2 MB CHALLENGE RESULTS

[Face]

DXMP_Snorbans_Final.dx (Cozmo)
Looks: 6.5 / 10
Originality: 6 / 10
Playability: 7 / 10
Atmosphere: 7 / 10
Technical: 6.5 / 10
Lighting: 6.5 / 10
Sounds: 7 / 10
Total: 46.5 / 70

66%

Cons
~ No ambient music
~ Lost opportunities – it would have been nice to have the ability to reach higher up areas (example: the balcony above one of the spawn rooms).
~ Link between the courtyard area and the lower Snorbans area would have been great.
~ Scaling issues – some things are unrealistically big (example: a door made with what looks like a foot thick piece of wood).
~ The curved stairs do not add to the overall design of the square stairwells - they were distracting and annoying.
~ Brushwork errors (example: top of curved staircase there is an obvious issue).

Pros
~ An interesting layout with variations in height.
~ Good use of ambient sounds.
~ Nice attention to detail (examples: windows have ledges; buildings have drainpipes; streetlights)
~ Lights have “light sources”, which improves overall atmosphere.
~ Good item placement – hidden freebies a nice touch, although mostly only available to games with augs.

DXMP_Snorbans Sum Up

Despite some questionable brushwork in places, the map has a great overall feel with plenty of atmosphere thanks to the varied use of textures, lighting, ambient sounds and detailing. Although the layout plays well, an additional route between the upper courtyard area and one of the lower side street areas would have given the map something extra.
Snorbans has the edge over many maps thanks to the thoughtful design and item placement. Being neither too large nor too small it’s easy to navigate and know where you are at all times. An enjoyable map to play!

Future work: Refinement of brushwork could make this a winner.

[ShadowRunner]

COZMO
DXMP_Snorbans_Final.dx (Cozmo)
Looks: 6.5 / 10
Originality: 5 / 10
Playability: 7 / 10
Atmosphere: 8 / 10
Technical: 6.5 / 10
Lighting: 6.5 / 10
Sounds: 7 / 10
Overall Score: 66%

PLUS
~ Sexy ambience and I got excited looking at the drainpipes. It was a WOW! This is a Deus Sexy moment.
~ Although not original, basing your design on something real, like games designers do, has paid off. Custom brushes are sexy.
~ Despite occasional teletubbies brushwork, this map has the ability to produce emotional responses in players that most other maps can't. It's ambience is good.
~ Humour is often overlooked in people's work, but the title is good, funny.

MINUS
~ One gate has amazing out of bounds with lit window that has me psychotic in effort to explore, but other tunnel end has fake backdrop texture all the way to ground level.
~ Hard to understand that you're a rare mapper who can do real Deus Ex perfection, then you turn a corner and see a door a foot thick with keyframe 2 somewhere outside the map. Same with the spiral stairs. I was utterly sexed up and on fire going past the drain pipes, stripes on floor, general dysymmetry and reality of the street had me in awe, then turn the corner
and I'm suddenly inside those spiral stairs and its like watching a Ridley Scott movie with 5 seconds of someone's iphone footage in the middle. Your map is a winner, if not for for 2% of brushes letting down the rest and perhaps the
bare minimum of work in some areas.
~ A sense of unfinished, in the upper street. The map is a loop, but could do with a house backing onto both streets in the middle perhaps or some sewers or paths just a little more complexity in gameplay design perhaps.

Having said this, what you did do, is superb, when you see players jumping out of windows in the map edge and things like this.
FUTURE:
I really like your style. I feel like I am in the SP story. I think just sometimes brush sizes are off.
I think you've mastered urban street scenes and I hope to see more in future...

[ShadowRunner]

CUSTARD PIES
There's another way of looking at this competition. Which mappers would I give a custard pie in the face to?
The answer is surprising, Majster avoids one and possibly Anax and Avatar avoid one too... everyone else had a reason for getting a custard pie in the face at some point.


I see this challenge as a tiebreaker between Kalman, Cozmo and Chin with Kalman's map edging slightly. Although Chinny's maps probably answers other criteria more consistently than the other two entries, it is using someone else's design and playability and the fairness came into question. Chin's is almost overpolished, while Kalman's and to some degree Cozmo's seem a little unfinished. Kalman executed a superbly original idea and surprised me with improved brushwork, but it appears little thought at all went into MP playability. Cozmo's map again is superb in it's ambience, simplicity and atmosphere, but is marred by simple errors and perhaps some underdevelopment, so again it doesn't clearly win.

Where does this leave us? Kalman is the least experienced and made the least screw ups, but probably did the least thinking about gameplay. Chinny is the most experienced but perhaps side-stepped a good 2/7ths of the challenge, yet screwed up the least perhaps, while Cozmo may have had the sexiest map, it was flat and undeveloped and had a couple of eyesores, jarring the dreamlike experience. If we had not disqualifed Chees, things might have got even more complicated. How you pick a winner from these three maps is really difficult.

I would beat Kalman around the head for almost scoring easily 8+, but repeating the strangedocks thing of strange gameplay, chokepoints and square oceans. You had the most oustanding concept and the only map to survive disqualification which answered that particular criteria of originality, but Chin and Cozmo own you on lighting and gameplay with their looped maps and skybox. Anax does too. I see this map possibly winning because all others failed at least one category, but winning by default and really, you deserve a custard pie until we stop seeing square oceans and black walls in your maps!

So the cake (shaped like a lighthouse) really should be shared with all the mappers... and judges!

[Face]

Congratulations to everyone!

I know I'm not alone when I say how fun it was checking out every single entry. If anyone wants to follow up on any of the comments up please just shout or catch me on MSN.

[[DXA]avatar]

Thanks guys!
btw ... i came 4th with the lowest score xD!? ... you did typing error :P ...

[Face]

Thanks guys!
btw ... i came 4th with the lowest score xD!? ... you did typing error :P ...

Don't worry, Shadow has been informed...

[ShadowRunner]

Haha, yes, fixed, thx Avatar.

Just to repeat Face's comments, if anyone needs an explanation of the judging process or the map feedback, just hit me by pm or msn.

[anax]

in dxmp_ikea, subtracts were largely empty because what decorations were present, coupled with data from lighting/wep racks/movers/bots had already pushed the data past 2.0MB. That being the case, there was no possibility for adding many new details.

it's mostly empty space - but some other maps aren't? lol.

complaining about the corridors is insane - so you want hallways to be big/easy to jump around in?
The "jumpability" of DXMP_Ikea is 50/50 and evenly split between the halls and the open areas which are easy to jump in.

It's bland? DXMP maps are meant to be played not looked at, the lighting creates enough atmosphere anyway imo.

some of the observations seem very subjective, rather than being based on actual Gameplay of a dxmp map.

[[FGS]Kalman]

Congratulations for everyone! Congrats Cozmo for the 1st place

[ShadowRunner]

Anax I would put your map at 6.5, but there are too many areas of your map are simply just an initial subtraction to win the challenge. "Defence", ??? No-one is attacking, my 3 favourite maps were yours, cozmo's and chin's, but I had to look at the criteria, not "best map". Chin managed not to present any spaces to players that were purely just initial subtractions, so he scored higher.

also you say that it's mostly empty space - but dxmp_smuggles_ed isn't spacious and empty!?!? Lol!

You are so off with this comment. Smuggles has atrocious gameplay, I never said it is a good map. It has terrible spawn arrangements in the largest room. The stairs to the turret computer are terrible. And smuggles has far more on the walls than Ikea. You can't start comparing maps. We judged maps according to how well they met the criteria. Smuggles is a grossly unfair design to beginners also, the spwns with windows, it's truly terrible in places and I would never use it as an example of a good map to a mapper.

You did something that looked like DXHR, it was very very sexy, art direction was great. But you should be able to see that other mappers didn't present a map that presented empty spaces at all, there was a minimum of detail all over most parts of their maps. The striplights or something have eaten your budget and they can only detail the room they're in. As you gain experience, you will gain skills in distributing the detail and interest for players more evenly.

Two judges took a week of examination. Examine every map for a week and you will realize, other mappers included more sounds, more interest for players. The looks alone were winning, but looks weren't enough. You avoid a custard pie, you have a map I would host, I don't see what there is to get upset about, my thoughts aren't going to change. Can you honestly say your map is more original than Chees or Kalman, can you honestly say it's better detailed than Chins, can you say your sounds are better than avatar's? I'm sorry that you're disappointed, but the standard is very high in the challenge, people did well.

[Cozmo]

Had a good laugh at some of the review comments!

MINUS
~ For not putting a deusex.weaponbaton anywhere near the drumkit, this is epic fail.

Also I somehow forgot 16 units = 1 foot while mapping; so those doors ARE a foot thick, Face.

A three way tie is surprising though; was wholly expecting to be destroyed by Kalman and Chees (and Chin, if he didn't have the originality handicap).

[[DXA]avatar]

question !

what is playability and how is it marked ^^?

[anax]

i was comparing dxmp_smuggles because it's frequently played on aug and non-aug servers, not because i think it's a good map.

deducting points for lack of solid details seems unfair in this case because it couldn't be done due to the data limit.

[ShadowRunner]

I don't know what your problem is. You haven't spent a week examining all the other maps.

If you're thinking you should win because it looks nice, think again. It is becoming evident that you don't understand the criteria perhaps. Let's forget the issue of empty initial subtractions, I'm still left with a grey corridor-shooter like Drydock or Smuggles, how was that design going to win and call itself original with maps like this out there? It didn't win for Chinny either and Avatar has lost tons of points for this too, your score would be similar but you have made it truly excellent to look at and the playability is good, plenty of exploring and action in a small space. You've got a great map, I suggest reading Face's comments again, he's actually told you how to reduce filesize. Challenge is over anyway, no rules, just enjoy developing the map, it's very good.

Did you even read our feedback. Note my comments about smuggler. Smuggler btw is 2mb

And forget my maps, only the WW2 are recent, the rest are at least 4-6 years old. The challenge has produced enough maps and mappers to get rid of mine. I'm not the best mapper, but I am sure I have made the right decisions judging and in feedback.

[Alessi]

Btw Anax I found a loophole or whatever it's called in your map..it's located near the pipes with a valve. If you jump next to it, you die instantly.