2009 Mapathon?

[Sabertooth_X]

Will there be one? Normally there has been a thread up already (around the beginning of May) to discuss ideas for one and such.

[Antistone]

Wouldn't surprise me if this didn't happen, given low participation last year and the proximity of SC2, but I chanced by and saw this thread, so I thought I'd offer an idea...

Last year, organizers decided to make the Mapathon into a collaborative project, to try to get a large and fun map rather than bunch of incomplete minigames. Some people seemed to feel that this didn't leave participants enough creative control, which might have been a reason for low participation, and the logistics of merging multiple entries became a problem almost instantly.

Here's a possible middle-road approach: before the contest (or as the first contest or two, like last year), develop and release a reusable framework. Contests involve creating a game using the framework, but each contest entry is a stand-alone game, so you can change anything you want and you don't need to worry about merging or compatibility with other entrants. We just use the framework as a bootstrapping tool to help people produce deeper and more polished maps more quickly.


For example, perhaps the framework consists of a system for two teams of players to select and customize heroes.

The first contest is to make a game involving territory control, so one entrant makes a king-of-the-hill game, one has heroes running flags from their base to various command points to seize control of them, and a third has heroes skirmishing over resurrection points similar to Runes of Power. Next week, the contest is to make a game featuring a dangerous environment, so one entrant has the two teams of heroes racing through a valley fortified by undead, another puts the teams in an arena match filled with deadly traps, and a third features a survival contest against waves of monsters.

All the maps feature essentially the same set of heroes and the same rules for selecting and customizing them (possibly with some changes necessary to support/balance the particular game), which means that the map makers can just focus on the core game rather than the large set of options and abilities that make it interesting and replayable, and players who've tried out one map can more easily get into all the others. However, each designer retains complete creative control, can change anything they want, and need not worry about integrating their work with anyone else's.


As another example, the framework might consist of a tech-tree suited for constructing fortresses: walls, traps, sentries, and the like. Different mappers in various contests might use this to create a game where each team builds a fortress and then races to destroy the enemy fortress, a tower defense-style game, an empire-building game where you defend your cities and trade routes against barbarians and bandits, a game where you design a prison to try and contain dangerous creatures for as long as possible, etc.


TLDR Version: Produce lots of complete, polished maps quickly by giving people reusable components and letting them focus just on the part of their game that makes it unique.

[The_Nyne]

I like antistones idea. Just have somebody take and build an easily implemental framework and everyone does what they will with it.

[Sabertooth_X]

I must say, while that is a very creative way to balance the way the past two types of Mapathons, I lean in favor of the earlier types, where a keyword is given and you just do whatever.

[CHUNK]

Recently we had an officers' meeting to discuss the potential for a Mapathon 2009 and decided that no one likes a poorly-attended contest, and while there are probably ways that we could encourage more active participation than last year (or the previous, for that matter), it is generally our impression that genuine interest of a few people probably isn't enough to merit a full-fledged summer contest.

However, we generally feel that weekly summer get-togethers are still a great idea and in the spirit of Mapathon, what we think we will likely do is have an official 'game night', where people can bring random maps to play - weird, poorly designed, awesomely-well designed, partially designed... whatever people want - so long as it is fun (or at a minimum weird enough that we have a good time). Along with the Game Night, we will also state up-front that anyone actively designing a map can bring it and we will play it, generally give it the once-over, and give the best feedback that we can about it. Along the way, we might spark a few new map projects (maybe someone will take an idea from one of the maps we play and extend it or modify it into a prototype) or inspire someone to pick up on an older project that they abandoned... whatever goes.

Game Nights will be for anyone who hangs out in our community (or any of our associated communities) or for people who want to get involved with our community. These will be a bit different than our traditional in-house clan play-testing Game Nights, which we will also schedule either on demand or if there are enough in-house projects, regularly over the summer.

The idea is to have an organized time when people will commit to coming on bnet - so for people who just want to keep warcraft fun by playing with friends (often the Mapathon contests were just about playing around with new maps/ideas and having fun), there'll be some of that. For map-makers who want to flirt with new or old ideas, there's a chance to do that... and for those people who want some serious feedback about projects they are developing, there'll be plenty of people around to help out (we hope).

Our intention is not to try and ramp up a complete contest - but to keep the participation level active, keep the gameplay fun, and to possibly provide some motivation for new ideas along the way. We used to have nights like this (between playtesting maps) where someone would dig around and find some new maps and then just throw them all in a pile and people could cram into them and see what it was about and I think they were usually some of the best times as a community because there wasn't such a heavy expectation of anything other than screwing around, but there were always enough people that you could play whatever.

We haven't organized enough to come up with a specific time-frame for which day/days we will hold these Game Nights, but if people who want to be involved have restrictions, now would be the time to let us know and we'll try to schedule something that works. There will be some more posts around about these events in the future, but feel free to give feedback here for now.

[Sabertooth_X]

Sounds like a pretty good idea.
I support it.