Competition: HL2DM 1024-unit Official Entries

Quote from Sentura

have you actually played these maps with other people on rick's server? i know that repeater, capricious and tyr were lagging so badly (either because of LIFTS or because of water or something like). Either way, those maps would probably get a 0 or 1 on gameplay because the lag practically made the maps unplayable.

well my map capricious played perfect in testing... but throw someone with a 400 ping in and the whole map turns to shit. Needs a faster server

or not someone from brazil hehe

well i don't know what my fps was, but i think it was in all maps above 50.. with all the options to the max..

graphic card ATI X1800XT, so 50 FPS is pretty low..

Maps with poor fps are likely to have ladder mount/dismount entities touching brushes. Or other entities intersecting brushes. That's at least one cause, anyhow.

With 16 maps, how about splitting the playtesting and scoring up into 4 sets of 4 maps? It'd be easier to digest the results & organise a playtest with a preset list of maps to try out in that session, and if the tests are spaced out it should hopefully give each map the time it deserves for proper feedback.

The task of judging/rating/giving feedback on 16 maps in one go seems a bit daunting to me.

Honestly, it was something about the lifts. The only two maps we experienced really bad lag on both had lifts, and lots of them.

Indeed - there was filesize as well, some of the laggier maps were rather large in mb, yet peris' map was just over 3mb, ran perfectly and no lag. So there was just something suspect with the laggy maps.

Also don't blame someone with 400 ping for lagging a map/server, it's completely untrue that a single players' ping has any effect on the performance of the server. Just makes it harder to hit them, it doesn't make _everybody_ lag.

As for how to rate the maps, I dunno if it would be that hard to sit down and rate the maps out of 4 categories, they're not massive maps and they don't need huge amounts of thought put into rating them. 15 or 16 maps, big deal. let's just start voting - everybody has played them by now ;D

yea but moving objects with people with high ping in the room always equals death. its tries to sync the lifts for everyone and the laggy one. The high ms time slows it all up the lifts and makes the jitter, the engine does odd laggy things with them to compensate. expectancy code? Play the map with no one in it... its fine... player with 3 people with 20-40 ping its fine.. this it what all my testing was based. on... just thought id throw this out there.. no matter though. its bugged and teleports would of been the best move. thats that.

Quote

Indeed - there was filesize as well, some of the laggier maps were rather large in mb, yet peris' map was just over 3mb, ran perfectly and no lag. So there was just something suspect with the laggy maps.

(Kakburks inner mind: Oh noes! He's onto me!! How could he know about the virus I added to the file? )

Hmm-- jokes to the side. :\ I didn't get time to playtest all the maps yesterday and those I've tested I've tested very little, so I'm not sure if I can judge them properly. Also I had hoped for today to test some of the last maps but eh... it's my birthday obviously, or atleast my gf tells me it is, so I guess I won't get much time for that... I really thought my birthday was next week.

Gave em all a good go on a one on one lan server the other night with a friend of mine.

First of all I'd like to say that all the maps were enjoyable and none were really alot worse than the otheres, there were 2 maps however that stood out from the crowd in my and my friends opinion.

dm_weaver and dm_tobor, looked best, and had the most fun on them.

If I'd had to pick one of them it'd be tobor due to weaver having the rpg in an easy to reach spot, so it might become a bit of an unstable map on public servers, though it was great on a lan game since you won't get as much spammers (you can just slap em irl )

Other than that I'll leave the judging to people with a bit more knowleage of source and hl2dm than me

'Kin ell.

just had a my first good look through the maps and gotta say there is some serious talent on show there. Fantastic stuff. Someone needs to get Valve to pimp this on Steam some of this is as good / better than the DM maps they have officially released.

Quote from JamesL

'Kin ell.just had a my first good look through the maps and gotta say there is some serious talent on show there. Fantastic stuff. Someone needs to get Valve to pimp this on Steam some of this is as good / better than the DM maps they have officially released.

Agreed!

Also how difficult could it be? We all know what makes a map. I know i for one have graded all the map i tested with special criteries in mind. So a simple poll would do to just vote on the map you thought was best.

What about if we throw together a jury of 4-5 mapcorians~ which can have a quick playtest of the maps and rank them all in terms of gameplay, graphics, performance, originality etc.

I nominate Rick_D! And maybe even Spellbinder too!

I think that is probably the best way to do it in terms of all maps/authors getting useful feedback rather than a useless "0 votes", but it might be another while before we get this all finished up if that is how it goes down.

I pretty much balls up the whole design of mine at the last stage. The center of the map was meant to have a cycling respawning weapon, that would fire a siren when it spawned. Only ammo and basic guns were to be found inside and on the tops of the apartments meaning anyone seeking a decent weapon was going to have a hard time camping either of the two roofs. However once i realised that i didnt have time to make the respawner i had to just stick in a jump pad instead.

Not that i dont love jump pads mind, but it fucked up my intended gameplay big style.

oh and just have 4/5 guys play through each map in succession, rating them in 1/5 or 1/10 in three catagories - appearance, gameplay, fun and lets wrap this thing up.

Keep it 1/5 - makes it easier with a smaller range of numbers to pick from. I also think "gameplay" and "fun" are a bit too similar - Insta's groups of visuals, gameplay, performance and originality, or something along those lines, would probably be better.

So if that is how it were to go down, would we gonna elect a set of people to do it? I've not a particular preference of who, but I think it should be long term members or moderators rather than just the first 4 people to come along and post some numbers Might be nice to do this in addition to a poll so that other forum members can have their say.

Whatever though - I don't really care what happens with winners etc... but it would nice to get it done and get a pack out. Maybe then we could try and get it pimped on Valve's update news - they sometimes seem to struggle for content so it doesn't seem too far fetched a possibility.

EDIT: Ooooh 1500th post!

hehe congrats reno, and yes, lets get this thing over with

I think one of the requirements for being a member of the jury would be that you did not actually take part in the contest

Hehe, I like to think that was a given

I guess I could go for contest jury (haven't participated in contest; though I have been on the playtests). I play HL2DM regularly and I can easily tell you what's hot and what's not. I also consider myself rather objective in my judgment.

Are the results supposed to be in tonight?

3 of us went through all the maps tonight, Baracuda, a coder friend of mine called Andy and.. me.

Marked them out of Gameplay, Graphics, Performance, Originality (a bit of a bleh one but gotta be in there considering it was about being creative with HL2 stock content).

So, in that order:

My scores:

repeater------| 3 3 2 3 - 11

northfacility--| 4 4 5 3 - 16

grace---------| 5 4 5 4 - 18

postoffice----| 4 4 5 3 - 17

tyr------------| - 3 1 3 - 7

conscript----| 3 3 4 2 - 12

rocketsilo---| 3 3 4 4 - 14

asgar--------| 3 3 5 3 - 15

tobor--------| 4 5 4 5 - 18

capricious--| 3 3 2 4 - 12

weaver-----| 4 5 5 4 - 18

lock---------| 2 2 4 3 - 11

rockhill-----| 4 4 4 4 - 16

tenements-| 3 4 5 3 - 15

nimrod-----| 3 3 5 3 - 14

Andy's scores:

repeater------| 2 2 2 2 - 8

northfacility--| 2 3 4 2 - 11

grace---------| 2 3 4 2 - 11

postoffice----| 2 3 4 2 - 11

tyr------------| 2 3 1 3 - 9

conscript----| 3 2 3 1 - 9

rocketsilo---| 2 2 3 3 - 10

asgar--------| 4 5 4 4 - 17

tobor--------| 3 3 2 3 - 11

capricious--| 3 3 3 3 - 12

weaver-----| 3 4 3 3 - 13

lock---------| 1 2 2 1 - 6

rockhill-----| 4 4 3 4 - 15

tenements-| 3 3 4 1 - 11

nimrod-----| 2 2 3 2 - 9

Baracuda scores:

repeater------| 2 2 2 2 - 8

northfacility--| 4 3 5 2 - 14

grace---------| 5 4 5 4 - 18

postoffice----| 4 4 5 3 - 16

tyr------------| - 3 1 3 - 7

conscript----| 2 2 4 2 - 10

rocketsilo---| 3 3 3 3 - 12

asgar--------| 3 4 5 4 - 16

tobor--------| 5 4 4 4 - 17

capricious--| 4 3 4 5 - 16

weaver-----| 4 5 5 4 - 18

lock---------| 1 1 5 3 - 10

rockhill-----| 4 3 4 5 - 16

tenements-| 4 3 4 3 - 14

nimrod-----| 4 4 5 4 - 17

3 of us went through all the maps tonight, Baracuda, a coder friend of mine called Andy and.. me.

Marked them out of Gameplay, Graphics, Performance, Originality (a bit of a bleh one but gotta be in there considering it was about being creative with HL2 stock content).

So, in that order:

Overall scores so far:

repeater------| 27

northfacility--| 41

grace---------| 47

postoffice----| 44

tyr------------| 23

conscript----| 31

rocketsilo---| 36

asgar--------| 47

tobor--------| 46

capricious--| 40

weaver-----| 49

lock---------| 27

rockhill-----| 45

tenements-| 37

nimrod-----| 40

Need more scores now ;D