Not had time to map kaias. Been real busy with packing, work, real life, bills and crap.

Congrats to everyone that finished.

I think my biggest disappointment is not being able to finish the map in time. I wanted to have an operational briefing, two or three custom music tracks, and time to actually doodad it. But, that's what you get for waiting until you're only able to spend eight hours on your work...

Yer with your fixed version only half of my troops were given to me the other half remained orange (neutral to me, but they were aggressive to me); then I had to fight my own troops, luckily I send one of my rines toward the teal firebat and it was rescuable... But then I died later on because I didn't have enough men. ;(

Oh_Man, it's a two player map, so you'll need someone to play with you. That's why you only got half your men. Pr0 probably should have specified that.

Actually while I'm specifying stuff like this, you need at least two players to play TANKS 2. At most eight. But you're not going to play it anyway so

hmm

Oh.
I didn't look that hard.

When does judging start?

It has already begun!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111one

two?

What if one of our mappers here turns out to be non-human??

Anyway... Congrats to you all!!

Then it can plug its shiny new peripheral directly into its USB port.

Lets do another in 3 weeks. Sounds good.

Would anyone be interested in a 1 month or multi month contest that allows entries from this contest as well as fresh entries?

The prize would be of similar value.

Also where the fuck is everyone on donuts now I want to play these multiplayer maps with people. -_-

Yes, interested.

I probably won't be participating since my aim is to make at least one UMS map per month, and if I'm working on the same thing for that long, I'll either finish early or not finish at all.

I got banned @East......
I'm down for a month long.. a multi month long would be like a super project o.o......
And who won this contest?

I'm down.

Well I've finally got around to playing all the maps, the delay was primarily due to finding people to play the multiplayer maps with. Thanks Jack and his crew in that regard; Lethal and Kaias disappeared. -_-

I'll cut to the chase: the prize goes to, fairly unequivocally, Leeroy Jenkins' Middle of the Ocean 2 DOWNLOAD.
He crafted a well rounded RPG with good atmosphere and decent gameplay, albeit with simple systems and a basic storyline. But afterall, this was a week-long contest, and Leeroy produced a map that fit that timeline, unlike so many other contestants, particularly the drop-outs, who fell into the trap of biting off way more than they could chew.

Leeroy - PM me with your details and to discuss what prize you want.

FURTHER THOUGHTS
Funky's "Haunted Facility"
Pros
+It is... complete?
+Intuitive... gameplay?
Cons
-Has about 30 triggers
-So vanilla one might suspect it was made in 1999

OK... well this was a very basic map. Played with three players, you go around killing preplaced units and... well that's about it. It was pretty difficult too, so we ended up rigging it so we could complete it... and STILL couldn't finish it because there were some random locations that just insta killed you if you stepped on them.






jjf28's "Narrow Straits"
Pros
+Promising Grid-based PvP shooter
+Could be picked up easily by bnetters
Cons
-Incomplete, no ammo pickups, no visual representation of gunshots?
-Gameplay I felt was very simplistic and not much fun... not much depth to it

This was a promising map but it was incomplete. I think even if you added some method of getting ammo and then released the game as is it would still be boring. Things like randomised weapon spawns that you can pick up, interactable environment (teleport beacons, gates you can open/close to force players to take different routes, etc.) would help give this map good gameplay depth. Of course, I don't know what you had planned for this map, but I feel like it has a LOT of potential.

Right now all you can do is shoot each other, in a map that I think is far too big for the gameplay. The observer is also pretty ugly aesthetically but I guess it is a necessity for your system to work? I think weapons should have some sort of visual effect when you shoot them, all we had was WAVs. I also think the objective isn't very conductive of interesting gameplay, you have to plant a bomb at the enemies base, but they SPAWN at that base! Capture the Flag would be much more interesting, especially if you can cut off routes by opening/closing gates like I mentioned previously, perhaps reduce movement speed on the flag carrier too.

All in all this map isn't very fun to play as is, but this is due largely to its incompleteness and over-simplicity. With further work this map could become a great PvP map and the next bnet hit.





Pr0nogo's "Graves of Stone"
Pros
+It has voice acting
Cons
-The voice acting is shit

Ok, OK, OK... so the voice acting was alright. But each character sounded exactly the same, only with different audio effects. The one exception was the... British? guy? He actually sounded different from everyone else. Sort of.

Now... the gameplay was vanilla campaign style. If you've played the Starcraft and Brood War campaigns... you've played Graves of Stone. Nothing set it apart except for the custom VO work. I don't think it was balanced very well either, Jack and I played and we ended up draining all our resources fending off the (trigger spawned?) enemy waves and made barely any progress pushing through the map. We got to first UAV... and that's about it. Ended up flinging all our SCVs into the battle as well. There were minimal minerals at your main bases, and NO expos in the entire map. Liberating UAVs should have given some sort of resource + unit reinforcement reward. You'd have to be a pretty strong melee player to beat this map unaided, and I think you'd have to do it by turtling at your base, massing as many units as the mineral limitations allowed, then pushing out in one big joint task force.

So after Jack and I got raped I rigged the map and smashed it solo. All it got me was a few extra VO scenes. Storyline was... alright... I guess. Vincent Burke was a typical subservient jarhead, and it was almost sickly to watch him and his superior constantly ingratiate each other after the most minute achievements: "Good job Burke," "Thank you sir," "Your welcome, Burke" "No, you're welcome, sir" "Oh Burke, stop it" "Sir, I love you sir," "Report to my cabin, I want to show you my Captains Log...-" [Dialogue gets too graphic to repeat here].

OK, so basically - I think more work should be put into the map itself and less into the VO. VO can certainly accentuate a map but can't really make it stand on its own. You need unique and enjoyable gameplay for that. And the gameplay in this map is nothing more than what shipped out of the box way back in 1998.






Jack[RCDF's "Black Hat RPG"
Pros
+Ambitious Map - VHP and EUD systems
+Great atmosphere, cool music and somewhat engrossing story
Cons
-Combat wasn't very enjoyable
-Though technically complete, you could clearly tell it was rushed

This map is another one that had a lot of potential but fell short because Jack either A. didn't manage his time properly, or B. attempted something too big for a 1 week contest. Chiefly noted is the rapid fire text. The dialogue was not timed properly at all, most of it flashes by so quickly I missed it. The ending was also incredibly abrupt, flicking by in a series of text montages that you only barely get to read. No doubt this was because Jack was trying to get more important things done before the deadline, and thus didn't get time to fix these 'little things'. However it detracted significantly from the aesthetic of the map and hampered the player's ability to get into the story.

So the 'theme' of the RPG is that you are a hacker on your computer. Your dad is also a hacker but he has gone missing, Tron-style. You play the hacker's 'digital avatar' and you progress through the digital world shooting viruses/trojans and having boss battles with other hackers. You collect various 'programs' which modify things such as your HP, damage, armour, and attack range. All monsters have VHP, but you attack automatically, it isn't "A + Left Click" style combat. Viruses also spawn 'dynamically', though I use the term hesitantly. Sure, they're not preplaced, but they spawn at set locations and have basically no AI - you mow them down as they spawn, they don't JYD either. Despite VHP, the combat still feels pretty vanilla. Enemies shoot you, you shoot them, no spells, nothing unique about bosses except lots of hit points, nothing. EUDs are used only for interacting with items, opening 'doors', and opening your menu.

[SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH IF YOU DONT WANT SPOILERS] Storyline was interesting at first but the ending kind of destroys it. You are hunting down this master hacker to track your dad, you find the master hacker, and it turns out he is not your enemy he is your friend. Then cops bust in, and take you to jail (at this point the 'game' is over, you are now watching a movie), your dad is in jail too. You get tortured, the master hacker comes and rescues you somehow, and then the game leaves you with a quote, basically instilling some sort of 'anti government' vibe. This whole sequence takes place in about 30 seconds too, due to the rapid fire text spam. Yer - rushed. Good music though.

In summary, I think this map was just very rushed and fell short as a result. I think combat should definitely have some extra quirks. Like spells and such. "A + Left Click" might actually work for it. The storyline at first felt like it was going to be good, but the ending was a big time let down. Once again though, I think this was due to it being rushed. The fact that the text whizzed by so fast I could barely read it didn't help the story much either. You know what you should do? Something like Deep Six/One Small Task. With footstep sounds, the map split into tiles, etc. Your VHP/EUD systems would work perfect with something like that. Lots of potential.





Mini Moose 2707's "Theater of War"
Pros
+Very Unique DOTA-esque PvP warfare
+Huge variety of tactical options
Cons
-Bnetters complained that it had 'more breadth then depth'
-Some balancing issues, game-breaking bugs

Yer, played this a couple times on bnet. Had an intelligent bnetter give some very thoughtful feedback on this map, ask Lil.

OK so basically you are two teams of three, but the players are more like 'generals' or 'battlefield tacticians'. The armies are controlled by computers, you just maneuver them and send reinforcements and launch spells and so on. So bear with me when I say "DOTA-esque" because that is the closest type of game I could think of that describes it. You have a huge array of options available to you on the bottom of the screen. You send civilians to read what each option does, and you build nydus canals to actually 'cast' the spell (wherever you place the nydus). These spells are things like, sending dropships full of troops, spawning different unit types, moving where your units spawn from, capturing bases, freezing enemy troops, etc. All these spells cost minerals, which you accrue during the game.

A complaint made by battlenet user#241239123 was that you probably had too many options than what was needed, which I somewhat agree with. I mean - many of the options were only superficially different, and tactically equivalent in terms of their function. Lil_Inf summarised it well with the "depth not breadth" comment. The map would benefit from sublimating several of these options, and perhaps further differentiating the remaining options. You need more things like the "Vacuum" spell, that was really cool - sending a dropship full of units to reinforce an scv capturing a base, then vacuuming the enemy units that come to stop the SCV. More abilities like that would really expand the strategic complexity of the map.

There were a couple of nasty glitches and some balance issues - but that goes without saying really. Nothing that can't be fixed. Also you should put water or something on the sunken and spore colony areas. Otherwise, in non-full player games, people can build nydus canals there.

Overall, this was a pretty great PvP map and I don't think I've ever seen its like before. It was very difficult to weigh this against Leeroy's Middle of the Ocean map because they were of completely different genres of map. In the end I went with Leeroy's map because I had more fun playing it; which, at the end of the day, is what it is all about. But make no mistake, this is a great map - and with some additional tweaks - this could be a big bnet hit.




Leeroy Jenkin's "Middle of the Ocean 2"
Pros
+Complete RPG with a variety of activities for the player
+Unique sprite/terrain use, great music, quirky fourth-wall breaking dialogue
Cons
-Nothing revolutionary in terms of systems
-Storyline is bland (but amusing!)

Well firstly let me say that this is truly the sequel to Middle of the Ocean 1. Leeroy stays true to his queer fourth-wall breaking humour that always makes me lol, while going more ambitious with the gameplay. This RPG had it all, catching & cooking fish, breaking into houses, warping across continents, fighting monsters underwater, saving the damsel in distress, equipping armour, levelling up, and speaking to many different people about all sorts of topics.

The storyline is typical fetch-quest, collect 3 keys and then kill the king. I admit I kinda felt like a dick killing the King. It wasn't like the king was portrayed as some oppressive tyrant and I was the heroic liberator. In fact - the king seemed like a pretty swell guy, which made me cringe when I plunged my sword into his nice-guy heart. The storyline didn't really expound on this point at all, you had a task and you had to do it because... you had to do it? You never got to see the aftermath of your decisions either, after killing the king it was quest complete - GG. That all said, though the storyline wasn't very satisfying on a grand scale, it was the dialogue with all the individual characters that I most enjoyed. Leeroy has this unique brand of humour that permeates all his characters, and just makes each conversation fun to read, even if there is not really much 'point' to it all.

Combat was pretty vanilla - monsters were preplaced, no spells on either side, and your equipped armour was represented as shield points, whereas your damage was represented as skill points (vespene gas). The only unique thing was that monsters would drop mineral chunks which you picked up by interacting with them (moving scourge). This was kinda cool but also superfluous. There is no downside to picking up gold, so having to pick it up constantly becomes a chore. Why not just reward the player directly per kill? If you have to pick up a dropped item, it should be something that the player actually has to decide needs to be picked up or not, like some sort of item. The bosses just had lots of hitpoints, I think one of the bosses 'charged' at you - but this was just aesthetic and wasn't really a spell. I also wished the King had his own boss battle.

This RPG had really good atmosphere, the music was amazing. And most of the funky things you did with sprites I had never seen before. How the hell do you get the civilian on water?? The forest tunnel with guardian projectiles flying overhead was interesting, I'm not entirely sure what those yellow gobs were meant to represent though.

What were you supposed to do with cooked fish a part from sell it? You should be able to eat it. I finished a lot of side quests, I think, all of them - though I can't be sure.

This was a fun little RPG that utilised its one week time limit really well. Though it offers nothing groundbreaking - it is a very well polished RPG that will offer you an hour or so of quirky dialogue and interesting gameplay. Perhaps one day we will be treated to a Middle of the Ocean 3?




I think I will be hosting a multi-month contest in the near future if another people are interested. If you are, post your consent and any other ideas, such as start and end dates, here in this thread.

Daww you said nice things about my map :3

Congratulations Leeroy! I'll be sending you all my minerals.

I actually could read all the text in my map, maybe you just read slow. Havin said that, it was a bit quick and I was going to change it but it was down to the line on getting the map complete and out the door.

The ending was rushed out to get the map complete, as you no doubt worked out. I think that while the map was a little ambitious, I was pretty happy with how well it turned out in one week, although if there was another one week contest I think I could do better. JYD and death animations would have taken a moment to add and were planned but I forgot. Boss fights were uninteresting and there was only one kind of spawned enemy because of time constraints; hopefully I'll continue working on the map to show more what I envisioned for it. I might rip the entire ending out and replace it.