Hi All,
Just to let you know that at 12:01am on Friday 4th July, I will be posting details of the next mapping competition.
Usual rules will be confirmed as will the actual theme.
If you have any general questions, please post them here.
July 2014 Mapping Competition
27th June 2014
Can you fast forward time up to the announcement time?
Are you eager to get started then?
Yes. I have been wanting for a long time now to return to half-life 2 and create a fresh single player experience.
Ok, I have a question. Will I be able to finish a map for once?
And while I’m at it. Congratz on the donations 🙂
Tobeas, with all due respect, you just need to release SOMETHING. It doesn’t have to be perfect. In fact, no matter how hard you try, it won’t be perfect. That desire will be what drives all your future work. But that first step – that’s the most important one. The process of releasing anything at all will get you over what seems to be a mental hurdle more than anything else. 🙂
I second this. If you never release anything you will never get any feedback. These 10 day mapping competitions are perfect ways to throw out rough ideas and get good feedback from a wide variety of folks, both level designers and players.
Over the years I find the biggest reason people give for not releasing a map in a competition is ego/pride. They see it as unfinished or unpolished and hold it up to an unreasonable expectation of quality, even in some cases comparing their work to classics in the game they are mapping for which is just insane.
Having looked at all of these PP competition maps in detail it is very easy to spot map authors that started off very rough in their first entry but are now creating solid maps for each competition. The progress in quality is there for everyone to see!
Prime example. My DefendVille submission. Generally considered the most unfinished of the maps in that competition. Haha.
Someday I’ll get it right!
This’ll be the first time I’ve had free time during a competition for a while, so hopefully I can get something done.
Fingers crossed.
This will be my first mapping competition and I’m very eager to get started with my first meaningful map.
A quick question:
Is there anything in particular I should have in mind when compiling my map for PP, or should I just compile it as I normally would?
Looking forward seeing all the entries and happy mapping to you all!
Other than giving it the proper contest filename, there isn’t anything in particular that you wouldn’t normally do.
Since time will probably be short, make sure to make your map in a way that will reduce compile times. If your map has quite large open areas, func_viscluster brushes are a life-saver.
More general advice is just to keep it simple on your first map, and try not to worry if everything isn’t perfect.
Yes, let me agree with that. Keep your first map simple and to the point. Better to finish early than be over ambitious and miss the deadline. If you finish early you can do another detail pass or polish it in some other ways.
Thanks for all the tips! I will try to make it as simple as possible and focus on gameplay. If I got time, I will polish the visuals.
Just to confirm, will this be another ten day competition?
Yes. From Friday 4th 12:01am to 12:00pm Monday 14th. All times GMT.
Because I live in Sweden, I will have to wait until 2:01am CET. The CET time is +2:00 hours from GMT. But thankfully it affects the deadline as well. In CET it will occur at 2:00pm CET? Just a bit confused about the am, pm stuff. We use a 24-hour clock system.
Am I right? Dont want to miss the deadline and I dont want to loose two hours of mapping either.
I would suggest setting up an RSS reader and subscribing to the site. That way you’ll know almost imemdiately once the post is visible. I often post these things a bit early too and am a little flexible with regard to the deadline – but only a little.
Mmmmh, will this have something to do with the Civil Protection in some way? CPVille? UrbanVille?
Could be.