MapCore Challenge Discussion (Old)

    Hey guys, just a reminder to cast your vote for the 20 Brush Challenge if you haven't already. We got some great entries including some great work by some new faces. Submissions are here: viewtopic.php?f=57&t=15843 with links to the voting threads.

    I also wanted to see how people thought about trying to run more of these again? I know it's something we've done in the past with mixed results, but I had a blast on this even if I did just build 20 floating hexagons, and I think there's some fun options to run new ones. Some thoughts I've had:

    1024 Challenge - resurrecting an oldie but a goodie: build a level inside a 1024x1024x1024 cube

    Geometry challenge - All geometry, flat texturing. Like the classic Q3 GeoComp

    Old School challenge - HL1, Q1, Unreal, etc.

    Art Pass - similar to what Valve ran for TF2

    I think in the future it might be neat to have guest judging panels and the like (I'm sure we can all find plenty of people to help out), but I do like maintaining the "Challenge" part of the title vs. "Competition" - no prizes, just being creative and working within fun limitations.

    Any other thoughts? Good idea/bad idea?

    I like the idea of those challenges. I didn't spend huge amounts of time on this challenge but it did motivate me to learn geometry tools and the material editor in unreal (even though the map I submitted didn't make use geometry tool and minimal use of custom textures, another map i was working on did).

    Future comps sounds good, as long as they are well space apart, ie not every month and have plenty of warning/long deadlines as lot of us obviously have active lives.

    I really wanted to enter but lost track of the date and didn't have time anyway, so I would love it if there were more small fun challenges like the ones you mentioned. It's like a break!

    mapcore definitely needs this, perhaps once every month if people can muster the support for it. i know other forums have been doing such challenges, so why not us?

    i would also like to see another 1024 dm contest, as those seemed to kick the most ass. the 20 brush challenge was fine, but there were too many categories to vote for in, and for me that made judging an issue. and i can imagine it's going to be an issue on how to tally all the votes together. keep it simple.

    I think the 1024 was one of the best we had, and I also have an interest in not failing to complete something like I did for the last one That might be a good one to roll out as the next one, but I think we should let things settle for a couple/few weeks before we go after anything else.

    Sentura brings up valid points on voting; and I think we should try to simplify voting in the future. I also feel like more of an "approval voting" style might be better for future challenges - if we allow people to vote for up to, say, 3 entries, and then tally based on those totals. Voting for one in each category was hard enough, and voting for just one in a single category might be torture

    Voted earlier, some great entries. Think it's great with these competitions, feel bad that I was too lazy to participate. The 1024x1024 one sounds like fun, think I also participated in one of those once (or at least one with very small maps).

    Would love to see more of these, and actually participate when time allows. These kinds of challenges really show off the talent of designers since everything's not covered in a bajillion meshes.

    actually, i should add that there should be a few different suggestions for contests, but that they should all fit the general theme of being small and manageable. 1024^3 is no doubt the flavor of the month, but i am sure there would be other attractive modes that would need to be tried out. perhaps a suggestion thread is in order?

    The Quake1 crowd had a contest about a year ago to design a single player map that was constrained on x and y to 768x768, but not limited in Z. Made for some cramped maps, so maybe 768 was a little low, and it'd be interesting to see maps constrained on 'any two axes', or even any single axis.

    I'd love to see more contests. Can't guarantee always entering but keeping them intentionally small scale and not focused on putting out loads of custom content makes them extremely tempting prospects!

    To add another idea to the pot, how about something riffing on the Halo forge style of level editor? Provide some standard terrain and let people build on top of it but not actually edit it. Similar in ways to the art pass idea, but instead of having the focus on the art, it's more on how you integrate your own layout and brushwork with the restrictions of the existing terrain. Sadly that would probably mean restricting entries to a single engine though, which I think these days in a community like ours could be a bad idea.

    As for the voting method, I'd put my weight behind allowing more than one vote, as I think it spreads out the voting more. Having just one vote each can lead to the strongest entries hogging all the votes while others sit with none, which is a shame as sometimes they have plenty of merit and charm of their own, just not enough to win around somebody's sole vote. If voters could pick a 1st, 2nd and 3rd choice - with more "points" going to the entry based on that ranking - I think it would lead to more interesting polls with more of the entries competitive. Not sure its possible within these forums technically though.

    The multiple categories question...I actually quite like splitting it up as it has been this time around. The current difference in leaders in each category attests to it's value in my opinion. It lets maps be celebrated for what they do well, regardless of failings in other areas. CJ's barragan map for instance has horrible gameplay (no offence, but you said so yourself!), but it has a really nice atmosphere and is the map that most makes you think "I'd love to be there", for which it is rightly winning votes in the visuals category. I'm not sure we then need an "overall" category though - maybe just adding the totals of all other categories would be sufficient.

    Quote from Lunaran

    The Quake1 crowd had a contest about a year ago to design a single player map that was constrained on x and y to 768x768, but not limited in Z. Made for some cramped maps, so maybe 768 was a little low, and it'd be interesting to see maps constrained on 'any two axes', or even any single axis.

    That sounds like it could be really fun, especially with the vertical aspect...

    Otherwise the 1024 contest always seemed like it'd be fun, same with most of these ideas I'm hearing.

    If I had my way, small 512 x 512 x 512 single player maps for HL2 vanilla (so it's compatible for Ep1 and Ep2 too) and then we put them all in a mini map pack at the end. LONG LIVE SINGLE PLAYER!~

    Quote from Minotauro

    Please get back regular 90 minutes competitions!! It was so fun playing all the levels with everyone who participated in the same day!!

    the problem was that nobody wanted to participate

    i also think that the 3 texture challenge sounds like a good idea

    Here's a brutal one for you - Triathlon. First week, Source/HL map. Second week, Quake map. Third week, Unreal map.

    Speedmap stuff would be great to try again, but it's hard to sustain things like that. I wonder if we might have better participation/results by mixing those sessions in between larger challenges?

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