Post-Submission contest thoughts

I hope the top 3 make it to be official maps. Then we'd have 5... They could probably make the top 5-10 official maps. Which'd be quite a good number of maps, and we won't get sick of 'em. I think that there is WAY too much good stuff which isn't going to be recognised.

I also think VALVe should give the mappers who made it into the final release prior knowledge and give them the chance to polish it off, before it goes official.

Didn't they release a map pack last time with the HL1DM mapping competition? (the comp where Rapidcore won)

I think the maps here have a good chance of winning, i've seen alot of maps like avalong , but i think gameplay on avalon might be crap and it's the wrong theme i think.

i think that snarkpit will defenatly get a 1st seocnd or third place, 3 maps in top 10 :wink:

Avalon looks great, and I get the feeling it will play very well, but I doubt VALVe will make it official. The theme is too far away from HL2, so even if they do like it best, I really have doubts about them even considering it.

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting Leperous</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>Didn't they release a map pack last time with the HL1DM mapping competition? (the comp where Rapidcore won)</DIV></DIV>

two things

1) yup tis my reference to 50% good and 50% crapola.

2) can you imagine the publicity if a snarkpit member manages to capture even one of the top spots. :biggrin:
personally, i think people are stupid to set their sights so high, it leaves only empty space to fall to.. but, i won't pee on anyones parade.. go for gold guys :smile:

I personally believe that Ferret stands a very good chance with Rebar.
Echo is also great, and ReNo has some kind of a chance.
A few others on this site are of a great standard and should place well. (Morbid, Island17, Void, etc.)

But really, 8000 entrants. I reckon only about 1000 of them will even be playtested by the boys at VALVe. They will probably have a bunch of people going through all the maps and getting rid of the crap ones, and keeping the good ones for the judges to look at, and playtest.

So, 1/1000 chance. Feelin' lucky boys?

I thought the best 3 were included kinda, but the best got the prize? There are 2nd and 3rd in this contest.

Then again it is hard to know what Valve are looking for... I'm sure they are looking for something in particular to compliment the existing suite of maps- and you cannot tell what they are going to release aswell. I think a Ravenholm map has a good chance, also combine maps- but the ones set in the normal cities I'm not sure about because there are loads of them.

I didn't enter, which kinda cuts down my chances Trapt :biggrin: Rebar
certainly is in with a chance though, its a really nice looking map and
seems like it should be fun to play, plus it runs fairly nicely to
boot. There are other maps I've not had a chance to play but look to be
of extremely high quality - I draw your attention to District 33 (
http://www.snarkpit.com/maps.php?map=1621 ) for example, which has both
the setting and visuals to grab first place, though I cannot comment on
gameplay.

:o hehe.

I've also seen a few decent maps at Mapcore which I think stand some kind of a chance.

I'm not sure whether VALVe will go for Gameplay, mixture of prettyness and gameplay, or just prettyness.

You never know with VALVe.... :/

Damn it, this topic makes me feel worse and worse about the damned
comp.

I figure they might have recieved 800 entries tops, with about
700 of them being utter s**te. That leaves about 100 maps that are
playable and are not kill boxes. 60 of them will be ok, but nothing
spectacular, so they'll get dropped. Valve will then sought out the
maps from the remaining forty into 2 groups, the ones that fit into the
HL2 universe and those that don't. Those that don't will be dropped,
leaving maybe 20-30 pretty good maps, which will then be soughted into
which areas of the single player game they apply. They'll then choose
the "best" ones from each area, so that the maps that they add to the
official DM map list will not all be the same theme. Of course if all
the best maps are in the combine theme, then only one of them will make
it, while mediocre maps will take the other places, because they are
city or canal themed.

Well thats my thinking on how it will be done. Of course I'm probably
off on the numbers, but I can guarantee that the three winning maps
will not be of the same theme.

I'm inclined to agree - its the reason I picked a non-typical HL2 theme
yet still in the same universe. There are so many people making nice
looking city maps, that you'd have to make something really special to
stand out amongst them. Less maps seem to take place entirely indoors,
and as such I figured I'd stand a better chance by doing so.

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting Leperous</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>My mummy doesn't let me go to the Steam forums on my own, she says it's full of Bad People. Care to share a few direct links? :smile:

I would also like to propose that we do some kind of showcase or map pack of all the maps made by people here- basically something to get those maps out there and played!

</DIV></DIV>
Well I just go Yahoo the other day, so as long as the pack doesn't exceed 30 megs, I may be able to do some pimping for you guys :biggrin:

PLEASE DONT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting omegaslayer</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>PLEASE DONT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
</DIV></DIV>
wasn't me.

Was just checking out the Steam Forums and it seems a lot of entries
for the competition, including mine, required signatures for the
package, but thats caused some problems since its a PO BOX. I'm not
sure whats happening but Ferret apparently emailed them about it and
got an answer. If you could enlighten me Ferret I would be endebted to
you.

Also is anyone else in the same boat?

I hope they use a bunch of the better maps as official ones. If this multiplayer gets padded out a bit more, I'd be more interested in purchasing HL2. It stills seems like just half a game to me.

After running around a lot of entries, I would agree with what someone said earlier- that these all look excellent, but most aren't fantastic DM levels. It's the little things like sound effects, CLIP brushes to ease you through doorways, and background detail, as well as the important things like decent layout and weapon placement, which make a map as well.

Well the good news is someone has just signed for my map so it would
seem to be in. It did arrive on the thursday, three days before the
competition deadline, but its only been signed for and picked up today,
five days after the deadline. Oh well, they could see its been
delivered before so it should be right. What a relief.

I just got a Steam popup thing about Updates and stuff. They said they received about 200 excellent entries, and they are having trouble picking a winner, or something.

Just thought I'd enlighten you. :smile:

I cant get their exact words quoted here (as I've closed the window
already), but they said they got over 200 entries, Reno you were right,
it was only in the 100's not thousands, someone runs a very high chance
of winning here. And they are adding two weapons to HL2DM, the stun
stick, and something else I cant remeber.

Adding some weapons? I hope they add the "Weapon_Brickbat"

No really, I hope they add the IceAxe, It was a weapon in the beta that you were supposed to get on the Borealis (the ship)

The other weapon is the SLAM, whatever that is.

I can't wait to see the winning maps, surely if they sift through 200 of 'em they'll find 3 great ones :razz:

I hope SLAM = freakin TAU GUN.

Here's what the update says:

Last week marked the end of the Half-Life 2: Deathmatch level design contest. We
received over 200 submissions, and we're going through and playtesting each one.
There are a number of great maps in here, and we're already having trouble
picking the clear winners. The release of the winning maps will coincide with a
release of Half-Life 2: Deathmatch, which will include two new weapons: the Slam
and Stunstick.

Also of note for level designers and Mod builders: there will be an update to
the Half-Life SDK this week which most notably will include source files for six
Half-Life 2 maps

I think eventually all the fabled weapons will be in HL2. Maybe through a patch or DM maps.

If you look at some of the HUD "textures" there's icons for all sorts of crap, including sniper-rifle, Gauss Gun, snarks, I think there's a flare gun in there too.

I think you guys should check out some of the threads on the Steam HL2 MP forums, as many are talking about your maps and giving useful feedback.

Here was the screenshot of the update today:

Mikee, we all have steam.

Also, I had to look something up, a little issue I'm having with steam, can't find it in their FAQ, so I thought I'd wade through their forums. However, I can't get through, their server refuses my connection T_T (On that note, if anyone can give me any clue as to how my key bindings for HL1 disappeared, I'm all ears)

Mikee, we all have steam.

But not all of us read the news on a regular basis. Thanks for posting the interesting information.

Mikee, we all have steam.

No :razz:

? quote:? quote:Mikee, we all have steam.

No :razz:

Then why would you care about HL2 information like this?

I don't check the news either, but the only way this thing doesn't pop up on your screen is if you manually turn it off ... which means you don't care.

I think it's good for everyone to be seeing the same info. I happen to have that news announcement open on another PC, but if I didn't it would be handy to not have to bring up the news page or rely on my memory.

But anyway ... over 200 submissions? I'm guessing that doesn't mean over 250 submissions. That doesn't sound a lot - I recall someone getting a competition ticket number over 25,000.
All they need to do is print the list, queue them up in a local server, and do a quick run through. Say, 60 seconds per map. Anything that obviously isn't #1 material is going to get scratched quickly and easily (like when companies go through resumes and ditch all the ones that don't follow standard resume formatting, or spell the company name wrong).
After they're left with the pretty ones that actually have lined up textures and decent lighting, they can work on culling the ones with poor gameplay. At this point they might easily have under 100 maps to check out. Scratch half for bad fps, poor doorway clipping, bad weapon/ammo placement, crappy spawns, etc. and they probably won't be left with many that really need thorough playtesting.

Just my uneducated 2 cents.

I'm hoping there will be a top-10 mappack release, because once you get down to the top 10 there's no doubt you're looking at some seriously good maps.

as they are playtesting i think an hour per map maybe half gour, to test the gameplay.

and some time to look for bugs etc.

I can't access the steam forums either, which is pretty wierd. If
anyone finds some competition news in there please post it up here. Ta.

<H1>I think most of you guyz read this, but i think it is important, to me actually, and who ever is intrested :dorky: </H1>
<H1></H1>
<H1>STEAM NEWS</H1>

<H2>LATEST VALVE NEWS </H2>

<DIV class=narrower>

<H3>Source SDK Update Released</H3>January 19, 2005, 5:03 pm ? cliffe

A Source SDK update is available and will be applied automatically when Steam is restarted. The changes include:

Source SDK
<UL style="MARGIN-BOTTOM: 0px; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px">
[*] Added XSI addon for importing and exporting SMDs

[*] Added simple SDK bot sample code for adding bots to your mod

[*] Added source files for six Half-Life 2 single player maps

[*] Added interface plugin to add bots to mods

[*] Fixed resource leak in the SDK launcher and vconfig utiity

[*] Added bspzip tool -- allows you to compile custom content directly into a .bsp
</UL></DIV>

I think rebar has a good chance and there was another one but I don't remember it's name.

Is it just me or is everyone getting 403: Forbidden errors when trying to visit the Steampowered forums?

I get 'em too

Yeah I've been getting them since last night. Thought they banned me or something.

Every so often the Steam Forums have gone down. There were some HUGE changes introduced to CS and SDK as noted above, including bots. I can imagine there has been some "fallout" on their forums.

But maybe Gabe left his laptop at the local Starbucks, you never know what's going on in ValveyWorld.

gabe doesn't like starbucks. He only eats McDonalds. Proven fact.

The SLAM is a satchell landmine type weapon. They could make it do a number of things, or operate various ways. Hopefully they will be aware of spawn mining dangers.

WOW....that Canadian link won't load when accessed from the UK. LOL!

Here, I got a copy so you can see it from the UK

Is it just me or is everyone getting 403: Forbidden errors when trying to visit the Steampowered forums?

I got this at one stage, but I think it was because they moved the
steam forums from http://www.steampowered.com/forums to http://forums.steampowered.com/forums

Could be worng though... :smile:

I think you guys should check out some of the threads on the
Steam HL2 MP forums, as many are talking about your maps and giving
useful feedback.

Ah yes, the steam forums... Best place for some quick comedy.

lookee heear!!

[size=13]no Broadband is CABLE not ADSL your getting confused its just that companys have used the broadband for ADSL...

its like calling a landrover a Jeep its not a Jeep but every one calls
offroaders Jeeps even thow Jeep is a name of the well JEEP...

ADSL gose down phone lines Broadband dose not it gose down a dedicated line...

It is generally agreed that Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) is broadband but it is not just makes it easyer for companys to sell

DSL can't handle as much as CABLE can no where near...

[/size]

On the steam forums, no one can hear you scream.

just in case this bit of news slipped past anyone. it seems valve received 200 or so maps from the contest. the odds of a pit member winning?? 200/1 doesn't sound like to long a shot to me :biggrin:

when you consider that snarkpit may have 10 or more maps submitted by members, both oldtimers and new, that increases the odds to 100/1.

we may have a chance afterall. i was expecting better than 1,000 submissions.

/me points orph towards the last page

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting Kage_Prototype</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>/me points orph towards the last page
</DIV></DIV>
sorry.. being gone so long.. /me removes screen.

Anyone got a server and want to cycle the contest entries from the Snarkpit?

I'd like an "official" list of entries from people here, and put up a page to pimp them...

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting Orpheus</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>just in case this bit of news slipped past anyone. it seems valve received 200 or so maps from the contest. the odds of a pit member winning?? 200/1 doesn't sound like to long a shot to me :biggrin:

when you consider that snarkpit may have 10 or more maps submitted by members, both oldtimers and new, that increases the odds to 100/1.

</DIV></DIV>
Big font = wtf? Anyway, if 10 members sent in maps, that multiplies our chances by 10, so the odds of a snarkpit map winning are 1/20, or 5%. Very good chances.