Mapping competition 2003/4

(DG) #101

If you’re going to split, I’d go large & medium rather than public & clanwar. any medium sized, non-dual objective map that would be pants for clanwar will be pants for public aswell. Dunno where the perception comes from that there’s some huge difference, the only one I can think of is clans are less liable to give lipservice and more happy to say exactly what they think of a map, and tend to pick up on faults quicker.

(chavo_one) #102

The big factor you have to decide on is the balance between offensively biased maps and defensively biased maps. When I was making Venice, clan players were screaming that the map was too defensive and led to full holds, while pub players were screaming that the map was too offensive and didn’t last long enough. IMO, you can not appease both of those camps with one map. So I would insert the idea of deciding who you want to make the most happy with this contest.

I would vote for making the contest designed to provide competition worthy maps. There are plenty of pub maps out there, but no one is designing maps with competition in mind. One reason for this might be that competition worthy maps aren’t as fun to make. You can’t get extremely creative with lots of stuff to do. The map has to be single minded in a way. But competition maps can find happiness among both camps easier than pub maps can. For example, TC_Venice, which was completely designed for competitive play, has found life on some pub servers. However, my original pub venice wouldn’t be touched by clans with a 10 mile pole.

(MadJack) #103

Interesting discussion. I’m an advocate of “Do what you’re good at and what are having fun doing.” though I’m aware that in a competition this is less likely to happen but in any case, if a mapper is intelligent enough, he’ll know if he’s isn’t good at making a particular kind of map, he won’t enter in that category.

So my take on that would be to have more than one or two category. Something like:

  • Small maps
  • Medium maps
  • Large maps
  • Clan maps
  • Pub maps (?)

I think putting things at their simplest is the easier way. Making strict rules about each category, what each category implies, what it MUST have, what it CAN’T have so on.

The more informatoin mappers have the best chances we’ll get excellent maps. Loose sets of rules are doomed to failure for the normal mapper. I’d bet a lot saying that most mappers don’t know what makes a good clan map. I certainly have only a vague idea of it.

Why not try to have a poll on each of those different sites that will “publicise” the mapping contest asking players (and mappers too) what kind of maps they want. From that, we can base our sets of rules and go forward from that point on?

(G0-Gerbil) #104

There are plenty of pub maps out there
Yeah and maybe one or two of them are decent.
The thing with ET is it’s a much more public-biased map than RTCW ever was, so public maps have a big part to play.

Having said that, if enough people were interested in making it a clan-map only competition, I’d be happy to go with that?
What say peeps? In a way doing competitive maps might be good for me since I’ve now got 4 large maps on the go - small ones are a nice change as proved by seven_dc’s competition.

So what are people’s thoughts on making it a competition map contest only? In a way it may make maps easier to test because playing conditions are quantifiable - IE timelimit, team sizes / weapon restrictions etc.

(MadJack) #105

Just to clear something… How many maps should there be in that map pack? And how many of each kind (if more than one)?

I’d be more than willing to map something for the competition and of course, small maps are faster to build than large ones. :smiley:

(G0-Gerbil) #106

Well, it’ll be as large as it needs to be I suppose - any maps up to the ‘standard’ will get in, but by the same token, maps WILL be refused on technical problems.

(Mean Mr. Mustard) #107

Is it individual mapping, or can it be a team effort?

(MuffinMan) #108

at least there was no problem with team efforts in the original rules and I wouldn’t make the thing more difficult than it needs to be - after all the purpose is to get good maps and to make people download them…

(MadJack) #109

I think there should be a max size for the map pack but very hard to come up with real sizes because maps sent can be of different size. Maybe we should use an approx. size. Something like: Map Pack should be around 400 MB. Just a thought.

As for my opinion on team mapping, I have nothing against it but I think it’d be a bit unfair to have team/individuals compete against each others. Why not put those 2 in different categories?

(DG) #110

you mean 40mb… right? :eek:

why not have a seperate category for every map? seriously, all anyone is interested in is how good the maps are, regardless of who or how many made them.

you need to decide a maximum number of maps. otherwise youre saying all the maps that didnt make it are shit, rather than just “not as good as these excellent ones”, and the cut off between what goes in and what goes out is impossible, it just becomes whatever maps you like. I suggest the absolute maximum cap be 6, though 4 or 3 possibly better - depends how you want to do it, and er how many good maps you think you might get.

(MadJack) #111

Anything against categories DG?

Oh well ok then 40 MB… Not that much if you ask me. It depends a lot on how many maps is decided will be part of the pack.

(G0-Gerbil) #112

Agreed - anyway team mapping has it’s own problems associated with it - namely lazy gits :wink:
The only distinction I’d make (if any) is clan-war / public - the rest is up to the mapper.
As for final size, I couldn’t really comment.
If we had too many ‘winners’ (woohoo that’d be nice!) then we could split it up into different groups, eg public / clan-war or, if there’s still too much, then maybe according to themes (desert, town etc).

I for one would look forward to the problems of having too many decent quality maps!

Possibly as part of the rules we’d have a maximum individual PK3 size limit, can’t remember if there was one in the original proposal - will go check.

(DG) #113

you were serious with 400mb? that’d be like, 50-100 maps.

(MadJack) #114

DG, let’s face it :slight_smile:

The 6 original maps are 90 MB uncompressed or about 25 compressed… Now, let’s think about custom textures, models (gamemodels have to be included), sounds… It could get big.

Unless we decide it’ll be ONLY normal textures/etc or max pk3 size.

(DG) #115

Unless each map is coming with a 15min divx run through, I cant quite see it getting up to 400mb… I dont even remember seeing a ET map >20mb, most are more like 5mb.

IIRC, we were thinking about something like a cap of 20mb per map, with a hint that the total pack size would be a factor, and hence that smaller maps would more or less get a metaphorical bonus point or something (whereas a larger map might get that bonus point because of the sounds/textures etc that made it large) - you get the idea.

Basically just emphasise that mappers should consider the tradeoff between feature vs. increased filesize carefully (which I’d assume they should be doing anyway). I wouldnt go on about it too much since chances are most maps will be like 5-7mb anyway.

btw might want to consider wether the “winning” maps would be released as a .zip pack of maps, or a single .pk3 file.

(MadJack) #116

I was exagerating a bit with 400 MB :stuck_out_tongue: but I think it could get to 100 MB depending on how many maps will be included.

First let’s think and talk about the rules then we’ll get to sizes :smiley:

(MuffinMan) #117

to be honest - I wouldn’t set many rules for this competition, we can be happy if we find enough decent maps at all so I wouldn’t care for the file size and I wouldn’t set the pack fixed to 6 maps or something, just take the good ones… only question is who will decide and what date is the end of the contest, then gather all news pages we can get hold of, send them the pack and write the same news text to all of them at the same day, this would give it a good start, we could talk to all clans we know of and ask them for help as well.

given enough helpers at finding supporters this would at least be a possibility, otherwise I foresee nothing to happen…

(G0-Gerbil) #118

I agree.
Any map that’s high enough standard would get in - no point in omitting decent ones because of filesize, or max map number.

I seriously doubt we’ll run into problems with too many decent maps - the rules should make it damn clear only top-notch fully tested stuff makes it in.
I expect most maps to fail at the ‘standard’ part, not an arbitrary filesize limit!

(MuffinMan) #119

ok then let’s talk about who decides - public poll, voting thread like for the 1024 contest or will just the people who want to help organizing do that? I’d say the interested people in here should test the maps for serious technical flaws and we need players as well for gametesting - anyway this will take a while anyway, for a start somebody could write the text for the competition (if anybody is lookin at me - I am no english native speaker so somebody else has to do this <g>)

([MOAB]) #120

“I’ve just received a mail from Pack outlining pretty much the same questions and concerns as those raised above. As far as I’m aware he’s one of the organizers, so what I thought I’d do is discuss the ideas here with Sock and Wils and then get back to Pack with some proposals.”
-Locki

this has happened half a year ago and no official statements since then. what has happened, locki or SD? will there ever be a competition and an official mappack?
thanks,
-[MOAB]