Ye Olde Conteste - An Unofficial Minor Contest

[Katsu! :3]

Banner artwork is courtesy of a combined effort by @MayaMogus and @Brandini Panini. Thank you both!

Main Thread || Test Night Planning || Upload Thread || Public Voting Thread || Judge Voting Thread || Results Thread​

Thrown back in time to the medieval ages once again, a battle of gladiators has commenced forth. Between the primeval foes, RED and BLU, lies countless bodies bathed in blood, sacrifices for their kings as if the struggle would ever have been able to end. The kings, oh the kings, they've both demanded you, the mappers at TF2Maps.net, to come forth with brilliant new designs for their battlegrounds to take place! From the great mountains of their homeland, to the sands of Egypt and Persia, to even ancient China, the world may in fact be at stake! Your task is to create a most wonderous map, all within Medieval Mode! HAVE AT THEE!

This is an unofficial contest that'll last for two months, with a total prize pool of $300 to the winners! I hope to see what'll come out of this...

IMPORTANT DATES
Contest Start: September 1st, 2024, 12:00AM Eastern Time
Submissions Opening: September 1st, 2024, 12:00AM Eastern Time (We're trying something new!)
Contest Ends & Submission Deadline: November 1st, 2024, 12:00AM Eastern Time
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All Judging Begins: November 3rd, 2024, 12:00AM Eastern US Time
All Judging Ends: November 30th, 2024, 11:59PM Eastern US Time

THE RULES

1. Your map may be any gamemode you can come up with, but it must use medieval mode. (You may use custom restrictions at the judges' discretion.)
2. You map may be asymmetrical OR symmetrical.
3. Your map must be playable in a standard 24-player*server. (Sorry 4v4 PASS and Ultitrio fans.)
   • * - We are allowing one exception to this, that being Mann vs. Machine maps. This also applies to Rule 4. Elaboration will be in the clarifications post below.
4. Your map MUST be playable on TF2Maps servers and offline servers. If you are unsure what this means, please check the TF2Maps Testing Rules.
5. Maps began prior to the contest, whether it be public or private, are not allowed to enter. You must map from scratch.
6. Collaboration is allowed and encouraged! You may have up to three entries in the contest.
   • (An "entry" means being credited in a map, regardless of contribution.)
7. Judges may be allowed to create maps for the contest if they so choose, however their maps are not allowed to place in the contest. If you are a contributor on a map made by a judge, that will not count towards your contributions limit.
8. A grace period of 72 hours, or 3 days, will be granted after the submission deadline for necessary bugfixes and updates.
9. All Testing will be given random crits and have class limits disabled.
10. All questions about the contest should be asked to the judges!!! Do not be afraid to make questions!!!!!!
11. Thanks to the awesome vscripting might of @Sprinkles The Opossum, we have a special melee vscript fix available for everyone to use, with no cost to your contributor count!

JUDGING PROCESS
Maps will be scored evenly between the Judges' Average (50%) and the Public Vote average (50%). Each map will be judges via three categories:

Criteria	Weight	Description
Gameplay	60%	"A good map makes me want to play it more than once!"
Uniqueness	25%	"I don't just want to play DeGroot Keep 2!"
Aesthetics	15%	"An aesthetically-pleasing map draws me to a map in the first place!"

We will have either three or five judges. Applications to BE a judge can be found here.
Your judges as of now are:
1. @Katsu! :3
2. @Fiddleford
3. @half
4. @robopan
5. @Gruppy

We are aiming to have a healthy mix of medieval enjoyers and medieval unenjoyers in the effort of having the judge booth be a bit more versatile and unbiased in the kind of feedback the mappers will receive. Please treat them well!
I do expect our judges to make consistent attempts to play maps for the contest. If you can't do that, you are unfit to be a judge.

PRIZE POT
For our top three winners of the contest, I will award $300 dollars total to whomever makes it this far. The only stipulation I have is that the money will be given via steam in the form of digital gift cards. The earnings will be the following.:
1st Place - $150 in Steam Wallet cash
2nd Place - $100 in Steam Wallet cash
3rd Place - $50 in Steam Wallet cash

The submission thread will be posted closer to the actual beginning of the contest. Remember, this starts SEPTEMBER FIRST, NOT right now. With that said, get yourself prepared, cause this is gonna hopefully be a great one! THE CONTEST HAS STARTED!!!!!!! Below is a clarifications thread with anything that's been asked beforehand and currently. Please ping me (Katsu) if you have any questions!

 

[Katsu! :3]

Clarifications! For when questions are asked and you need to remember an answer, now made easier than ever in an immediate followup comment!

All Current Clarifications

1. Sprinkles Vscript Clarifications
   • To be clear about this: You may choose not to use the sprinkles Vscript at your discretion if you’d like to, however be aware that this is not guaranteed to either raise or lower your overall score from judges and public votes.
   • Saying this again, the sprinkles vscript does not count towards your contributors! Everyone may use the Sprinkles vscript in each of their maps, and they will receive no penalty for doing so.
2. Contributor Clarifications
   • A map may have as many people contributing to it as it needs, however any individual user will still only be allowed to have 3 maps in the contest at one time.
   • All public assets made before this contest are not affected by contributor limiting. You may use as many past assets as you see fit, though I will ask you still keep track of your asset creators for when the upload thread comes out. (Ex: Gex's Medieval Bricks, the Japan Pack, Yaki's Engineer building prefab, and so on.)
   • Any asset that was available prior to the start of the contest, but had an update to it during the contest period, will still be exempt from contributor limiting.
   • "Public assets" include assets added to a fresh installment of Team Fortress 2. Assets released for the 2024 Scream Fortress event do not fall under this, and must credit the creator of those assets in the "Bespoke assets" section.
3. The Uniqueness Score
   • The Uniqueness Score is meant for voters to compare how the map they’re voting on differs from Medieval maps in the official game. As an example, a Medieval CTF would be expected to have more uniqueness than a DeGroot-style A/D map.
   • The Uniqueness Score is a composite of aesthetics and gamemode. When marking your uniqueness scores for maps, take that into account. Let’s try expanding out from just medieval castles!
   • The uniqueness score should not be effected by any, if any, custom weapons that are present.
4. Server Requirements (MVM)
   • We have decided to allow Mann vs. Machine to place under the basis that any mapmakers for MVM understand that you will not be getting any testing from TF2Maps. Additionally, I will not require our judges to play MVM maps until we are doing our official judge notes on maps. If you want somewhere to go, I would suggest using Potato’s custom servers. You must also have at least one mission for us ready to play when judging begins.
5. Bumper Cart Usage
   • We’ve decided that bumper carts themselves do not count as “medieval.” You may use them as an end-of-round minigame, similar to Carnival of Carnage, but nothing stronger than that.
   • Using bumper carts outside of an end-of-round minigame scenario is not allowed.
6. Working before the Contest
   • To clarify on this, you may only sketch layouts via paper or paint software. You may concept ideas in hammer (like gameplay mechanics) but you MUST remake them from scratch when the contest begins.
   • You may NOT create assets for your map before the contest. (ie: things like Models, Textures, and Particles)
   • You MAY create gamemode logic or vscripting prior to the contest beginning.
7. "What if the map gets into Official TF2 before the deadline?"
   • The map will be immediately disqualified from the contest.
   • You may upload your map onto the workshop while and after the judging deadline has run. (May god have mercy on your workaholic ass.)
8. Leaver's Clause
   • In the event that a judge leaves their current position, for any reason at all, they will be replaced by one of the backup judges we have selected.
   • Judges who have left their position will still not be allowed to place in the contest, under any circumstances. This is to prevent fraud.
   • All backup judges who are added to the official judge list will no longer be able to place in the contest under any circumstances.
9. Working after the Contest
   • After the 72-hour bugfix period is over, you are not allowed to update your map on TF2Maps.net until December 1st. This is just to make things a bit smoother on the voting side of things, as we don't want people voting for future iterations of a map.

 

[spruce]

5. Maps began prior to the contest, whether it be public or private, are not allowed to enter. You must map from scratch.

Is sketching the layout in paper/program/a cave wall prior to making it in hammer allowed?

 

[Katsu! :3]

Is sketching the layout in paper/program/a cave wall prior to making it in hammer allowed?

You are allowed to sketch the layout in paper, and only concepts in hammer

 

[Katsu! :3]

FURTHER JUDGING INFORMATION!!!!!!!
Heyo guys. Now that we're nearing a month in to the contest, I feel like it would be good to finally get our current judging procedures out and to the world for everyone to view and look forward to. We're gonna put out the voting thread a couple days after the mapping period for the contest ends, and of course we'll still be hosting our ahem regularly-scheduled gamedays for the course of November.

PUBLIC VOTING
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For public voting, we're going to keep things simple and clean: Each person will have three categories they must give a map a 0-through-10 rating on, those being Gameplay (60%), Uniqueness (25%), and Aesthetics (15%). Yes indeed, I must remind you that this contest is focused on making good maps. (a shocker, I know). As a public voter, you should have these questions in your mind when voting:

1. "Do I consistently enjoy this map?"​

2. "Does this feel like a different experience than DeGroot Keep or Burghausen?"​

3. "Do I think this map is particularly replayable? Does it offer any unique experiences?"​

4. "Does the map look and run nicely?"​

Additionally, while you aren't required to, a lot of the mappers would really appreciate some notes on what you think could improve their map. Feedback is very much welcome :3

JUDGE VOTING
-------------------------------
The judge voting is going to be a lot more intense. I feel like it'd be a good idea to first show, then tell.

This is our official judging template for the contest. Pretty nifty, right? Each of the judges, myself included, will also be voting on a 0-through-10 scale for each of the categories presented before you, which will then be averaged into judge totals for a map, followed by the category totals which average up all of the subcategories, and then further on averaging the overall total of points for each category into a single, simple number. But what do all these subcategories mean?

Well, let's get into it. Our judge doc has a full breakdown on what kind of questions the judges should be asking themselves when it comes to, y'know, actually figuring out how we'll all vote for each of these maps. Keep in mind each judge has their own opinion when it comes to each map.

Ta-da! We have everything we need right here.

If you've got a question about judging, feel free to ask it! I will say that, these things are finalized; all the scores, all the planning, blah blah blah, but if you're a little confused on something, reach out to our judge team (@Katsu! :3, @Gruppy, @half, @robopan, and @Fiddleford) and we'll answer as quick as we can. Thanks for reading, and good luck with the rest of the contest!

 

[Katsu! :3]

Hello everyone. The team and I have had to make the tough choice of letting go of one of our judges, mousejumper, due to life circumstances for her preventing her from being as active of a judge as both parties thought she would've been able to at the start of the contest. The decision was mutual, and we're hoping her the best in life moving forward.

The second part of this announcement, is that I would like everyone to give a warm welcome to @robopan, our new fifth judge! Currently, we're continuing forward with our planned schedule, however please do not be surprised if we do an extension of the judging period by a single week. Please have a good day!

 

[Katsu! :3]

Hello! I'm excited to tell you that we've had two new developments since I last spoke to this thread:

1. We are extending our Judging & Voting period by one single week, as was mention was a possibility in our previous announcement. This is due to a variety of reasons, but the main one being that we just want to give our mappers ample time for their final versions to be played, and for us judges to get an especially solid outlook on each map's final edition. The new deadline for all voting is November 30th, 2024, 11:59PM Eastern US Time.
2. To coincide with this extension, we'll also be doing one extra week of contest testing in November. Previously, we had planned up to the 20th for planned tests, but we are now doing four more tests that will reach up to November 27th. I hope to see you there!

 

[Katsu! :3]

DING DING DING RING RING RING MAPPING TIME IS OVER!!!!!! Unless you're fixing bugs for the bugfixing period, sit yourselves down and go rest a bit because we're here! We're actually here! ehem, let me get my more composed self back on the mic for a second.

GOOD MORNING!​

I would first and foremost like to congratulate everyone for making it to this point in the contest, whether you made a single version and dropped the map right after or made a map worthy of workshop release, I sincerely thank you for showing interest in Ye Olde Conteste! Y'all deserve a good rest for your hard work on your maps here. The 72-hour bugfixing period is currently under way, which should give you enough time to find any bugs in your map and fix those. The bugfix period is only for fixing bugs, no layout changes may be made whatsoever. Fixing misaligned clipping, repairing a broken vscript, getting rid of a crash, all of these count as bugs! You have until Sunday, November 3, 2024 11:59 PM (Eastern US Time) to make sure your maps are fixed up!

Now, fufufu... comes the fun part. We are going to give each map three tests across the coming days. Each map has been placed into an individual Group (there are four groups), and two groups will be run at a time for TWO WEEKS. So, bearing that in mind, the criteria for a public vote to be valid has been officially declared as 11/23 of the total maps. That is just under half of the maps, which considering the map turnout we got is very lenient! Notes are highly encouraged (though not required) for your ballot, as, well, what mapmaker doesn't want some form of feedback to go off of? You have until Sunday, December 1, 2024 12:00 AM (Eastern US Time) to submit your vote. The thread will be up within the next two days. We have 12 total test nights planned over the course of the month, so please attend as many as you can! (In fact there's one today on the US server :3)