The Not Official Not Level Design Contest!?

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D00D64

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Ladies and Crawlas, are you having trouble making maps? Map block? Uncreative with level design? Can't figure out what makes a map any good? Just kinda boring? Well, how about you just give up? Yeah, dry those tears and throw those scraps in the trash! There's plenty of other things you can do in SRB2 instead, and this contest is here to prove it! Join us, in the first, and hopefully not last...

[NOT OFFICIAL NOT LEVEL DESIGN CONTEST]

The NONLDC (obviously pronounced after famous wrassler, "Non' El Dick") is a contest where you try to make the most amazing, interesting, cool, or just plain different experience for SRB2... without touching the levels at all. Put that Doom Builder away, don't bother with Slade's early map editing tools, and if a single one of you brings up WadAuthor or SRB2 Workbench, we will laugh at your stupid remarks as we beat you with large trout.

To excell, you need to use talents in Lua, SOC, and even graphic design. You can literally do ANYTHING that isn't level design or modifying. You're free to replace any objects and textures in the game, and modify the MainCFG to suit your needs. Does your mod change enemies or items? Perhaps it revolves around a specific character with wildly unique mechanics? Perhaps your mod revolves around playing with a specific gimmick for the whole game? Anything (but mapping) goes!

Is your mod just for a specific map or set of maps? Or perhaps your idea doesn't work with bosses or the Metal Sonic race? Just modify the MainCFG to start on whichever map you need to go on first and/or modify the mainCFG to skip them. You don't need your mod to work for each map if it's not necessary.

Currently, the contest is Single Player only. Due to the unstable nature of multi-player, it's probably for the best to not touch that yet. It CAN be multi-player compatible, but it MUST be fully completable in Single Player, and Single Player must be the primary way to play. Also, if you wish to enter, we need you to get the wad hosted somewhere. Since this is Not Official, you can't host it on the MB with attachments. To host your wad file somewhere, we suggest Dropbox. PLEASE, do NOT use sites like 4Shared.

When releasing your mod, you need to include a text file called "readme-NONLDC_(mod filename)", including the full name of the mod, your name on the SRB2MB, a description of what the mod does, and any other details they'll need (controls, requirements, multi-player compatibility, etc). Please be as clear as you can as to what the mod does! However, there's one exception; if the mod's purpose is a seeeeekrit, just give the bare minimum of what info you can to the player without spoiling it, even if its just some vague description.

...Oh, and when I say "Anything (but mapping) goes!", I should also point out that lazy shit like music replacements are already outright banned. Replacing music is fine, but you need to do something else. Speaking of, also PLEASE keep your filesize as low as you can. Use OGG music
(or anything else lower file size than an MP3), and put the music count at a minimum. If this gets out of hand, we may have to impose a hard limit on how big your file can be.

Like the actual OLDC, you CANNOT use anything you released already. You need to make your own new content. That's kind of the idea of the contest, after all! Also, due to the nature of the contest, you can't use anything that's been released on the forums either, even if they allow permission.

Now that all the rules have been established so far, get out there and think of how you too can modify SRB2 without a single look at a linedef! The contest deadline is being considered for September 20th! We'll soon figure out a place to send your submissions to. Currently, it's just me, but I may get some other idiots folks to help me out.

Oh, and one important question; Currently being considered is a "low tier, high tier" system for mods, where low tier mods are smaller mods and high tier mods are big mods. This way, smaller projects can make it in without being blown out of the water by much bigger endeavours. At the moment, we're unsure how to describe what a "low tier" mod would be, however. It's mostly for scripts, but we may include graphic and music options. Any suggestions on low tier restrictions?



Okay, I'll openly admit this was written pretty much on a whim. While I had the idea years ago, SOC was just too limited to work with, so I just kinda forgot about it until someone pointed out other contest ideas and I remembered how badly the Amateur Level Design Contest went. But there are others out there who just don't have their talents lie in level design. Lua opened up a HUGE amount of potential for changing SRB2, and now that many of us have had experience with Lua, as well as the improvements to SOC, I feel its time to finally have a contest dedicated to anything BUT level design. I know there's plenty of you guys out there with amazing ideas just waiting to be made! Good luck!
 
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Haha, not if I can help it!

Interesting idea going on here anyhow, might be a tricky one to judge properly afterwards though.
 
so I just kinda forgot about it until someone pointed out other contest ideas and I remembered how badly the Amateur Level Design Contest went.

This begs the question, but what IS a good contest? Cause when we made the ASDT, this is what we had in mind: a platform where non-top-notch designers who wanted to learn specific skills pertaining to level design, could come and recieve solid, filtered criticism that would help them become better designers in the future. Not so much a contest as it was, well, trials.

With that in mind, I feel like the ASDT went smashingly. If Zipper, Simsmagic, LJ sonic, and The Cyan walked away from it with a little of a better grasp on level design thanks to us, then we accomplished our mission. Ultimately, I can't say for SURE it worked, because I haven't seen any of their content since then, but I sure FELT like it worked, and I have confidence in my methods.

Admittedly, we chose a questionable theme for the first contest, when we opted for holiday spirit rather than function. I wouldn't make that mistake again. No serious harm done though, right?

I don't think the Non Official Non Level Design Contest is much of a "contest" either. It's more about the sheer fun and shenanigans of seeing what weird and interesting things people can come up with, than it is getting some serious meat and content, isn't it? I personally can't envision anything super refined coming from this. We'll likely get our bouncy.lua and gravity shield, and toys along those lines. That's okay, too. However, I also won't make the mistake of assuming that others may not have better vision for potential amazing entries than I do. :p
 
Is it now? The contest that I've been waiting for since my entrance to this community?!? Now I can sprite for an actual reason!

Quick question: is there a limit as to how many entries we can submit?
 
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Quick question: is there a limit as to how many entries we can submit?

I wanna say the possibility of two entries a person, weather or not the tier system goes into place, or if we change how voting works. But for now, just focus on making one entry.
 
Currently being considered is a "low tier, high tier" system for mods, where low tier mods are smaller mods and high tier mods are big mods. This way, smaller projects can make it in without being blown out of the water by much bigger endeavours. At the moment, we're unsure how to describe what a "low tier" mod would be, however. It's mostly for scripts, but we may include graphic and music options. Any suggestions on low tier restrictions?

Perhaps rather than "tiering" we should "categorize" the mods. This way, say, a mod that replaces all of the music (with originals, of course) would not fall into the same category as a mod that replaces all the graphics: they could both be incredibly awesome, both are really artsy, but judging them against each other would be a wreck due to format bias alone.
 
This looks hilariously interesting; practically anything goes and you're allowed to do whatever you want. Not only is this a great way to get creative with what SRB2 offers, but it allows me to play a bunch of crazy things!

somebody make spinach ripened butts 2
 
Perhaps rather than "tiering" we should "categorize" the mods. This way, say, a mod that replaces all of the music (with originals, of course) would not fall into the same category as a mod that replaces all the graphics: they could both be incredibly awesome, both are really artsy, but judging them against each other would be a wreck due to format bias alone.

Not many users on this forum are actually able and interested in investing time to fill SRB2 with their own original music compositions. Yeah, I get that that music and graphics might have to be judged differently from each other, but that's kind of the nature of a contest that covers such a broad range of topics. If you categorize mods by "type" like this, then you'll just end up spreading your groups too thin.
 
I am thinking about joining this with my obvious project, but I'm unsure for doing so because the whole thing I'm making is basically just a big visual edit of the main character with the same gameplay. Pretty much just good to look at and that's about it.
 
I was actually talking with Charybdizs about this, and possibly going with something like a Hacking Contest-like award system where you earn awards for specific elements, or have users explain what they liked most about a mod, like what was the most innovative, or the most interesting, or the most visually impressive, or what had the most replay value... things like that. A straight voting system or the OLDC's new best-to-worst sorting system may not be the best for the kind of variety you can get from this kind of contest.

...That, and the project your working on replaces sprites that are about as old as time with far more well drawn ones, so I wouldn't say it stands no chance to winning anything.
 
Oh, yeah, this sounds like fun, I'm going to make this super awesome thing which will-... oh... I have motivation... That means no ideas... Damn artist part of me.
 
With that in mind, I feel like the ASDT went smashingly. If Zipper, Simsmagic, LJ sonic, and The Cyan walked away from it with a little of a better grasp on level design thanks to us, then we accomplished our mission. Ultimately, I can't say for SURE it worked, because I haven't seen any of their content since then, but I sure FELT like it worked, and I have confidence in my methods.

Didn't you see my CTF map at the OLDC?

Anyway, this contest sure looks interesting, but I will not be able to compete because the only thing I can do is mapping (poor me). I can't wait to see all the crazy things we will get from this contest.
 
I'm sorry for bumping this, but is this actually-good-idea ever going to make it off the ground? I mean, the deadline for this was over two months ago, and what's even worse is that this idea in General had started over four months ago. Was it just completely forgotten about?
 
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Yep, is dead now. Go home with your pie, guy.
Maybe this could come back when the OLDC pauses it again.
 
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