Vote for the '21 mapping contest theme/restriction!

[Neon_Knight]

As an idea, how about "must include a trap"? Anything player / bot activated for the sole purpose of killing other players / bots?

Inb4 somebody will recreate Claustrophobopolis from Quake just to comply with this particular rule.

[UnrealGGecko]

That would've qualfied for the "destructible/reactable environments" I think :p

There might be 1 more rule of "dont exceed over... idk, 150 MB with all your custom packages included", but that rule would mostly be for the mappack.

[Gustavo6046]

Interactive environment sounds fun! Trigger and its subclasses are underrated :)

Also I love dragons
so ya got me at a crossroad there lol >w<

[ExpEM]

As an idea, how about "must include a trap"? Anything player / bot activated for the sole purpose of killing other players / bots?

Inb4 somebody will recreate Claustrophobopolis from Quake just to comply with this particular rule.

Had to google Claustrophobopolis, looks fun but bot pathing would be a bitch.

That would've qualfied for the "destructible/reactable environments" I think :p

Now that you mention it, I think your right...

[makemeunreal]

Use of destructable and reactable environments/decos That is a cool idea!

[SteadZ]

oh wow destructible environment creeping in behind no rules now :O Certainly would be a cool idea, but I can see it taking a lot more time/planning to execute..

[Feralidragon]

NOTE: In case you didn't notice, you can cast up to 2 votes.
So if you want X, but would also be fine with Y, you can vote in both.

oh wow destructible environment creeping in behind no rules now :O Certainly would be a cool idea, but I can see it taking a lot more time/planning to execute..

I have a feeling that option is being voted mostly by players who want to see it done rather than mappers who actually want to do it.

Meaning that maybe a lot of people do not realize that for a proper map of that kind to be made, you need to also add in some scripting of your own, meaning that mappers able to script things will have a huge advantage (which while it could promote teamups with script-able mappers, most mappers will likely go solo and just use what they can, and will likely face a lot of issues that could be easily bypassed and avoided with coding).

Sure, you could also use an existing package, but to be completely sincere, I don't think there's anything out there feature-rich enough and stable enough across the board to be used (but I could be wrong about this though).

If this gets voted in, I am not sure if I am going to participate myself, because the idea that I have for that type of challenge consists in doing exactly the same map, but designing it and adding stuff to it that would make the map almost look like a transformer ("almost" being an hyperbole of course, don't expect a base transforming into a giant ass robot as a "reactive map"... although that would be very cool).

I mean, it would be very fun to do it, but the extra challenge to actually do it in that way would likely place this same map in the 5-6 months range rather than the 4 months, and the contest should not last that long (Christmas is magical, and we need to take advantage of that to some degree to finish these maps).

The problem here though, besides time, is the stability of things like movers: they have been improved in 469, but I am not sure if they are stable enough for something like this, at least the kind of vision I have for it, even because I reported bugs with it which were never fixed because they were very tricky and were postponed for a later patch when (and if) the rendering pipeline gets to be rewritten.

I was already planning to do a new FX package anyway to replace the old one I have been using in my other maps (maybe spend half of September on it), which I will likely call "C21FX", and I could actually take advantage of this contest to add in stuff around the "reactive" stuff, but on the other hand I really don't want to spend too much time coding here (yet), since I have one other much more important ongoing project which I shouldn't really steal time from just to do a map for this contest.

We'll see how the poll turns out first, then I will decide what to do, but I do see this to be a turn off to some mappers, and a huge turn on for others, which may either be a bad or a good thing... time will tell.

[TankBeef]

If this gets voted in, I am not sure if I am going to participate myself

But this is part of the reason why I was proposing no rules, but giving some sort of bonus or recognition to those who pull off any of the themes mentioned. It should be more "you think you can do this? Want to give it a shot?" rather than "everybody has to do it this way, or nothing".

Was thinking something more like this, your example map would be DNF cuz black skybox : https://unrealarchive.org/maps/unreal-t ... aeff2.html

I had not played this map before. Really cool and well made. Thanks Gecko.

[Feralidragon]

Sure, no rules, with reactive stuff as optional (but valued in the contest in some fashion).

Although that would bring the question: how the winner would be decided, because it will either be by a panel of judges, at which that bonus can be enforced, or if it's by the community (which is simpler, better and less biased imo), then that bonus is not really enforceable.

On the other hand, as a secondary challenge may mean that the maps with reactive stuff will stand out on their own well enough to get in more votes from the community, granting them a top position in the contest (maybe even winning it because of it).

So yeah, that would be interesting that way.
That way I personally could design the map with reactive stuff in mind, but not necessarily submit the first version of it with that kind of stuff for example.

I just want to do a map really, since it's been a while since I did my last one, and it's more fun to do maps in the context of contests and map packs like this, but also I don't want to spend too much time on it myself, nor run the risk of not finishing in time, which has happened almost every time I enter a contest like this.

Well, let's see what happens, the poll ends tomorrow around this time, so people still have around 24h to vote for what they want (mappers and players alike).

[Metalfist]

So no rules, but bonus points for including dragons that destroy environments/decos ? hehe

[Tyr]

I like the idea of interactive/destructible environment, but i don't know much about UScript and didn't found a proper source for learning that.

[UnrealGGecko]

Think we can do that next contest, but this year seems like we'll be doing No rules (with a couple exceptions like adding the batch).

Hoping to start this soon.

[papercoffee]

so the NO RULES MAPPING CONTEST ...NRMC.

ok... I'll work on a batch when I'm back home... in 2 weeks.
No rules means no rules means break the rules!
If some mapping guru says "you can't do that" just do it.
be brave be crazy. think outside the box.

[TankBeef]

so the NO RULES MAPPING CONTEST ...NRMC.

ok... I'll work on a batch when I'm back home... in 2 weeks.
No rules means no rules means break the rules!
If some mapping guru says "you can't do that" just do it.
be brave be crazy. think outside the box.

Yeah, something like the insane tower would be nice, don't you think?

[Feralidragon]

"No rules" means I can start right now even before the timings were set?
Can I release an edit of CTF-Face as my submission?

So the maps will have the NRMC vendor prefix then, nice.

be brave be crazy. think outside the box.

Well, I did already try to do some experiments on CTF-Face yesterday: changing the lighting colors of the whole map at random at fixed intervals... it works surprisingly well, makes you feel like you're in a rave, and gamers will likely appreciate all the RGB the map is filled with... not sure where I am going with this though...
Likely something to change the color of the map on the fly (with the reactive option being so strongly voted, I ended up starting to look into it, so maybe I will do a little something on that front too, maybe...).

But now that "no rules" is the winner, I can at least start working in the new FX package I have planned, so I can then create the new map I have been planning for this contest.
There are a lot of things I want to experiment with first, before formalizing them into a full fledged package.

Well, everyone, good luck, I hope to see a fair number of submissions this year.