Mapping Contest

I'm not 100% sure to be honest, but I sure hope its one of my flatmates, or somebody has hugely overpowered vocal chords :biggrin:

I wish I had time to partake in another contest. I would be fully interested in observing one, however. I think the partnered creation idea is cool, but it seems like the idea most likely to fall apart quickly. It's so hard getting two people on the same page. But hey, maybe I'm wrong.

I wonder, if having a face-off style contest might be a bit of fun also. Conceptart.org has a thing called the Thunderdome, where 2 artists challenge each other within a certain theme, and the audience judges winner. It always seems to be a very fun, well spirited competition. It would be cool to maybe have a similar thing with mapping. Keep the maps small, the rules simple, and possibly break it down into 'heavyweights', 'middleweights', 'lightweights'.

Just a thought. Whatever the conditions, another contest would be sweet.

I'm in favor of a contest that doesn't demand too much time/too large of a map, maybe keeping it simple to encourage more entries. Perhaps 3-4 rooms at most, a simple DM map? The sheer scale of Broken Palace and various other entries really scared me away from attempting an entry.

I would personally LOVE a Half-Life Geometry map contest. Would really unleash some creative forms/architecture from people, I think. Plus it would be generally fairly simple, without having to worry about textures/realism as much. It would be mapping in it's purest form.

As for teaming up... Maybe it can just be optional, since a lot of people would prefer working alone? :smile:

EDIT: Oooh, Finger's post reminds me of "Photoshop Tennis" (Google it if you've never heard of it). Some sort of arena-like showdown between 2 people (or maybe even teams!) would be pretty entertaining.

Finger said:
I wish I had time to partake in another contest....

hey finger! nice map! (broken_palace) 5/5

Wow, thats certainly a novel idea. So essentially it would be run like a knockout tournament, in a tree style system, and each week or whatever time frame is allowed all the pairings would come up with their maps. Then at the end of the week, there would be a judging period, and once the results are in, the tournament tree is updated and the next round begins. I can't help but feel it might be a bit long winded and complex for the current state of the HLDM mapping scene, but it sounds like fun :smile:

Hmm, going to the uber simple end of the spectrum, how about a geometry focused contest to make a symmetrical arena? I know symmetrical arenas are really quick and easy, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing - surely it would encourage a huge amount of our users here at the snarkpit to contribute.

The thunderdome/tournament idea with a set timeframe and a specific theme agreed to beforehand by the competitors would be cool. Course it may cause some drama with placement, rankings, and the choice of winners... that may stir things up a bit around here. :biggrin:

"Two men enter. One man leaves!"

The face-off idea sure sounds fun, but as I feel Reno is probably thinking, the simpler the better. I like the idea of strictly focusing on geometry...maybe couple that with the limited texture idea from earlier posts. Say 5 textures, focusing on making the most interesting symmetrical arena. Sounds simple, and fun.

edit oy, and thanks for the props for Broken Palace. In my mind, what really pushed that map was heeding the constructive criticism I recieved from various snarkpitters...so pat yourselves on the back also.

I don't think there would be enough entrants to split it up into multiple brackets to be honest, and having all entrants in a single bracket could dissuade less experienced mappers from entering in fear of getting paired with veterans.

That idea would be good for a SPLA map, we would use the 8 best sections made or whatever. Meh...

I think a simple contest with size restrictions and room number restrictions would be good. Some map that has to be visually pleasing. No other rules.
Maybe make it so theres a plan restriction but no elevation restriction... get some good x axis action :razz:

It already sounds too complicated, when thinking about matching up contestants, and dealing with time constraints.

Room and size restrictions sounds cool, because although youre limited no-one can dictate the shape, size, setting or different layers in one room..

something along those lines sounds good :smile:

a DoD mapping contest... DoD maps are hard to make... for me :rolleyes:

This is sounding pretty cool. if it's meant to be a small map, I might even be able to participate. sadly, most of my maps are initialy meant to be small, but turn into monsters!

The problem is that people around here all map for and play different mods - the only one pretty much everyone will have some experience with, is HLDM... or HLSP, of course, but single player takes time most people don't have these days.

Hmm, so it's agreed that the contest obviously has to be simple to ensure success. I also concur with Reno that HLDM is really the only viable platform to map for.

As for restrictions... I think something along the lines of 5 textures (no more than 1 mb of texture memory?) and the map be a one-room, large central arena. Keeping it simple while allowing for some nice setpieces. Should gameplay gimmicks be allowed? (i.e. a train that moves all around the level)

Sure, why not? suerly one of the ups of doing a small map is that you can put plenty of work into yummy entities.

Or make lots of entries :biggrin: For that reason, it might be wise to put a limit of 2 or so entries per person, just to keep things reasonable.

God knows how many Mr.Hawkin's could cook up if things were kept this simple

Hmm, another idea to bounce around:

Someone makes an empty "shell" map, that's just completely barebones with wall/walkways/floors/ceiling. Something that will just barely compile and be playable. Then, the contest will be to build upon this shell into a playable map; the only restriction being that you can't make the map bigger/smaller and you can't delete/modify the original shell geometry (but you could add additional walkways and such, naturally), would be interesting to see how people interpret the map. But then again, I doubt something like this would get many entries due to complexity/restrictions. :smile:

Sounds like a good idea to me. It would certainly be a good way to restrict size. However, I think people should be able to add hallways so that they can modify connectivity to their liking.

I like CJs idea. In fact, I like all the ideas presented here, except for mapping teams... It must be individual mappers, or it wont work.

<!-- ZoneLabs Popup Blocking Insertion -->Oh nice idea CJ :smile: very nice :wink:

ReNo said:
Or make lots of entries :biggrin: For that reason, it might be wise to put a limit of 2 or so entries per person, just to keep things reasonable.

God knows how many Mr.Hawkin's could cook up if things were kept this simple

Heh...i've still not finished most of the maps I started for the last competition :smile:

I like CJ's idea too - makes for a fair 'battlefield' if we all start with the same map - though I think textures should be in the hands of the individual mapper in this instance - otherwise there would be very little to distinguish one map from the next.

Saying that, I also like Myrk's idea of a limited space but freedom to map what you like within that space :smile:

The competition theme would have to be fairly simplistic imo as I doubt there are many mappers willing to commit themselves to a large project this late in HL's life.

A 'joint mapper' competition is foolishness, get back in your boxes people :biggrin: How about "mish-mash" where you tack together all your old, disused levels (I'm sure you all have a lot of them by now...) into one big crazy lump?

Sounds like a great idea to me! I've got tonnes of old maps hanging around. Just to clarify for this, will we be allowed to do "mini-mods" - GMDM2 style, or will this have to be a straight bsp and extra resources for HL?

Good idea but in practice there's a lot of newer mappers that may not have such a large collection of abandoned map 'bits'.

Leperous said:
A 'joint mapper' competition is foolishness, get back in your boxes people :biggrin: How about "mish-mash" where you tack together all your old, disused levels (I'm sure you all have a lot of them by now...) into one big crazy lump?

i like this idea, but am hesitant, because all of my scraped maps are rather large by themselves.. i would assume others have similar maps..

Not sure about your mish-mash idea Lep, how will you know its all from actual disused maps? To avoid cheating that is.

It would be good if you could do a GMDM2 style mini-mod, but I'm not sure if that would work. It would seriously disadvantage the non-coders among us.

I like the idea of working from a pre-defined set of resources (textures, sounds, mapmodels etc.), you suppose we could combine that with CJs idea?

EDIT: I just had an idea. How about, each map must have a "cool" effect in it, eg. shiny floor?

Who cares, the point would be to make something incoherent on a small scale, but coherent on a larger one, or something sounding as metaphysical/cool. The other point would be to get people to do something with all their disused maps...

All this talking about only 5 textures lets me remember the screenshots from HL2 alpha level builds. How about... only orange (or blue, whatever) test textures? One orange raster texture, a masked ladder texture, a railing texture and one or two light textures... that makes 5 exactly and ensures noone has an edge over the other with his/her textures... Then you will have to impress the player pure with architecture and lighting only...

Personally I think the idea of only 5 textures is a pile of crap!

I think as many have agreed the best option would be to have a pre-made level or set size to map in. Something really small. Then inside this space you can make anything. Would be good to see what people want to construct for thier last ever level!

I vote a set size within which you can do whatever you like - I guess you should set up another poll to see what the general consensus is now we've established that there's an interest in a new competition :smile:

It's all down to Lep in the end what the competition is. The site is a democracy under a dictator :razz:

The democracy bit is there just so lep can look down on us and laugh like little kids do when they have ant colony glass box thingies...

Myrk- said:
The site is a democracy under a dictator :razz:

i foresee lep slapping you in the back of the head on his way to the shower again myrk

LoL

I spoke to him last night about it :razz:

Wow I missed a few pages lol. So... whats going on?

Read them you lazy bastard :razz:

On the subject of textures, we could have one set .wad file to use only - and then see what people could come up with, although this could lead to predictable results.

I'm leaning more and more towards the flat coloured texture theme - perhaps allow people to use as many as they want though. If this was done, then as Loco suggested, we would probably need a premade wad as the default HL flat colours are a tad limited.

You could set a limit to the amount of colours that each mapper can use - but within that limit, it's their choice what colours they use.

Here's a idea.

Load up VHE and browse the following textures:

filter = oxy and take the plain blue texture
filter = fuel and take the plain red texture
filter = crete3 and take the three wall textures
filter = stripe and take the red and white one

That could be our texture set. Maybe a { texture for a floor grill too.

The maps would be for HL only, although you could choose DM or DOM. The maps would be relatively small, 4 to 6 player capacity. Maps can be made individually or in teams of 2. Individual mappers can have 2 entries, team mappers only 1.

With the limit in textures, judging would be done more towards layout and architecture and entity scripting. No code moddifications like GMDM2 (save our poor souls please)

The theme would be common. Some kind of Quake/Unreal/Elite Force theme perhaps?

/me dislikes the whole limited textures idea. It's a challenge and all but you're taking a lot out of the gameplay experience because of it.

fraggard said:
/me dislikes the whole limited textures idea. It's a challenge and all but you're taking a lot out of the gameplay experience because of it.

You dont take out gameplay. The physical layout is still the same, its just a different kind of eye candy. It would make a nice change from all the flashy textures and for some of us, a nice shift back to the old days :biggrin:

i could be convinced that limiting everyone to a wad would work, but limiting the amount of colors is preposterous.. damned few would go for that idea.

limit area.
limit time allowed
limit wads
limit r_speeds

Wild Card said:

fraggard said:
/me dislikes the whole limited textures idea. It's a challenge and all but you're taking a lot out of the gameplay experience because of it.

You dont take out gameplay. The physical layout is still the same, its just a different kind of eye candy. It would make a nice change from all the flashy textures and for some of us, a nice shift back to the old days :biggrin:

Somehow, for me, seeing a bland map with repetitive texturing does take a lot out of the atmosphere. Sometimes gameplay is not about layout alone. And I don't really care too much for shifts back to The Old Days. If I did, I'd be designing levels for Pacman or Pong or something.

*Edit: Orph's idea is somewhat better though. If we select the right WADs for limiting the entries to, there could still be a lot of variety in the maps.

Well, was just a idea. So other than textures though, is there something we can agree on?

What game?
individual mappers or teams or both?
What gameplay? DM DOM CTF Team DM etc
Map size?

I dont really think there should be a r_speed limit since the limit should be playable. The second the map isnt, somethings wrong. I do want a texture restriction though.

I'd like:

A restricted area in which to map
A restricted number of texures to use (though its up to the mapper what textures they choose)
Both individual or team mappers
DM gameplay

Flat-shaded would be nice too :smile:

How about a rendition of one section of the Black Mesa Facility when the disaster took place? Can be any size and can contain scripted sequences/sentences, but must use only standard HL.wad. Disaster must be convincing and directly related only to HL1. The scarier the better, can contain humor as well.

I'd like a limit on r_speeds but i think it should be damn high. I was thinking about it today and i think a competition where gameplay and playability don't matter would be cool. Basically a chance for the mapper to create the most visually impressive enviroment he possibly can and to push HL as far as it can go. Emphasis on archicture, lighting and texturing a chance for mappers to really get down and dirty with some good quality brush work would be pwnage.

Reno, hehe :razz: wuv

limited wads= 8 wads, no customs, original half life
limited area=bout 1/4 of the grid [whatever that is in units]
limited r-speeds=1000

thats my sugestion