So... don't build that..? The point of this, as with all "limitations"-based contests, is to get people thinking outside the box as much as possible with a pretty restrictive rulebook. I bet at least a few will still make some pretty cool stuff, and I doubt that our winners will be boring conglomerations of coliseum walls and brace larges. But hey, if you doubt it's possible, that's fine. Don't participate. I want to work in a joke here about how you're always AFK every time I play customs with you anyway, but me not smart enough at the moment. Something something AFK LOL.
Thing is though, I only use like 15 different pieces when I forge anyways... And with Despair being the most scaled down and split screen playable of my maps, its barely even has that many pieces. It'd be cake to swap some pieces and make it meet the rules. :O But that really wouldn't be cool... And I barely have the time to work on something new for this. Between University, drinking, reforging maps, testing, social life and the time difference, its just not in the cards for me. I'd voulunteer to help ya with this as well, but the time zone difference really screws me with that... If I didn't have to get up early every morning and had my xbox/tv in my room, it'd be a different story.
No worries, I think we have plenty of judges between the three of us, the FH staffer (whoever it ends up being), and several other volunteers - whose services we may not even call on. We'll make a decision on that pretty soon. Maybe I'll drag you into one of our testing lobbies when the time comes to look at the submissions, anyway.
Hopefully I'll be on at the same time as some of them, would love to help out... And tote my opinion of maps.
Did you ever decide to do the whole anonymous submissions thing? If not, I should start building soon. Also, how are you going to fairly decide a DoD rating? Will you just assign a difficulty rating to each piece (like a brace large gets a 1 but a teleporter frame gets a 5) and just add that up?
Won't bother with it, too much work and not enough reward. We're relying on our outside judge(s) and our own good sense to keep things as impartial and unbiased as possible. Yet to be decided. I'll talk to the other judges about it once we have a definite pool. We could either do it the way you suggest, or leave it a little more nebulous and let judges determine. Either way, if we're doing it right we should all come up with something close to the same score - it should be fairly evident when somebody does it the "easy" way (e.g. coliseum wall, brace large, 2x2 ramp, 4x4 block, and bridge medium) vs. the impossible way (1x1 bank, 2x1 flat block, small railing and nothing else!). I think what's interesting is the friction between what most easily lets you make a map that is larger and plays well, and the choices that will get you a really high DoD score but will almost certainly hurt you in other categories. If someone ends up with a 9 or 10 DoD and actually scores well in all the other sections, it will be damn impressive. My guess is that our eventual winners probably won't do as well in degree of difficulty, since it's intentionally weighted less... but you never know. If you're not judging, you can participate. We may decide to exclude submitters from the playtesting sessions though. They likely won't be regular Monday night TCOJ lobbies.
Sounds pretty cool, hopefully we can have a community run contest that runs full course! Oh, and little miff from the rules section: Invasion is competitive, however I wouldn't want to se one made for this contest anyway because the limitations just would not work for one. Not trying to change any part of the contest. with that.
Two questions, are we limited to forgeworld, or could I build on ridgeline? And are we allowed to incorporate natural terrain?
Thanks, I should have specified already. Forge World only please, as I can't guarantee the judges and testers will all have the DLC, and I want everyone on a level playing field, object-wise. Natural terrain - use to your heart's content.
Natural terrain is allowed if not encouraged (to a certain extent). Using natural geometry will help limit the amount of items you need so it's definitely a good idea to use it for a part of your map. I wouldn't advice using it for the entire floor of your map. That only results in the map looking very unoriginal.
****, I was going to make a Map on Breakpoint. EDIT: Could I make a Map on any of the other standard Maps( Powerhouse, Boardwalk, Countdown, Spire, Boneyard etc)?
Strictly Forge World - most (all?) of the other maps don't even have structure objects, so that gets away from what I really want the contest to be about. This information has been added to the rules in the first post just so it's clear to all.
This is very challenging. I spent about 8 hours trying to work on something decent and got a few ideas out. Nothing seems to be working very well for me. It's more of a challenge than I thought. I still will attempt something though- if only to beat this predicament of the contest rules.
Just to clarify, can we spend $7000, or do we have to have at least $7000 remaining? Either way I have a map, but aesthetics wouldn't go a miss if I had another few thousand budget.
You have $7000 to spend. Meaning you should have $3000 left over. At the end if you have $2999 left you will be disqualified. Get it? Got it? Good.