@WARHOLIC it is possible for members to fund their own contests provided the prize pool isn't embarrassingly mediocre and you approve the judges and criteria, correct? Zombie dyer did something like that To me, this is the answer that is kind of staring us all in the face, put your money where your mouth is and fund your own contest. I might do that for infinite if stars align
I've been extremely quiet about the future plans for ForgeHub and have asked the staff to do the same because I hate it when we have expectations for something to happen and then get upset about how long it takes to complete. We're still in the design phase and have not begun development since its a very large scope of work and there are a million pages to design. I'll put your feedback into our internal discussions and hopefully, you'll get your wish I personally think its a great idea.
The favicon I'd assume. Just shows xenforo for me. The monitor was there for a little but i dont know what happened to that. It's been wrong so long I just stopped noticing. If not then you should still fix that too.
One more thing to note is that with the design skill gap only increasing across each franchise instalment, halo infinite map competitions are going to be the most polarizing they have ever been. We already can see that now, there is a huge gap between the maps made by new designers, and the usual names you see consistently placing top spots in contests. I know you could say its always been like that, but its going to be nuts with the new forge capabilies. A handfull of veterens are going to be creating AAA quality maps polished and deep and beautiful, blowing everything else out of the water, whats the point of even competing when you are new? Playtests? Feeback i guess? Idk that just seems really crappy Im not suggesting participation trophies, but what about taking all the maps that don't make it to finals and creating a separate ranking for maps that are especially fresh or have alot of potential, with a good lengthy feature alongside the winners
I still think this recommendation I made ages ago should happen. It's community driven, offers good experience to budding forgers, may introduce us to some valuable fresh blood and gives everyone a chance to do what they shine at. ---------------- Preacher001This site could benefit from a multi teared or more specifically a multi competition, competition. Something built around making the very best maps available by fully utilizing what every member does best. Each competition with it's own independent winners. Let me break down what I mean. Competition part one - Blockout, The blockout bosses battle for best blockout. -Multiple entries accepted. Winners are selected and the top 3-6 winning blockouts move forward. Competition part two - Spawns, All winning maps are available to all weapon and spawn masters. -Anyone can enter once per map -Very minor map blockout tweaking only. Winners are selected and the best versions of each map move forward Competition part 3 - Aesthetics, All winning maps are available to all aesthetics artisans. -Anyone can enter once per map (maybe more if it's a completely different theme) -Very minor map layout changes only Winners are selected and the best version of each map moves forward. Now I say move forward but there are a couple ways to go here. One is to do a final best overall map competition out of the maps as they now exist and end it all, or there is one more competition that could happen first: Competition Part 4 -Spit Polish, All finished maps are available to anyone who thinks they can do better, -Anyone can enter once per map -The goal is refinement* *-broader changes can be made to layout, spawns, and aesthetics Winners are selected and the best version of each map moves forward. Final competition - Best of the Best -No further alterations available -All maps in their current best form compete for best overall map. Winners are chosen and Best of the Best Forging teams are decided. As opposed to other competitions this will promote the very best of what the Forgehub community has to offer as a whole. it's also a great way to see what could be produced by people who've either never worked together or just plain could never work together, you know - without actually making them work together. I would have liked to put a gametype competition in there but as most maps are best suited to being designed around a gametype I think it best to either announce what gametype the competition is for beforehand, and potentially add it to the Spawn competition, or we could work on adding gametypes after the competition is over. Just a thought for future competitions. ---------------------------------
Its going to be hard to judge a blockout without spawns and playtesting but its possible. I do it all the time for my own personal work, playing a level with my imaginary friends. Maybe the contest you listed isn't 100% viable but I think there's def an opportunity for 80% of this to work. I would love to judge a contest purely based on blockout (with spawns set up) so we could playtest without art informing our decisions. However, sometimes art plays a key role in our emotional response to an environment, without our consent. Level design plays both ways, art and design. But yeah, I could totally see us doing a step by step contest like this to switch things up. We've never done something like this before, so thats a huge plus. That said, I don't know if the staff is too keen on judging a new contest right now. I think they need some E3 material to pump up their blood stream Like Soldat said, we could support a community-run contest if there's any volunteers. I'll help.
lol, true. I guess the lack of spawning could be a hindrance but I doubt it would stop the judges from being able to narrow the choices. The main reason I separated spawning (including weapons spawns and gametype specific spawns) was so that a great blockout wouldn't lose out because of **** spawns. Much like the idea that a great blockout may not be given the chance to achieve it's true greatness without an equally incredible art pass. I like the idea that someone builds a blockout with an idea of how the aesthetics will be created and then the map takes a complete turn and becomes something completely different. Think Haven becomes Mercy. If there's any refinements that need to be made to this concept to make it a reality I would like to see them implemented just to see something like this happen.
I like the idea of doing a contest in stages, but not in the way you're suggesting. To me, when you start breaking each of those aspects into something distinctly separate, you're getting away from what I think we appreciate most about design - it's holistic nature. I can't have someone else setting up weapons and spawns for my level when I've designed the level to have them setup a particular way in order to work. Likewise, I know many designers that can't really separate art and layout - the layout can be directly influenced by the theme, with both being developed simultaneously. To me, if you're going to have contests run in stages, you turn it into a basic iterative process. You have an initial submission date. The judges do a couple of playtests, and then cut the lowest ranking (or bottom half) of the maps. The judges offer specific feedback to the remaining participants, and then allow another 2-4 weeks for them to improve their levels. Then you do the final testing and announce winners. This could be done in multiple stages. You could cut directly to a top 15, 10, 8, 5, or whatever after the initial tests. There are many ways to implement this type of approach. Also, in an ideal world there would be a couple of people dedicated to organizing and/or running testing lobbies during each phase, so that participants have every opportunity to refine their levels.
We have tossed some ideas around like that. The 4v4 contest was originally going to follow that sort of thinking, but transitioning from slayer to objective. After the backlash and an unplanned impromptu poll for another contest on the twitter that someone made it kinda fell to the way side. I don't think what you are suggest will be good for H5 do to pop and remaining life span. I would like to see if this could be the first type of contest we could do in infinite as everyone should be on an even playing field in regards to tools and such and everyone's skills would improve as the contest goes on. I'm all for hearing new contest ideas and ways to do them.
I believe this is a rough list of the top 10 and keep in mind this is in no particular order. Cynoplis Iceworm Mar Dunn Concrete Jungle With Love L'appel Du Vide Node to Joy Lost Growth Virtue US 2 I don't have the map makers on hand for most of these and its a bit late for me so I'm not going to hunt them down in the submission thread for now. hope this answers the question.
Cynopolis - Ryley Iceworm - Box Mar Duun - Martian Concrete Jungle - Chron With Love - Xandrith L’appel Du Vide - Behemoth Node To Joy - Xzamplez and Wyvern Lost Growth - Purely Virtue - munk07 Uncomfortable Silence - Xandrith
So would you guys say that these designers and/or yourself are significantly outgrowing the rest of the forge community at this point? Or were these differences always there? Maybe after 4 years and a pretty specific and sweaty gametype/contest this isn't a good time for this question but how do you guys feel at this point?