April/May Contest RESULTS

[karamazovapy]

Congratulations to our leading entries and their Second Place Tie, Hunt and Portaliteration! Don't like ties? VOTE NEXT TIME.

In case you hadn't guessed, our levels and designers were as follows:
Fracticality - Unknown
Hunt - C. Bob
Portaliteration - Qui
Soccer Series - C. Bob
Tag - C. Bob
Wounded Knee - bobdaduck
Z-Relation - _k

Congrats! I think we presumably lost a few people in the transition, as well as there were a lot more maps to view (x3 of each map). So I'd bet next contest we'd have more voters.

Well done C. Bob, the Hunts were pretty cool. I actually liked wounded knee a lot too. And so Unknown doesn't feel left out, Fracticality was pretty solid. I was a bit disappointed that only four people entered maps. Everyone should participate, even if your maps aren't brilliant! And vote!

I've also given some serious thought to the comments on my own map, and I like the idea of putting some kind of levelgen script in. Who knows when / whether I will get it working, though.

[watusimoto]

One useful aspect of this contest was that it resolved the issue of how to use those min/max player settings I added so long ago. Now that we have it working, I'd like to request some industrious map makers to create some versions of the stock maps that are better for fewer players, so we can include a set of maps that is more appropriate for typical game sizes.

My hope is that, like the Fractility series, the maps within a family would all feel the same, and, ideally, would not draw attention to the fact that there are different versions.

The idea of trying to make smaller-scaled versions of the standard maps occurred to me, sometime during this contest's run. I find it an intriguing idea, and might look into trying my hand at it.

However, I'm not sure that, ideally, different versions should necessarily be largely identical, as you seem to suggest by your reference to Fractality. My soccer series scaled very similarly to Fractality, without any massive changes, and you don't see it getting any accolades (although, to be fair, they are soccer maps, so what should I expect). When I designed Hunt's larger versions, I had the idea that new strategic elements could be added in, that the players could take advantage of. In smaller maps, more things are automatically dealt with (like force field regen); in the larger maps, when you have more people to attend to them, I take away more of the automatic regeneration. Along the same lines, I add extra strategic elements, like the generating flags -- because while it isn't necessary, or necessarily desirable in the smallest maps, it can give the larger ones extra life.

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As far as the contest itself goes, all of you might be surprised to know that, originally, I planned on the Soccer maps being my only entry. I figured that making it easier to score would be enough of an innovation, and I was perhaps inspired to mediocrity by the original soccer map, which contains no objects -- I decided to make mine the same way. The characteristic graphical flaws are also all mine, and the sheer difficulty of doing anything in the center is another flaw I must regretfully take full credit for.

A while after that, with the contest looming closer on the horizon, I felt inspired by my old map "Stalking Grounds" to try my hand at making team Nexus maps for the tournament...and upon having done so, decided to make them my official entry, since, while they were, as I told _k, "probably not as good as the last batch", I didn't feel the Soccer maps were as innovative.

Obviously, making Hunt my main series was definitely the right choice, even if I didn't realize it at the time.

Finally, with the contest about to begin, I read K's post on how he wished there were more map entries, or words to that effect, and made up "Tag" to fill in the gap. I believe I had already seen Portaliteration at that point, so part of that series' idea, unfortunately, might've showed up in mine (which made me find Unknown's review of the two series strange, when taken into context -- Tag has basically the same conceit as Portaliteration, with its allusion to the larger levels, yet implemented in a less complete manner, and Tag gets praised and Portaliteration bashed?) Fortunately, Tag was not a contender.

Tag was based on another one of my levels, "Kill It", which it took the kills-for-points concept from. I'm willing to admit that, aside from that idea, it wasn't a great level series. I allude to the probable cause of this in my review -- the level series really was made in a time uncannily close to ten minutes. I spent probably half a hour, tops, getting them completely finished. With that sort of timeframe, you can't help but expect limited results.

Finally, one of the oddest parts of this contest was having to review my own levels, and try to maintain a relatively balanced perspective. I like to think I achieved this; I really did feel that Hunt was the best of the contest, and I feel that the other series also got a reasonably fair review. I am a fanboy for my team Nexus levels, though, so perhaps there was bias all the same -- I know I talked about them more than anyone else's levels, and I actually found myself writing sections in my review to defend my three-team map, when Unknown took it to be the third map instead of merely a bonus.

It was a good contest and exciting finish, even with a miserable tie. Congrats to all who entered.

[karamazovapy]

I thought all the main entries were good. I had a lot of fun playing them, in the little time I had. Seriously, each series had some really cool stuff in it. The design this month was very encouraging, if not the voting. You're all invited to post your maps in the gallery, should you so choose!

(One thread for the whole series might be preferable to one for each map, but I'll leave the choice up to you.)

It wasn't the expansion part of Portaliteration that bugged me - it was the teleports and the fact that in the early stages, there were unplayable zones that were still visible.

As for my map, Fractality, I though that while it was simplistic, I really liked it when I played it with others. I actually made a fourth iteration, but as was mentioned in the reviews, as the fractal extends it forms useless dead ends. I was thinking about finding a pattern for clearing dead ends so I could extend it infinitely, but I decided that it was not worth it for now.