Rulebook The entries Popular Vote The Outcome
The time has finally come to unleash the Map Design Contest of 2018! Blessed by the guidance of NoobMapMaker, we hope to build up on the previous iterations and provide the means for map designers to do their best and create the best OpenRA mods maps for players to play on. Money prizes and fame (I’d try to do my best and push most interesting maps into the official map pool) are one of the motivational factors for mappers, together with the fun of mapmaking process.
Map rules
- Maps for officially supported mods (TD, RA, D2K) are accepted. Maps for unofficial mods (i.e. Shattered Paradise) may be accepted on an explicit decision of judges.
- Map can allow any amount of players (1-player missions are accepted too).
- YAML/Lua additions are allowed (separate “Custom rules” category, see below); map author may be asked to describe the implemented changes to simplify the judgement procedure.
- Trash/low effort maps are not accepted and will be premoderated.
- Maps can only be submitted to the contest by their author.
- Only new maps are allowed. Maps that were already present on Resource Center or anywhere else prior to the contest (July 7th; see below) are not valid to submission and may be taken off the list if the fact of that is known.
- Only the latest official release version (20180307) is accepted. In case of new pt/release cycle modded maps may require targeting for playtest rules instead as the maps will need to be updated anyway.
- Maps are to be applied for one and only one of the categories (see below).
The Jury and Popular vote
A jury consisting of Anjew, Blackened, FiveAces, SoScared, Unano and WhoCares will judge all the maps according to categories. Scoresheet for each judge includes 5 parameters that are used to assess amap: Innovation is how innovative the map is, Balance is how balanced it is, Aesthetics how pretty it looks, Playability is how playable is the map which would differ between the different categories (do the mods make it lag? Is it too chokey for competitive? Are there too many trees/bridges that cause lag in casual? etc), Replayability is how much is the map worth playing again. Worth noting that different categories will weight the scores differently.
People included in the jury list may not submit their maps for the contest (to preserve impartiality) and can’t participate in Popular vote (obviously).
Jury votes are to be anonymous; only the combined results will be posted.
After the freeze period the jury will have time to judge the maps; popular vote will also be commenced, serving as a completely separate category.
Separate thread will be created to hold the Popular Vote. People are free to choose up to 3 maps per category, giving 3, 2 and 1 points for their picks, arranging that in any way they choose according to the category. Only forum accounts created before July 1st are eligible to vote.
Note: Popular Vote will be run as a separate category, completely unaligned with 3 main categories that are picked by the jury.
Contest timeline
Map Submission Period: July 7th - August 10th
Maps can be submitted to the contest.
Freeze Period: August 11th - August 30th
New maps may not be submitted to the contest anymore; map revisions (up to the allowed limit) may be submitted.
Voting Period: August 31st - September 9st
Map roster and revisions are final. Jury and players cast their votes.
Results: September 10th
All dates are in UTC+0 timezone (i.e. if the end of the period is 10.08, that will mean 10.08 23:59UTC+0).
To help with observing and testing the maps, streams will be held, as frequent as possible (at least for me). Other streamers are encouraged to provide help and airtime.
Contest categories
- Competitive map: 1v1 and 2v2 maps may be submitted. Maps are more thoroughly judged and tested on balance and playability here; 1v1 maps are likely to be picked for the longlist of RAGL map pool next season.
- Modded map: custom rules, single player maps, total conversions and everything else you can do with YAML/Lua.
- Casual map: any map layout/idea not fitting into previous two - team maps, FFA maps, asymmetric maps, works of art.
- Popular vote: people’s votes combined across categories will decide the winner here.
Map submission procedure
All maps participating in the main contest are to be uploaded to Resource Center, and then you send the link to me (netnazgul) via forum, discord or other means.
Information should include the following:
- Map name
- Author name (in case there are different names on Forums/Discord/RC/whatever)
- Contest category
- Resource Center link
- Map screenshot (on the Resource Center; alternatively, upload it to imgur.com and provide the link)
- Description of yaml/lua changes (if applicable)
Note: you can upload the map and its revisions anonymously by creating a separate account on Resource Center (or I can create a separate account for The Map Contest) and then telling me in submission that this is an anonymous entry. This will be the same as it was done in previous contests. The author identity will still be revealed after the contest.
Additional info
Contest prize pool donations: $150
$40 - netnazgul
$32 - eskimo
$28 - NoobMapMaker
$25 - wippie
$25 - Kernel Panic
4 winners of the contest categories will receive a share of the prize pool which is yet to be raised. Popular Vote category will have a smaller share. If there is enough money to finance the prizes, 3 categories may be split into 9 (per each mod).
Money transactions will be dealt with through the RAGL PayPal account (no, we don’t plan to mix everything up there, it’s just easier to have a settled and respected entity to handle the finances).