Seasons Contest

[Springheel]

It's your show, but if the theme is supposed to be seasons, I would make "seasonal use" its own category. Otherwise, how does one vote for a map with great visuals be no seasonal factor at all? Or vice versa?

[Carnage]

+1

[fllood]

Yes, an additional "seasonal use" category make absolutely sense.

 

I like Bikers' ranking he used for Lockdown: Tolerable, Good, Very Good, Excellent, Near Pefect.

... there is no such things as a poor FM!

[nbohr1more]

Hah!

 

I like all this upsetting the apple-cart.

 

I recalled Bikerdude's renaming and thought it was sensible but was afraid that it would lower the bar and reduce the competitive spirit. Since I was on the fence on this one, I will go with the prevailing winds.

 

Tolerable to Near Perfect it is.

 

As for a separate "Seasons" category, I'll goof around in the Poll tool to see what's possible. I think that might mean squeezing the remaining criteria into the other two categories?

 

(Just a sec?)

 

 

Example Poll is up.

 

I think that should be sufficient, no?

 

(Let the grumbles commence )

Edited February 15, 2011 by nbohr1more

[Aprilsister]

Unacceptable.

 

Yuve gawn und roont evree thinq lykka hunta coo.

[nbohr1more]

Yep

 

We a little more Poll flexibility.

 

I think that the Season portion should be weighted mathematically higher in the results against the other categories.

 

That's about as good a way to break-down the voting as I can conjecture 3 vote-able questions.

 

Got everything up till "hunta coo"??? Roots reference?

 

Edit:

 

As you can see, the Seasonal definition is intentionally ambiguous. As long as it makes you feel the Season that the author intends somehow then it gets a positive vote. So complex fictional Seasonal boundaries, etc, can be put into place by the author as long as some Seasonal mood is evoked.

 

How one would do that without making an allusion to a known Seasonal stereotype is beyond me. If we go by advertising standards you have to bonk the customers over the head with at least 3 or more stereotypes in a commercial to remind them of the season

Edited February 15, 2011 by nbohr1more

[nbohr1more]

I have placed the announcement at Moddb for the official March 1st contest start date:

 

http://www.moddb.com...st-announcement

 

The article has not yet been authorized by Moddb but should be shortly (2 days at most).

 

 

Edited per stumpy's reminder...

Edited February 18, 2011 by nbohr1more

[STiFU]

Haha, I just voted. :-P But maybe group story and gameplay together in a vote. It'd be a shame to have lots of great looking seasonal maps that just don't tell you anything...

 

By the way, when you're going to evaluate the contest results, I have something for you, that will probably help you out a little. I wrote a flexible Open Calc / Excel document back when we had the vertical contest, because Fidcal said it was so tiresome to do the calculations for the final weighted scores by hand. Using the file also makes double checking of scores redundant, so yay!

[Sotha]

nbohr's scoring suggestions look nice to me.

 

I recommend to have a scoring emphasis on gameplay though. This is a game and games are all about gamplay. No good looks and 'seasonality' should save a mission which simply is not fun and boring to play because of poor focus on gameplay.

 

Gameplay is king and all mappers are recommended to spend time on that.

 

Oh, and surely the contest polls will be open so that everyone see what others have voted? Our mature community has survived of that so far.

[Carnage]

Poll looks good to me. I agree with Sotha that gameplay should have the highest weight. First and foremost one should enjoy a map, having some kind of seasonal effect is a great addition, nothing more or less.

[Bikerdude]

change the tolerable to ok in the poll options and your set.

[nbohr1more]

I know that you are trying to prevent "Troll votes".

 

I know that The Dark Mod itself makes nearly any map into an enjoyable mission.

 

But surely we are mature enough to admit that someone could possibly produce a less than enjoyable experience and others should be informed of this.

 

If I change the lowest criteria to "ok" then folks will equate it to "poor" anyway.

 

(Though I do admit if non-Thief or non-TDM folk show up, they may vote poor for "too much stealth and not enough AI to kill..." so that might be bad PR... except to TTLG types who revel in knowing that others don't understand...)

 

Finally, some polls still have "poor" as a choice. Imagine comparing an old great to some newer "meh" mission where voters were not really given a choice to say anything negative...

 

OK... The easy way to clear this up... Five Star Rating.

 

I will update the poll...

[stumpy]

link problem fixed, duplicate link removed.

Edited February 19, 2011 by stumpy

[moneyobie]

You can use any content you like, but of course, content modelled by blender etc. isn't reusable for other people (unless you make say individual houses vs. an entire street), so this might get you a point less from some people.

Ah yeah, you're talking about breaking a level into modular elements (static meshes or prefabs or whatever) versus exporting from a modeller as a single mesh? That's how I try to design levels in the newer editors (like UED), since apparently that's "industry-standard" and makes load times a lot faster (plus it's quicker to design the level/change things around)

 

I kind of miss the old-school editors where you could make pretty much all new content you wanted in them (at least all the architecture)

 

btw, though the official start date isn't until March, is it OK if I start working on at least ironing out storyline/sketches? I fear I might lose a bit of my enthusiasm and free-time by the time March hits if I have to wait

Edited February 18, 2011 by moneyobie

[Baddcog]

I think the time line is just 'start mapping now'. Editor/modeling time.

Of course people know the contest is on so thinking/planning it is probably happening already.

 

Modeling an entire level just doesn't work well with Doom3. The culling is through the use of bsp geometry and visportals (so is sound propogation, very critical in TDM). So while it is possibly to model everything it isn't the best way to go about it. And you deffinately want to break it up into the portalled areas anyway. (would require building nodraw walls around all areas to seal the void and enable visportalling, at which point the walls may as well just be textured and used instead of hidden within models of walls)

 

But I don't know why Tels said it would be a mark against you for using custom content in any form. The 'license' of TDM is basically that everything is open source. If you include models in a map you are basically giving them to the community. And contibutions are a good thing.

 

I think the major concern of most mappers is to just not rip terrain directly as we all want our maps to be a unique experience. (ie: using a building front, a window prefab, a texture, or the same barrel model is no big deal (giving credit where due). Taking an entire street or mansion and reusing it cheapens it, at least ASK permission to do so first).

Of course that would be against contest rules as it would be pre-built stuff before the contest began.

[Tels]

But I don't know why Tels said it would be a mark against you for using custom content in any form. The 'license' of TDM is basically that everything is open source. If you include models in a map you are basically giving them to the community. And contibutions are a good thing.

 

Nitpick: an author doesn't have to give the map to the community, he can choose a more restrictive licence if he wants.

 

However, as with the "the entire map consists of unique, but only usable once" "models", these two points would be, well, they would (in my opinion) reduce the usefullness of the map, so I would count them as "slightly negative".

 

But, and that is the but, this is only a small part. If you have a great story, brilliant visuals, then nobody will hold the way you build the map, or the license against you

 

Also, I am not sure the voting even reflects that. It will probably judge story, visuals, gameplay, bugfree etc, but not how you build the map. You probably could submit a pen-and-paper game for everyone to print out and it might probably pass the contest rules

[nbohr1more]

As I have stated before, there will be no way for anybody to tell how much lead time anybody had to get their map going so it is up to each mappers own conscience to adhere to the time restriction. With other contests, the end date has been extended to allow late entrants. More missions is the goal here.

 

If you need to start now and you don't want to violate the rules, just do as STiFU suggested and stop mapping early. As long as the time worked equals approximately 3 months then you're fine.

Edited February 20, 2011 by nbohr1more

[ocn]

I'll be taking a break from my contest mission now. I don't think I'll ever be done with it. I suck big time at mapping it would seem. I've completely broken it, and I can't bear the thought of starting from scratch right now. Anyway, I made a little something with whatever I had working in the hopes that it would inspire someone else to join in on the contest. A little rough around the edges... but guys, I really need a supporting pat on the back right now. I got the TDM blues.

 

Autumn's Breath "teaser".

[Shadowhide]

Looks very interesting Ocn

 

I making autumn mission too

 

 

[fllood]

Much promising Trailor ocn! ... just take a break ... the Spring sun will take away the blues for your contest or non-contest building - keep faith ocn!

[nbohr1more]

Don't be too hasty ocn.

 

In the Vertical Contest, Bikerdude helped Fieldmedic with his mission. I suspect that whatever you've got going on can be mended and if you can't do it, perhaps it another mapper will help. Or perhaps Fidcal will take your work and complete it (if he hasn't grown weary of that activity...)?

 

I will check the video out on my next (brief) allowance of "at home" internet time.

[Springheel]

Looks cool to me. What happened to "break" it?

[ocn]

Thanks guys. I needed that. As for what broke it is anyones guess. I did something that ripped my brushes slightly apart and they wouldn't snap back... so I had to revert to a previous save without a rather big revision. Attempting to rebuild what I had messed it up further. That's usually what happens when I try to fix things, so I think it's better to start fresh, at a later date. Can't think about it now, though. But I definitely will.

Good luck to everybody else entering.

[Sotha]

Thanks guys. I needed that. As for what broke it is anyones guess. I did something that ripped my brushes slightly apart and they wouldn't snap back... so I had to revert to a previous save without a rather big revision. Attempting to rebuild what I had messed it up further. That's usually what happens when I try to fix things, so I think it's better to start fresh, at a later date. Can't think about it now, though. But I definitely will.

Good luck to everybody else entering.

 

Do not give up!

 

That looks so promising that it would be a crime (vile blasphemy) to abandon it. I see it this way:

we have gameplay mappers and we have gorgeous life-like-details mappers.

We don't have many mappers who can build extremely immersive storylines and it would appear that you have, according to the video, great potential for this. I got instantly hungry to know what the mission is all about.

 

I don't know how big your mission is, but it cannot be so huge that restoring it would be totally futile. My guess is that you could easily fix the map with one dedicated evening of work.

 

If you are totally unsure what breaks your map, you could restore it by the following procedure:

• Open the most recent map you made.
• Go through each scene (Ie "rooms"). Convert all the details into separate func_statics in each room. Create a new layer in which you put all the detail brushwork.
• Select all the details in the map. (Everything except the worldspawn brushwork that seals it against the void)
• Copy-paste all the details in an empty map.
• Rebuild the exterior sealing brushwork by hand.

OR

• Rebuild a new, better sealing brushwork
• Copy paste in the detail building facades

Usually the void-sealing brushwork is very simple (big boxy rooms) and much less work than all the details (func_static building facades). This way you're sort of starting fresh, but all you gotta do is to recreate the void-sealing stuff.

 

Sometimes a fresh start may be a good idea if you have fundamental flaws in your map design, such as too long views or areas that are un-vistportallizable. In this case make a good plan, create the crude void-sealing brushwork and then re-use as much detail brushwork from you previous attempt.

 

I know from experience that learning to map is a twisty journey and sometimes one will hit the wall. It's important to plan ahead, begin with relatively simple mission and most importantly: do not give up.

 

Good luck!

[ocn]

Those were really encouraging words, Sotha. Thanks. I shall repent mine wretched sins and try some of those suggestions tomorrow. I'm a terrible planner, so I guess I should start with a pen and paper this time. I believe the story is rock solid so I won't abandon it in any case, I was just a little overly ambitious here...

I also forgot to credit my daughter for providing the voice of Lady Helena.