Official Level Design Contest Voting: November-December 2007

Status
Not open for further replies.
Single Player:
Knux Emerald Quest Zone by SonicMaster - 1/10
This zone did not have good emerald placement, and it looked like no effort was put into it.

Sapphire Coast Zone, Act 1 by Blade T. Hedgehog - 7/10
This one was a nice stage. it multiple paths and good textures. The only thing was that it could have been longer

Omega Tree Zone by RedEchidna - 3/10
The textures you chose blended to much together. It was a bit cramped as well.

Aquatic Basin Zone by Boss - 1/10
The platforming in this level wasn't too good, you have the ceiling too low in the beginning part. You also have mismatched textures at the start. Overall it seems like you put random ideas all in one map.

Arctic Dewpoint Zone by SonicMaster - 7/10
This map is the best one you made for this pack, it shouldn't have the objects so close.

Super Special Stage Zone by SonicMaster - 1/10
Pretty much what everyone is saying, the rings too cramped and not a good level.

Match:
MAPA1 - Leafy Cave Zone by Blade T. Hedgehog - 6/10
Even though the map had cramped hallways, it still proved to be pretty fun.

MAPA2 - Cosmic Warehouse Zone by SonicMaster - 3/10
This had too much open space, and for some reason had sky textures on the walls.

MAPA3 - Supa Kingadahill Zone by SonicMaster - 1/10
The grass textures everywhere made my eyes hurt @_@. Also using scripts on a contest level is not a good idea.

MAPA4 - Fail by Kaysakado - 5/10
This map was actually a bit fun. I think there were too many monitors though.

MAPA5 - Pipeline Panic Zone by Roy - 5/10
Some areas were dark, it was also a bit to bland for me.


Capture the Flag:
MAPA6 - Freeze Factory Zone by Com - 6/10
This map just needs to be smaller, its too big for normal ctf. The level looked very nice at least.

MAPA7 - Medivo CTF by Glaber - 6/10
This one is mostly good, those bases needed to be bigger or something.

MAPA9 - _-All Hail Shadow-_ Zone by Penopat - 8/10
This zone looks very nice and plays well also. Some people were a bit confused on how to get out of the water, you probably should have put some springs.

Circuit:
MAPA9 - Racing into Dreams Zone by SonicMaster - 5/10
Your single player nights level was better. Some of the items are too close together.

MAPAA - Caustic Fortress Zone by SonicMaster - 0/10
This wasn't fun at all. It was a linear thokfest with no challenge.

MAPAB - Dimensional Zone, Act 2 by simsmagic - 5/10
This one is kinda fun. I saw some AFALL textures in the water which isn't supposed to be there. I also thought the nights objects were put there for no reason.
 
Right, better get started on these as well.

Match
Leafy Cave Zone by Blade T. Hedgehog 6/10
Crampness needs to go, but it was still good.

Cosmic Warehouse Zone by SonicMaster 1/10
Firstly, this map ills software, plus, why the heck did you use sky textures on walls? I say a normal like texture like the ones in some places could of worked. Its also too open.

Supa Kingadahill Zone by SonicMaster 2/10
The grass textures hurt to look at, plus, that script kept spamming the heck out of it, it was annoying.

Fail by Kaysakado 5/10
This map was somewhat ok, don't know what to say here, really.

Pipeline Panic Zone by Roy 6/10
The dark areas were abit too dark, I can just hide in there till someone comes and I could easily score a hit, you could of set the lighting to 192 aleast, or was it set to that?

Capture the Flag
Freeze Factory Zone by Com 7/10
Nice map, but size it down abit.

Medivo CTF by Glaber 6/10
This was good, just make the bases bigger and it could of been better.

_-All Hail Shadow-_ Zone by Penopat 9/10
You gone at it again, eh Penopat?

This map plays well and good, but there was a sight problem... you could of added more springs in the water, as that was hard to get out of with sonic.

Circuit
Racing into Dreams Zone by SonicMaster 4/10
You could of added a bit more detail here, some items were also too close together.

Caustic Fortress Zone by SonicMaster 0/10
Look, if you want to make a race map, DO NOT MAKE IT LIKE THIS. This wasn't fun at all, not at all.

Dimensional Zone, Act 2 by simsmagic 5/10
This was fun, but there are some things wrong in this map.

AFALL's in the water? looks like you forgot to place a texture there, however when making new sectors, a texture is automatically placed there with the default one.

In software, there HOM everywhere in the sky, After taking a look in this in Doombuilder, there are missing textures outside the playing area, since OpenGL doesn't show this, this may cause somewhat bad stuff for software users.

For water FOF's, can you please add a middle texture? I just saw some GFZROCK1 water and I didn't like it.

-------------
I think thats all of them...
 
Ok, Multiplayer maps.

Match

MAPA1: Leafy Cave Zone by Blade T. Hedgehog - 7/10
Some parts of the map are really cramped, but thankfully the map plays really well.

MAPA2: Cosmic Warehouse Zone by SonicMaster - 1/10
This map is HUGE. One, it HOMs in OpenGL, two, rail-bomb totally owns people here because the map is too open and large.

MAPA3: Super Kingdahill Zone by SonicMaster - 1/10
Read the contest rules. No custom anything in multiplayer. As such, the map suffered because the script is broken. The giant grass textures look stupid, aswell.

MAPA4: Fail by Kaysakado - 5/10
Hah, another case where the joke map isn't the worst in the pack. There are lots of rings on the ground, and when the Attraction Shield popped up, I owned the map. Rail is overpowered here. You can snipe well almost anywhere in the map, the worst place on the ground of course.

MAPA5: Pipeline Panic Zone by Roy - 6/10
On contrast to other people's decisions, I thought the dark parts were just right. I just thought that you should have a spring in there to kick campers out of there. It plays decently apart from that. Oh, and the THZRAIL doesn't work properly. May I suggest using a tiny invisible FOF (Linedef Type 57)?

Capture The Flag

MAPA6: Freeze Factory Zone by Com - 7/10
Not bad. :) This map is just a bit too large for CTF, if the size was toned down a tad, it would be one great map.

MAPA7: Medivo CTF by Glaber - 6/10
You're getting better and better at map making. This map plays well, but it is cramped inside the castle hallways.

MAPA8: _-All Hail Shadow-_ Zone by Penopat - 8/10
What you have here is standard Penopat awesomeness. Although it wasn't easy figuring out how to get out of the water with Sonic.

Circuit

MAPA9: Racing into Dreams Zone by SonicMaster - 4/10
You like NiGHTS maps, don't you, SonicMaster? :P This one isn't as good as your single player stage, the item placement isn't as good, it's very barebones in the detail department, the obstacles were too close together.

MAPAA: Caustic Fortress Zone by SonicMaster - 0/10
Bland, straight, huge thokfest.

MAPAB: Dimensional Zone Act 2 by Simsmagic - 2/10
It's pretty. :P I didn't finish the whole circuit however, because I could jump into the NiGHTS Super Sonic item and finish the level, which should NEVER happen. I don't really care if you don't take my vote for this, but that is a fatal glitch.
 
@GCFreak's review for Fail: Read this:
Kaysakado said:
MAPA4 - Fail by Kaysakado: tan(90)/10. (No, it's not in radians)
This was half-joke, half-unjoke. It was made as a joke WAD, yes, and I didn't put much effort in it, yes, but I did give a tiny bit of consideration to the item placement. For example, the placement of the rail ring.
 
I'm only here so I can vote.

I couldn't choose the name SonicMaster because it was already taken. But I am the same one who made seven of the maps for this contest. Sorry, I'm not going to rate all of them.

Single Player

Sapphire Coast Zone, 8/10
Like most people said, this map was kinda devoid of a gimmick. But it played well; the textures were nice, too. But 1:20 is too short for this level. Should be like 4:00. Extra path made it nicer.

Match

Fail, 7/10
Definitely the best match map of the contest. The initial humor helps, and its small size makes the map more interesting. There's a total melee that occurs within this map. It's just fun, even with nine players. Thank goodness you didn't put a Homing Ring; otherwise, it'd be a flat-out 0.

Pipeline Panic, 5/10
This map felt more empty and devoid of a gimmick. The shadows were way too dark, and the top of the level was especially empty.

Capture the Flag

Freeze Factory, 2/10
While the size of the map didn't make it less fun for most people, it really took out all the fun of it for me. I admit it; I'm not very good at SRB2 online (so my name is indeed a misnomer). The multiple paths are a good idea just like in any CTF, but coupled with the incredible size of the map, the paths only made Freeze Factory come off to me as more confusing. It should also be easier to get up onto higher ground.

Com, you said that you made this for the colossally huge netgames. Problem is that those netgames just plain don't happen very often. :P

Medivo CTF, 6/10
Definitely the best CTF map of the contest. Nothing too special, but the visuals were nice, and it wasn't confusing. The lack of a gimmick still made it feel somewhat generic. I really hope you can pull off another Daimondus in the near future; Daimondus is my favorite CTF map ever.

All Hail Shadow, 4/10
I didn't have a lot of fun with this map. It felt unoriginal (at least to me), and the current in the water, coupled with the fact that there's only one spring to get out, got annoying. Sorry if there was something original in this map (besides the name); I just missed it.

Circuit

Dimensional, 4/10
The strong points were the visuals and the mildly-amusing NiGHTS object placement. (BTW, there is now a tutorial I made up on how to bitset hoops manually if you wanna do that again.)

The weak points were the fact that I, once again, felt the absence of a gimmick, and I didn't like the backwards springs.

Replies to feedback on my maps

I can see that I really need to try harder. That really hurt the scores on my maps.

Arctic Dewpoint
Out of all the maps I submitted, this one had the most time and effort put into it. I will make sure to define the track better for a future Single Player NiGHTS level. I will make sure to put better distances between NiGHTS objects. And I actually placed all the objects, even the hoops, manually. I can't get NiGHTS OBJECTPLACE to work. Not even Digi could help me get NiGHTS OBJECTPLACE to work. Wouldn't even work on my computer when trying to OBJECTPLACE in Digiku's great Botanic Serenity.

Cosmic Warehouse and Supa Kingadahill
My next match maps will be more detailed, given better visuals, and NOT BE SO FRIGGIN EMPTY. I've already made another, and I put thrice the time and effort. ^_^

As for the sky textures on the walls in Cosmic Warehouse, I thought that'd be kinda something new. But looks like none of you like it, so I'm not gonna do that.

The script did work properly in Supa Kingadahill before I submitted it. It would display in the center of the screen: "PLATFORM OCCUPIED! SHOOT HIM DOWN!" Won't do scripts in multiplayer next time.

Caustic Fortress
I thought that the linear design of the map would be an original and good gimmick. But I was wrong. Playing it in a netgame actually helped me see that it wasn't very fun. So far, only Kaysakado and Blue Warrior liked it. Everyone else hates it. Therefore, linear race maps are not gonna happen from me again! Making this map did help me discover that linedefs cannot be longer than 32768 fracunits. (Yes, this map was going to be even longer. o_O)

Super Special Stage
I was going to try to put an unlockable in Arctic Dewpoint, and this was supposed to be it. I'm glad I could not figure out how the unlockable thing worked. Looking back on the Special Stage map, yes, it is horrible. I will never submit a Special Stage to the contest ever again.

Knux Emerald Quest
I thought it'd be cool to make an Emerald Hunt, cause most people don't. But it appears that these maps are naturally bad in some of you guys' eyes. Therefore, I will not make another Emerald Hunt either. I don't think I can ever properly make one anyway.

And a441, some of the walls are actually intangible. :P And about gliding off the Thwomp Block? That's not how you get it. Three floating Emerald spawn points exist that are intended to be reached only by springs. :P

Racing into Dreams
It's not too hard to tell that I made Arctic Dewpoint AFTER I made this level. Yeah. Way too devoid of...everything, and...Torgo pointed out to me on a netgame that space environment in NiGHTS fails.


Thank you very much for the advice you have given me. I see that my weak points were graphics, emptiness, and poor NiGHTS object placement. However, I feel that my greatest strength would be unleashed in a NiGHTS map, yes, GCFreak, I love making them.

And Glaber, I actually do have NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams. In fact, you sometimes have more area to fly around than what was shown in Arctic Dewpoint. Botanic Serenity also had even more area to fly around than Arctic Dewpoint.
 
SonicMaster, the god of hating forums, registered? The apocalypse is coming! Anyways, I really think your vote on Fail is biased since you actually know me: I would only have given it a 5 or 6, contrary to what I wrote:
tan(90)/10. (No, it's not in radians)
 
I still do hate forums.

I still do hate forums. Even this one. I only registered here to vote...but even more so to show the other members that I am listening to what they have to say, unlike other noobs who apparently get offended.

I'm not going to go to the rest... Must avoid noobs. It would also be definite addiction. I know that this sticky has neither of that.

And yes, my vote on Fail got higher. The fact that you made Fail isn't the first thing that comes to mind when I was voting on it. The fact that it was a joke WAD made it a bit more fun, especially considering it was decent anyway.

I love it when there's humor in a level. a441's Treetop Inanity is from a long time ago, but with 2 players that was so freaking funny to teleport into a monitor and have it register the teleportation when you are above the death pit. It was even funny when I was the victim of it!

And by the way, I hated Death Egg Zone, so...it's not because you made it.

It's not like you're going to find me posting anywhere else. Just in a Level Design Contest sticky.
 
GCFreak said:
MAPAB: Dimensional Zone Act 2 by Simsmagic - 2/10
It's pretty. :P I didn't finish the whole circuit however, because I could jump into the NiGHTS Super Sonic item and finish the level. which should NEVER happen. I don't really care if you don't take my vote for this, but that is a fatal glitch.

Huh, shouldn't have happened. I made the sector an Instant Kill if you happened to find your way in there, wonder why it didn't work...
 
BlueZero4 said:
The NIGHTS drone is probably bigger than your sector. :X

Hmm, maybe. Let me pull it up on DoomBuilder again and see if I can activate it...

EDIT: Yep. I was able to activate it by thokking on the stand that the drone was on. Crap. Note to self: No NiGHTS area in Act 3.

On an unrelated note, should Act 3 be made in SP, or Circuit again?
 
The rest of the votes:

Match:
Leafy Cave Zone by Blade T. Hedgehog 5/10

Main problem was the fact that the center areas are both highly segmented and cramped. You can usually get away with one or the other, but not both.

Cosmic Warehouse Zone by SonicMaster 1/10

Its never a good sign when your map HOM's in OpenGL. Not to mention that a huge, empty and quite uninteresting map combined with rails lead to a rather unfair win to the first person to pick up said ring weapon. If you want a rail match map, it has to have better ways to cover yourself from your opponent's fire.

Supa Kingadahill Zone by SonicMaster 2/10

This wasn't much better. No, I didn't count the broken script against you. At least this one wasn't so huge and flat like your previous map. Unfortunately, the lack of interest with your sector-based scenery still applies. This map needs some more complicated platforming than a ring, a hill and a couple of square mounds.

Fail by Kaysakado 2/10

The map's name speaks for itself. Not much else I can say.

Pipeline Panic Zone by Roy 6/10

Not bad. My gripe was the fact that your homing rings were placed in a way where I could simply breeze around the map and collect all four of them one after the other. In order for better balance, you have to make it a bit harder for one person to control all of one ring weapon.

Capture the Flag:
Freeze Factory Zone by Com 7/10

I've seen you do better. Not that this isn't a decent map. As far as I'm concerned, the biggest flaw is the fact that it was way too large. I also think that the water rooms on each side need a bit of work so that they don't detract from the level flow as much as they currently do.

Medivo CTF by Glaber 5/10

You continue to improve. Some of the inside areas with springs could use a bit more room. My biggest problem was the fact that a narrow middle caused the map to grind into deadlock after deadlock. An expansion of the center area to make it non-linear is in order.


All Hail Shadow Zone by Penopat 7/10

Two problems. The first was the water system with its currents. It just felt like being forced one direction by current killed any kind of flow the rest of the map had to offer. My second issue was how narrow the steps are leading up to the castles. These caused me to fall into the water way too many times, being caught by the current, etc.

Circuit:
Racing into Dreams Zone by SonicMaster 1/10

Lack of obstacles except for highly annoying staggered columns never make for a decent race map, sorry.

Caustic Fortress Zone by SonicMaster 1/10

Short, bland and uninteresting. Can't really give you much of anything useful on this.

Dimensional Zone, Act 2 by simsmagic 5/10

Strange, but not bad. Biggest issue was actually a bug because of the NiGHTS objects you placed in the map. I'm still not quite sure why you put them in there in the first place, but when a player turns into Super Sonic, the race ends with a tie between all players at whatever game time is. You'll want to look into that.
 
Well... time to find out the scores. Are the officials going to do it like they're supposed to, or will someone else have to do it for them like last time?
 
Single Player
-------------

Knux Emerald Quest Zone by SonicMaster -

Emerald hunting has never been my cup of tea. It was one of the things about the Sonic Adventure series that I thought really, just, well, sucked.
I'm also not to fond of this gameplay style in SRB2 either. When I play in a smaller, more exploration based level, such as this one, I expect a lot of
detail and little touches here and there. This, well, lets say it isn't quite yet there. The theme was as generic as it could possibly be, with not much
varying in the level except for some pits and hills here and there. It felt just like a really bland place to explore, which is basically one of the main
elements of creating a emerald hunt level. Should I also note that the emeralds weren't hidden in very interesting or clever places. I wouldn't blame the
lack of quality of this level completely on you, for the gameplay in these types of levels just isn't suited for Sonic the Hedgehog. But please, please, don't
try to make a emerald hunt level again.

Verdict = 4/10

Sapphire Coast Zone, Act 1 by Blade T.

Lets say this, you're on the right track to great level design. I liked what I saw here. I'm glad you were able to find a way to put a sort of "twist"
on the typical beach theme by using a different texture for the walls BESIDES GFZROCK. This level has good thing placement, and a par structure and flow.
It was a tad cramped however. It wasn't too bad, but it was noticable. Just learn how to widen things out just a tad bit more. This level also just lacked
special something the best levels have that just made you say WOW. This thing had water, jumping, and Crawlas. That was all there was to the level. Nothing
to make things a tad on the interesting side. The last thing I shall point out is that this level was to short and small. Next time make you level atleast
last a good 1:00-1:30. Like I said at the beginning of this review though, you are on the right track to creating bigger and better things.

Verdict = 6/10

Omega Tree Zone by RedEchidna

Omega "Bush" Zone anyone? This level was really, really bland. Although I don't hate the idea of a level that takes place in a tree, this, eh, well
wasn't taking place in a tree. You didn't vary the textures in the level even though you should have. It was just green, green, green, GREEN. I wasn't feeling
too well after playing this thing. Maybe it was because of the blood pooring out of my eyes. This level was also a tad short and it relied on some very generic
gimmicks. Though I am a bit glad this level wasn't too cramped for being all inside level. I liked those curving stairs near the end though. Neat stuff.

Verdict = 3/10

Aquatic Basin Zone by Boss

No is my answer to this level. Just... no. When I first saw the undeafened rings in the beginning of the level and the GFZ theme, I was about to vomit.
Good thing I got a handle on myself. Anyways, this level is a good example of what NOT to do. Terrible, TERRIBLE themeing, bland structure, very empty and
just, for lack of a better word, boring. The gimmicks in this level (atleast I thought that was what they where) weren't too hot either. And this level was short. I don't
want to sound discouraging, but this sucked. Sorry, but it did.

Verdict = 2/10

Arctic Dewpoint Zone by SonicMaster

NiGHTS. I never understood why people liked it so much. I never understood why it become a cult classic. But it did. And some how, a NiGHTS gamemode
is in SRB2. I must admit I did find some NiGHTS levels like Botantic Serenity (or however you spell it) fun to explore and beautiful. Your level lacked both
of those qualities. I think that this level was just to bland, and the lack of background made it hard at times to see where you would turn and how you would
turn. This level was just so empty. Although this is a ice, tundra like level, still, you could fill it up with some more stuff. I just never found anything
interesting here to do. It was just a race to collect as many rings as you could and get out of there. Just as with Knux Emerald Quest Zone, don't try to make
a level in this gamemode again. I beg of you, please.

Verdict = 4/10

Super Special Stage Zone by SonicMaster

Quantity instead of quality eh? Yet again, it seems as if you have ventured off to try to make yet another level that is based of some foreign gamemode.
And this one might be the suckiest of them all. I hope this type of special stage isn't in the final SRB2, but for now I guess I just have to deal with it.
It is boring to just collect rings in a bland and ugly envoirment. There is no point to this, you just go around collecting rings. Which are too close together
might I add. That factor made this one a little easy. Different DOES NOT mean better.

Verdict = 2/10


Dammit, I'm late...
 
Same reason why the Jan-Feb contest topic is missing. I'm just going to go ask F.Fox if I can host it this time just to see if we can't get the contest going again.
 
Glaber, instead of hosting it... you could calculate the scores. This way one ENDS before another one starts (if that happened, there'd be a bit of confusion, other issues, etc.).
 
Don't worry about the new contest thread. It will be created soon™. We have never cancelled a contest yet. We just need someone to go through this thread and tally up the votes in the meantime.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Who is viewing this thread (Total: 1, Members: 0, Guests: 1)

Back
Top