Posts by KungFuSquirrel

Update 01/24/2011: VOTING IS NOW LIVE

Best Use of Brushwork: viewtopic.php?f=57&t=15878

Best Layout/Gameplay: viewtopic.php?f=57&t=15879

Best Visuals: viewtopic.php?f=57&t=15880

Best Overall: viewtopic.php?f=57&t=15881

Polls will close automatically 01/26/2011 at 12:15 PST.

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It's that time! This thread is where we want to see your entires to the 20 Brush Challenge. This thread is ONLY FOR COMPLETED SUBMISSIONS. Please keep your wip entries in this thread instead.

You have until the end of the day SUNDAY, JANUARY 23rd, giving you the next three weekends to come up with something.

And, of course, OUR RULES:

Quote

INTROOver at leveldesign.nl they've recently wrapped up a 20 brush level contest and the results are really cool and inspiring. So let's run one of our own too!

GOAL

Make a small MP map with 20 brushes at most!

TIMEFRAME

Saturday, 8 January 2011 - Sunday, 23 January 2011 @ 11:59 PM PST. (16 days; three weekends with two weeks in-between)

RULES & CONSTRAINTS

• 
  [*:1q30bsu1]For our purposes, a brush is a single convex primitive, built in a level editor, whether additive or subtractive.
  [*:1q30bsu1]Use any engine / mod / game mode you want, as long as it uses BSP and brushes.
  [*:1q30bsu1]Use 20 brushes at most -- but there's no face limit.
  

  [*:1q30bsu1]Don't merge multiple solids into a single brush. Don't use any specialized brush editors or generators.
  [*:1q30bsu1]No static meshes, detail props or particle systems -- unless it's part of a gameplay entity you're using.
  [*:1q30bsu1]No fancy 3D skyboxes. Use the most basic skybox setup in whatever engine you're using -- basic 2D skybox, basic sky mesh, etc.

  [*:1q30bsu1]Each face of a patch or displacement, before subdivision = 1 brush and must be for structural use, no terrain / no terrain tools
  [*:1q30bsu1]Each sprite / decal / overlay = 1 brush
  [*:1q30bsu1]Special tools brushes (sky, portalsky, origin, trigger, visportal, nodraw, hint, etc.) are free as long as the player can't walk on them nor touch them.
  [*:1q30bsu1]Brush entities / movers / matinee stuff and such with BSP-like dynamic meshes (converted directly from brush(es) built in the editor!) are okay; each brush / primitive in your mesh will still count as a brush but your origin brush is "free" if you need one.

  [*:1q30bsu1]Custom textures allowed. Please credit the author if they're not yours.
  [*:1q30bsu1]Unlimited lights / cubemaps / sounds / postprocessing entities.
  [*:1q30bsu1]Unlimited gameplay entities. (Flags, weapons, ammo, player spawns, vehicles, etc.)

  [*:1q30bsu1]One entry per person! (show-off as many as you want in WIP, but submit only one!)
  [*:1q30bsu1]In general, be a good sport and try not to do stuff that goes against the spirit of this compo.

SUBMISSION

In the special "20 BRUSHES" submission thread, make a new post:

(1) put your map name,

(2) attach a beauty shot,

(3) attach a layout / overview shot, so people can understand the space of your level better,

(4) put a map download link [required!], most people likely won't have time to play your level but some will.

(5) a "proof" screenshot from the editor that you used only 20 brushes [optional, but recommended and fun]

Submit by January 23rd @ 11:59 PM PST. Or, submit really early if you want. You can spend as few as 2 hours or as much as 2 weeks on this; do what you can / do what feels fun for you.

JUDGING

Community voting. There'll be a poll, open for a week. Categories: Best Overall, Best Visuals, Best Layout, Best Use of Brushes. The top 3 in each category will be featured on MapCore!

PRIZES

The prestige of competition! And maybe some kind of MapCore forum title / badge or something? We'll see! And Campaignjunkie will buy you a drink if you're ever in NYC

Display More

Good luck!

Quote from Jetsetlemming

I actually had to avoid buying all the upgrades for it, because if you get all the recoil mods it starts recoiling DOWN when you fire.

This. This is the best.

Quote from Vilham

Does that extend to unreal as well then, turning a brush into a mesh so you can use it in a matinee sequence?

That is an excellent question. I think the ability to have moving pieces is a great addition and could give people some really creative options. Since Quake/HL levels will be able to do this with brushwork, I'd personally be ok with letting Unreal entries use dynamic meshes that have been directly converted from a convex brush that fits our rules. Each use of the same dynamic mesh also would count as one of your 20 brushes. Is that fair?

Quote from seir

What about engine where there's no brushes?

I think for this contest, we'll probably have to say it's probably a no-go. What did you have in mind?

Quote from Vilham

what about turning brushes into things? Ie turning a brush into a func_rotating?

Go for it. Your origin brush would be free, as well, as it's a non-solid invisible brush.

Re: Rules -

-I think the "max entries" question was per person, not total, but you've listed that as one in the rules draft and I agree with that. By all means, make as many as you want, but pick the best one and enter that. Will be easier for us to manage here

-This should be the ongoing thread for "hay guys look what i'm doing!" and any progress shots. When we've agreed upon the rules here, we can put up the submission thread with the rules in the first post, then all your final entries should be posted as replies there.

- I would amend the rules to require a download link. With multiple games and possibly a lot of entries plus community voting, I don't think we can formally require that everyone play every level, but I think we should encourage it. I would encourage bot compatibility where possible. In any future contests, I think it'd be nice to get judging panels and require full play of all levels.

- I would say let's put our poll threads together at the earliest convenience on Monday, then close the voting on Friday with results posted over the weekend? Or should we include Saturday for voting, too? I want to make sure people have enough time to vote but I don't want it to drag on for too long, either.

- I'd submit voting categories for: Best Overall, Best Visuals, Best Layout, and maybe Most Creative Geometry? Then spotlight the top 3 in each as our winners? There may still be some overlap or a winner that sweeps multiple categories, but it seems like a good enough breakup.

- I like your solution for patches/displacements/terrain. No heightfields is easy enough, and if we just require that patches and displacements be structural, that should cover it?

- re: prizes, I'd prefer if we treated this as a challenge more than an outright contest, like polycount does for a lot of theirs. Prizes are hard to arrange, and at least for this one I like the "for the fun of it" nature. We can create spotlight forum posts with the winners of all the categories to showcase them, but I think that should be enough for this one.

Quote from Mr. Happy

Just to clarify, I assume the brush has to be visible non-sky to count right? Or do sky brushes in editors that use them count towards the limit? What about in, say, source, nodrawed brushes used to control vis/csg? And since you can have pickups/objectives I'm going to assume that triggers and special effects brushes directly related to those things are ok (like the respawn room no entry visualizers in TF2 wouldn't count) or would they?

A basic skybox is free, as is a sky mesh for games that work this way (I'm looking at you, UE3).

Quote from Mr. Happy

May want to use a no displacements/patches rule just to keep it more in the spirit of brushes. I know my ideas rely heavily on displacements to not be flat.

Quote from Serenius

Just for clarification, would setting up terrain in Unreal count as a brush or would that be DQ'd?

Tough call. Terrain in UE3 isn't much different functionally than patches or displacements in id tech/Source, but can cover a much larger space at much higher detail levels. There's some clever patch and displacement work in the ld.nl entries as well as in CJ's sample, so I'd hate to exclude those. Is it too nitpicky to allow displacements/patches and not terrain? I don't think we want to get into a situation where we start having to customize rules per toolset. I think our options are:

1) Patches and displacements are allowed, but heightfield terrains of any kind are not.

2) Patches, displacements, and heightfield terrain are allowed, but must adhere to a maximum poly/subdivision face count

3) No patches, displacements, or heightfields are allowed.

These contests were way easier back in the day when no one had any fancy toys to play with

Rule-wise, I say let's try to get a revised draft up tomorrow or so so we have time to review it and finalize it before the "official" start on Saturday.

Quote from seir

I know that "20" is just fine but for me that's something like stoling the idea. I don't know...

There's been a lot of variations on this contest over the years across different sites and communities (same with the 1024 challenge we had ages ago). The recent leveldesign.nl take on the contest is absolutely an inspiration and should be credited for getting people excited about trying the idea over here. I've been making sure to credit them as I've posted about it, and plan to continue doing so as I'm updating things on Twitter and in any official threads here.

Personally, my vote for this one would be to go au naturale with the brushwork.

Unreal supports some crazy boolean operations and allows solids with coplanar and concave faces. You can perform an intersect operation on as many brushes as you want and they'll be merged into a single solid. It'd be way more awesome if the tool weren't so clunky, but it's definitely a way to cheat the contest

No need to rush it, there's plenty of time. But, no harm starting now if you want; this isn't really a time-critical challenge. Should also give us a little time to iron out any kinks in the rules before the "official" start this weekend.

Generally, as long as we stipulate "convex" I think it'll be fine. UE3 allows for some pretty crazy structures, though, which I would argue might violate the "spirit of the competition" if abused. Converting an entire level to a single additive brush probably should be frowned upon.

Moved it for you!

I think it sounds like fun, and it's a short time commitment which always helps participation. I'm definitely interested. I'll put the call out on the MapCore Twitter, too.

I'd submit, if we do this, a starting date of Jan 8th with a final submission on Sunday the 23rd? That's 3 full weekends and the two weeks in between... hopefully way more time than people need, but not so long that it fizzles out?

Singularity turned out really weird. At points it's brilliant. At other points you're fighting a giant terrible kitchen-sinked boss monster that's the worst thing ever in the history of games. The timeline stuff during the time shift events (where you jump backward/forward in time and the world reacts) are fantastic, but on the per-TMDable-object level, you're going to get really tired of collapsing and uncollapsing crates. But it's absolutely worth buying, if only for rebuking Activision for leaving it dead on arrival with no support.

Also, we should probably make a new thread, no?

I just keep a desktop shortcut to the SDK Also, I dunno how many versions of Windows support this, but on Win7 right clicking the Steam icon in the taskbar lists your 5 most recently run items - I imagine the SDK fits in the top 5 for many people here

My tally so far is The Witcher, Wings of Prey, and Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising. I may nab the Ghost Recon set, too... otherwise I didn't find today's quite as interesting

Quote from Jetsetlemming

New sales up, and they include -75% off all the Ghost Recon games. Which was the one that had a PC version specifically made by GRIN? I might get that.

Advanced Warfighter (GRAW) and GRAW2 were the Grin games

Which he says clearly on his site: "In-engine shot (only terrain textures are my work, the rest is copyright Valve)"

Which is probably why it's on a personal art portfolio and not the official BMS site

I've been playing through the first one again recently (well, by "again," I mean "getting back into it after sinking 15 hours into it a few months ago) and enjoying myself.

Actually was inspired by some of the new stuff they've shown of 2, and figured I'd never get back to the first if I didn't finish it before this one comes out, haha

Nice combat overview here, showing the two modes available: http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/66871

I peed.

Oh come on, I said mostly the same thing a page ago. Mostly.

Chrjs, that looks pretty nice so far, but might I recommend a different image host? You can feel free to attach screenshots directly to the forum, too!

Hey, Sam, usually a lot of the feedback in this forum hinges on the actual portfolio structure - I have a few comments on that, then I'll hit the content.

I think your base portfolio is actually in pretty good shape for what you've got. I think a key factor to keep up with is the reasoning behind decisions made in each area. You'll need to be able to articulate the "why" in your designs in job interviews - you don't have to get too fancy or overthink it, but it's good to see. The inconsistency between your two projects bothers me a little bit; personally I prefer the gallery display from the L4D2 map over the HL2 one. A real nitpicky thing but something that did stick out is the gap between your projects and the bottom of your page on the index - but, like I said, nitpicky.

ChopperDave is right about listing your personal projects on your resume - they're all you've got at this point. The one piece of advice I'll give you there is be careful about the trap of overdoing them. When you only have a couple projects, it's easy to bullet point the crap out of them and get some redundant points in there. We've had some resumes come through at LightBox where well-meaning people have overdone things to the point of appearing to claim far more than they actually did. I think yours is ok and you probably don't need to change it, but Iyou might be able to merge or trim down a few bullets and still get the point across. Just something to keep an eye out for.

As for your content! Speaking honestly, at first glance, it is a bit unremarkable. There's not a lot in the screens that jumps out and grabs you, and some really simple layout and brushwork. That said, two key things did jump out at me - your attention to detail and thought process behind the scenes. Stuff like the pair of sleeping bags next to the deck of cards, or the use of the slow gate to softly hinder progression against the Hunters are great touches that a lot of amateur (and even some professional) developers might miss. Keep building more stuff, keep showing those two strengths, and work on bringing the rest of the level's layout and visuals to that kind of bar, and I think you may get some good opportunities.

Hope that helps!