Discussion: Q3W LEM competitions

[cityy]

I think we should regularely host small competitions on the forum. Nothing big and serious, just something for hugs and fun (no homo).
I'd love to see a 20 brush competition over christmas (deadline 31st) and maybe a 1024 competition in late january or febuary (duration of 2-4 weeks). Prizes are not needed IMO; the winners can be determined by polls.
How is everyone feeling about this?

[obsidian]

I approve this message. Though not sure about the time line. I was thinking of doing 20b starting Jan 1. Might give a little more time for people to see this and join. I guess we can see depending on the number of people interested in signing up.

I'll be enforcing the rules, so no sneaking in that 21st brush, I will slap you with it.

[Fjoggs]

I would probably join the "bigger" contests. 20 brush-contests are just too boring imo. :P

[skinmaster]

a twenty bush contest should be for prefab creation maybe? flat shaded caulked brushwork ...

[themuffinman]

A speed mapping comp could be interesting.

[obsidian]

I think we should start with 20b. If the turnout is good, we'll host other types.

[Eraser]

I'd dig a 20 brush competition

[skinmaster]

i like the 20 brush idea too, makes me wonder about making a transformer map where all twenty bushes change positions.. modifying the "layout" :P

[sock]

20 brush-contests are just too boring

20 brush, speed mapping and 1024^3 mapping competitions have been done to death and are indeed not interesting anymore. Maybe try something new, like focus on game play item balance or environmental spaces instead?

Create a map based on :-

* 2 weapon types only like for example SG/RL, PG/LG or GL/SG
* 1 power up, like a Battlesuit, Speed or Regen in a central area
* A restricted set of weapons, ammo, health and armor that everyone must use
* A visual hook, something that perfectly describes the map with a single word or phrase
* A choke point that separates the map into two halves and guards a special item
* A highly vertical environment with low gravity to reduce fall damage
* An environment with lots of water, maybe have fun with water texture alpha blending

All maps should follow the same game type, size and textures so everyone can judge them easier. Plus this will help people that don't have lots of time to spare detailing areas or finding/creating textures.

[GONNAFISTYA]

20 brush-contests are just too boring

20 brush, speed mapping and 1024^3 mapping competitions have been done to death and are indeed not interesting anymore. Maybe try something new, like focus on game play item balance or environmental spaces instead?

Create a map based on :-

* 2 weapon types only like for example SG/RL, PG/LG or GL/SG
* 1 power up, like a Battlesuit, Speed or Regen in a central area
* A restricted set of weapons, ammo, health and armor that everyone must use
* A visual hook, something that perfectly describes the map with a single word or phrase
* A choke point that separates the map into two halves and guards a special item
* A highly vertical environment with low gravity to reduce fall damage
* An environment with lots of water, maybe have fun with water texture alpha blending

All maps should follow the same game type, size and textures so everyone can judge them easier. Plus this will help people that don't have lots of time to spare detailing areas or finding/creating textures.

[Kaz]

What he said

[fKd]

agree

[skinmaster]

in a 20 brush would a maxes out sibdivided patch mesh still only count as one brush?

[cityy]

My biggest concern is that if we do something too extensive people will be afraid to join. Thus I'd like to stick to something around the extent of a 20brush comp or a 1024 challenge.

[Eraser]

How about a competition to create a Horde/Firefight-like map for EntityPlus

[monaster]

My biggest concern is that if we do something too extensive people will be afraid to join. Thus I'd like to stick to something around the extent of a 20brush comp or a 1024 challenge.

True. Plus, we've settled in a long hard fight for quite decent rules regarding the 20b comp back in the days of infernis' leveldesign.nl (not too long ago if anyone remembers). Using these will not only spare us the trouble of setting up a new catalogue of dos and donts (like the subdivided patch mesh issue skinny has mentioned asf), but also attract some people interested in spending some time they usually don't have many of into a small map. This way we can also kinda determine how many people are still left mapping for Q3A every now and then (beside the well-known 15 or 20 regularly posting here).

On a sidenote: Hi sock!

[themuffinman]

Speed mapping isn't too extensive. The only issue would be running it so it's convenient across as many time zones as possible.

20 brush could be extended to 50 brush or so to make it more interesting but still simple.

[sock]

How about a competition to create a Horde/Firefight-like map for EntityPlus

Good idea

[Eraser]

Cool idea, although usually collaborative efforts don't work out really well. But if everyone is working on a completely isolated part of a map, it might just work.

And sure, I'd be definitely willing to help out.

[ShadoW_86]

All maps should follow the same game type, size and textures so everyone can judge them easier. Plus this will help people that don't have lots of time to spare detailing areas or finding/creating textures.

Hmmm, not sure about textures. It's exactly something all should be able to choose, 20b contest is about creativity like nothing else. I could have excellent idea for 20b map which would work only with specific textures or theme, I don't think this type of limitation could improve the results. 20b should be all about creativity and not about means. If a map makes better imporession then another one, it wins .

[themuffinman]

Bump bump.

There was quite a unique idea for a mapping competition brought up on tastypleen.net a few months ago:

...
Have a contest where you are given a .map file with entities only.

Like have armor here, health there, guns here here and here, shards here.. etc.

The object of the contest is to build a map around the entities provided.
...

That'd be different to any previous Q3 mapping competition (afaik), it'd be easy to get going and could yield some interesting results. Thoughts?

[Fjoggs]

Sounds way better then a 20 brush contest atleast. I would probably try to enter.

[Eraser]

Or a remix competition. Take an existing map and everyone should remix (redo texturing, lighting, detailing, maybe even allow adding gameplay altering geometry) the map. So you'd get a lot of different versions of the same map but redesigned in unique ways.

[cityy]

I like both ideas, though eraser's sounds a bit more interesting to me.

[deqer]

I oppose Eraser's idea because I'd rather hit two birds with one stone by having the competition be fun and useful. It's not very useful if you end up with "a lot of different versions of the same map" unless gameplay/geometry is significantly different between the maps to make them less the same, so that you end up with a bunch of useful maps rather a bunch of variations of the same flow of a map; because the flow/gameplay is what matters.