Bitfighter Forums

Thanks to everyone who submitted levels! We had a terrific showing, with 13+ users submitting 32+ levels, including seven levelgens and nearly all game modes represented!

This thread is for general discussion or feedback of the levels, NOT reviews! Use this thread to share what you liked and disliked about the levels or offer some suggestions for improvement.

There will be a formal review thread after the next contest party. Many levels are often inhibited by only a few small, easily fixable issues, so this gives level creators a chance to revise their levels before they are prematurely judged or voting is influenced.

Holiday Bonanza Theme

• Amazing Technicolor Xmas Hendeca - ZC
  
• Christmas Tree - HTF
  
• Coronavivacious - BM - Levelgen
  
• Day of the Dead - HTF
  
• Jack-o'-lantern - BM
  
• Matunda ya Kwanza - RET
  
• Menorah Map - BM
  
• NYE Ball Drop - SOC
  
• Pickle Pit - CTF
  
• Santa's Sleigh Ride - RET
  
• Spin the Dreidel - NEX
  
• Toppled Tree Tussle - BM
  
• Xmas Rage - COR
  

A Year to Remember Theme

• Afterglow - ZC - Levelgen
  
• Ballot Counting Simulator 2020 - NEX
  
• Beekeeper's Revenge - COR - Levelgen
  
• Bobdaduck is Freaking Dead - CTF - Levelgen
  
• Cervesa - NEX - Levelgen
  
• Civil War II - COR
  
• Confusion - CTF
  
• El Gendrado Fire - SOC
  
• Murder Hornets (BM) - BM
  
• Murder Hornets (NEX) - NEX - Levelgen
  
• Requiem for a Duck - ZC
  
• Rest in Duck - BM
  
• Shopping During the Pandemic - NEX
  
• Social Distancing - NEX - Levelgen
  
• Socially-Distant Bitmatch - BM
  
• The Big 'Rona - COR
  
• The Electoral Preschool - ZC
  
• The Political Compass - ZC
  
• The Two-Party System - CTF
  

Feedback Template

Reminder: Please just post general discussion or feedback in this thread! Stuff like constructive criticism, suggestions for improvement, things you liked, etc. Save the actual reviews for the Reviews Thread which will be posted on Sunday.

Amazing Technicolor Xmas Hendeca
Pretty neat map, the holiday theme feels a bit shoehorned and too many touchdowns required to win IMO but this is a fun arena-style map and an interesting take on the Zone Control game mode with its in-wall goalzones.

Day of the Dead
This map is decent. Drop the score limit a bit, I think. I enjoy the asymmetrical bases very much, but regenerating burst turrets are always, ALWAYS a no-go. Burst turrets in general are a no-go in bottlenecks.

NYE Ball Drop
Are you really supposed to coordinate leaving this up to the hostile turrets to decide the score? ...plus, why so many points to win then?

Santa's Sleigh Ride
The best novelty map of the contest, good work and thank you for the short timer. Felt just about right.

Spin the Dreidel
While the level itself isn't terribly entertaining, the random mechanic using teleports on top of one another is rather ingenious. Nice innovation!

Toppled Tree Tussle
So the only way to get a loadout change is by suiciding into no man's land? ...uhh... okay... also very easy to get outside of the map.

Xmas Rage
So the only way to get a loadout change is to go to a faraway corner of the map, ignoring the objective for a solid 20-30 seconds? ...uhh... okay...

Beekeeper's Revenge
This level is a great idea with a neat script, it literally just needs some tweaking for better gameplay balance. Very skewed in favor of the defenders currently -- and for the invading horde, those self-regenerating hostile projectors come back SO FAST it's ridiculous even with large numbers of players.

Confusion
Whoever thought this was a good idea at all is insane. Nonetheless, people tired out so badly playing this that one team was able to nab a couple of points. I would honestly change the score limit to 1 and call it a day.

El Gendrado Fire
This one made me laugh the second-hardest but the gameplay is fairly atrocious. The use of the resource item to get the soccer ball caught is clever, although really unnecessary here.

Murder Hornets (BM)
Interesting concept -- the turrets can score a whole lot of points here, so it's arguably more important to survive than to try and score kills. Good novelty map.

Requiem for a Duck
The "AIDS" reveal absolutely slayed me. Thanks for that, Little_Apple, I'm presuming.

Shopping During the Pandemic
Unbelievably tedious, and a crash course on why team nexus maps shouldn't have secure bases.

Social Distancing
Unbelievably tedious despite an amusing (if confusing) levelgen, and a crash course on why team nexus maps shouldn't have secure bases.

Socially-Distant Bitmatch
Mercifully short with a short time limit. Worthy of a chuckle and a good break map.

The Big 'Rona
There's some serious mind games to this one and I'd like to see it played a few more times. Countries can try to take down the COVID-19 team or else kill each other off, but killing each other off adds more players to the COVID-19 team... it's a balancing act. The stationary cores are a mistake because some teams have a core panel that can only be struck via bouncer/burst, but most teams do not. Unfair advantage.

The Electoral Preschool
I'm not against the use of the SVG convertor tool, but if you do, probably consider putting more than two minutes into the rest of the map's design. There are numerous inaccessible goal zones, the score limit of 51 makes no sense, it's impossible to get a touchdown, and teleporting to Hawai'i can easily get players outside the map. Also, since size is no object unlike an IRL map, why not make Alaska its proper size?

The Political Compass
The idea of making the win condition less than one touchdown is a cute one, but I'm not convinced it works in this map's favor, especially given there are two flags available. When I played this, players seemed confused and lost for the most part and I was able to easily hit the score limit and secure an easy and somewhat unearned victory.

Afterglow
I like the triva levelgen! Bit blocky, but it doesn't really need that much design. Bots seem to just bounce around at the bottom once they get the flag, did you put your center there?

Amazing Technicolor Xmas Hendeca
Absolute Chaos with players. With bots, it suffers horrendously, probably due to the inwall-goalzones. Theming's weird.

Ballot Counting Simulator 2020
It's a nexus map. There's a tendency for a few players on one team to mutually heal and hoard flags in one of the corners, but otherwise everything's good.

Beekeeper's Revenge
Like Quartz said, extrodinarily skewed for the defenders. Consider tweaking it. Bots on the beekeper team seem to get confused and bump the wall a bunch.

BOBDADUCK IS FREAKING DEAD
Interesting levelgen. I did not know what to do here, and the invincible turrets do not help. Maybe just make the turrets hostile to all and killable?

Cerevesa
AAAAA VISUAL NOISE. There is so much going on in this map, and it makes it impossible for me to focus on anything, and the zfighting Does Not Help. Consider making the outer ones line polygons? Other than that, pretty good levelgen.

Christmas Tree
I see someone took a page out of my Simple Points, and turned it into a Big Map and made it more like an actual hold-the-points game. Pretty cool! It's more fit for large amounts of players though, with small amounts (~4-6) it'd probably be somewhat slow. Bot-proofing is good.

Civil War II
The Better American Map Map. I like the text strewn all over the states, though i don't understand half of them. Southern Ohio should be labeled "Corn Town". As with all open levels, Seekers OP Pls Nerf.

Confusion
They're The Hallways Of Hell. Only good for like 6 players. Open up the hallways a little. Bouncer OP Pls Nerf.

CORONAVIVACIOUS
Basically just a really big arena map. Eh. Flashing lights are a bit much, esp. when epilepsy is taken into consideration. Consider an in-level epilepsy warning if you upload it to Pleiades.

Day Of The Dead
I really like this theming! Burst turrets are too much, consider normal turrets and less. Sadly, bots seem to bounce around the center of the map. Consider putting the editor-center outside the actual level. This is one of my favorite maps of this contest.

El Gendrado Fire
Like other small maps, this map was hurt by 20 players. Maybe make the map bigger. Also, the forcefields are hard to get through and the goal area is a bit bottlenecky. Bots seem to get confused and want to shoot all the hostile turrets in the center, and also tend to own-goal themselves.

Jack-O-Lantern
A really nice simple bitmatch map. Timer isn't too long and might be a bit small for big parties, but otherwise it's pretty much perfect.

Matunda ya Kwanza
Nice map! Shootthru walls are a decision, and it's pretty annoying to get at the flag with all the seeker turrets, but otherwise it's pretty cool. Bots get confused and bounce around the center.

menorah map
bottom text

Murder Hornets [NEX]
Like most of the other team nexus maps in this contest, secure bases hurt this map with the suicide exploit. Levelgen is good. I could see this being a fun nexus map if you took away the bases.

Murder Hornets [BM]
Like Quartz said, this map becomes more focused on getting safe than getting kills. I like the gradient effect with the text using stacked text.

NYE Ball Drop
See what Quartz said.

Pickle Pit
Weird theming. It's like the mapmaker saw the discord message and said "this would be funny if made into a map" and did so. Easy to just camp out the center bottleneck on your base and prevent any and all advances. At least it's botproofed, and the profile picture was pretty accurate.

Requiem for a Duck
This was the funniest level of all. The cherry on the top is the weird twisted goalzone at the tail. Sadly the bots get confused.

Rest In Duck
It's a bitmatch map. Nothing much else to say about it.

Santa's Sleigh Ride
One of the best maps sent in. Short, simple, and sweet.

Shopping During The Pandemic
Shopping map one. The one-way gimmick is pretty fun, but the bots get stuck on them very easily. The team-specific teleporter routing is cool. The bases allow for the suicide strat, axe the bases and it'd be pretty good.

Social Distancing
Shopping map two. Suffers from much of the same problems as Shopping During The Pandemic.

Socially Distanced Bitmatch
What Quartz said, basically.

Spin The Dreidel
Fun idea, but everything else is a bit lacking.
The Big 'Rona. I like the red lines around the inner/outer polywalls. Other than that, what Quartz said.

The Electoral Preschool
The Worse American Map Map. See what Quartz said.

The Political Compass
See what Quartz said. Bots get confused and bounce around the center.

Toppled Tree Tussle
Not A Good Gimmick. Especially since it allows people to leave really easily.

Xmas Rage
WHERE'S THE LOADOUT ZONE
Other than that, map is pretty good.

Don't have thoughts on all of the levels but I do for most:

Amazing Technicolor Xmas Hendeca
Clean, simple zone control. I like being able to cap some of the zones from anywhere, but it's pretty hard to get a touchdown with two competent offenses. I might suggest making the flags neutral, or taking out one or two of the zones.

Christmas Tree
I like the asymmetrical design and I think gameplay is fun. I would maybe suggest speedzones to make traveling to the bases a bit faster.

Day of the Dead
It was fun crafting defenses and trying to outlast the enemy, but I think grey base was too tough. I might also suggest adding in a couple more resource items to make it easier to engineer defenses or for offenses to engineer portals.

NYE Ball Drop
I think if it was a little longer and was easier to move the ball toward the goals that would help improve gameplay. Cute art.

Pickle Pit
The delayed spawns are creative, but to be honest I'm not a fan. It makes it tough for weaker teams to stay competitive if they're constantly dying and thus not being able to defend their flag. I would also make the entryways a little wider, or add an alternate route into the base, as there is some serious cramping going on at the entrances.

Santa's Sleigh Ride
It's very pretty, but also quite difficult to make it all the way through. I would suggest either making the route shorter or making the slipzones wider. There could also be walls along the route instead of arrows so players didn't have to start over if they fell off. Finally, I'd suggest improving the spawn area, as players can just camp it and make it tough to begin the sleigh ride.

Spin the Dreidel
This is one of my favorite levels of the contest. It's a total gamble whether you'll get more flags or just die, which makes for some hilarious gameplay. But I'd suggest decreasing the number of flags available in each track. If everyone is flying around with 25+ flags then people don't really feel an urgency to attack each other. Reducing the number of flags available ensures people to continue trying their luck or increasing combat between players for more limited flags. Maybe you could still have one track be a "jackpot" track with 25+ flags though.

Toppled Tree Tussle
I love the art design, but I dislike locking the loadout zone away. You have to either die or wait a long time for the portal to come back. This might not be an issue for some game modes but for bitmatch it can be an issue where every life counts. I'd also like to see maybe a neutral turret somewhere, the laserbeams are nice but don't really offer much value in repairing since there's not a huge incentive to go in the portals.

Finally, I might suggest rotating the tree a bit to the left. Not a lot, just some. Playing with rotation is fun, but it can be dizzying to see something that we're used to seeing vertical be as tilted as it is.

Xmas Rage
Same deal with locking the loadout zone away - had to hunt for it and once I eventually found it I ended up dying right away. I would bring that out and readily available to each team. Next, I'd suggest moving the portals leading into the resource item middle closer to the resource items so their purpose was clearer. I got a bit confused by all of the portals so this would help.

I think the whole map is very cute and fun, but it's pretty big. I think if you resize it down 20% or 25% that could really help.

Afterglow
I love the theme and the questions, but I might suggest adding a second team to make the gameplay more interesting. Could have it be white or light blue to keep the color scheme. I would also suggest putting a partial enclosure around the levelgen triggers since people fly over the triggers frequently, causing the text to go by too quickly to read.

Ballot Counting Simulator 2020
Pretty design, but the time before the nexus opens is too long, in my opinion. I think it might be interesting to have some emitters on the walls in the corners to make it easier for folks to craft bases to hoard flags too.

Beekeeper's Revenge
One of my favorite maps in the contest, but pretty heavily skewed toward green. I'd start by taking out the grey lasers at orange base and replacing them with orange lasers. I'd also suggest widening the entrance to green's base or adding a secondary entrance, and adding a couple more resource items, as those will eventually fall into the hands of orange more easily than if there's just a couple floating around.

It might also be worth making the jimmy core a tad stronger - if even one player gets through they can kill the core within like a second, two seconds tops. If they get there unnoticed green doesn't have enough reaction time to respond, ending the game right away. I understand strengthening the core somewhat would skew the balance in favor of green, but there are other ways to fix the balance that don't involve an endgame that occurs near instantly once a player gets close enough.

Finally, I'd suggest clarifying the purpose of the bug spray with some text to make it clearer what it does, as right now it just looks like you enter a room of enemy turrets with no real purpose, unless you can connect the dots.

Bobdaduck is Freaking Dead
I understand this isn't intended to be a serious map, but I enjoyed some strategy in taking flags that belonged to my opponent to prevent them from scoring. Limiting each team to just one flag would certainly help with that though.

Cervesa
Clever levelgen, but nexus stays closed for too long. More nexus opportunities would make this much more fun to play.

Civil War II
Really impressive work, clearly drawn out by hand with a lot of creativity for each of the state. I saw lots of fun references! My only suggestion would be some speedzones (highways?) or teleporters (airports?) as it's pretty annoying to spawn on one coast needing to get across the entire country to get to the other core haha.

Confusion
I honestly really dig the design of having every channel end up in the same place, but it's very difficult to successfully take flags from opposing bases. A simple fix here would be to move spawns behind the flags, or have wall gaps so players could shoot through the walls to kill enemies and therefore try to catch up. You could also widen the gaps to make it tougher to camp, or add health packets midway through the channels for incoming players.

As an aside, Arctic and I had a lot of fun on this map as a primarily 1v1 with a couple bots. We would have each other's flag, so I would go and hide his flag in the third team's base, take the third team flag, so if I killed him I could still cap a point but if he killed me I wouldn't be totally exposed. Some really interesting strategy with low numbers of players.

El Gendrado Fire
This map was really fun, and designed smartly, but a bit too much going on in my opinion. I'd suggest streamlining the map a bit, removing some of the chaos, making the channels wider, and smoothing out the walls. You also might want to open up the entrances to each base to make it easier to push the balls into the bases.

Murder Hornets (BM)
Creative concept, but if you fly in one direction around the circle you can kill the edge hornets very quickly. From there as long as you avoid the middle it becomes quite easy to not die. I'd encourage slow regen of turrets. I'd also stick a loadout zone in the middle: Having to die to change loadouts is really not fun in bitmatch where lives are precious, and if you put it in the middle, that can be a fun challenge to try to get the loadout while dodging the turrets.

Murder Hornets (NEX)
Fun and pretty. The nexus opening timing is very good, really felt like there was a nice mix of urgency vs hoarding time. The bzzes were a little too frequent - maybe consider limiting those levelgen zones. I'm also not really a fan of the delayed portals. Not being able to help teammates is a terrible feeling! Someone did point out that players could hoard flags in the spawn areas by suiciding, but I'm not sure what the fix for this would be or if there really needs to be a fix given the frequency of the nexus opening.

Shopping During the Pandemic
Clever idea. Like some of the other nexus levels, I'd encourage opening the nexus more frequently, to limit boring camping. I'd also suggest making the bases easier to get into - taking out the regen of the defenses, for instance. Players can quite easily defend their strongholds and just hoard flags for ages, but if they could be pressured more easily then it would make for some fun frantic gameplay I think.

Social Distancing
Very clever levelgen! However, the impenetrable bases take away from this levelgen imo. I understand it might not fit thematically with the level, but allowing access into the bases is critical as players will just suicide and hoard flags if they aren't able to attack anyone. There's not really much reason to go out and risk dying when they can just hoard flags in their bases. I would also suggest making the level quite a bit smaller so combat is encouraged. I really, really dig this levelgen.

The Big 'Rona
I really dig this map, but it took me a while to figure out the importance of going after black (covid) first. My first thought on core is to go after the cores nearest to me as they pose a great threat. Maybe that's part of the humor in the theme design, but practically it results in covid winning most games. I think if you position the walls such that it's not as easy to go from side to side, or give each base a stronger natural defense, then players might be more motivated to go and look for an easier target, such as black in the middle.

The Electoral Preschool
I love me a good old fashioned zone control, but I would definitely encourage adding in some more speedzones or teleporters to get across the map quicker. Hawaii also needs to be larger (consider an invisible wall) so that players going in the teleporter don't end up outside of the island entirely with the flag.

The Two-Party System
I just want to say this map cracked me up the most out of all of the them, it's pretty hilarious to be beating up on poor yellow in the middle the whole game. I understand it's not particularly fair, but I think we can make that exception for this great joke.

Christmas Tree
This one is baffling to me because although I think it's balanced and reasonably well designed, it's very stressful to me and not fun. It will be hard to give this one a final rating when it comes down to it. I do think Engineer is unnecessary in this, as the bases are reasonably easy to fortify with defending players and the existing turrets/projectors. Other than that I can't suggest any changes that stem from anything other than personal annoyance, you know?

Coronavivacious
Man it's too bad no one has stepped up and fixed the script to make it flash less fast huh? xDDDDDD lol

Day of the Dead
This one was improved vastly by removing the burst turrets, so thanks for that. Last night I played it on the team that used to have the burst turrets, and we still won just fine. See? It works out!

NYE Ball Drop
This was just never a good idea in my opinion. It's better now for sure, but the whole concept is mediocre. Take it from a guy who's wasted hours trying to make a bad map concept into a good map, it's just not gonna happen sadly.

Pickle Pit
There's actual map to this map now, so it went from being like an automatic 1/10 for laziness to maybe 6/10 for being an OK, generic CTF. I would say 4/10 but it makes good usage of Test Items, which is truly a rare feat. But again, no final scores here. I may or may not adjust at the end.

Santa's Sleigh Ride
It's been stated on the Discord by numerous people but I'll reiterate: the biggest disappointment of the updated contest was how badly this level was nerfed. The track is maybe half or 3/5 as long now, and that's really sad. It had a better look and feel to it before. I didn't mind getting knocked off the track most of the time and not getting to the end most of the time ... that's the whole point. I honestly hope it's just reverted to its original state.

I can respect people trying to revise their map based on feedback presented here – that's the whole point – but just because one person said "it's too long" doesn't mean you need to change it. Sometimes you should stick to your guns. There were several suggestions in this thread that I ignored for my maps, while I heeded several others.

Spin the Dreidel
This didn't come up while I was at the second party.

Toppled Tree Tussle
This didn't come up while I was at the second party.

Xmas Rage
This didn't come up while I was at the second party.

Afterglow
This one was changed the heaviest out of any, I reckon. Afterglow received a serious glow-up, I really appreciate the integration of many goalzones for a handful of flags – do you put all of your flags at the back and wait for sky_lark to pick them all up while mashing "drop flag," or do you spread them out and try to defend them separately? It's a thinker. Cool map now!

Ballot Counting Simulator 2020
I honestly can't stand these small arena Nexus maps anymore, they're just so lazy and uninspired. Thankfully I think this was done in about 10 minutes, so I'm sure no one's gonna be mad at me for saying that.

Beekeeper's Revenge
Much better balanced now, great work. Just make sure to fix the exploit where people can teleport into the wall and destroy the turret killing the Bees' Core, you wouldn't want the runner of the contest to cheat or anything.

Bobdaduck is Freaking Dead
The second time playing this, I literally just parked in a corner and browsed things on my phone.

Cervesa
I think this ought to have the Nexus open more frequently.

Civil War II
The addition of Interstates is a nice convenience, but it's also so easy to unintentionally run into Speedzones on accident with all of the visual noise on this one. Not sure if it's ultimately an improvement or a downgrade.

El Gendrado Fire
Somehow it's legit harder now to actually score, largely thanks to those obnoxious turrets and the slightly-changed angle of getting into the goal rooms. This one went from mildly frustrating to incredibly so – I did not have fun.

Murder Hornets (BM)
This one admittedly was a lot more fun with the excessive number of players during the last party. Since you can't count on 18 players to normally be on Bitfighter, maybe set the score limit lower and see if that replicates the experience somewhat? I don't think the capability for vigilant players to avoid death by turrets should be removed outright, but I do think it should be a little more challenging for them to stay alive.

Murder Hornets (NEX)
I like that players are now forced to spawn in swarms – it's thematic! And now there's no bases to suicide in. I'll reiterate that arena-style Nexus maps are boring, but this one is a little more strategic thanks to the respawn timers.

Shopping During the Pandemic
This one was improved by making the bases far less fortified, but it's still pretty damn easy to camp your way to glory on this one. Case in point – I did just that and won handily.

Social Distancing
This was the map that convinced me to head off for the night.

Socially-Distant Bitmatch
skybax's least favorite map of the contest apparently, so you knrled up, mate.

The Big 'Rona
Not much needed to be changed here – everyone playing this for the second time realized they should go after COVID-19 first. Making the Cores rotate was a good call. It's unfortunate that the team switching to the winning team works as intended if COVID-19 is in the lead, but for all other teams it will randomly pick one team, decide it's "winning," and throw everyone on that one, even though the scores are tied. Shouldn't it be a random team change if the scores are tied? raptor might look into the algorithm on this one.

The Electoral Preschool
This one was improved but still reeks of a map that isn't playtested. Also, if your levelgen isn't working, ever consider just ... not using a levelgen? If you're trying to get different states to be worth a differing amount of scores, you could literally just copy+paste the corresponding number of goalzones on top of one another ... yeah it's ghetto, but it's what we would've done in the Zap! days and works just fine.

The Political Compass
Getting to play this against alert opponents last night was a lot of fun. We hit the time limit, which was fine. Reducing this to one flag was a good call.