Congratulations! You're one of 7 people who managed to get a map into this contest! Or, in the case that you're reading this and you didn't submit a map, help me congratulate these people. Let's take a moment to celebrate, now that judging is finally over!
Okay, now that that's over with, let's talk about some things that I learned from this contest that I think are vital to what makes MVM fun. Everyone (not just the entrants) should keep these in mind when designing for MVM.
First, let's talk about catering the pop file to your map. Some maps are definitely "easier" that others, in that the same pop file on both of these maps would be a lot easier on one than the other. While this is not really a bad thing for either map, what we should keep in mind that some maps don't work well with harder pop files, which is a bad thing. Valve knew, while they were making their first 3 maps, that they were going to be reusing these maps a lot, which they did! Replayability is a huge factor in designing a MVM map, because half of the gameplay is the waves themselves - a map should be able to be played with a large variety of different kinds of waves for it to be truly great. The easiest way to accomplish this is to do what Valve did: make bot paths low ground surrounded by buildings with cover and health/ammo. This probably isn't the only way to go, though - feel free to experiment!
Secondly, let's talk about differences in kind vs. differences in skill. Watch this video. In the video, the narrator talks about how bumping up the difficulty number (health, number of robots, damage output) is a viable tactic to make things harder, but adding different mechanics (bot types) is what allows you to make interest curves and really bring out the best in your map. Some maps had issues with monotonous waves of robots that seemed to drag on - mix it up!
Some notes about how I judged:
Technical wasn't based on the number of issues a map had, but instead, how much these issues affected the gameplay of a map. For example, a map missing cubemaps is going to get a higher score than a map with broken bot paths.
Waves were scored on how fun they were to fight, as well as how well they interacted with the map.
I included all of the judging notes that I took during the duration of the contest and included it in the PDF for your map. None were written with proper grammar (or an awake mind), but please read through all of them - they go into more depth than the "official" scores, and hit on more specific issues rather than broad ones.
Now, let's bring on the scores:
Atomgrad|3|3|7|7|
Destruct|3|2|5|7|
Isolation|7|10|9|10|
Maelstrom|10|8|8|8|
Sludge|8|9|8|5|
Plateau|5|4|4|7|
Ventus|6|5|10|5|
And of course, PDFs with all of my notes on every map.
Atomgrad
Destruct
Isolation
Maelstrom
Plateau
Sludge
Ventus
EDIT April 16, 2017: Dropbox links are dead. Mirrored on Google Drive.
I'll be posting these PDFs in the respective threads for easy reference. Enjoy!
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