going to keep working on this one; 3 weeks just wasn't enough time to make it perfect.

Let me know if any of you get lost, turned around, confused, frustrated.

Awesome contest Baron, tons of fun! Enjoy!

Download link for my entry

http://www.duncanmoore.org/downloads/snarkpit/snark_mfb01_round2_finger.zip

A few things I would love feedback on:

• Did you get confused at any point?

• Did you get the story points?

• Was performance acceptable? (I really wonder if I should chop this into 2 maps).

Well, I'm sure Baron will put this all together in a nice combined file, but here's a link to my entry, too, for the impatient :smile:

http://www.1-filehost.midnightirc.info/index.php?t=dl&hash=c7i7MJdbuEg0y0Fh6ynl924JGa8Mpn63

I tried to get in a bit of stealth and trickier methods to fight your battles, as there's so much action in the introduction already. The map also features my very first step into faceposer posing, a very rudimentary scene, I must admit. Finger's part was so polished already that I didn't bother changing much and instead focused on a nicely connected new part.

I too would like to hear your feedback, especially on whether you got stuck at any point or if NPCs did something stupid. I'm also not sure if the little scenes I prepared are as obvious to play as I hoped to. For any more info (and slight gameplay spoilers) please take a look at the README.

I remember Finger mentioning demo recording as the ultimate feedback. Of course, if anybody manages to record a demo of his session and could send it to me ( reaper.fourtyseven -at- gmail.com ) that would be awesome and super-helpful.

This competition was as much fun to participate as to watch and I sure learned a lot. I wish you all a good time playing the entries!

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Why snark works.

Can't wait to try it out Reaper. I'll record a demo of my playthrough (maybe you can return the favor?).

I started to get into faceposer with the intent of creating some choreographed sequences, but my pc really disliked that program. I would get a crash every other time I touched the slider bar. It was also a real system hog. In the end, I decided to go a cheaper route without using faceposer, and putting more time into creating a custom skymap and more gameplay.

I totally forgot to do the demo for round1, sorry. I'll sure hope to deliver one for this round. My internet time is weirdly distributed nowadays, so it might not be until next week for the demo to arrive.

Faceposer more or less ignored what I wanted to do with it (a simple speech/expression) at first but then I learned a few basic things which made things much easier. I never tried any multi-character choreographed sequences, though. I just barely scratched the capabilities of the program.

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Why snark works.

A custom skybox, Finger? Now I'm really interested.
I'm going to be lazy and just map (read: avoid mapping) tonight, but I'll download the two tonight and give my comments tomorrow, possibly with a gameplay vid.

Here's waiting on Redwood (and anyone else).

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Also change the texture of the dock. Docks are rarely tile. -Facepunch
As I Lay Dying

Yeah, I'm bored with the Halflife2 skies, so I created one with a little more mood and color. I found a really cool program that makes it easy to paint the seams. Basically, it lets you look around a virtual skybox, pick a spot you want to paint then export that into photoshop; saving in photoshop applies it back to the skybox...really cool. Not freeware, but it has a trial period.

http://www.skypaint.com/

Reaper, I just played your entry and really enjoyed it. It was sort of surreal seeing what how another person envisioned the continuation. I like how you used your spaces - very efficient with good flow. Your combat felt well balanced, and I died a couple of times, which is good in my book. I want a challenge. I'll send you the demo once I zip and upload it. Good stuff!!

Did anyone else enter?

Some images in this post have been automatically down-sized, click on them to view the full sized versions:

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Some images in this post have been automatically down-sized, click on them to view the full sized versions:

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Some images in this post have been automatically down-sized, click on them to view the full sized versions:

I was maybe 50% done with my entry. It's hard being out of mapping for months and then attempting my first-ever single player map. Add that on top of me being traditionally slow as molasses and well...

It was going to be a continuation of the combine modified subway station from finger's map, with you going right through the heart of their base. The combat was going to build up from a rather quiet start to a really big end fight in the helipad area replete with apcs, gun emplacements, lots of combine to plow through and possibly a strider or gunship.

There was going to be a controllable cannon on the top of a 'new' combine apc I made that would let you take on this army and blow open a door to progress, but I ran out of momentum when I found out that not only was func_tankmortar changed from HL1's hitscan explosion to an actual mortar which is pretty much meant to be enemy only but also that you could no longer remotely control func_tanks but had to actually see and target them to use them. So after spending about a day on that s**t and discovering that I had to retool a bunch of stuff I basically washed my hands of it. :sad:





<A href="http://www.snarkpit.net/pits/yak_fighter/snark_y2_3.JPG" target=_blank></A>

[url]http://www.snarkpit.net/pits/yak_fighter/snark_y2_3.JPG[/url]

I'll be back Sunday night to comment. Cedar Point, hear i come.

EDIT: i might as well tell you this now sense i wont be hear to explain myself later. I envisioned this train station being built into the side of a hill or plateau (odd spelling, http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/plateau). on the side wear you can look up the steeps (at the combine wall crusher thing) would be a city and wear the tunnel exits in to the light would be a open grass and cliff area. possibly a river or a canyon with a river at the bottom. I realize the transition i made was rather sudden but i look it as when you finally see a blue sky with a sun setting in the back round (as dictated by the lighting in fingers round 1 entry) its like you have finally escaped form your prison. it acts as a visual reward for surviving and getting to wear you are. and for havening such a rough start i think some sort of reward is needed.

PS: there is a smg grenade in the antlion tunnel. with my displacement issues you would never see it. just side step a little bit around in there and you should pick it up.

Sorry for the delay folks =/ I haven't even had a chance to look at the entries yet, in any case I'll have the poll up shortly.

Here's Redwood's entry for those who already grabbed the other two.
http://files.filefront.com/snark+mfb01+round2+redwoodrar/;7925944;;/fileinfo.html

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o