Mapmaker Mapmaker Make Me My Map (Idea)

I have been thinking about this for a while since some of us in the rangers server have been doing things like map challenges (make the best map you can with 10 cubes, anyone?) and collaborations (one of these was along the lines of "map speed-dating" where we'd work on a map for a half hour and then send it to the next person while getting another map from another.

An idea I had was this:
1) I or someone else or whatever would make, say, the main room of a map, perhaps only partially completed
2) Other mappers would edit this base map into a finished product
3) We see which finished map(s) is/are the best
4) Put all the maps into a single mission or something

Sound good? I'll have to work on this idea later today.

edit: Furthermore, if we want to make things genuinely interesting, we can make a cube-count budget, i.e. you can only use such-and-such number of cubes more. For example, I could make a room or two and say "you can use no more than 15 cubes" or maybe 20. If I'm feeling really mean, I might say 10. I might give this idea a whirl tonight.

I like this idea. I often make a neat room and then don't have any idea what to make the rest of the level like so it just goes unfinished.

I would advocate for a higher cube count (say 25-30) so level designers have more leeway for creativity and detail. Otherwise all the maps will be the same: rectangular rooms connected by rectangular tunnels. Unless you like that kind of thing. Minerva, Neptune, and Vamped seem very popular.

Well while more cubes leaves more room for creativity increases mapmaker freedom, I want to force people to be as crafty as possible.

I could probably add more requirements for a finished map though.

I would have already given this idea a whirl if only there were actually some people in mumble other than Will and Blarget and me.

edit: I want to revise what I said about more cubes. I believe that more cubes gives someone more room to create what they want but does not necessarily constitute greater creativity. Though not mutually exclusive, creativity and freedom are not the same.

I am all over in this. Xeph is right, there must actually be no limit at all at the pieces we bring in. Aside from the fact that anyone playing descent uses one of two modern ports which support more than 900 cubes, even if we stick under 900, it's better to process the pieces as they come and try to adjust them into levels posteriori. My dad used to say to me when I was playing with lego, "never bind your design according to your available materials, never fear to run out." So let's build the pieces completely freely, and bind them as it can me seen fit.

Thinking about it, 25-30 is much more reasonable, maybe up to 50. On the other hand, I disagree with allowing no limits, especially in this case because it completely undermines much of the challenge; if you just want to build whatever you want, you might as well make your own level from scratch.

It also conflicts with one of my bigger inspirations for this thing - Trackmania's puzzle mode, which only allows a limited amount of pieces and challenges you to make a track within this budget to achieve the best time and hopefully beat the gold (or even the author) medal time. With an unlimited budget, the challenge is gone since you could just put in a bunch of platforms to make the straightest possible line from the start to the finish.

Haven't gotten around to doing anything like this since it seems the mumble has been dead-ish for the past couple of weeks or so as far as mapmakers go.

The cube limit is an important part of the map challenge, otherwise there's not as much of a point in passing the map around. So there should be some limit.

I think 25 cubes allows enough leeway for creativity, but also forces the level maker to be resourceful. I sketched out some ideas for rooms and it looks like I could make do with 25-30. You want to have enough cubes for a neat room, and also enough for neat hallways connecting that room to other places. No level maker would want to spend their turn building the hallways between the rooms.

Let's just start a level and post it on dmdb or something using a new profile that everyone knows the password to, then post updates here whenever someone is going to work on it/finished with their turn. (We should make it clear in the dmdb description that it is not a playable level yet). People could also get a head start by saving their creation as a block.

Also, what are the rules on custom textures?

One point of the challenge is for each individual mapmaker to submit their own completed level, though mapmakers taking turns to build a complete level is also a cool idea, and something I have done. An example of one of these kinds of collaborations is a level I recently uploaded called Dang Mang!!, where three of us (Blarget, JinX, and I) started base maps, then sent the level to one person while receiving another level from another, then modifying it. We'd swap every 30 minutes of real time.

But that's different from this.

As for custom textures, well the first level I'm going to use for this will be D1, but I will also convert the base map to D2. The rules on custom textures are simply that they are allowed as long as they do not appear in any of the cubes on the base map, just like no cubes or textures on the base map can be modified save the attaching of cubes to and from the base map.