It's been almost a week since the contest ended and only one person has downloaded my submission. I guess there's only one active judge now, who I assume to be ETEFT(U).

May as well not bother with these contests when there's only one judge active and one contestant entering.

I downloaded your map and played it the day the contest ended, as I always do. You're right, not many people on SEN seem to care about the contests or sc1 mapmaking. It's a little disappointing.

It's not because we don't care about contests or SCBW mapmaking, It's the fact that these there is very little hope for viable returns on participation in these contests; a lot of us are busy and the actual time we have free to map in one or two weeks sum up to a little less than ten hours, barely enough to even churn out a melee map, let alone a UMS that follows the thematic restriction, so it's difficult to compete fairly.

If there was some sort of "participation reward" then maybe more people would care.

As discussed before, we try to use broad themes to limit, if not completely eliminate, such restrictions; I would find it hard to believe that any map could not be adapted to a theme like empires.

Furthermore, the actual time you should spend to make a map (not chatting or fooling around) seldom exceeds ten hours. Even if that's not enough, we would gladly accept unfinished entries and such entries would have as good a chance of winning if you make up in originality or complexity what it lacks in completion.

You're right that there are no viable returns in entering contests (other than minerals or contest points which, let's face it, aren't very useful) but there are also none in making maps to begin with. Such contests exist only to motivate us to complete our projects and measure our talent against our peers.

I'm still interested in these contests, but I also have other things to do that sometimes have to take priority. I have projects started for a couple of the past contests that I had to interrupt work on because of more pressing concerns, without getting far enough that there'd be any point to releasing an unfinished version. I understand what you're saying about possibly giving good scores to unfinished entries, but I think that such entries only have any potential when they're from a genre where the development is very vertical rather than horizontal, which my maps never are.

To explain what I mean by that...

Take a typical RPG, which I would consider to have a vertical development structure. When designing an RPG, you might start out with a few basic triggers to handle some general happenings (like item use, etc.), but most of the development goes into creating different areas in which the few general systems can be applied-- the chapters, if you will, of the RPG's story. Now, with a map like that, you have something to play as soon as you create the general triggers and the first bit of space to walk around...there might only be a few seconds of gameplay, to be sure, but at least there is some.

Now think about a very simple, triggered-projectile-type arena map. Instead of a few basic systems for the RPG, you need to have ways of handling aiming, the projectile's motion, the damage dealt by the projectile, and so on, and until all of those systems are in, there's nothing that the player can do except try and judge the map-maker's assurances that there will be gameplay when it is finished. After the game is playable, though, it's nearly done, unless you want to add additional weapons or what have you. This is what I would call a horizontal development structure.

Furthermore, some maps wind up being artificially horizontal because of the design process. Still considering the projectile map, suppose there are six types of weapons instead of one. Now, it might well be the case that there are some general systems-- dying, losing, etc.-- that it makes the most sense to put in at the end, because testing is much simpler without them. As a result, if you don't get the full time that you expected, the map will be unplayable, even though there was still enough time to make it playable, if some of the features that it made sense to develop earlier had been excluded.

The result of this is that you might have two maps that will take the exact same amount of time to develop to completion, and two map-makers who each spend an equal amount of time, getting each map to, say, 90% completion, and wind up with two "unfinished projects", one of which is nearly 90% playable, and the other of which is 0% playable. So inviting people to submit unfinished projects is all well and good, but don't expect it to make much difference if the people are working on something that requires horizontal development.

Since I have very little interest in either making or playing the typical kinds of map that are most suitable for vertical development (such as RPGs), if I'm interrupted by work or life and have to reallocate my time, you're not going to get a submission from me that round. But I have been working on things for the contests, and who knows how many others are in the same situation? I think the best thing to do would be to keep the contests up, and maybe there will be times when enough of the participants do have the opportunity to submit something to get some competition going.

Then you were the only one who did so =P I assumed it was ETEFT(U) because he was saying he wanted more entries to judge lol.

I'm just waiting for more entries..
will read fox's post later.

I'll participate in the next one.

I'm no longer judging, by the way.

No problem, good riddance. On to the next one, chia's turn to host, results for this one will be out shortly. UU still needs to judge Week 2 I believe.

Ps. Leeroy-Jenkins you should do what your avatar says beneath it and "loosen up your e-ego." Toodles! deuces.

I assume you're referring to my "private" message with chia. But, as I clearly said in that-- that has nothing to do with me leaving. As you can tell by the fact that I didn't bother to judge Azrael's map, I kinda gave up on SCI contests a while ago. Nobody else cares, neither do I anymore.

And for the record, I don't think I should've won. I was just put off by his thoughtless review. Things like "0/10 gameplay- not much to say here (lawls)" and the lack of a "pros" and "cons" section are enough to tick me off.

I understand where your coming from, but wether it is in a PM or on the actual forums, it ALWAYS has to be kept profesional. Anyways you saying that noone cares about SC1 map making any more is kind've an ignorant thing to say, SC1 has been alive and still beating (as if it had a heart.) since present time and I am sure even though SC2 is out, it will still remain to be the game to play when people get bored of SC2, if they ever do. Anyways it was nice having you as a judge for the short period of time that you were one, have a splendid time with SC2 and I bid you farewell and goodluck. On to the judging, my scores will be evaluated and posted on here within the hour.

Well maybe people still car about SC1, but nobody cares about our contests. So, that's why I'm out.

This is taken from the ocean contest, which you entered and you knew fully well of the consequences of entering a movie map. I said it before and I'll say it again because, apparently, it's obvious to everyone but you: your map had no gameplay whatsoever! Movies are not games and gameplay, as the name suggests, is exclusive to games.

How could you be so arrogant to think that a minute-long sketch that doesn't even remotely abide to your own theme could get good ratings to begin with? My review was fair and if you have an argument against it other than "your ratings are retarded", I'd be glad to hear it.

That was actually me. I'll get that judging done within the next couple days.

UU isn't done with Week 2 either, at any rate. We were playing through my map with Tikels I believe, we have a save file about 2-3 hours into the game (about halfway), but I haven't seen UU on Bnet much since then, and when I do he is busy or afk. I've sent a few PMs trying to setup a time to get online but he's always busy Idk what to do there, it's been a long time now.

Cecil, if you're still one of the judges, then PM me a time and day and we can play through my map. Might not be able to do it all in one sitting, depending on how much time you have free, but we can always save it. I'd personally like to play it to completion again.

I take that back.

People have more fun playing my map on b.net than they do with Azrael's map. So, maybe the rating system is retarded.

It certainly sounds like something's retarded

People have more fun going outside than playing your map. Doesn't mean a text file saying "go outside" scores better than a fully functional map that follows the rubric.