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Community "Unusual Gameplay Contest"


nbohr1more

Unusual Gamplay Contest Template  

7 members have voted

  1. 1. Unusual Gameplay Theme

    • One Star
    • Two Stars
      0
    • Three Stars
    • Four Stars
    • Five Stars
  2. 2. Gameplay Quality

    • One Star
      0
    • Two Stars
      0
    • Three Stars
    • Four Stars
    • Five Stars
  3. 3. Aesthetics (Visuals, Story, Audio)

    • One Star
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    • Three Stars
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OK then how about stating the build time. Eg Build time: 6 Months.

 

This isn't really an issue with regards to points for me. I'd like to stress that I'm not interested in winning. I'll give it my best shot but my main reason for wanting to enter is to have fun, interact with fellow mappers and contribute to what I hope will be an interesting and innovative contest.

 

What I do have an issue with is my work being compared to someone elses when they have had potentially twice as much time to work on their map. Stating the build time would solve this. Whether people take this in to account when voting or not means nothing to me.

 

I really hope I'm getting my point across here. Its not about winning or loosing for me. Just making sure people work gets seen in the correct light.

"I believe that what doesn't kill you simply makes you... stranger"

 

The Joker

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I think this build time idea is good, as it's mentioned anyways in most FM posts I guess

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

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Size -> Enjoyment.

 

Oh, I always thought it is not about the size, but how you use it. :P

 

OK then how about stating the build time. Eg Build time: 6 Months.

 

I have no problems with build time announcement. However, one should remember that build time is not the ultimate indicator how much real time went into the map.

 

Someone might work 6 months, half an hour per day.

Someone else might work 3 months, 2 hours per day.

Someone with a lot of coffee might make an insane two weekend quick-mapping rage-burst with 12 hours per day.

 

When I started mapping I could easily pour hours and hours into the fascinating process of mapping. Nowadays I have roughly 2 hours of free awake time per day which I also need to allocate to other hobbies, studies and home maintenance. Average mapping speed is something around "few brushes a day."

 

What I do have an issue with is my work being compared to someone elses when they have had potentially twice as much time to work on their map. Stating the build time would solve this. Whether people take this in to account when voting or not means nothing to me.

 

I really hope I'm getting my point across here. Its not about winning or loosing for me. Just making sure people work gets seen in the correct light.

 

I understand your basic point, it is a respectful one and I wish there was a simple way to satisfy it, but it is difficult to find a realiable and true indicator which would allow the mission "to be seen in the correct light."

 

In the end, like Obsttorte said, the voters opinion will be fully subjective and they will probably only take the stuff they see in the mission into account: my view is that the players are probably not very interested in the circumstances that took place while the mission was produced. At least as player, I'm not interested in outside-the-mission-information when evaluating the mission. Only the mission counts: be it large or small, took a month or a decade to finish, it does not matter as long as the mission is challenging, interesting and fun to play.

 

But sure, if the contest rules require something of me, it will be a matter of honor and sportmanship to fulfill the requirements.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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Oh, I always thought it is not about the size, but how you use it. :P

And I always thought this is a statement from people lacking of size. :P

 

Regarding the build time: One could agree that this is stated in hours (roughly, of course) This may also attract new mappers for the future as "build time: 6 months" may sound a bit distracting for somebody, who have plenty of time for mapping (and may think that the mapper who posted this also has)

Edited by Obsttorte

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

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Regarding the build time: One could agree that this is stated in hours (roughly, of course) This may also attract new mappers for the future as "build time: 6 months" may sound a bit distracting for somebody, who have plenty of time for mapping (and may think that the mapper who posted this also has)

 

In hours?!?! isn't that being a bit too specific? Sometimes on a Saturday I might spend an hour or 2 mapping, go out for lunch, map a bit more then go out for the night, come home and map a bit more before bed. I'm certainly not going to keep track of how many hours that is in one day. Never mind 3 months!

 

This is getting way too technical I think. Something as vague as "Build time: Roughly 6 months" will more than suffice I think.

"I believe that what doesn't kill you simply makes you... stranger"

 

The Joker

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And I always thought this is a statement from people lacking of size. :P

I've been told that those are the guys that drive the big fancy cars with custom plates. :laugh:

 

Regarding the build time: One could agree that this is stated in hours (roughly, of course) This may also attract new mappers for the future as "build time: 6 months" may sound a bit distracting for somebody, who have plenty of time for mapping (and may think that the mapper who posted this also has)

 

Extremely roughly, because it is impossible to for me to know how much time I've invested in my WIP. From where to start counting? Modules have been built and deleted. Placed and deleted and redesigned and placed. Lots of playing around without even considering this might become into a mission. Some days all free time was used. At some point weeks passed without any work. Any number I produce is bound to be flawed and erronneous, if not even misleading. My problem is that I really want to play it by the books, but I cannot do it properly.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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I've been told that those are the guys that drive the big fancy cars with custom plates. :laugh:

B)

Extremely roughly, because it is impossible to for me to know how much time I've invested in my WIP.

It's a difference if you've spent 100 or 200 hours of work, but not if you've spent 110 or 120 hours. So extremely roughly isn't a problem IMO. It's just more precisely then months I guess.

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

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You could have a time tracker running which tracks how long you have DR open (or manually start/stop it). But then, probably no mapper really wants to know how many hundred hours they sink into their mission :)

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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You could have a time tracker running which tracks how long you have DR open (or manually start/stop it). But then, probably no mapper really wants to know how many hundred hours they sink into their mission :)

true, but it was meant more in terms of 25 hours or so (Build time: 25/50/75/100/...hours)

We have a contest. I'll post the terms at moddb when I get a chance this weekend.

excited ... can't wait ... wanna start mapping

Edited by Obsttorte

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

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This might be too late, but why not have 2 sub categories for the contest? Rank fresh missions against other fresh missions, and WIP missions against other WIP missions? Sure, this means you'll technically have 2 winners for the contest, but you avoid any issues that come with pitting WIP stuff against fresh material, while still having a contest as a pressure and incentive for the people planning to enter WIP missions into it. Best of both worlds, as I see it.

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This makes sense if the number of participants is sufficient high.

 

But we could stick to this and say: make it like this if there are for example 3 participants in each category at deadline, and if not rank them against each other.

 

Referring to this Thread it looks like:

 

WIP: Sotha, Fieldmedic

Fresh: Thor (maybe), Sir Taffsalot, stumpy, Obsttorte

 

not sure if it makes much sense to rank them seperately

I still think that the idea with posting the build time in terms of 25 or even 50 hours is a useful starting point in comparing work

(not just WIP and fresh, also three months can mean something completely different in dependence on the mapper)

If you think that the working time should not be taken into account, then there is also no need to differenciate between WIP and fresh and we may stick to the Build time in terms of months think or even not mentioning when the building began

 

Personally I would prefer hours or nothing, because the month think doesn't say much

 

Sorry if I repeat myself, but IMO we should decide this before starting the contest (or nbohr1more just decides and post it on moddb :P )

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

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Ah, I didn't say anything about the hour count, not because I felt it shouldn't be included, but because included or excluded, I didn't feel it bore too much relevance to whether or not splitting the missions into fresh and WIP categories would be a good or bad idea. I do however, fully agree that some minimum level of confirmed entrants would be required for the categories to make sense, and at least 3, if not 4, per category should be a minimum. That said, if nbohr1more is setting up the conditions of the contest, he's free to take my idea on board if the participant number warrants it, and anything else is up to him.

 

Personally, I'd like to know roughly how long people spent making their maps, not as some measure of the quality of the work or as a measure of their skill at mapping, but to gain a perspective on how long it took them ("It took only 30 hours to make this? Wow this guy moves fast!" "Huh, 200 hours for this? I wonder how much time was spent on little details I've missed, or did they try to do something radical and it just didn't work out?")

Edited by Xarg

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I'm not sure I will find time to enter the contest, but how would a Swift Mazes misison rank on "fresh" vs. "WIP"? The framework is WIP since quite a long time and will be so for the next time, but it would be used to build the mission..

 

Also, I'd might re-use prefabs, but even if I re-do them, I'd re-use whatever I learned during building the current demo mission.

 

Me thinks, it would be better if I didn't even enter the contest.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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This might be too late, but why not have 2 sub categories for the contest? Rank fresh missions against other fresh missions, and WIP missions against other WIP missions?

I think something along those lines would help - it still leaves the problem of how to judge, e.g. Sotha's FM (quite a bit of stuff put together already) against e.g. Fieldmedic's FM (stuff drawn on paper), but I don't think there's any straightforward solution to that one.

 

I had a kinda similar-but-different idea, which was to have one award for 'Most enjoyable FM' (where build time is irrelevant) and another for 'Most creative FM', where marks were biased in favour of mappers starting from scratch, but Xarg's idea is simpler and therefore probably better. :smile:

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Simpler yeah, but I think your idea has more merit - except in the case of things being voted creative/enjoyable being highly susceptible to subjectivity. Imagine, for example, I made and entered an FM where the premise was after an evening of burgling, the City Watch beats your fence to a pulp and finds your hideout. Queue a high speed day time chase through a somewhat linear landscape, all of which is beautifully made and performs like a dream, you can go on the rooftops but there are archers that have an easier time hitting you, on the ground the guards are able to open the gates via a scripted yell to a guy in the guard house while you have to climb over increasingly fiendish geometry puzzles. The citizens in the market react perfectly, fleeing once you get too close to well designed flee points, and the guards behave somewhat intelligently. It sounds like a very creative, and ambitious mission. It may also receive terrible votes for enjoyable if the person went into the mission expecting a night time mansion heist.

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I'm not sure I will find time to enter the contest, but how would a Swift Mazes misison rank on "fresh" vs. "WIP"? The framework is WIP since quite a long time and will be so for the next time, but it would be used to build the mission..

 

Also, I'd might re-use prefabs, but even if I re-do them, I'd re-use whatever I learned during building the current demo mission.

 

Me thinks, it would be better if I didn't even enter the contest.

 

I think you should enter the contest Tels, even if only to show off what you can do with the stuff you're using.

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Personally, I'd like to know roughly how long people spent making their maps, not as some measure of the quality of the work or as a measure of their skill at mapping, but to gain a perspective on how long it took them ("It took only 30 hours to make this? Wow this guy moves fast!" "Huh, 200 hours for this? I wonder how much time was spent on little details I've missed, or did they try to do something radical and it just didn't work out?")

That's good thinking. In addition, as I've mentioned somewhat earlier, 100 hours doesn't sound as long as 3 months (what could be the same if the mapper has only a limited amount of time per day/week). This may be a better style in the purpose of attracting new mappers.

I think you should enter the contest Tels, even if only to show off what you can do with the stuff you're using.

Yeah, enter ... let us see your magic. :smile:

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

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Me thinks, it would be better if I didn't even enter the contest.

I think you should enter the contest Tels, even if only to show off what you can do with the stuff you're using.

Indeed!

 

We're curious how a Swift Mazes mission would look and play in comparision to a traditional build mission in this contest. And how much hours it took to build it.

"To rush is without doubt the most important enemy of joy" ~ Thieves Saying

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Moddb article with the contest terms is posted:

 

 

http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-dark-mod/news/community-unusual-gameplay-contest

Please visit TDM's IndieDB site and help promote the mod:

 

http://www.indiedb.com/mods/the-dark-mod

 

(Yeah, shameless promotion... but traffic is traffic folks...)

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