Thank you Jip!
-Crimson
'Brigadier Fletcher' Mapping tournament
After a short discussion surrounding the submission of @TheCrimsonKnight I decided to drop the following AI grading criteria:
Navigational mesh
- Navigational mesh generates in more than 4 seconds
- Navigational mesh is larger than 30 megabytes
These were intended to limit noisy heightmaps. But in practice they also limit the creativity of an author. That would be damaging to the submission. As a result I'm dropping these two grading criteria all together.
Good luck for those that compete 
A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned
My tournament submission was kind of a last-minute spontaneous idea that I thought I could accomplish without the normal amount, i.e., fifty plus hours, of effort. The idea is several large artificial monoliths for base-building surrounded by water and maybe just a bit of natural-looking terrain, and it's predicated on the phenomenon that if the water level is the exact same height as the land you get to build and move land units as usual, but the water textures are also rendered.
Kings of Beta Ceti
No one now living knows where the massive columns, dubbed the Kings of Beta Ceti, came from, what they're made of, or the significance of their markings. But these mysteries are going to have to remain unsolved, at least for a while longer. The moon, officially named Beta Ceti E 44, is approaching its perigee with the super Jovian and the entire site is rapidly flooding. The UEF scientists are packing up and leaving, abandoning everything but their data. Even the exceptionally expensive Black Sun instruments will soon be submerged.
Site brief courtesy of UEF Advanced Special Programs Division.
Image from Novax pass 29:40:10 local time.
Final transport leaving Logistics Command. The floodwaters have reached the peaks of the artifacts.
Each spawn has about 1k mass reclaim. You can go first navy factory without moving if you wish.
Each civilian area contains about 2k mass reclaim.
The Black Sun wreckage was reduced to 15% of its original mass.
I'll get this uploaded to the vault in the next day or two. Thank you @Jip for hosting another tournament.
One final shot of some flooded structures.
I am submitting "Stulta Aqua Pugna" for this contest.
These photos are before adding the shaders I'm going to work on with Index! So it should look even better soon.
@thecrimsonknight Images are a tad small so see
"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" - Spock
@thecrimsonknight you can grab the map from the vault and reverse engineer it. As far as the actual skybox, I used Gaea for the planet texture and GIMP to sphereize, fade it out, and add the star.
Your map, Stulta Aqua Pugna, has been a blast to play! I've been using it to host extremely challenging survival games. The layout works great, the map looks fantastic, and it is an especially difficult map to try and win on. It also helped me fix a bug in my mod I was unaware of!
What I like about the map a lot is, while it is symmetrical, it doesn't feel symmetrical.
Anyways, here is a replay # of us all being crushed if you want to see:
#21177132
@rama That's great to hear! The idea is that the map is not perfectly symmetrical, but the differences are so minor, (and mostly aesthetic,) that it ends up looking more realistic while not sacrificing game-play
Humble reminder that the deadline is tomorrow (12th of November)
A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned
The submission deadline has passed once this message is 24 hours old or older. At the moment we received the following submissions:
- Adaptive Fangtooth Islands by @CaptainKlutz
- Stulta Aqua Pugna by @TheCrimsonKnight
- Kings of Beta Ceti by @STlNG
A work of art is never finished, merely abandoned
@captainklutz I am going through another revision let me beeeeeeee
(I'll be on time don't worry)
"Design is an iterative process. The necessary number of iterations is one more than the number you have currently done. This is true at any point in time."
Newest map:
This once lush and verdant garden world hosted a classified UEF research facility, researching the first components of the Black Sun doomsday device. We do not know what happened, but all that is left now is a crater and the scattered remnants of the research complex, the planet razed to the ground. // CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. AI compatible.
For this tournament I submit Project Vortex. The map was designed as a all-out navy brawl: every bit of terrain gained will come with another mex for you to claim. Small islands, many with mexes and/or chunks of reclaim are scattered across the map. Most of these islands are low enough that frigates will be able to shoot over them, although some larger ones have some cliffs and mountains.
The spawns are located on the top left and bottom right corners, with two players starting in the water. To start off, these water spawns get two hydros, but will then have to find dry land to expand their powergrid and build non-navy factories. The remaining corners provide some more reclaim, as well as larger islands that allow for some very aggressive forward factories.
Thematically, this map shows the result of a scientific disaster: all that remains of the research facility that was once present on this planet is a large crater in the center. What survived of the buildings from the research complex was blasted outwards, and later moved around by the water that ended up filling the crater. The effects on the region as a whole was disastrous: no life remains. Only the charred husks of what were once large forests teeming with life provide an indication that this was once a verdant garden world. Across the map you'll find many buildings that have since gotten stuck or washed ashore of the many islands. Some newer structures include UEF cranes and a civilian base, indicating that the UEF has started salvaging efforts.
The center of the crater remains a danger to this day, and it is not recommended that commanders are dropped into the deep.
"Design is an iterative process. The necessary number of iterations is one more than the number you have currently done. This is true at any point in time."
Newest map:
