Mapping Contest

KungFuSquirrel said:
I fail to see what is so bad about this sort of thing.

Levels have 3 primary visual components. Architecture, textures, and lighting. Architecture, though, is unique in the sense that only it can stand alone from the other two. What is being proposed here is a chance to really go all-out in the architectural design of a level and really explore the abstract side of your construction. The worst that can possibly happen is nothing at all, the best case scenario could have you discovering new ways of doing things you might never have thought of before.

Agreed, I have already started on my little piece to maybe convince you guys even more, expect an update later tonight :wink:

Dammit ReNo! I started on a volcano/castle combo earlier only to log on and find you've already done it...grrr

/goes back to drawing board

Looks really cool though - as I said before, I especially like how you've used the slight variations of colours to give it a shaded effect :smile:

Yeah its worked pretty well but its using an awful lot of textures, I'm over 10 now, and so if its a limited texture count competition then this is gonna impossible to use. To be honest I'd probably start afresh anyway, and dust this one off for fun...of maybe enter two or something. I'm really enjoying working like this, haven't enjoyed mapping to this extent in a long long time :smile:

BTW, I'd be intrigued to see your take on a similar theme, do it by all means mate!

Think i'm going to keep the volcano bit, but as i've already done 2 castles (with another half-finished), i'll try an aztec/jungle theme to go with it...maybe....hmmmmm

Because the volcano + castle theme is WAY overdone. :rolleyes:

Gorbachev said:
Because the volcano + castle theme is WAY overdone. :rolleyes:

It is? :biggrin:

Why is it reading this reminds me of when Orph tryed to call me a prick in French

I haven't been reading this thread through, but I gather the competition is based around a flat shaded map? It would be nice to post it as a news item so people can see clearly where the topic has ended up because it's a pain to read through the thread when you join quite a few pages in.

Mmmm... that gives me an idea for a spinkee new forum feature never before seen/thought!

Wonder if you can patent forum ideas...

Leperous said:
Mmmm... that gives me an idea for a spinkee new forum feature never before seen/thought!

uh-oh... Usually there's a reason why its never been seen before :razz:

Tssk.. mock me fool but I am a vertitable Internet Pioneer, you sohuld be bowing at my feet! :biggrin:

/thread hijack

I assume the plan is

1) new forum feature
2) ??
3) Profit!

If so, I'm happy to bow, provided I get 10% :smile:

Im exceptionally curious as to what this feature could be...enlighten us oh great leper!

I'm extremely new to the topic, but an idea that I've had is to have a literally 'drawn' level. Have only 2 textures in the entire level - a paper texture and a pencil texture. The mapper then creates the majority of the architechture with the paper texture, and creates outlines with the pencil texture.

I'll try knock up a quick map to demonstrate.

LOL, what a wierd but intriguing idea :smile: It could kinda fit into the flatshaded theme though, as, for example, making a black and white map is essentially going to result in the same thing.

Not quite from the way I intrepreted what he said. Sounds more like cellshading but with only black and white.

Very much like cellshading, but try drawing something with pencil then scanning the image in with a very high DPI and that's the effect that i was thinking of. I'll just upload an image, hang on.

EDIT:: Sorry about the big file size, but I needed max quality. Anyways, here's a detailed scan of a reference pic i drew for my SP project: http://www.gamesupply.co.uk/kingnic/images/scan2.jpg (240kb)

I have no idea how that relates to a sort of pencil-celshading effect, but I'm sure you have some explanation that just isn't apparent to me.

As in use a pencil texture which is the same as the scanned pencil, making it look like the map is actually drawn.

Hah, if you want that, and you have quake 1, get NPR quake - it's a renderer for quake that makes everything look like it's pencil drawn, even the enemies.

http://www.cs.wisc.edu/graphics/Gallery/NPRQuake

That sounds pretty cool.

Reno, I talked at great length about what I would like to see this contest be about. Handicaps are good training, but I would much prefer to see a contest based upon how we as mappers perform at our full abilities.

I think it's perfectly natural for me to want a contest that I want to participate in to be based around something I do well.

real locations, perhaps local areas might be interesting. Everyone must have something mappable nearby & nobody else here has probably seen it.

KoRnFlakes said:
real locations, perhaps local areas might be interesting. Everyone must have something mappable nearby & nobody else here has probably seen it.

I have the brighton pavilion right down the road from me, if i could find some textures which are indian,chinese and have some chinoisoire effects that would be pretty good to make :wink:

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if i could find some textures which are...

This hurdle is easily avoided when using flatshaded maps :smile:

That would be hard... Living in a city theres not much mappable stuff here (you have to see the city to understand, the whole central area was made into a 1km long shopping street thats hugely open in 6 directions, and the rest is large roads). :rolleyes:

But I agree with Cassius. We should use our abilities, not hinder thier progress.

People always say that if you lose one of your sense, the others become stronger. This is the idea of a flat shaded competition - Your architecture gets better because you aren't allowed to use textures to make it look nicer.

I get enough frickin' architecture on my architecture degree lol!

The type I do is too complex for HL1 engine though, and probably too hard to construct in HL2... DAMN CURVES AND WIRES!

So I guess you architects never use computers to generate 3D models of buildings then?

We don't have to, thats where the power of the pencil and rotring pen comes into play :razz:

For my last building I didn't even try to do it in Autocad, curves in all 3 axis just aint fun to constuct

So that's a yes then. And how is it that it's possible to render them in autocad and not HL2... lets see... oh wait, it is possible!

if i want to handicap myself, i dont need a competition to do it. They dont have events in the olympics where they handicap the 100m sprinters by tying their left leg to their right arm do they? :smile:

-BB

if i want to handicap myself, i dont need a competition to do it. They dont have events in the olympics where they handicap the 100m sprinters by tying their left leg to their right arm do they? :smile:

-BB

No. But if they did, it would make it more interesting :razz:

But tying people's legs up in the Olympics would defeat their purpose- however, it would not defeat the purpose of, say, a 3-legged race. If this contest was about making the best map EVAR!!!1 then yes, you'd have a point, but it's not, so you don't. :razz:

I don't think I've ever seen the snarkpit so firmly stuck into two camps - almost everyone here seems to be strongly for or strongly against flatshading :biggrin:

There is no reasonable argument to be made against "limiting ourselves" as you put it. As everyone would be limited, it is an equal playing field. As Lep said, not every contest needs to be about making the best map possible. I think the best contests are ones which force you to try something different and see who manages to do this most succesfully. Anyway, the truth is that hi-res textures and realistic lighting aren't the only routes to good looking maps, there is such a thing as being stylised that can also achieve jaw dropping visuals.

I had this argument slightly drunk with one of my flatmates last night as we spoke about my map. One of my flatmates believes the map looks cool, and another thinks it sucks. The one who thinks it sucks also thinks Jet Set Radio and The Wind Waker look crap visually, and try as we might, the positive flatmate and I couldn't seem to convince him that realistic graphics aren't the only way to achieve good looks. He agreed on this but pretty much any non-realistic (mostly cartoony) games we listed seemed to garner the reply of "it looks crap". Are you guys the same as this? Or is it just seeing non-realistic maps in the HL engine that looks rubbish in your eyes?

I think the people against need to look at the Q3 competition using flatshading to dispell all these ideas that in a flat map theres no lighting, you get lost, and it looks ugly.

http://www.planetquake.com/nunuk/geocomp2challengemaps.htm

Please, if you are against the flat shaded idea right now, take a look at the maps on that page - most of them are flatshaded, and they all look great.

Yey themes, This is going to be the first contest that I enter. I'm going to make a weird themed map were everything is random and strange. Mybe have some of those melted clocks on trees in there to.

Peace! V