Total punch count vs. total possible based on participation:
12 / 20
Favorite prompt this season:
Earth, Wind and/or Fire
For a day I was master of all 4 elements. This was also the point where I realised just how abstract / insane I could get with theming.
Also got to pull out a scrapped April Fool's map to make a custom gamemode (always fun); as hard as I crunched on that one I think it was worth it.
Least favorite prompt this season:
Static Spawns
Had a hard time picking since I enjoyed all the MC's I was in so much, but this was the hardest set of restrictions to fight imo.
Though much of that was fighting early decisions... (This was a mistake and I should've known it from the start)
But also aiming for a Speedmapper Punch led to me ignoring some layout issues, I might've done a second draft given more time. (I couldn't risk upsetting my sleep cycle this time)
Capture the Flag just doesn't work with such a narrow mid, not with how cluttered and disconnected I made it anyway.
This one was deceptively difficult.
Favorite map you made this season:
MC19 (Dynamic, Asymmetric KoTH)
I'm really proud of my brushwork cliffside canyon
Unfortunately the surrounding map & mode don't work together great, but I'd really love to fit it into a larger A/D CP map someday
The most memorable map(s) someone else made:
14bit's MC17 PLR
Just a really impressive map and it played super well.
The Payload elevator into death hallway worked great and made for some really tense and memorable pushes.
Plus the theming was incredible for every map in that MC.
Norfolk's MC17 A/D CP
Flowed pretty well and defending the final point was an interesting dance around the
not-quite-death-pit
Scrly's MC16 KoTH
The elbow point really helped the map fit around the exclusion zones pretty seamlessly
All the fighting around the point was pretty interesting too, for a koth it felt a few alphas deep, rather than an A1
FloofCollie's MC17 KOTH
How could I forget?
14bit's MC18 SD
Flowed smooth, though the elevator cap was uniquely chaotic and a stalematey struggle at times
Jameson's MC20 RD
Love robot defense, the order of the robots felt a little off to me though, and the circular layout unfortunately make tracking down core thieves really difficult
The core room itself fit into the map really well and seemed to be well balanced in terms of defensibility.
Besides the inherent challenge of Back to Back spawnpoints, this map made it feel pretty natural imo
Thoughts on the Season 2's 24hr format vs. Season 1's 4hr format:
I only started in late Season 2, but Season 1's 4hr format sounded super intimidating
Getting back into mapping via 24hr challenges was a neat way to test my limits and learn to plan & work with deadlines
As much as a did try to aim for the Speedmapper Punch in my entries, I never got it.
MC20 was close, with major geo completed around 4-5hrs in (after the 1hr planning block), but I still ended up making minor fixes up until the final hour.
Personally I found the "1hr planning -> 4hrs geo -> 17hrs sleep / eat / texture / logic / add frogs / AAAAAAAAAA / submit" structure to be a pretty good basis
The forgiveness period for late compiles and having time to relax and rethink during the total period was also pretty nice vs flat out crunch.
Since I'm in Australia most MCs start around midnight for me, so I can't do an all-nighter without a lot of prep.
As a result most maps only get around 8hrs of attention. MC17 would be the exception, getting a whole 14hrs, including most of the 1hr compile forgiveness window making last
second fixes.
Overall I think going for a 24hr window really helped open up MCs to more people, which is great.
This brought us to having so many entries the tests got split in half by the end of the season, which is a good thing considering we could end up spending 48hrs awake playing similar maps.
Since I often submitted late I could end up missing my map in the playtest, but splitting the playtests allowed me to sleep after the first 3 maps or so, then rejoin after a nice deep sleep to play my own map.
In the future I'd probably like to see the playtest happen after a break, and maybe some shuffling to allow for different mapper's timezones, but that'd likely require multiple staff members to coordinate.
The vibe of relaxing for an hour or two post submission deadline as we wait for the test is a good one, and hosting is likely already quite a strain with the current load though, wouldn't want to take up a whole week.
Overall I really enjoyed the journey I got out of the tail end of Season 2.
Hoping for a Season 3, but we'll see. A collective post-mortem might be a good move for planning out a Season 3, could lead into creating a blueprint for future micro-contests too.
In the meantime I plan to try and nurture my existing entries into more fleshed out maps, some might get merged together, some might get rebuilt, but I've got some work I'm really proud of out of all of this.
Also looking forward to tackling more small projects from start to finish so I can finally understand what's it's like to see a map all the way to RC.
This was fun, let's all do it again sometime!
