***Mini Mapping Contest #6 - Voting Thread 2***

Best entry?


  • Total voters
    35
  • Poll closed .

Altaco

L420: High Member
Jul 3, 2008
484
120
In my opinion, all mini-mapping competitions from now on need to be anonymous. No offense to anyone involved, but I can tell that a lot of people were voted for, yourself included, Youme, because of the mapper, not the actual map in question. I saw several amazing looking spawnrooms go down in the last voting round, and not to insult Midel, because his entry is quite good, but there were definitely 2-3 that in my opinion were better that I was disappointed didn't get in. It's still a good spawn room by all considerations but I feel like a few amazing ones I saw (such as Fleshgolem's which only got one vote, mine) were completely ignored.
 
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YM

LVL100 YM
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Dec 5, 2007
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So you think entries need to be PMed to the person in charge of the contest and then they post them all together in the same place without any names so we can vote, then once voting is over the person incharge reveals wich one belonged to who?
Well that could work, its a lot harder to organise though but its posible. It would mean that uploading entries to the database would be out of the question as well.
 

Inqwel

L6: Sharp Member
Jun 2, 2008
308
59
I'd have to agree about the voting thing. There were a few spawn rooms that I liked. There were some that were great! However, I didn't want to vote for anyone who was popular enough to have their own search tag. :unsure:


So it was between Psyphil, Arkosis, Apom #2, and Midel.

Psyphil's was interesting, there was little to discredit with the odd shape except for the outstanding fact that the base was built inside a hallowed-out rocket. It felt off since it stepped outside the TF2 theme. I mean, shouldn't we the team be hiding that instead of hiding inside of that? Now if Psyphil wanted to go for the cylinder shape, it might be more understandable if the base was inside something like a silo and the rocket is going to be launched instead, then I probably would have voted for it.

There were only two things I disliked about Arkosis' spawn. As I said in the other thread, the rocket area could have been better. Second, the glass doors blocking off the coffee room felt a little unnecessary, but that's a minor detail. Otherwise I liked the little flags on the conference table covering the map. Major plus.

Apom #2 was better than his first, (the dead engineer was a dead no). The custom exit door was inspiring to his peice, but the detailing in the prop room was a little overwhelming and I did like the garbage chute's use. However, too many consoles on the walls made the area feel too cluttered. The textured scaffolds could of used a little bit of a clean up. Moreso, the exit from the spawn to the 3 doors could of used more attention. Again, the support beams could of used one less texture (possibly a clean metal face to one of the sides). I wasn't sure what the custom pipes were in the corner between A and B were, but I could guess they were those letter chutes. Also, the pits in the same room were too close to Door C's exit, making it feel rather small. But all in all it wasn't enough to consider it a running mate with the others.

Midel's lacks something, but I couldn't be sure what. Maybe a sound? Hell, if Midel inserted a custom sound via packrat, one of a water dripping from a leaking pipe, that might have made it better. I don't know. The room was short, and done in a style I could reconize easily. The reason I chose it was because not only did it protect respawning players (I've played many customs that negate that fact that TF2 designers wanted people while respawning), it was one of those spawns you could easily drop into your map and not worry so much about the size.


Any spawn in the contest that I didn't mention had a few issues that may have needed work: lost me with layout, felt to unusable for a map in mind, needed work on texturing, not enough details, and/or I didn't understand what the mapper was going for. I'll be happy to give a review if asked.





On a personal note:

I hated my spawn room after I submitted it and just wasn't sure how to fix it until I saw other people's entries. I tried to encompass what a final spawn room would be like for a 5cp map or a attack defend map. It looks nice and no two sides are exactly the same... However, it is too large.

Things could have been better, for instance, instead of the train being in the middle, it could have been a single level platform instead of a double-Decker. Or instead, if I kept it a double decker, make the exits closer to where the players were instead of them having to go over the train itself, eliminating distance and that false door that was near the players. (it would also mean that the storage area on the first floor that is the prop room where the stairs and exit doors would be.
 
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Sep 12, 2008
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So you think entries need to be PMed to the person in charge of the contest and then they post them all together in the same place without any names so we can vote, then once voting is over the person incharge reveals wich one belonged to who?
Well that could work, its a lot harder to organise though but its posible. It would mean that uploading entries to the database would be out of the question as well.

Yes, I think that'd be a very good idea. Giving the entries more useful names would help too; like entry_1, entry_2, etc, so nobody can see who made it. Because now, the most popular people had the most votes. And I don't like that kind of voting.
But this has one other point: the person in charge of the contest can see who made a respawnroom, so maybe he shouldn't vote, or he has to be fair.
 

Apom

L6: Sharp Member
Sep 14, 2008
366
65
But this has one other point: the person in charge of the contest can see who made a respawnroom, so maybe he shouldn't vote, or he has to be fair.
Enforcing a "no voting for oneself" rule sounds like a reasonable answer.
 

YM

LVL100 YM
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Dec 5, 2007
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Yes, I think that'd be a very good idea. Giving the entries more useful names would help too; like entry_1, entry_2, etc, so nobody can see who made it.
The problem with this is that everyone will name their entry file and then send it to the person in charge, they then can't rename th .bsp since that will break all cubemaps so everyone needs to name their spawnroom in order to start with, and how do they know which name to use?

Its complex but managable I guess, however I need to decide what to do the next contest on, I'm still lacking a single awesome idea that stands out above the others.
 

Zeewier

L9: Fashionable Member
Sep 20, 2008
619
262
Maybe let a mod (or just an active member) host the contest that will not participate?

No offense to Youme (except that he has to learn how to spell my name :p), because I think he does a very good and objective job.

But he can change the rules in a way that is an advantage to him,
but also disqualify people, which does increase his changes :p
(I should blame myself for that one, what youme did was 100% according to the rules :p )
 

Altaco

L420: High Member
Jul 3, 2008
484
120
The problem with this is that everyone will name their entry file and then send it to the person in charge, they then can't rename th .bsp since that will break all cubemaps so everyone needs to name their spawnroom in order to start with, and how do they know which name to use?

Its complex but managable I guess, however I need to decide what to do the next contest on, I'm still lacking a single awesome idea that stands out above the others.

That's actually another thing that frustrated me - All the spawnrooms had totally different names so it was hard to test them properly ingame. We could adopt some proper naming standard where all the entries are, say, "tf2m_contest6_#" where # is the entry number.
 

YM

LVL100 YM
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Dec 5, 2007
7,135
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I'd ask the three entrants not to vote at all on this one.

lol @ midel :lol:

Thats right midel, we can see who voted for who :rolleyes:


Unfortunately altaco that requires people to either be A) allocated a number before they start their entry or B) know which place they are when they submit their map. And B can't happen because you name your map, then finish it and by that time someone else may have taken the name you used but either way you wont know because the submissions are private.
So for this to work we basicly have to allocate filenames at the start, and even then we're going to get gaps, say ...._1, ...._4, ...._5, ...._7 and so on because people express intrest and then dont finish their entry.
 

TheDarkerSideofYourShadow

L10: Glamorous Member
Apr 12, 2008
792
286
I would say do B,, but do it this way (still somewhat difficult).

Say I've got my entry all ready, but I just need to know what number I am. So I send you a message (or whoever is in charge), and you tell me to do my final compile with a certain name, ex contest_7_entry_9.
 

grazr

Old Man Mutant Ninja Turtle
aa
Mar 4, 2008
5,441
3,814
I think for the most part things are fine with just the end of the payload contest. I was one of those people who expressed interest but because of how much time i need to dedicate to my uni course i simply wasn't able to even make something as simple/small as a spawnroom. I havn't even touched Avante or my payload map any more than once each in the past month. Which is really depressing.

So think of something and then announce it maybe a week after the large map contest. Which gives you plenty of time to think of something amazing. For those who arn't as busy as those in uni with part time jobs, maybe hold another texture contest, to create an actual full blown texture. Jus to keep things busy and interesting?
 

cornontheCoD

L420: High Member
Mar 25, 2008
437
70
I think for the most part things are fine with just the end of the payload contest. I was one of those people who expressed interest but because of how much time i need to dedicate to my uni course i simply wasn't able to even make something as simple/small as a spawnroom. I havn't even touched Avante or my payload map any more than once each in the past month. Which is really depressing.

So think of something and then announce it maybe a week after the large map contest. Which gives you plenty of time to think of something amazing. For those who arn't as busy as those in uni with part time jobs, maybe hold another texture contest, to create an actual full blown texture. Jus to keep things busy and interesting?

I would love a texture creation contest. I need to practice and try my hand at texture creation. this would help
 

cornontheCoD

L420: High Member
Mar 25, 2008
437
70
hmm, there's tuts for texture creation all over the net. oh well, I just think it would be a neat contest

edit: sorry, I'm kinda going off-topic here
 

Psyphil

L3: Member
Nov 6, 2007
125
60
if everyone just name their entry "tf2m_##_whatever" where the ## is the number of the contest e.g. 06 for this spawnroomcontest and "whatever" isn't allowed to be thier own name or anything hinting which author it is.

if an account were made with the name contest06 (##) and a secret password, people with an entry could pm the "host" to get the password, and then upload their entry with that account. That way we don't have to upload anywhere else..
 

Nineaxis

Quack Doctor
aa
May 19, 2008
1,767
2,820
Danke, danke, mein hard-hatted friends. Youme also did a great job, I'm surprised he didn't win.