Blue Warrior's Idea: Best of 200x

[Scarbo the Black Sheep]

He doesn't seem to want to actually post the idea here, but I think discussing it here would be a great idea. Basically, he wants to take all the OLDC multiplayer maps of a year that got over a 7.00 and merge them into one WAD. I suggested that the Circuit cut-off be 6.25 since there are only four Circuit levels EVER that have gotten 7.00 or over.

With this, we would be able to play a WAD and have only particularly enjoyable levels in that WAD's rotation. With his ideas and mine combined, we'd have 25 Best of 2006 levels and 24 Best of 2007 levels. So, what do you guys say about Blue Warrior's idea?

The idea was introduced here; but it just is so much easier to discuss it here.

 

[Chibs]

A "Best Of" wad? Hmm..that seems plausible...

 

[A-star]

That might be bigger than zck2020's srb2 star wars mod.

 

[Sniperific]

That might be bigger than zck2020's srb2 star wars mod.

Just for maps?, i would like the idea of this wad been made and if it was i would use it alot.

 

[Jazz]

SonicMaster, I'd suggest adding a link the respective talk page in your post, so those who haven't seen it can have a better idea of what is going on.

And as I said there, if this idea went through, I might just host SRB2 netgames again. Having the best maps in one place would be a boon.

 

[Ice]

I like the idea, go for it!

 

[Scarbo the Black Sheep]

OK, Jazz, the Wiki link is up.

 

[clairebun]

He doesn't seem to want to actually post the idea here, but I think discussing it here would be a great idea.

lol... I guess you could say I wanted to wait until I was sure I had everything fully thought out for my idea. But yeah, discuss it here, I don't mind.

And yeah, I want this idea to come through, since promoting the usage of a wider variety of FUN maps will enhance the quality of our master server and make netgames a lot more enjoyable. Considering I've already gotten a good amount of feedback ( which was considerably positive) on this from the wiki, I will probably start working on the wads very soon myself. There's just a few things I'd like to address.

One is that we're missing the 2003 contest wads. We can't make a "Best of 2003" if we don't have the maps, right? ;)

Another is the circuit cutoff. 6.25 is understandable, but as I've said on the wiki, I don't want the standards to bend to the map quality; I want the map quality to bend toward the standards. And besides, what if the circuit quality picks up? We might have plenty of maps that hit 7.00 or higher, and in that case, we don't want 6.25 maps on there.

Because I find consistency and formality to come hand-in-hand, let's keep the standards for all divisions at 7.0 or higher. If there are less than... five maps (I'm thinking ten, but I want your opinions), then the next highest maps of that year will be placed in until there are five/ten maps in the rotation... given that they're equal to or above a 6.0 of course. I think this is as fair as we can get without forcing too short of a rotation.

So, I think that's all I need to mention. If anything else comes to my mind, then... y'know.

 

[Scarbo the Black Sheep]

By the way, Illustrion Zone got a 7.00 and therefore qualifies in Best of 2004. However, it needs to be completely fixed to work correctly in this WAD, because the water current system for 1.08 is incompatible with 1.09. Just so you know.

 

[Ice]

Hang on, what about single player maps? Its says on the wiki discussion page that the SP levels go to SRB2.org, but the addons section is very rarely recently updated, if not at all these days.

 

[Scarbo the Black Sheep]

Anyone can play Single Player levels by themselves. It'd be hard to get a good multiplayer map in a netgame especially if you can't host or you're hosting multiple maps.

 

[clairebun]

Hang on, what about single player maps? Its says on the wiki discussion page that the SP levels go to SRB2.org, but the addons section is very rarely recently updated, if not at all these days.

It isn't updated at all. It's over a year old, actually.

But yes, I did want to put the single player maps in, but I saw practical problems with that.

First off, we'd have to find all of them. While the multiplayer maps usually stay in the same old zip file that they started out with during the contest, the single player map links usually expire. So, we would have to do some serious collecting and exchanging of email attachments before even thinking of putting the maps in packs.

Second off, the SP maps are in separate wads for a reason: socs and textures. We would have to ensure all the custom textures that have been added will appear in the wad's list of textures and won't coincide with other maps' textures. Socs are a little more serious, because enemies and the likes are usually edited off of existing thing types. Anyone else is free to try and fix that, because I know I'm not going to.

Lastly, we might want to consider the difficulty curve. Some maps might be pretty hard while others might be really easy. We'd want to show some sort of gradual increase in difficulty if we put the SP maps all in one wad, not just moving all the from January to December.

 

[Scarbo the Black Sheep]

Better idea: scr_bestof200x.zip. Can't we just do that?

 

[Ice]

EDIT: I didn't see the "scr" at the beginning of what you wrote.
Yea, I think that idea is good.

 

[clairebun]

@SonicMaster: If that was the case, then the player may as well just go onto the wiki and/or Addons section and hand-pick the levels he wants to play himself. Then again, we could just zip 'em up with the multiplayer wad for convenience.

 

[Scarbo the Black Sheep]

It's the multiplayer maps that really need the compiled WAD thing. I say forget about Single Player and focus only on the other gametypes.

EDIT: Mystic, FuriousFox, you are the contest holders. Do you approve of the WAD idea? If so, will the WADs be made official after you see them?

 

[Fawfulfan]

Here's an additional idea: Why don't we not only gather together the best WADs, but also add a few extras to them to make them even better?

 

[Jazz]

Then again, we could just zip 'em up with the multiplayer wad for convenience.

Probably keep the multiplayer and single player WAD files seperate. You could simply pack all the individual levels in individual WADs into the scr_bestof200x.zip and then have the combined multiplayer WAD in mtf_bestof200x.zip.

Reasoning is, anyone can simply download the individual single player WADs from each contest, as netgaming is unimportant. As SonicMaster said, its the multiplayer maps that really need the combined file. That said, there is no reason not to have a "Best of Single Player" for each year as well, but it doesn't need to be a full file compiliation like multiplayer. Would take far too much work to get all those maps and custom content to work properly in one WAD file.

 

[Spazzo]

EDIT: Mystic, FuriousFox, you are the contest holders. Do you approve of the WAD idea? If so, will the WADs be made official after you see them?

Why does that matter? I don't think you should be asking them whether this is official or not, personally.


You guys also have to take into consideration that some people might not want you to put their map into a compilation, even if they submitted it to an OLDC.

I do like the idea, though. It's something I've wanted to do myself for some time, and I just never got around to it. I hope you guys actually carry out the idea.

And, for the record, they should all be one "megawad", not just a zip. It's a lot more work, but the reward is greater.

 

[ST218]

On the flipside, I don't think the map makers would care, nor do they have too much of a right.

Nominally, the maps in a contest go on the Addons section. Ergo, they're available for public download. Meaning, the maps are available for public compilation. It's not editing or anything, it's just repackaging. Anyone could do this on their own and host it (not that I'm downplaying the awesomeness of this idea, just proving a point), and there's no limitations against that. And if they host the map pack, people have to download it in order to play. Again, there's no limitations against that either.

Basically, if anyone actually objects, you can heed their request, but don't worry about that happening, since sharing and compiling like this is a logical conclusion of making a map.