Hypothetical-Contest Rules Voting

How come I can submit multiple times? ?

Edit In the interest of promoting further discussion, here are my thoughts on pre-existing maps:

I think they should be allowed, but there should be bonus points and possibly even a separate prize for mappers who provide good public documentary evidence of their progress from start to finish. This would also benefit the community in the form of content, and hopefully help some people with their portfolio skills.

I think it would be best to just start fresh. That way everyone starts out equally. And I'm also for avoiding remakes altogether. The purpose of the contest should be to promote new and original maps. But, I like the idea of being transparent throughout development. It's a good way to see maps taking shape from blockout to final version. Last time everyone was holding out until the very end to avoid other people taking "inspiration". That's also a fair point, but it's less likely that somebody is going to straight out just copy your idea.

Also, we've put fourth the idea of allowing mapcore staff/moderators that are not on the judge panel to participate in the contest. While nobody seemed to mind in the Discord and encouraged the idea, it's good to also talk about that here just so that there are no issues down the line. I know that I'd like to be participating in this one and maybe @'RZL as well.

Regarding the judge panel, a lot of people have been vocal that they would like to see more industry professionals. Something else to discuss.

No half measures this time, please. Let’s keep it simple. VMF’s, even grayboxes should be fresh as of the contest announcement. Everyone can join so long as they’re not a judge. Six months deadline, no delays what so ever.

Quote from grapen

1 hour ago, grapen said: No half measures this time, please. Let’s keep it simple. VMF’s, even grayboxes should be fresh as of the contest announcement. Everyone can join so long as they’re not a judge. Six months deadline, no delays what so ever.

Ugh yes - Please no delays/shifting deadlines. They almost killed me twice. Yes, I got a better product in the end, but I felt punished for planning/managing my time accordingly and it was way more stressful. Especially when there is a surprising shift which extends the contest into christmas holiday time.

I agree with poLemin and Grapen. Contest should be shorter this time around, HARD final deadline, and fresh maps. I think this helps to provide a solid lesson in reigning in scope and ambition. It requires designers do more planning early on on paper or docs, which I think is a healthy workflow we should promote via those rules.

Secondly on judges, I also agree they shouldn't be allowed to enter. I know we had a discussion yesterday about who constitutes as staff/judges. I think that's a tricky subject to narrow down, but I do think staff should be allowed to enter if they aren't judging. I realize that staff members could have good relationships with possible panel members, but I think we should assume that the critique and feedback would be fair to all.

Lastly I believe the judge panel should be made up of industry artists and designers. I think this is ideal over including personalities or "popular" members of the csgo community for several reasons, tho the major three that come to mind:

• Feedback from industry designers can provide both major motivation and critique to a layout. Even if people lose, it's still a big win to get that kind of attention on your work.
• Industry designers will be able to articulate why a layout works, or doesn't work. Why this art is too busy, or too empty, etc. They'll be able to provide feedback in ways that can continue to help improve the entries beyond the contest duration. By this I specifically mean how impact the feedback is, and not so much actually continuing to give feedback after (that's their discretion)
• Obvious one is that aspiring artists and designers ultimately want to get into the industry and while feedback doesn't specifically constitute confirmation on that path, it put's entrants on a path that takes them there. This will help to allow mapcore to reach out to a wider professional community. It also allows industry members to keep an eye on promising talent that ultimately they may have interest in hiring. This is partially why polycount, RTVFX and so on are bringing big numbers to their contests.

There's some other bits I will post later that are on my mind, but I want to see more public responses first on how others feel.

You guys are bringing great points, I agree that judges should be industry professional, for all the good reasons you guys mentioned!

I would certainly participate as well! Really loved the contest last time and learned so much

This whole question is very important to me, because of that tragic misunderstanding that happened at the very end of the last one. As long as the rules are clear, I'm in! (and for the record I don't mean that they were bad last time at all, just they were like... 99% clear haha)

One thing I would like to be changed this time around, is to strongly encourage people to form teams, and have equally sized teams if possible. I thought it was a bit weird last time to have a competition between people that are by themselves vs teams of 3-4+ persons... For instance, art for a typical map is so much work, that one LD could be matched with 1-2 artists to make a solid team! I may be speaking only for myself here, but when I work on a project like this, I want to focus on level design, not everything.

I do game jams here in Montréal on a regular basis, and most of the time the organizers strongly encourage or even force participants to be in teams with people they don't know. Participants simply specify their discipline, and are matched accordingly. That way they make new contacts, and learn to work with all kinds of people! Game development is a team activity, at the end of the day. I'm not saying we should go that far with this concept, just food for thought...

Oh and... why not do one on a modern engine this time around?

As a person of the minority who has never played CS:GO this is my favorite sentence in this thread:

Quote from MikeGon

1 hour ago, MikeGon said: Oh and... why not do one on a modern engine this time around? ;)

I'm not sure what it would do to the amount of entries, since most people seem to focus on CS:GO here but the Door Challenge seemed to have a somewhat big amount of entries.

The problem with “modern engines” is that you are not level designing but creating a game completely. Yes sure, you can create a theme like The Door, but is not something you can find funding because is not to be added to an actual commercial game.

The UT contest did have a lot of participation.

On the topic of having professionals, in a forum where most people are themselves professionals, I quite struggle to see we can’t get some of that talent to judge. Sure people wanting to participate or that are stuff working for studios could drop an email inviting the seniors to judge?

If is CSGO would it make sense and be possible to at least try and invite a couple pro players? Seagares has been collaborating with Faceit and there are people like N0thing that have always tried to help aspiring pro players, with many of these ex champions/stars now focusing on streaming guess they could find the time?

Quote from Radu

9 hours ago, Radu said: Also, we've put fourth the idea of allowing mapcore staff/moderators that are not on the judge panel to participate in the contest. While nobody seemed to mind in the Discord and encouraged the idea, it's good to also talk about that here just so that there are no issues down the line. I know that I'd like to be participating in this one and maybe @'RZL as well.

Regarding the judge panel, a lot of people have been vocal that they would like to see more industry professionals. Something else to discuss.

Yeah, I'd like to participate as well, so it would be great if we could find veteran industry professionals who are interested in judging this. I'm sure there is plenty who would be willing to do so.

I'm not sure how the judging has been done in the past, but it would be great if we could get some video for an announcement or to hear the judges thoughts, maybe even a livestream.

Quote from FMPONE

3 hours ago, FMPONE said: On the judging stuff, please don't hesitate to name names if there are people out there you want on the panel. Can't make any promises but we can certainly reach out to people and see if they're available.

How about some of these people? I know Puddy's been on the panel last time too; maybe he wants a break this time? If any of the mentioned people see this and would like to get involved, just post in this thread.

Patrick Murphy @Puddy

Invalid nick @mr.P

Jason Mojica @General Vivi

Marc Bidoul @El Moroes

Valentin Levillain @ElectroSheep

Mateusz Piaskiewicz @seir

Rick Underhill @Rick_D

Oskar Jansson @Oskmos

Beck Shaw @Beck

Will Josephy @Vilham

even if Rick isn't a judge he should do reviews on the maps

If the contest was at a time when I could judge, I would be happy to.

hypothetically, i would theoretically like a contest which had a shorter deadline and was focused on creating a "neat whitebox" map which perhaps had a stated goal of trying to innovate the map structure (the latter not being necessary ofc)

by "neat whitebox", i mean a whitebox level that is fully playable and tested but also fairly fleshed out in terms of geo and architecture and where artistic considerations have been made to a large degree (architecture, shapes, vistas. placeholder art etc) but a full artpass hasn't been made

so the goal wouldn't be to have a 100% finished level, just a very promising base that has solid gameplay and the potential to look great when completed

Quote from Puddy

Just now, Puddy said: hypothetically, i would theoretically like a contest which had a shorter deadline and was focused on creating a "neat whitebox" map which perhaps had a stated goal of trying to innovate the map structure (the latter not being necessary ofc)

by "neat whitebox", i mean a whitebox level that is fully playable and tested but also fairly fleshed out in terms of geo and architecture and where artistic considerations have been made to a large degree (architecture, shapes, vistas etc) but a full artpass hasn't been made

so the goal wouldn't be to have a 100% finished level, just a very promising base that has solid gameplay and the potential to look great when completed

I like this idea a lot. Contest length could be even shorter and smaller teams won't be so much of an issue. Then again you have the problem of funding for the contest since I'm sure faceit wants polished end products for their service. This doesn't bother me personally as I wouldn't mind a short contest without a cash prize. I think it's an interesting idea worth spinning.

Quote from Puddy

16 minutes ago, Puddy said: hypothetically, i would theoretically like a contest which had a shorter deadline and was focused on creating a "neat whitebox" map which perhaps had a stated goal of trying to innovate the map structure (the latter not being necessary ofc)

by "neat whitebox", i mean a whitebox level that is fully playable and tested but also fairly fleshed out in terms of geo and architecture and where artistic considerations have been made to a large degree (architecture, shapes, vistas. placeholder art etc) but a full artpass hasn't been made

so the goal wouldn't be to have a 100% finished level, just a very promising base that has solid gameplay and the potential to look great when completed

I like this. With a whitebox you can iterate as much as you want without art getting in your way and you're not afraid to make the big changes because you might ruin a view. In an ideal world art shouldn't be touching a whitebox until the level is fun and balanced.

Everyone is on a level playing field too since art isn't being taken into consideration.

well, art and design is a collaboration but i think there's a time and place for focusing on the design, because otherwise the main priority will be to make it pretty in time (which is very time-consuming and requires the design to be more or less locked) the csgo workshop map pool is becoming bigger and bigger and i think it's interesting to encourage the exploration of new ideas and give them time to grow