'Brigadier Fletcher' Mapping tournament

Jip

This mapping tournament is not like previous mapping tournaments. I'd recommend everyone to give it a thorough read. This tournament is not just about creating great content, it is also about sharing your ideas on how you tackle the creation of such great content.

You can post your submission in this forum topic until November the 12th, 2023.

There will be a follow up player tournament where two top-notch teams will play a BO5 with an expected prize pool of €320,- .They will play using the submissions of this tournament. The player tournament is separate of this tournament and there will be a separate forum post for it.

And last but not least - please be aware of speculative work. We do not offer you a job here, hence this isn't speculative work. But you need to understand the value of the content that you create and share. If you manage to win this tournament then that means that you're either experienced or talented. One way or another, read the website about speculative work. It helps you understand that what you do has value and that you should be properly compensated for your time and effort when creating content professionally.

Other tournaments in this series:

'Princess Burke' Mapping Tournament
'Brigadier Fletcher' Mapping Tournament (this forum post)
'Brigadier Fletcher' Player tournament

Jip

Prizes

First place

You are rewarded with the Grand Sculptor avatar. Your submission is guaranteed to be played during the player tournament. Additionally, the winner of the tournament receives one of the following rewards:

A license for the Indie edition of World Machine

or

A license for the Indie edition of Gaea

or

A €130,- one time donation to the Wereld Kanker Onderzoek Fonds

Second place

You are rewarded with a Face of Faction avatar. Your submission is guaranteed to be played during the player tournament. Additionally, the runner-up of the tournament receives one of the following rewards:

A license for the Indie edition of World Machine

or

A license for the Indie edition of Gaea

or

A €110,- one time donation to the Wereld Kanker Onderzoek Fonds

Third place

You are rewarded with a Faction avatar. Your submission is guaranteed to be played during the player tournament. There are no additional rewards.

Unlike other tournaments you can not receive a direct cash pay out under any circumstance. Each prize has separate options available. The use of or is exclusive, meaning you can't have both options. Any received license as part of a reward will be all yours to use as you see fit.

The winners will be tagged in this forum post. A prize is automatically converted into a donation to the Wereld Kanker Onderzoek Fonds if left unclaimed for one month or longer. The receipt of all donations to the Wereld Kanker Onderzoek Fonds will be posted in this forum thread.

All the prizes are funded by myself. This tournament is an experiment. No additional donations will be accepted. I first want to gain some experience hosting tournaments like these before I make it more complicated for myself

Jip

Requirements

The following are strict requirements. If you do not meet these requirements then your submission will be disqualified. I don't want to disqualify your submission. Please make sure you've read, understood and applied them accordingly. To list them, you have to:

(1) The submission must be 20x20 naval-based map and it must use the full playable area

As an example, the following maps meet this requirement:

- The Bermuda Locket
- Sludge

The following maps would be disqualified:

- Crossfire Canal
- Any map that reduces the playable area via script
- Any map that (significantly) reduces the playable area via terrain types

The reason Crossfire Canal would be disqualified is because of the extensive use of mountains to limit the playable area.

(2) The submission must be licensed with a creative commons license. My personal recommendations are cc-by-sa 4.0 or cc-by-nc-sa 4.0

To add a license to a map you can include a LICENSE.md file in the map that has the full text of the license. You can add the abbreviation to the description of the map.

(3) Gameplay related assets such as reclaim and deposits need to be symmetrical. The heightmap does not need to be fully symmetrical, as long as there are no clear advantages or disadvantages to one team
(4) The submission needs to be created for 8 players (spawn positions). You can support more or less by using the adaptive script but we'll grade it based on the default eight player layout (the first eight slots)
(5) The submission needs to be new, it should not have been published at the moment the tournament starts
(6) The submission needs to meet the vault rules
(6) You can have only one submission

Jip

Grading

No matter what expertise, all grading is subjective and highly depends on those who are grading. I hope these sections allow you to understand what it is that we're looking for. And I also hope that it helps you understand how one can look at a map.

AI (up to 6 points)

A significant chunk of the total number of games played involve one or more AIs. The support for AIs therefore matters; the existence of this section signifies that importance. On average the AI has more trouble dealing with unintuitive situations.

You can use the following lists as a rough example to what we use to deduct points for this section. If you'd like to read more about AIs and what they may find difficult then you can read up about it on the wiki with thanks to @maudlin27

Navigational mesh

~~Navigational mesh generates in more than 4 seconds~~
~~Navigational mesh is larger than 30 megabytes~~
Unable to generate expansion markers
Unable to generate large expansion markers

Legacy support

No legacy pathing markers
No legacy AI utility markers

Heightmap

Map has narrow paths
Map has tall cliffs
Map has extractors with no room for all storages
Map has reclaim on unpathable terrain
Map has extractors too close to the map border
Map has small plateau's

Spawn locations

Spawn locations have civilians nearby
Spawn locations are too small for a large base
Spawn locations rely on cliff building

Theme (up to 8 points)

The map should give the user the impression it is on a planet that belongs to the UEF faction. How you achieve this is up to you. You can take inspiration from campaign maps that involve UEF bases and settlements.

note: if I'm not mistaken then Earth got blown up by the Seraphim and would therefore not belong to the UEF faction anymore

Aesthetics (up to 10 points)

Great maps not only have great gameplay; they also look and feel great. The atmosphere of a map matters. This section represents the general aesthetics related to a map.

You can use the following lists as a rough example to what we use to deduct points for this section. If you'd like to read more about creating high quality map content then you can read up about it on the wiki with thanks to @IndexLibrorum . In particular, the topics about Gaea can be meaningful even when you only have the free edition.

Decals

Decals do not accentuate terrain
Decals do not accentuate ramps
Decals do not accentuate props
Fewer than 10 decals
More than 2000 decals
Decals do not have proper LODCutoffs

Props

Props appear to be random
Less than 10 props
More than 10000 props
Excessive floating props

Heightmap

Terrain appears to be artificial
Terrain that is unpathable is not recognizable
Terrain is excessively noisy

Stratum textures or masks

Used five or fewer stratum layers
Two or more duplicated stratum textures
Stratum texture repetition
Stratum texture stretching
Stratum mask visually look like noise
Stratum masks do not blend properly
Stratum texture too blurry

Water

Water ramp bleeding
Lack of waves

Lighting

Incorrect use of map-wide shadow
Incorrect use of map-wide normals
Over-saturated colors
Excessive normals
Map is too bright
Map is too dark

Terrain types

No terrain types applied
Incorrect use of terrain types

Disksize

Map is more than 200 megabytes in disk size when compressed

General impression

Map feels incoherent
Map feels unfinished

Strategy (up to 16 points)

This is where it all comes together. This section is all about the heightmap, the placement of markers (such as resources, spawn locations) and where we can find the initial reclaim. This section is difficult to quantify. We encourage you to discuss your designs with high rated players and/or members of the matchmaker team as you see fit.

You can use the following lists as a rough example to what we use to deduct points for this section. Note that this particular list is likely incomplete as it was written for the Princess Burke Tournament that has a different map format.

Resources

No safe resources for each player (< 3)
No raidable resources for each player (< 2)
No contestable resources for each player (< 2)
Too many contestable resources for each player ( > 4)
No clear expansions for each player
No hydrocarbon plants for each player

Reclaim

Very little or no reclaim (< 500 mass per player)
Excessive reclaim (> 5000 per player)
Excessive concentrated reclaim

Gameplay

Map has volatile plateau's
Map has volatile islands
Map has volatile reclaim
Map has volatile resources

Water

Map doesn't utilize water
Map favors faction with early hover

Heightmap

Map has spotty pathing
Map has narrow land pathing (doesn't fit a Fatboy side to side)
Map has narrow naval pathing (doesn't fit a CZAR side to side)
Map has clear choke points
Map has spotty build locations (a lot of difficult to see slopes)
Map has spotty build locations at a spawn (a lot of difficult to see slopes)
Map has excessive cliffs that cause bombers to miss
Map has hard to see hills that block projectiles
Map has a lot of resources near the edge of the map

The lists of examples are just examples of what we could be looking for to deduct points. They exist for you to take inspiration from as what to look out for. They may not be used at all or it may include more or less observations

Jip

Graders

Deribus (confirmed)
Stormlantern (confirmed)
Jip (confirmed)

Jip

I'll update the posts accordingly, just like with the Princess Burke Mapping Tournament

TheCrimsonKnight

I'd like to ask how to make sure that map is compatible with LOUD and BAR? What are the requirements?

Jip

There are no requirements to make them compatible with them. The license merely allows someone from the BAR or LOUD community to use your idea and content (heightmap / stratum layers) and re-publish it there with the same license, crediting you.

TheWeakie

@jip said in 'Brigadier Fletcher' Mapping tournament:

(1) The submission must be 20x20 naval-based map and it must use the full playable area

Probably should explain a bit more what this exactly means. Would it mean that bermuda locket isnt counted as full playable area because of the dead space around the land mass (Even though it still tends to be used for raiding)? Or does it simply mean that it has to be 20x20 and not 18x18 (which would technically count as 20x20)

TheCrimsonKnight

Also, what exactly is the theme? Just UEF in general I'd assume?

ovenman

Signing up.

Jip

There's no need to sign up, once the details are finalized there will be a submission deadline

waffelzNoob

Signing up.

TheCrimsonKnight

@jip is this contest still going to happen?

Jip

Yes, but I did not have the time to finalize it yet.

Jip

The 'Brigadier Fletcher' mapping tournament is open for submissions until the 12th of November, 2023!

Have fun and good luck for those that compete

Blade_Walker

I had an old map idea that would suit the requirements, signing up

Jip

No need to sign up in front - as long as you post your submission before the deadline has passed

Jip

@thecrimsonknight said in 'Brigadier Fletcher' Mapping tournament:

Also, what exactly is the theme? Just UEF in general I'd assume?

I've not responded to this I think, apologies! Yes; it is a general UEF theme. The goal is that when someone looks at the map that the observer can clearly identify the planet as being part of the UEF faction.

CaptainKlutz

Making my post early because I'm unsure how busy I'll be during November.

Adaptive Fangtooth Islands

The idea was to create a navy-dominant map with strong land elements (air was always going to be relevant due to map size). Here we can see this idea manifested in multiple long islands that can be fought over by land but cut off by sea. Most of the mass on the map is vulnerable to navy, so that secures it as the primary theatre, but the capability of hover vehicles to navigate the numerous ridges should not be underestimated.

Features considerable Adaptive mex spawning for meaningful games regardless of player configuration.

Note: The map is still actively under development, do not take the version currently on the vault as the final product until the week of the deadline.

Thanks to Jip for hosting.