Mapcore Mappack (i.e. Mapkorpak)

    So I (we) had a little idea. Mapcore is striving to be a place where we all can strive to further our skills and careers. It's also really nice to get positive attention to our work. So lets kill a few birds with one stone. I hereby suggest a Mapcore Map Pack. The rules are simple.

    We set a submission deadline (let's say January 15th). In that time you try to complete/finish a CS:S map. On that deadline, we show the forum what's been submitted and pick the best 4 or 5 by vote (or as close to a quasi-democratic mechanism as possible). The winners then get a week or two to polish their work. Since we'll all be polishing and playtesting at the same time, it makes it easier to tweak spawnpoints and other flow issues. This also allows other community members who arent' level designers to help chip in with any custom textures and props that are needed. Once those couple of weeks pass and the maps and completely finished, we release the pack.

    Benefits:

    Big publicity on all the major HL sites (and most of the major gaming sites) means your name gets out there, and it's a nice thing to have on a resume.

    Mapcore's rep at a premier game design community grows.

    Gives level designers experience of working under a deadline.

    Gives other artists experience at asset creation to fit a particular need (instead of jsut freeform creation)

    If it works, the entire thing is repeatable. We can then try to put out a pack every 3 or 4 months with different deadlines, themes, etc.

    So who's in?

    Not a chance for that deadline - I've a piece of uni coursework to do, my honours project to be working on, and I'm away on holiday for a week on January 7th. I'm unlikely to be entering anyway but I think others would benefit from a later deadline. End of February or something seems more reasonable. I think it's a cool idea though

    I love the idea too, sad that it's coming right now when i'm all busy with school and jurassic rage. I was planning my own little map project with everything done by me, models, textures and map itself of course. In any case this comes too quickly

    Well I think the idea is not to have the maps actually finished on the deadline (although I do this this one is a tad close.) But to have everyone rough out their ideas into a playable level with a cool theme using pretty basic texture sets and model sets. Then we pick the best five and have most of mapcore concentrate their efforts (like textures and models) in improving the theme to be much stronger.

    We could have the polishing stage take another month if we wanted, and be sending out screenshots of finished areas to pimp it up during that time period.

    it would be neater if the texture artists made a bunh of textures and just rextures on requests and the modelers did the same so it could be a culmination of mapcore.

    That's worse actually. We want the people who can make art doing it for specific maps so each map is different and really solid. If they just create some shit, it will be the same shit as always like bricks and whatever.

    and the world does not need more bricks.

    mapper > artist > mapper type work flow.

    we all know that mike-o

    Anyways, it would be cool if the mappack had some diffrent kinda maps and not all standard stuff. For example there could be a competitive map focusing on match gameplay and not too much detail, a pretty map which lures ppl into downloading the pack, and some quality fun map (like suicidebomber ).

    Yeah, I just threw the deadline out there as an example, not a concrete rule. I'd just prefer it if the preliminary deadline was reasonable (perhaps January 31st). If you give everybody two months to make a map and a bunch don't get picked, you piss off a lot of people that put in a lot of work. If you give them a month, you don't get as many pissed off people. Also, remember that the first deadline isn't for your map to be 100% complete. It needs a theme and the basic geometry there so that people can see what it's going to look like and how it's going to play. That way you can leave a stack of crates at the bomb site and say "There is eventually going to be an outdoor fountain here."

    Then that mapper can be teamed up with a texture artist and modeler

    I like the idea.

    Mapper > Artist > Mapper is the way to go. Agreed.

    At this point I think Jan 31st is a better 'Alpha' date. Basically: show the core design (layout, geometry) with all basic functionality working: any physics or breakables or functional doors, sounds all working; hostages rescuable; target blowupable; Fletch Fletchable. From there the next deadline (TBD) could be the final submission for judging. From there, if we wanted, we could have a "final" polish stage for accepted maps. However, a final deadline should be set. At that point, we get what we get.

    Just my 2 cents.

    Some point in January is not too soon if it is going to contain already finished or nearly finished mapcore maps. The first Mapcorepack could just be the 4-5 best Mapcore maps released in the last few months.

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