Posts by KungFuSquirrel

As an added bonus: Our skies! http://www.gamefront.com/files/20504288/nw_skies.rar

I unfortunately don't have light settings immediately handy for these If I can dig any up, I'll post them.

No, most textures should be used at 1:1 scale. You'll see a lot of the tall walls have 160 unit tall wall sections with 96 unit tall metalish panel sections on top of them - that was to keep the textures power-of-two, but make sure we didn't make textures that were TOO ridiculously out of scale.

Oh CJ, you so silly.

In other news. START YOUR EDITORS THE CHALLENGE IS GO. See you Sunday!

Quote from Buddy

Someone should leak these maps, about time we play them!

I'm working on getting the most recent versions of all of them that I can to release publicly like the textures. I'm shocked how much traffic the texture release blog posts gets, so there's definitely some interest out there.

viewtopic.php?f=57&t=16348 all right, let's see how this goes.

Let's aim for starting the next big challenge on the 9th or the 16th. Is that far enough back to put Portal 2 on the table? Or should we just narrow it down from the current list of suggestions?

We're just going to do this and see what happens.

Welcome to the first MapCore WEEKEND CHALLENGE. Your mission: Build a Half-Life 1 deathmatch level using the Nightwatch textures in 72 hours.

This is deliberately fast and on short notice to see what sort of participation we can get. The great thing about short-term challenges like this is we don't really need big participation to have fun, and it won't eat weeks of your time. If this goes well or garners enough interest, we'll do more in the future!

Now, your rules!

Quote

Using only the Nightwatch textures (and stock Half-Life content, as necessary), build a Half-Life 1 Deathmatch level in 72 hours.The challenge will begin Friday, July 1st, and end Sunday, July 3rd at 11:59PM US CENTRAL time (GMT -6)

A submission thread will be opened on the final day of the challenge. Post the following items with your submission:

• 
  [*:ys37jfch]A zip file including your level (prefixed with nwdm_)
  [*:ys37jfch]2-4 screenshots of your level (ATTACHED! This will help us archive our entries for posterity )

If we get enough entries, we'll run the usual vote. If not, oh well! Hopefully it'll still be fun.

You must:

• [*:ys37jfch]Use ONLY the Nightwatch textures (nw.wad and nw_xeno.wad) and any necessary stock Half-Life textures (lights, clip, trigger, etc.).
  [*:ys37jfch]Compile all NW textures into the BSP.

You MAY NOT:

• [*:ys37jfch]Use any additional custom content

You can download the Nightwatch textures here: http://www.gamefront.com/files/15027791 ... tures.rar/

If you care to go outside, the Nightwatch skies are available here: http://www.gamefront.com/files/20504288/nw_skies.rar

And here's some theme reference:

All right, I'm going to draft up quick rules tonight and post a thread. I'm curious how many people we can roll in to something like this on short notice - even if this one fails, it should be a learning experience if we try to do more weekend challenges.

Is everyone on board with the requiring the Nightwatch texture set? I'd be fine running stock content, too, but NW-themed would be fun!

How many people would be in if we ran that this weekend? We've got 3 so far. (I'll put out a Twitter attendance check when I get home)

Gives us some more time to put together the rules for the next big one.

One more suggestion from Lunaran on the walk to lunch the other day - we grab some old GameFaqs text walkthroughs, pick one at random, and have each person build the described level and see what interpretations come up. Like a game of level design telephone!

These other ideas are pretty great, too. Good selection to work from

Also, SamCom: I still really want to do a weekend challenge at some point, but I've been a bit swamped with work and personal stuff lately so this is all slipping behind where I was hoping things would be. If you (or anyone else) have any ideas for what that challenge might be, maybe we can roll one before we get the next big one started?

Quote from Vilham

Sound to me like they just needed to use the ESRB's rating to decide if a game was violent, thats how its done in the UK. Twiz is right about that internet comment though.

The original law was created based on the belief that the ESRB was an inadequate ratings system (despite being rated the strongest of all the voluntary ratings systems here in the US).

This issue was never really about the content or kids being able to acquire it - the ruling doesn't mean that kids should be lining up to buy DNF (nor will they, because the already-established ESRB partnership with retailers already won't allow them to) - it's about the role of government in entertainment. We take our First Amendment right to freedom of expression very seriously over here, and all other forms of entertainment have been found to fall under those protections.

Games, like the film, TV, and music industries, provide voluntary ratings systems to help consumers make an educated decision about whether a movie, tv show, album, or game is right for them or their children. This California law targeted only games, which the justices of the Supreme Court (rightly) ruled is a violation of 1st Amendment protections when compared to other forms of media. After all, why should a local, state, or federal government get to say whether or not Halo can be sold on store shelves while Eli Roth makes Hostel movies and no one bats an eye?

An opposite ruling in this case would have relegated games to government oversight like alcohol, tobacco, and pornography instead of allowing them to exist in parallel to their peers of film, TV, music, books, etc, and would have set disastrous precedent for the entertainment industry as a whole. The Supreme Court made the right call, and it's a relief to see both sides of the political spectrum on the court generally agree (interestingly, the two dissenters were the two more extreme justices on either side, haha)

I used FancyBox for mine, which I'm really pleased with. It's got right click support, mousewheel scrolling, and totally customizable everything. I've got images, embedded HD youtube videos, and embedded text files all tied through the same interface. I recommend it

Great portfolio, too!

Quote from Rick_D

sounds like you don't know how games get made

They actually had this in the first game, if I recall correctly. I think mostly on the Hill Climb events. You'd get shorter runs earlier in the career, then open up the long 8 minute-ish courses later in the game.

PaulH, am I insane or was that actually the case?

Quote from Serenius

My preference are contests that are more design than art-oriented, but I'm probably in the minority here.

I'm inclined to agree, but the three we've run so far have been two with fairly strict design constraints and one entirely design challenge. Texture constraint entries would still have an impact on layout and gameplay, but in general I don't think it'd hurt to toss in a more artistic one here or there

Some excellent ideas there that could only come from you

I do think the more mass-market ideas are best suited for strong participation, though (I'm such a sell-out). I'd be interested in the texture constraint or re-lighting ideas. Both are good proving grounds for a specific kind of skillset, but I do wonder if we might want to consider settling on a pre-decided engine (presumably Source) for both of them, particularly the re-lighting challenge to help keep a consistent starting point.

Thoughts? Other votes?

What Radiant lacks in polish it makes up for in raw speed and power. I will it forever.

That said, don't plan on Rage being all that easy to work with. When I saw it at the QuakeCon 2007 demo, they talked about how they did build a roughly Doom III-level of detail in the latest version of Radiant before exporting it out to a modeling package for final detailing, and last I heard from dudes there it sounded like they were just straight up building a lot of their levels in Modo. I'm really interested to see what the final SDK they release looks like and what the actual balance ends up being.

Should I move this to Finished Work since it's been submitted to the Mapping Initiative already?

Quote from Puddy

One idea I was considering is that, you actually write the entries you want to vote for in a post along with a brief summary on why you voted for the entries in question.We're a pretty small community and I think this kind of voting would work, as opposed to more massing voting on ModDB or similar. It would be a good form of feedback, not only to the person people are voting for, but to other creators to see what players were looking for in a puzzle/"whatever the challenge is"-map. We're all designers here, not pure players, so it feels fitting.

This is a good idea, and makes my life easier in some ways. We have been getting some good vote turnout with the 3-vote poll method, though, and the one negative I could see is possibly losing some votes. But, I'll keep that in mind, and I'm curious what the rest of you think.

I know the Summer Mapping Initiative just wrapped up and we saw some entries there, but do people still want to rock some Portal 2 for the next challenge? I still love the idea of the MapCore pack, but we'll need some discussion time to sort out how to go from a collection of random entries to an actual cohesive pack. I think this could be a really great one with the game so fresh in people's minds and the fun options it opens for level design, but if everyone's Portaled themselves out already we can roll something else (in which case I'd consider this a good time to suggest something )

Looks like you forgot the download link Screens look pretty solid, though; it's cool seeing the Portal 2 content picking up!

All right, one more. Our trailer that aired during the Sony press conference:

To the best of my knowledge, it's always been intended as a console exclusive that will tie into the PC EVE. The first mention I saw of possible PS3 exclusivity hinted at Microsoft's policy toward off-site servers being a factor, which makes sense. MS seems unlikely to allow CCP to do what they want to do with this on Xbox Live. There's a reason Valve brought Steamworks to the PS3 and not the 360.