Official Level Design Contest: May/June Voting

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Mystic

Mystic

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We had a very good turnout this time. There are 12 match stages and 5 single player stages.

For those of you who don't remember, here is how the voting works. Play a few games of the stage in question, in the intended gametype for judging, and give the map a vote from 0 to 10. You can not vote on your own map. To encourage voting, if you are an author and you judge all of the competitor's maps, the lowest score on your map will be dropped. Please be as unbiased as possible for the author or the look of the map. It's all about how good the map plays, nothing else.

Although it's not necessary, it's very helpful to make comments about what you liked and didn't like about the map, so the author can improve his skill for future attempts.

Judging will end July 14th at midnight GMT (July 13th, 7:00 PM EST). The scores will be then averaged, and the person with the highest score is the winner.

The maps follow:

Match Contest Level Pack

Match Pack contains the following maps:
MAP01 - Super Mario Battle Zone - SRB2-Playah
MAP02 - Floating Rock Zone - Lance88
MAP03 - April Showers - Bigboi
MAP04 - May Flowers - Bigboi
MAP05 - Piano Room - Bigboi
MAP06 - Arabian Nights - Bigboi
MAP07 - Emerald Garden Zone - Tets
MAP08 - Floret Lake Zone - Digiku
MAP09 - Chemical Basin Zone - Digiku
MAP10 - Grassy Ellipse Zone - Digiku
MAP11 - Nocturnal Sahara Zone - Digiku
MAP12 - Dead Simple Zone - Shadow Hog

The single player levels for judging are:
Cold Metal Caves Zone - SRB2-Playah
Jungle Island Zone - RoboAshura
Egg Palace Zone - Some guy
Castle Wolfenstein Zone - Shadow Hog
Gloom Metropolis Zone Act 2 - FuriousFox

Please make sure to play the levels in the intended gametype, and above all, have fun judging!
 
See, now THIS is the sort of thing I was waiting for.

I'll check the levels out when I get home (whenever that is...).
 
MAP01 - Super Mario Battle Zone - SRB2-Playah - 6/10
I liked it the first time i played it, but it was way too buggy now.

MAP02 - Floating Rock Zone - Lance88 - 3/10
Yuck. Way too small and way too many 25-ring boxes.

MAP03 - April Showers - Bigboi - 8/10
This map is quite intresting and unique.

MAP04 - May Flowers - Bigboi - 5/10
Average. Just average.

MAP05 - Piano Room - Bigboi - 6/10
It was a cool map, but it just didnt strike me as fun.

MAP06 - Arabian Nights - Bigboi - 8/10
Now this map was fun. I loved it!

MAP07 - Emerald Garden Zone - Tets - 5/10
It was fun to explore in, but unfortunatly thats not the point of the contest.

MAP08 - Floret Lake Zone - Digiku - 6/10
Fun, but bland.

MAP09 - Chemical Basin Zone - Digiku - 7/10
It was fun for small netgames, and i really liked the computers.

MAP10 - Grassy Ellipse Zone - Digiku - 4/10
All this was, was a regular match level. Creativity is what pulled this down.

MAP11 - Nocturnal Sahara Zone - Digiku - 10/10
BY FAR the best map here. I loved every piece of it!

MAP12 - Dead Simple Zone - Shadow Hog - 7/10
It was fun, but a wee bit too small and crouded.

And here's a picture of the netgame:
netgame8am.png


NOTE: The map in the photo is Digiku's Chemical Basin
NOTE 2: This picture is un-edited, so yes, I was beating Mystic ^_^.
 
Having only played one round of the match stages, I'm not ready to vote on them yet, but I have played the single player stages quite a bit:

Cold Metal Caves Zone - SRB2-Playah: 6/10
I like the general design of this stage, and a few of the ideas used in the stage are great, especially the turret room is pure brilliance. However, on the other side, there are a lot of sections of the stage where you're just running through a passage with absolutely nothing going on. A little more elaboration on the long passages and you've got yourself a winner.

Jungle Island Zone - RoboAshura: 1/10
I'm sorry to say this, but there really aren't any redeeming qualities to this map at all. The passages are tiny, the camera gets stuck constantly, and there aren't any obstacles at all. Go play the official stages and see what makes them great, and notice how different they are from your stage.

Egg Palace Zone - Some guy: 10/10
Don't get me wrong, this map isn't perfect, but giving it anything less than a ten seemed like a crime against humanity. This stage goes above and beyond all expectations I ever had, and makes me look at some of my bigger stages and think they really aren't that large after all. It's like going from Sonic 2 to Sonic 3, and feeling how much bigger and more in-depth the levels were. You might want to try and clear out the little bugs, because you do have quite a few. When 1.09 comes out, I can't wait to try the full-size version. If you need me, I'll be in the back trying to figure out how to top this ^_~

Castle Wolfenstein Zone - Shadow Hog: 3/10
You get points for the coolness factor, because it is neat running through this game as Sonic. However, games have come a LONG way since Castle Wolfenstein, and perfectly flat floors with 90 degree angles just aren't as amazing as they were in the early 90s. Not to mention that SRB2 just isn't a FPS, and hallways with enemies just isn't a good design for a platformer.

Gloom Metropolis Zone Act 2 - FuriousFox: 5/10
I really want to give this stage a high score. I really do. However, there is a glaring flaw in the stage that just drags it down terribly. It just doesn't do much stuff that Gloom Metropolis 1 didn't do. Gloom Metropolis was really cool because it did original things with a texture set that is almost never used. The second act just doesn't have anything that the original act didn't. It just is longer and with less cool things like the broken highway bridge. It's a solid map, but it just isn't original.
 
The reason my map is blank and small is due to the fact that it's a race level. I almost finished a better one, but it didn't get done in time, so I submitted this.
 
I have a bad connection so I'm not going to grade the match stages, but I will give my opinions on the SP stages.

Cold Metal Caves Zone - SRB2-Playah: 5/10
Well, this zone was interesting. The thing that bugged me about it was that it doesn't have a solid "theme". It went randomly from Ice to Slime to Metal. The water that drained your rings was a pretty cool touch though. I wish that there had been less platform hopping over pits. That's really what drags it down for me.

Jungle Island Zone - RoboAshura: 1/10
This isn't really a level to speak of. It's a bunch of misshapen passageways using the same texture with no items or enemies to speak of until you reach the end.

Egg Palace Zone - Some guy: 9/10
This zone is amazing. You can tell that a lot of time and effort was put into this zone as the graphical detail is pretty dang sweet. The level is very big and is an extreme challenge for Sonic, while if you play as Knuckles it's easier without feeling like you cheated. The music is a nice touch.

Castle Wolfenstein Zone - Shadow Hog: 5/10
This is a good concept but the Wolfenstein level is not suited for Sonic play. You can rush past every bad guy on this level and head straight to the exit. I think you would've been better off making your own level similar to Castle Eggman using the Wolfenstein enemies and textures.

Gloom Metropolis Zone Act 2 - FuriousFox: 5/10
This level was decent, but it was kind of boring. The level was over pretty quickly as well. The sewer parts were really the most interesting part and if they were expanded maybe the level would've been more interesting. It doesn't help that the music is kind of dreary and non-descript.
 
Super Mario Battle: 6/10.
Way too slow. I had processor lag and frame lag... playing solo on this map!!! But, I know that you worked hard on this. There are a ton of FOFs here, and there's much more to this level than meets the eye. You really need to work on optimization, though, Playah.
And, I absolutely adore those flags.

Floating Rock: 5/10.
I remember playing this zone in a netgame a while back. Fun, but boring and a little small. The advantage to this level is that a butterfingers at aiming like me can almost never fire a shot without hitting someone.

April Showers: 7/10
What's up with the... uh... water being brighter than the other parts of the level? You desperately need a new flat there. Other than that and the bland use of textures and only one type of flower/scenery used, this map wasn't too bad.

May Flowers: 5/10.
Flowers? What flowers?
Anywho, three words: Sonic. The. Hedgehog. If you're playing as him, then there's no way off the ground, and you're cannon fodder to the tails-es and knucklers out there. But, he is fast.
Other than that, you only have two levels to this map: On the ground and on top of the trees. You have to be either on one or the other. Try changing the heights of the trees, or even the textures a little.

Piano Room: 5/10.
A couple things about this map:
1. "What? That's... water??? That looks like a rug, not water!"
2. There's only one bomber ring, so the entire map just becomes a lousy race to the top of the piano, where the winner can dominate everyone in sight due to this map's small size.

Arabian Nights: 8/10.
This map was rather fun to play. I remember when I joined a netgame with this map when it was nothing but the pyramid and the bridges. Overall, the atmosphere of this map is excellent, and the balance is good, but there are some things that I don't like:
1. Sonic can't move up the pyramid quickly enough to avoid getting hit by tails.
2. Took me a while to figure out exactly where the teleporter takes you, but no biggie, because you really never know.

Emerald Garden: 9/10.
This map is rather big, so it's hard to find the other players in a small netgame, but other than that and the deep water ("I'M MELTING! I'M MELTING!!!"), this map is utterly brilliant.

Forest Lake: 6/10.
Not bad, but it's a little boring... You'll see what I mean when you play it.

Chemical Basin: 6/10.
Not bad, not bad.

Grassy Elipse: 7/10.
Not bad. This has the sonic step problem, but it's not much of a biggie because the steps are spaced wide enough so that sonic has time to jump up for the net one.

Nocturnal Sahara: 5/10.
Are those rocks supposed to do something? From my experiance, usually rocks like that can be spun into or jumped upon to uncover something. Those evilrocks (as I call them) can be rather misleading. I think that I jumped on every single one just to see what it did. Not fun.

Dead Simple: 6/10.
This map is, well... rather stuffy, I suppose you could say, but it is fun and not too bad.
Oh, BTW: make the black shield room harder to find, 'cuz I found it on accident by alt-tabbing here to post only to find that I ran into a 'wall'. Heh...

Single Player levels: Havn't tried.
I'm working on Egg Palace, though. Two things that'll help with this level:
Gravity flashes, e.x. BIND "1" "GRAVITY -100; WAIT 2; GRAVITY 0.5"
Noclip. BIND "2" "NOCLIP"

That level's hard, man!
 
Cold Metal Caves: X/X. Can't vote on my own map, now can I? XP

Jungle Island Zone: 4/10. It was rather... Bland.
No enemies. No rings. No springs.
Just, a hallway of trees. Or, tree textures. Plus, as noted before, the passages were too small.
Sure, this was probebly meant for racing, but f'crying out loud, I like a map with speed!

Egg Palace Zone: 7/10. Quite a show of WADding skills!
The music was most awesome.
The guy who did this obviously knew how to work WA/DB.
The big letdown was how easy it was to get lost...
There were so many alternate paths, that I KNEW it would take me several days to find EVERYTHING.
I love big levels, but I don't like levels where it's easy to get lost.
Buuut, the sheer awesomeness of the level kept this level floating above the line of 5/10. :mrgreen:

*Favorite* Castle Wolfenstein Zone: 9/10. I have to admit. It was fun!
I liked how you drew the eggman mustache on the portraits. XD
Tell you the truth, I like FPS's.
True, it might not fit the Sonic style. But, the hallways are big enough to run full speed through them.
It was especially fun when I decided to switch on RINGSLINGER. ~_^
By the way, the enemies murder each other because they're in the way.
They're TRYING to shoot you, but accidentally hit the other.
Thus, nothing gives me more pleasure than circling the guy with the machine gun as he tries to shoot me, but ends up taking out everyone else. ~_^ And then, to finish off the irony, I kill him.

Gloom Metropolis Zone act 2: 7/10. Very nice lookin'.
Graphically, this is a very interesting zone.
Don't have much else to say. :roll:

I'll get back to you on the match levels once a netgame has started.
 
I've only tried two maps as of now, single player. I'll add to this post as I go on.

Cold Metal Caves: 7/10
I liked the overall feel of this level. The vertically moving platforms over the slime were nifty simply due to the graphical effect that made them appear to be pushed up by the slime. Also, as Mystic said, the turret room was brilliant. In my first run through, I thought I would have to jump from one crusher thing to another in order to get to a higher elevation, but fortunately I was wrong. That was probably due to me playing too much Mystic Realm. I'm sure most of us can agree, that's how Mystic would have designed that part.
There are only two blatantly obvious flaws that I can comment on. The level design, while great in specific places, is too simple in others, as in long passages with nothing but rings. This map needs more detail. Also, the emerald tokens are too easy to find. ;D

Egg Palace: 2/10
So far it looks like I'm the only one to not like this level. The only thing going for it, as far as I'm concerned, is visual appeal. I died roughly six times in the beginning because of annoyingly placed death pits. Not only is it obnoxiously easy to fall in these pits and die, but they're DEEP. Eventually I made my way past that and came upon more death pits, but this time they weren't obscured by water and were easier to avoid. Moving on, I happened upon a rather large staircase, after which I can only assume was a death pit trap covered under water similar to that of the beginning! I'm going to be blunt, lots of death pits does not make a map strategic. I attempted to cross it and failed because I didn't much feel like being patient (patience not being one of the qualities one must possess in order to play a level designed for a SONIC game).
Not wanting to deal with that crap again, I started over and went to the room to the left of the stairs from the beginning. This room was not particularly annoying and I passed it with ease. Then I stepped on a part of the floor in the next room which collapsed and left me plummeting to my death in yet ANOTHER GOD DAMNED PIT. These are seriously overused! At that point I was quite out of patience.
Enemy placement in this level is complete wank. In normal mode, I had nearly five of those crawla dudes that take two hits just swarming around me by the time I made it to the stairs. Much like death pits, people often make the mistake that lots of enemies is an easy way to add strategy to their map, and this is simply not true.
The music has absolutely nothing to do with the level design and I am completely indifferent about it.
 
MAP01: Super Mario Battle Zone 8/10
I suppose this level is very good, sadly that when i go to the underground place and thoked to a wall, the thok barrier... appeared too clearly... :( But the level itself is very good, and its castle has very nice designs.

MAP02: Floating Rock Zone 3/10
Yes, very close to your name of this level, but, doesn't seem to have a meaning of the match mode.

MAP03: April Showers 10/10
The map is... how can I say? AWESOME! I like the way you did on the dark background. Sadly that the boxes only have a kind. But the rest of them are able to put that in.

MAP04: May Flowers 7/10
I like the way of your water, traps (holes) the trees does look like trees, and the medium tree seems to be the "leader" of the trees, that's why most of the rings are there. The bad thing is... the only to get to the top of trees is to bounce up the spring IN the trap, which is hard to find (except Tails).

MAP05: Piano Room 7/10
Nice water coloring, nice chair and piano keyboards, but the top is... like too plain, doesn't have too much places for matches, and you shouldn't put a random box under water, because there are some chances that you don't get anything (i.e getting a shield that will disappear in water) unless you have invinciblity.

Map06: Arabian Nights 9/10
This map is simple. But because it's too simple, so people can't really find and shoot easily.


The rest of the maps will be voted later when i got time :)
 
Tets said:
that long story about EGZ
Click to expand...
Yeah, I agree that there were a lot of annoying death pits which I could've replaced whit something else. I put them there so that people would be really careful whit Sonic. Made the map smaller by 1.25 times and that made avoiding those pits a bit harder. Thanks for the suggestions.
You played whit Sonic, didn't you?
SRB2-Playah said:
There were so many alternate paths, that I KNEW it would take me several days to find EVERYTHING.
Click to expand...
It may seem that way at first glance but there are actualy only two. The other ones are for secrets. There are many bustable blocks.
hotdog003 said:
I'm working on Egg Palace, though. Two things that'll help with this level:
Gravity flashes, e.x. BIND "1" "GRAVITY -100; WAIT 2; GRAVITY 0.5"
Noclip. BIND "2" "NOCLIP"

That level's hard, man!
Click to expand...
Playing whit Sonic?
The level is easy whit Tails/Knuckles. Sonic is a different story but it isn't impossible. I always play whit Sonic and I find that Egg Palace is just fine.
 
Erm... I found out why SMB is buggy.
I sent an old one by mistake. ^_^'
I'll probably host the newer one on my website once I feel like it.
 
Cold Metal Caves Zone - SRB2-Playah - 8/10.
I love this map. 'Nuff said.

Jungle Island Zone - RoboAshura - 5/10.
Am Ithe only one here who likes this map?
First off, kudos for using depth. Most people just have one sector and change it on X and Y axis. YOu have an understanding that this map neds some Z play, too.
Seccond of all, this map might be a little ore interesting if you had more textures.
Third, it needs to be longer- 30 secconds just is too short.
FOurth, this map needs things. Rings, crawlas, etc. They're not that hard to use.
Nice for a beginner's map, though. Heck, it's better than my first map.

Egg Palace Zone - Some guy - already rated
Castle Wolfenstein Zone - Shadow Hog - 7/10.
Turn off chasecam, turn on ringslinger, play with god mode. Fun.

Gloom Metropolis Zone Act 2 - FuriousFox - 7/10.
This map was worse than act 1, but still fun to play.

Taz all for the single player entries.
 
I have one thing to say about the Multiplayer stages: for the love of pete, Verdant Forest Zone is NOT the only music you can use! Other than that, can't say much; I've not been in a netgame with them, yet. Heck, not even my own entry. Really should've, but it's kinda hard to set one up when you don't like chatrooms.

BTW, hotdog, you say Egg Palace is already rated, but I don't see a rating on this page.
 
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