Monthly Mapping Competitions

[RoBiNandL!nk]

newbie eh?? love rick i like the poll idea.. but i agree with more than a month. i cant make a half way decent looking map in a month yet alone one better than nick123s little brother 2-3 months should be the right amount of time. 2-3 months also lets you relax and think about it before u rush ideas and have to start over again

[RoBbIe]

K, well im going to settle with 2 months, i will try to start a contest next week if i get some people to help me, for the first contest it will be a poll no need for judges, all i need to do is think of a theme, and find out if superman would add 1st place winner's mp in for a week or so, So i will have the theme in shortly,

[musickid999]

I wouldn't mind helping lead it. I started all this talk anyway. My mapping for the past few weeks has been off, so I don't think I'll be able to really release anything worth being in a competition.

We could have a Seasonal Competition. 4 competitions a year, going on like this:

Fall Season - September to November
Winter Season - December to February
Spring Season - March to May
Summer Season - June to August

This first competition is obviously just a test to see if it will work. So it should run starting from right now towards the end of August.

[idias]

might be better to simply start a Poll with the map submissions and let everyone viewing the forum vote in private. It would be a bit less counting on the organizers part.

I dont agree, we could have both ways, let the general communnity votingin a poll, and also have 4-7 judges rating the maps. For egsample if we have 7 judges, 3 of them like Cuso, Rimini or DT, and 4 players that don't map.
_  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _ _  _  _  _  _ _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _ _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _        

We could have a Seasonal Competition. 4 competitions a year, going on like this:

Also dislike the season idea, it's too long, although it makes the winner much more important, because it's the best map, of three months. But still it's too long.

And like I said, if you need help you can count me in. PM me on IRC or tell me on the forums.

[musickid999]

Also dislike the season idea, it's too long, although it makes the winner much more important, because it's the best map, of four months of mapping.

Guess you didn't really like math that much when you were a young fellow.

EDIT: Never mind. You changed it. LOL

[idias]

If there are no judges there should be at least a couple of moderators, that would not just see what map is the most voted, but also see why it is the most voted one, and decide which one is truly the "best" map.
Because people have different tastes, some like small maps, some like big maps with more strategie and teamplay. Having the judges would help balance these things I think.

[Sorry about the double post...and I changed before I read your post =) - I just am too sleepy.]

[RoBbIe]

I am going with a poll, sense this is the first time doing this. So we will have a theme ready tomorrow? if that sounds fair enough and will go on for 2 months, or 3 what ever we decide, Musik id like you to help me, (get on xfire) and we can talk about themes and if anyone sees me around help give theme ideas or you can post in mapping theme idea thread.

[ViciouZ]

http://dplogin.com/forums/index.php?topic=10114.0

Try and learn from the mistakes. There is a another thread somewhere for the second one, but I couldn't be bothered to find it.

edit: http://dplogin.com/forums/index.php?topic=15123.0

[mewa]

I personally am not leading it, Everyone on the forum is, i just will announce and give out prizes (if that month does give out a prize) and i am the one who will try to find the judges,

hence you are the leader..... if youre the organizing it and setting up the rules, you are the leader/

I am going with a poll, sense this is the first time doing this.

guess what? youre making the more rules. and a hypocritical one. you want the poll/democratic system but it has to be enacted through you overruling this threads contributers saying they would like something more substantial than an open poll. also, since*

robbie, please take viciouzs advice to heart and study those threads. the last one was well organized but ended disastrously with the community completely disagreeing with the voting. i assume this is why you want the polling. but that is flawed too (especially on these forums), so a weighted system with some distinguished panel would most likely work best.

Anyways, I have to agree with the newbie up there,

nice rick, couldnt agree more.

[musickid999]

I think a voting system such as this would be nice.

A "Professional" rating combined with a "Public" rating.
4 judges seperately rate one criteria of the map and give it a rating out of 10.
Appearance - judged by non-mapper
Gameplay - judged by non-mapper (we might make this criteria judged by an active match clan)
Creativity - judged by a mapper (usually, it's the mappers that have problems coming up with ideas for a good map)
Technique - judged by a mapper (a non-mapper wouldn't know what to look for)
A public voting thread is also created, giving other people a chance to rate all 4 criterias (to keep things balanced).

We realize that the public voting system is flawed, but until we can come up with a better system, we will be using this one.

[mewa]

youll need more than four judges to avoid biasing issues. try like seven, or some larger odd number. seven seems right to me since any larger becomes to complicated and unneccesary. us supreme court found nine to be its comfortable number through trial and error.

you can, and should, use both the populous vote and the panel in the final decision. you just have to add a weighting system. there are any number of possible ways to do this, but for example; one panel vote = 10 public votes. you could make the algorithm incredibly fancy with loads of variables, but theres no need to since you'll have a rough idea of how many judge:public votes there will be with respect to maps submitted ([j/p]/m). roughly i'd think you'd want the total votes from judges to count for about 2/3 of the total votes.

also, might be beneficial to keep the conceptual talk in this thread and leave the other one as an "official" thread (only true or confirmed statements).

[KI3S]

Good idea, but not a good idea if run by these people. I'd actually like to see this take place, but at least take a meddling week from today to organize EVERYTHING. Tell Robbie to stop making new threads, then changing the rules, etc. If this whole thing is Music's idea, then let him run it. I'd like to see trusted members of the community judge this thing, not Robbie, Pheeks, and Kyuuchi.


Whatever you do, make sure you have everything set and ready to go before you post.

[Rick]

Robbie, Pheeks, and Kyuuchi.

haha!

Pheeks is new, Robbie isn't that great at either mapping or playing and Kyuuchi...I don't even know this guy.

[musickid999]

Don't worry, You can be rest assured that the judges will be more than capable of judging without any bias or problems. We're also quite well organized, as the official thread demonstrates.

[KI3S]

I saw the official thread, alot better from a couple days ago. Good work.

[Termin8oR]

Simply wow.

[musickid999]

Simply wow.

Wow as in, you think the organization is incapable of hosting these events?

[S8NSSON]

In order to get quality maps into the competition you should be prepared to allow the most time possible. Your best mappers won't even try to enter a map if they don't have sufficient time to create one.

The only way a themed contest would work is if it were very loosely themed. Do you really want 20 Old West themed maps coming out of a contest. Lets just say five of them were of good quality. There goes five Old West themed maps dumped into the community. Same with any theme.

Maybe base the competition on style? Example: 4v4 Indoor Multi-floor (must have at least two distinct floors/level). No sliding doors, no ladders, no water, no areas with sky (sky for effects and windows welcome). As always, multiple paths and strategic flow are a must.

There is no perfect judging system. But I feel the best judging system would be a blind vote/poll. The maps are submitted to competition leaders. The leader and his team review the maps to make sure they qualify according to the rules and theme and take screenshots. The maps are presented for review by the public. Then they are voted on via a poll by the public. One of the "rules" would be that no naming or features of or in the map should depict who the creator is, and there should be no display of betas or screenshots made available to the public until the competition releases the map for review and voting.