Mapping competition 2003/4

(TosspoT) #1

This seemed possibly the only place to put this,
ET is a great game, well made, and all round great, very similar to RTCW in its Qualities, yet RTCW is or has died, due to lack of developer support, limited to just 5/6 competition maps, people could only play it so much, all the bugs were fixed, all the competition formats were tried, but just 5/6 maps, their exploits, their tactical layouts, all played to death, only 1 map pack ever brought out by its creators, only 1 mod, unlike Quake 3 and counterstrike, which are the benchmark for online gaming, 5 years + hundreds of maps, and many many mods. I read somewhere that currently ET is no2 online game, which is dammed impressive. But the only way a game which somewhat a sequel to RTCW can survive, is to learn from the mistake of RTCW. ET has but 6 maps, it needs many more, seeing as ive heard nothing from the community sites, i figured i’d take the case of the clanned player to the makers…
Please make more maps for ET, official Maps, customs are fine, but they lack the support of the community, and the exposure too. Splash Damage proved that they know how to make a game, and the maps, but can u support it? competition wise, maps like Radar Goldrush & Oasis are the best, open, few choke holds, and open objectivly unique.
For ET to be an ever lasting success liek CS & Quake 3, there must be at least 2 more campaigns made, perhaps be cheap and combine possibly edit custom maps that you feel are up to scratch, or do the good thing and make your own in the footsteps of the first 2 campaigns, but PLEASE more maps :slight_smile:

EDIT: Changed title to reflect content

(The5thHorsemen) #2

?

I have played over a dozen 3rd party maps and they were all pretty impressive.
I think you underestimate the amount of time and energy spent and needed to make high quality maps .
The mission scripting itself in not an easy task but put on top of that the task of making the level balanced fun and have replay value and it takes time to do that.
why RTCW itself didn’t get more support who knows.
I did play a few add on single player episodes that were great and there are a fair amount of 3rd party maps for RTCW as well.
but for the most part until ET was released and GTK backed it up with support along with the site your now on giving boat loads of support ,
level editing for RTCW was a bit of a black art there was not enough info at first for people to really get moving on it.
Unfortunately allot of the top notch people in the know are already editing or getting ready to edit Doom 3 material or HL2 material.
ET was a gift and a big one at that without it even more people would have moved on already…

IMO

:drink:

(SteelRat) #3

I agree that more maps are needed and all the SplashDamage maps are impressive. 6 maps for a game is a low number but you have to consider the time these guys had availabe for first modifing the game engine and then design the maps so that it lives up to Id’s standards.
I know there are a lot of people out there struggling with Gtk, new entities and all the new scripting so I am confident more maps will show up soon.
I myself am to release X-Dam for ET this week and I hope it will live up to your expectations of a good map.

/SteelRat
www.srcgaming.com

(redfella) #4

Just like the 5th horseman said, everyone is focusing their sights on the new games, doom3 and hl2. This includes both the custom map world AND splashdamage.

And I doubt Activision would support a game anymore that has been released for free. Realise that they gotta make money somehow… and making more maps for a free game isnt gonna help.

But, although, I could be way off here. I’m just guessing, nothing else.

(TosspoT) #5

firstly, i wasnt questioning the quality of customs, however customs fail to get the community support for them, people arent waiting for doom3 or half life 2, Firstly as doom3’s multiplayer is firstly experimental (P2P) and secondly, near non existant, HL2 multiplayer is at least a year away, I might be wrong but i thought that ET official maps were 100% splash damage? not activision

(redfella) #6

Activision is flipping the bill.

(CaptM) #7

You also have to remember that ET almost never was. Originally, it was supposed to be an expansion pack but the company was having trouble, SplashDamage picked up the reins and did an increadible job especially when it was decided that ET would be release for free instead of as an expansion.

They did have time to make one of the best quality games that I have ever played. You have to remember that they did have a team of people working on this, and since the editor has been released we have seen some very good maps come out, but these have been usually 1 or 2 people working on them, it takes a long time to build a complete map and no one every really has a “Final” version, everyone always wants to make it better.

I think we should be seeing some extreamly high quality maps coming out very soon now, there has been enough time for people to get very comfortable with the editor and have had the time to put some extensive working into their maps (I’m looking forward to the "Indiana Jones and Venice maps).

Have a little bit more patience and I think you’ll be very impressed with what you see and with the longevity of ET.

Cheers to all that have putting in their blood and sweet to keep this one of the best games out there. :drink:

(sap_jr) #8

I believe that ET can now be purchased as part of a RTCW platinum pack.
Could this be some sort of sign that ET will be abit more “official”?

(blushing_bride) #9

ET and RTCW are both sussessful games. It would be stupid not to release a RTCW/ET 2 in the future. If they are making any stuff im sure it will be for a sequel and not something they give out for free. Of course it would be great if SD released another campaign. Maybe they had a few unfinished maps kicking around and are making them release worthy as we speak. But they are probably busy with Doom3 and stuffing as many cookies into their faces as possible to care about us anymore :frowning: :frowning: :frowning:

edit: you know im joking right

(DG) #10

toss you might be interested in this thing we’ve got happening.

(SCDS_reyalP) #11

:???:
What is their motivation for caring whether ET lasting success ?

(TosspoT) #12

motivation…my undieing gratitude, that has be worth a cookie or two?

(Moonkey) #13

[quote=“SCDS_reyalP”]

:???:
What is their motivation for caring whether ET lasting success ?[/quote]

Their reputation :o

(The5thHorsemen) #14

?

news to me
AFAIK
there are a few dozen sites dedicated to Doom 3 editing alone, and it’s upcomming multiplayer.
Texture artist are making the bump map’s, modeler’s are figuring out the new file format’s , I hear most people prefer .lwo .
Plus there’s programer’s pouring over whatever the can get.

and I would guess that Splash Damage team would have to spend more time on the newer engine due out then on this one.
it’s just the economics of it , if they are going to be a state of the art dev team then they have to .

(Lanz) #15

Either way, this game need more maps. In my magic ball I see a future of clans only using 3 of the six maps for matches: Oasis, Goldrush and Radar. A good map is a good map so I don’t care if it’s custom or from SD, but Tosspot is right, it’s damn hard for a custom map to get recognized and that’s a problem. Actually even non custom maps may have a big problem to get recognized if they are not bundled with a patch, the Game Of the Year pack for rtcw springs to mind. I hope that mapping contest will be succesful, but it will not be easy. Only if the maps are of the highest quality when it comes to gameplay they will have a chance.

(Locki) #16

At present I think we’re unlikely to find time to produce any new maps for Enemy Territory ourselves. What we could do though is officially back and help create a campaign that was made from three of the best community maps out there.

There are plenty of people at Splash Damage who would happily invest their spare time in helping put together a full campaign made from community maps. As these maps would come from different level designers, SD could help with gluing them together. We could probably help with unifying the command map art style, the campaign scripts, the audio/radio and aid with gameplay refinement. Obviously the important thing is that the quality standard for all three maps is very high.

These would then need to be beta tested publicly. Providing the campaign was well made, I’m sure that id and Activision would be happy to put it out via the auto-update server. This is probably the only way to get it widely adopted.

As to how we would select the three maps, I think they would need to be:

  1. Proven to be very well balanced and great fun
  2. Work well for tournament play
  3. Complete and ready for beta testing
  4. Artistically on par with popular RtCW/ET maps
  5. Have a plot/theme that is original (for the purposes of the campaign)

To help select the maps, the best option would probably be to appoint a team within the forum community here of respected Level Designers and Clan Tacticians/Strategists who understand what makes a good level. They would then propose maps to us.

One of the problems with making campaigns is that all three levels need to be on par. In making Enemy Territory we cut four levels that were nearly complete because they didn’t make the gameplay grade.

Paul/Locki.

(kevinski) #17

What exactly where the levels that were cut (map name, objectives, etc.)? And couldn’t they be reworked to be on par with the others?

(redfella) #18

Sounds like a good idea to me. I’ll volunteer in anyway anybody needs me.

(TosspoT) #19

locki the idea sounds good :slight_smile: pls make it happen :>

(seven_dc) #20

Awesome!
I was going to make happen the community map pack, but people were kind of inactive in this thread http://www.splashdamage.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=4722 and my time is very limited right now, but I am willing to help out. The officiality would rock. I think no one would want only my map pack.