October Map Showcases! Clock Edition

Fruity Snacks

Creator of blackholes & memes. Destroyer of forums
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Sep 5, 2010
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HELLO EVERYONE! Hope you all had a wonderful Halloween! I know mine was full of candy and sugar induced comas. Somewhere amongst it all, Valve noticed a few Halloween maps that caught their eye and decided to include them this years SCREAM FORTRESS UPDATE! Apparently, this years theme was "clock towers" ... I guess someone at Valve is scared of time.

Since these maps were picked up by Valve, and are by members of this site they are automatically moved into our showcase!

Moonshine Event - Hey You, Crash
Hellstone - ics
Sinshine - Phi, iiboharz
Gored - Puxorb (and technically Valve, but totally all Pux)

Congratulations too the authors of all four maps!
 

MegapiemanPHD

Doctorate in Deliciousness
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Mar 31, 2012
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That's something I don't really like about these maps, almost all of them use the clock from helltower. I understand it fits the halloween theme as well as gimmicks but now there are 4 official maps (including HellTower) that use that same prop as a feature. After a while, it gets tiring :(

Hopefully if Valve does this next year, they will give people more time to make more unique stuff.
 

Fruity Snacks

Creator of blackholes & memes. Destroyer of forums
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Sep 5, 2010
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That's something I don't really like about these maps, almost all of them use the clock from helltower. I understand it fits the halloween theme as well as gimmicks but now there are 4 official maps (including HellTower) that use that same prop as a feature. After a while, it gets tiring :(

Hopefully if Valve does this next year, they will give people more time to make more unique stuff.


As crash pointed out in chat, there isn't many set piece prop options at the moment. Limited prop pool.
 

ics

http://ics-base.net
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Jun 17, 2010
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There was basically a month of time to build a halloween map once Valve made the notification. It's not a lot of time. Just so it happens, a lot of the maps selected the clock as a prop, and used it also to make certain things happen. Perhaps next year we'll see something else than basic prop clocks. Like.. DIGITAL CLOCKS!
 

UKCS-Alias

Mann vs Machine... or... Mapper vs Meta?
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Sep 8, 2008
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Hopefully if Valve does this next year, they will give people more time to make more unique stuff.
I also hope valve actualy makes more bosses in the HHH style. To me this is the only good boss in its gameplay as it does hinder you far less than the eye or merasmuss. And best of all, you can influence the HHH when you are it. Just run to the enemy and melee hit them (or die) and then the boss often will take one of them. The HHH can reward a skilled player unlike the eye and merasmuss where in most cases the bosses will only just result in crits and recieving alot of damage. There is a reason they set the control point neutral.

And i hope that next year it wont be maps that have bosses and spells mixed up. Doomsday showed perfectly on why the 2 shouldnt be mixed as it just makes the map feel like a spamfest based around RNG.


And another thing about this announcement. Why only the 4 maps that valve added? Why do they need to be mentioned again? I rather would have seen maps that were less known or were completely ignored because of all the halloween maps. To me this feels like showing goldrush, dustbowl, 2fort and gravelpit as showcase maps, where as alternatives you had steel, powerhouse and snowplow. Those last 3 maps fall behind the ones everyone already knows and can actualy need that little bit of extra recognition.

In this case for example the following maps had to be put in the showcase aswel:
http://tf2maps.net/resources/turbine-event.916/
http://tf2maps.net/resources/burghausen.111/
Those maps have a better score on the workshop than 3 of those 4 halloween maps (note that burghausen is lifetime 2nd in the workshop). Yet for some reason they arent in the showcase? And for the anouncement you could instead just mention those 2 and only do a side note for those 4 maps.
 

killohurtz

Distinction in Applied Carving
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Feb 22, 2014
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And another thing about this announcement. Why only the 4 maps that valve added? Why do they need to be mentioned again? I rather would have seen maps that were less known or were completely ignored because of all the halloween maps. To me this feels like showing goldrush, dustbowl, 2fort and gravelpit as showcase maps, where as alternatives you had steel, powerhouse and snowplow. Those last 3 maps fall behind the ones everyone already knows and can actualy need that little bit of extra recognition.

All maps that go official get a free pass to the site showcase. If other authors want their maps featured too, they are free to work towards submitting them to the showcase themselves.
 

UKCS-Alias

Mann vs Machine... or... Mapper vs Meta?
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Sep 8, 2008
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I know that official maps get a free pass. My comment is that it doesnt need a special notification for it. Its a waste to do such monthly thing only to have it being consumed by 4 maps everyone already knows. I prefer other maps on that list, last month there were 3 maps that werent added by valve and 2 that were. At least in that situation you can promote those 3 maps some more.
 

Crash

func_nerd
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Mar 1, 2010
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I know that official maps get a free pass. My comment is that it doesnt need a special notification for it. Its a waste to do such monthly thing only to have it being consumed by 4 maps everyone already knows. I prefer other maps on that list, last month there were 3 maps that werent added by valve and 2 that were. At least in that situation you can promote those 3 maps some more.

Honestly, Frozen, who puts this together every month, was rushing out of the door to go out of state and last minute remembered that he wanted to do this before he left. So he did the default maps that needed to go in this month from getting added into the game. Next month will be better.

But, and maybe I'm biased here, I don't think there's anything wrong with acknowledging which maps got added into the game that come from this community. Having that front and center on the site only makes us all look better.
 

UKCS-Alias

Mann vs Machine... or... Mapper vs Meta?
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Sep 8, 2008
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It doesnt have to be wrong, but there are maps that need to get known more that arent ingame. I think its better to promote those. And if you realy want to acknowledge them, make a seperate thread for it. That way you can get the focus on both. I rather see maps i dont know so i can at least check those out.
 

Yrr

An Actual Deer
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Sep 20, 2015
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I think the issue isnt that the accepted maps got showcased, but that other maps couldve been showcased alongside them, so that they could get recognition too.
 

Fruity Snacks

Creator of blackholes & memes. Destroyer of forums
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Sep 5, 2010
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Kind of skimmed:

Something to point out is that if you are a member of this community, you have some observational bias towards map, because you do know many more maps than the common player. Showcasing maps valve pick is a way for those who don't know about our community too much, or know that we make a lot of maps, to see that ' these maps are by our members and that 'hey, we CAN make cool stuff.' The showcase also allows us to do internal gratification of those members. It's like a little in-house party.

As crash said, I was rushed to push this out because I've been busy with loads of things getting ready to head out of state. The next showcase, moat likely in november will most likely be 'better' by the guidelines you've mentioned.
 

puxorb

L69: Emoticon
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Dec 15, 2013
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Something I've noticed is how toxic this community has gotten. My posts have become increasingly infrequent because I'd rather not get involved in petty bullshit, but I will say this:

This is not a 'waste of a showcase' simply because you have seen these maps before. I am most impressed by how hard everyone had to work towards making a map for this update. Just over two weeks is barely enough time to create a Halloween-themed map (or any map, for that matter). I was extremely fortunate in having started a year prior to finding out about the community driven update, but Users like Crash, Phi, heyyou, and ICS who were able to re-theme a map while constrained by a restrictive deadline are truly noteworthy.

Call me biased but I believe everyone here is deserving of being in the showcase, and is deserving of a post that recognizes their accomplishments.

As for other maps, I do agree. I think maps like turbine_event and Burghausen_event are very good.
 

killohurtz

Distinction in Applied Carving
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Feb 22, 2014
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This is not a 'waste of a showcase' simply because you have seen these maps before. I am most impressed by how hard everyone had to work towards making a map for this update. Just over two weeks is barely enough time to create a Halloween-themed map (or any map, for that matter). I was extremely fortunate in having started a year prior to finding out about the community driven update, but Users like Crash, Phi, heyyou, and ICS who were able to re-theme a map while constrained by a restrictive deadline are truly noteworthy.
This. Calling an announcement like this pointless is kind of distasteful and dismissing the hard work of the community.

Like I said before, there is nothing stopping other mappers from promoting their work if they think it's showcase worthy. If you think certain maps deserve showcase recognition, feel free to encourage the author to polish it up and bring it to the attention of the staff.
 

UKCS-Alias

Mann vs Machine... or... Mapper vs Meta?
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Sep 8, 2008
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Showcasing maps valve pick is a way for those who don't know about our community too much, or know that we make a lot of maps, to see that ' these maps are by our members and that 'hey, we CAN make cool stuff.' The showcase also allows us to do internal gratification of those members. It's like a little in-house party.
But on this i still think that you shouldnt have picked all those 4maps and none of the others. The showcase post of last month for example was a very good one by mixing them.

To repeat: my issue isnt that official maps got showcased. the issue to me was that it was exclusively official ones without any mentioning to non offical ones (which need to be mentioned more to become better known).

Note that for those 4 official maps there is already a very important factor on which shows players those maps exist: its called quickplay. The first option displayed on the screen is for exclusively those 4maps. The blog showed those 4 maps and im sure that one is read more often than the front page of tf2m.

I didnt say its useless to post about them. There can allways be a few that werent aware of it, and for that reason i have no issue if half of the maps were those that went official. But its still very likely that those who visit this site already are aware of all the official maps. So the message would just be 'we supported these maps' or anything along those lines. Which is fine. You are supposed to be proud as community to have some maps that started within the community to go official. The issue isnt even that they get a post.

At the times i was still looking for maps to be put on ukcs i specificly tried to search non official maps that were at high quality. The showcase was ideal for that as it gave a very good basic filter. And what if an other server group does the same action? They will see the 4 official maps only and by that already stop searching. Thats why i find it a waste. Those maps that could have gotten a chance now got outclassed.

And especialy for those that try to find new maps, showing non official ones should be a key factor. Thats why i wanted some non official ones to go with it.