Map 1 - Parkball - Hillis

Originality : 6
Gameplay : 6
Eyecandy : 5
Overall : 7

As it is this map is a bit simple, needs some team colouring and on a personal not I would love to see some trees around this map. Other then that job well done!

Map 2 - Ballz - Cortez

Originality : 6
Gameplay : 5
Eyecandy : 4
Overall : 5

A good laugh and nice stress test for every nexball server. But this is basically duodecouple times 30

Map 3 - No Arena - Ai

Originality : 6
Gameplay : 6
Eyecandy : 7
Overall : 6

The large number of bugs dragged this one down a bit but I see this map has already been updated hugely, so good job on that for sure!

Map 4 - CB Nexball - C. Brutail

Originality : 9
Gameplay : 6
Eyecandy : 7
Overall : 7

This map was my personal favourite because of its originality and a lot of good ideas found its way into the map even with the small time of one hour.

Map 5 - Second Stage - TVR

Originality : 6
Gameplay : 5
Eyecandy : 5
Overall : 5

This is basically the small football map by Revenant sized up a bit with ramps, only the ramps would have added to the gameplay more when there was no way to avoid them.

Map 6 - Rock 'n Ball - morphed

Originality : 7
Gameplay : 4
Eyecandy : 9
Overall : 7

This looks as fabulous as you would expect from its author but is a bit too small and because the hoops are so small it's almost impossible to score.

Map 7 - Bubble Ball - Ronan

Originality : 8
Gameplay : 5
Eyecandy : 5
Overall : 6

This is like Cortez his map a good laugh because of the tiny turret and the invisible moles. Though both get a bit annoying if you start to want to play seriously

The final results are in!

At the last moment our plans for Fisume to be our third judge on the team fell through, so I took over his spot. I gave the other two the task to not only look at the maps as they were now, but also how they could become when given some more work afterwards. I think we all did quite well on that I think we decided on a deserved winner.

To explain the scoring, there were 200 points up for grabs in total. 20 of those were technical points regarding packing and naming and of course, whether the mapper managed to get his map done in the set time limits. The remaining 180 points were available to the judges. They had four criteria to rate the maps on, which were:

Originality -> scale 1 to 10 -> multiplied by 2 for final score for each judge
Gameplay -> scale 1 to 10 -> multiplied by 2 for final score for each judge
Eye candy -> scale 1 to 10 -> multiplied by 1 for final score for each judge
Overall -> scale 1 to 10 -> multiplied by 1 for final score for each judge

The first three criteria pretty much speak for themselves and my description of the 'overall' criteria was "All things considered, how likely is it you would vote for this map if it came up in the voting list?". So more a gut feeling score than anything. Originality and Gameplay were most important of course in such a short time period to make a map, so they were rated higher than Eye Candy and Overall by multiplying their score by two. \

By the way: some might think that this is a rubbish way of rating maps. And they might very well be right!

So there we go, how did the scores turn out? I will start with the lowest scoring map and will move up to 1st position like that!

Ballz - Cortez

Technical Points:
-----------------
Map worked out of the box. so 5 points for you sir!
You did not use the naming convention so no 5 points for that.
The .map was submitted before GMT 19:00, so you get those 5 points.
You had your .pk3 in by GMT 19:15, so you do get 5 points for that as well!

This is a total Technical Points score of 15.

Judges Points:
--------------
FruitieX gave you (3*2) + (2*2) + 4 + 2 = 16 points
Merlijn gave you (6*2) + (2*2) + 3 + 4 = 23 points
PinkRobot gave you (6*2) + (5*2) + 4 + 5 = 31 points

This gives you, Cortez, a total of 85 points, which puts you in 7th place.

Bubble Ball - Ronan

Technical Points:
-----------------
Map worked out of the box so 5 points for you sir!
You did not use the naming convention so no points for that.
The .map was not submitted before GMT 19:00, so you do not get those 5 points.
You did not have your .pk3 in by GMT 19:15, so you do not get 5 points for that.

This is a total Technical Points score of 5!

Judges Points:
--------------
FruitieX gave you (7*2) + (5*2) + 4 + 6 = 34 points
Merlijn gave you (8*2) + (5*2) + 6 + 5 = 37 points
PinkRobot gave you (8*2) + (5*2) + 5 + 6 = 37 points

This gives you, Ronan, a total of 113 points, which puts you in 6th place.

No Arena - Ai

Technical Points:
-----------------
Map worked out of the box so 5 points for you sir!
You did use the naming convention so 5 points for that.
The .map was not submitted before GMT 19:00, so you do not get those 5 points.
You did not have your .pk3 in by GMT 19:15, so you do not get 5 points for that either.

This is a total Technical Points score of 10.

Judges Points:
--------------
FruitieX gave you (9*2) + (3*2) + 7 + 4 = 35 points
Merlijn gave you (7*2) + (5*2) + 6 + 6 = 36 points
PinkRobot gave you (6*2) + (6*2) + 7 + 6 = 37 points

This gives you, Ai, a total of 118 points, which puts you in 5th place.

Parkball - Hillis

Technical Points:
-----------------
Map did not work out of the box. so no 5 points for you sir!
You did use the naming convention, there's 5 points right there!
The .map was not submitted before GMT 19:00, so you don't get those 5 points.
You had your .pk3 in by GMT 19:15, so you do get 5 points for that.

This is a total Technical Points score of 10.

Judges Points:
--------------
FruitieX gave you (5*2) + (5*2) + 3 + 5 = 28 points
Merlijn gave you (7*2) + (8*2) + 8 + 7 = 45 points
PinkRobot gave you (6*2) + (6*2) + 5 + 7 = 36 points

This gives you, Hillis, a total of 119 points, which puts you in 4th place.

Rock 'n Ball - Morphed

Technical Points:
-----------------
Map worked out of the box (despite lack of .mapinfo!) so 5 points for you sir!
You did not use the naming convention so no points for that.
The .map was not submitted before GMT 19:00, so you do not get those 5 points.
You did not have your .pk3 in by GMT 19:15, so you do not get 5 points for that.

This is a total Technical Points score of 5.

Judges Points:
--------------
FruitieX gave you (7*2) + (2*2) + 9 + 3 = 30 points
Merlijn gave you (9*2) + (6*2) + 10 + 8 = 48 points (highest rated map of this judge)
PinkRobot gave you (7*2) + (4*2) + 9 + 7 = 38 points

This gives you, Morphed, a total of 121 points, which puts you in 3rd place.

Second Stage - TVR

Technical Points:
-----------------
Map did NOT contain any Hint Brushes, but this will not affect your score.
Map worked out of the box so 5 points for you sir!
You did use the naming convention so 5 points for that.
The .map was submitted before GMT 19:00, so you get those 5 points.
You did not have your .pk3 in by GMT 19:15, so you do not get 5 points for that.

This is a total Technical Points score of 15.

Judges Points:
--------------
FruitieX gave you (6*2) + (7*2) + 4 + 7 = 37 points
Merlijn gave you (8*2) + (8*2) + 7 + 7 = 46 points
PinkRobot gave you (6*2) + (5*2) + 5 + 5 = 32 points

This gives you, TVR, a total of 130 points, which puts you in 2nd place.

Lava Ball - C. Brutail

Technical Points:
-----------------
Map worked out of the box so 5 points for you sir!
You did use the naming convention so 5 points for that.
The .map was submitted before GMT 19:00, so you get those 5 points.
You did not have your .pk3 in by GMT 19:15, so you do not get 5 points for that.

This is a total Technical Points score of 15.

Judges Points:
--------------
FruitieX gave you (10*2) + (3*2) + 9 + 4 = 39 points (highest rated map of this judge)
Merlijn gave you (9*2) + (7*2) + 7 + 7 = 46 points
PinkRobot gave you (9*2) + (6*2) + 7 + 7 = 44 points (highest rated map of this judge)

This gives you, C. Brutail, a total of 144 points, which puts you in 1st place. YOURE WINNER!


So just to wrap it up, the final standings:

1st: C. Brutail - Lava Ball
2nd: TVR - Second Stage
3rd: Morphed - Rock 'n Ball
4th: Hillis - Parkball
5th: Ai - No Arena
6th: Ronan - Bubble Ball
7th: Cortez - Ballz

Congratulations to our competition winner C. Brutail and a big thank you to all our competitors, my fellow judge and organizer FruitieX and also to [NL]Nexball server admin Merlijn who was so kind to join the judging team. As I said, unfortunately Fisume could not make the rating sessions as planned, but maybe for a next time!

In the mean while, I'm sure that patched up and improved versions of the created maps will find their way to the official servers in a little while and I hope that some of the mappers will maybe make some more inspiring Nexball maps in the future

Happy Nexball everybody!

GG all!
And thx for the judges, for that pure fun night

And here is your trophy C. Brutail!

I still think we should still judge a second version of the maps, to encourage everyone to fix/improve their maps for official release.

TVR wrote:I still think we should still judge a second version of the maps, to encourage everyone to fix/improve their maps for official release.

I second that. How about deadline this sunday? (as you suggested )

gratz C.Brutail!


or next weeks sunday??? my time until next weeks wednesday is very limited, so I won't be able to concentrate soon enough => map not ready next sunday... :S

Here is my fixed map:

http://hrfdesign.com/crap/maps/nexball/nb_farm_v1r2.pk3

In order to encourage the adoption of the contest maps into the official map rotations, I'd like to announce the second phase of the NexBall speed mapping contest.

With only 1 hour for conception, creation, compilation, and compression often leads to many ideas being cut in favour of speed, thus two of the PinkRobot & FruitieX have agreed to a rejudging of the revised submissions. They'll be using the original of 180 scale, plus the first two technical points worth 5 each for a total of 190.

Technical Points:
-----------------
5 points for whether your map can be loaded via the menu.
5 points for whether you followed the nb_ naming convention prefix

Subjective Points:
--------------
Originality -> scale 1 to 10 -> multiplied by 2 for final score for each judge
Gameplay -> scale 1 to 10 -> multiplied by 2 for final score for each judge
Eye candy -> scale 1 to 10 -> multiplied by 1 for final score for each judge
Overall -> scale 1 to 10 -> multiplied by 1 for final score for each judge

Contest deadline is next Sunday, May 10th, testing will occur sometime around 19:00 GMT.

I don't think I can participate in judging, as I have (somewhat unofficially) released a fixed version of morphed's rocknball map.

So here are my judgements for the revised maps, thanks to you all for the great effort!

Map 3 - No Arena - Ai

Originality : 8
Gameplay : 5
Eyecandy : 7
Overall : 6

This map looks like it has a lot of potential, but it still really lacks in the playability department. I'm not so sure adding weapons to nexball works out well, in our judgement game it turned out to be more of a shoot-out than a ballgame. Good job on the graphics though, it looks very nice. Some suggestions:

- More lava, so it's possible to laser opponents into it.
- If you don't have a laser, it takes pretty long to jump your way to the jetpack.
- Do something more for the goals, painted walls are a little boring.

Map 4 - CB Nexball - C. Brutail

Originality : 9
Gameplay : 8
Eyecandy : 9
Overall : 9

Great update, which makes for much more interesting gameplay. One thing still bugs me though, the small ledges you walk on make it really easy for an opponent to push you off when grabbing the ball, so you'll probably have to score from further away from the goal. This is essentially pretty hard and you will lose points again if the ball gets into the lava. I think the map should either have water instead of lava, or wider ledges. Personally I'd like to give it a try with water, as it could be more fun with lots of players.

Map 5 - Second Stage - TVR

Originality : 8
Gameplay : 7
Eyecandy : 7
Overall : 8

You've done some nice work on this map, though it still has some things that could be better. The triangle shaped goals are fun, but I think they would be better if they were reversed horizontally and that only the back would be marked as the goal area. This would make defence more interesting as it would be hard to shoot over the other player. Another thing is that the ramps still aren't really useful.

Map 6 - Rock 'n Ball - morphed

Originality : 9
Gameplay : 8
Eyecandy : 9
Overall : 9

Very nice map, lot of fun to play and pretty hard since both the ground and the board on the back of the goal aren't flat. Some things that still need fixing:

- You can score from underneath the goal.
- The 'jumping rocks' aren't solid (the ball can disappear in them).
- Bouncing up to make a dunk doesn't really get you high enough. In your map it's actually easier to score from the playing field than to use the dunk rocks.

Again thank you all for the added effort, and I hope to see more nexball maps when you have new inspiration

merlijn wrote:Map 5 - Second Stage - TVR

... The triangle shaped goals are fun, but I think they would be better if they were reversed horizontally... This would make defence more interesting as it would be hard to shoot over the other player ... Another thing is that the ramps still aren't really useful. ...

The goals are shaped like V's in order to make ground defence easy, but make goals shot from the second stage ramps even easier...

My judgements for the fixed maps:

Map 3 - No Arena - Ai

Originality : 7
Gameplay : 4
Eyecandy : 7
Overall : 6

The goals are too big, which makes scoring right from the middle way too easy. You could add some obstacle before the goal so that the enemy has to come closer in order to score. I'd also like to see a goal on the second floor, but same thing here: make it harder to score from distance.
Weapons aren't that great in nexball it seems so you should perhaps remove those...
As for eyecandy, I like how the map looks. The floor on the upper floor could be thicker though, it looks very unstable now
Also, raise the skybox and put a weaponclip there instead. This should prevent the black spots on the upper parts of walls. Be sure to compile the map with higher quality settings too!

Map 4 - CB Nexball - C. Brutail

Originality : 9
Gameplay : 8
Eyecandy : 9
Overall : 8

Very nice! I like this one very much. There are a few improvements that you still could do though, IMO. First, there should really be a ledge on the left and right leading to the terrain. Secondly, I'm getting poor performance on the map probably because of the trees. Maybe there should be less trees on the sides to fix this. Last, a tiny, hard to fix detail: it's too easy to get up on the edges of the terrain, which reveals the edge of the cloud layer, looking rather ugly. Could be fixed by extruding the terrain further, and using a weaponclip where the skybox is now. Don't want to be picky, as I said it's a very tiny detail and all in all, the map is great.

Map 5 - Second Stage - TVR

Originality : 8
Gameplay : 7
Eyecandy : 5
Overall : 8

I still don't think the map looks too good with it's invisible edges and missing textures, but gameplay is definitely better and more interesting with the V shaped goals. It could use some more details, but other than that it's a good map.

Map 6 - Rock 'n Ball - morphed

Originality : 8
Gameplay : 5
Eyecandy : 9
Overall : 8

The map is quite nice now that you fixed some of the bugs. Some bugs are still there, like it's possible to score from under the basket, sometimes the ball gets stuck on the basket, the chrystal things are non-solid and jumppads don't bounce you high enough. Something I did not like though is that the textures weren't GPL, so I had fixed that some time ago along with almost all bugs I named: http://www.hrfdesign.com/crap/maps/nexb ... l_v1r3.pk3

Map 3 - No Arena - Ai

Originality : 7
Gameplay : 5
Eyecandy : 8
Overall : 7

A nice improvement on the graphics part of this map, but I don't think the weapons really work on it. On your map, the gameplay suffers from it. I don't think weapons on a nexball map really work at all really, but maybe we have not found the right way to do that yet. The problem with laser on it is that you can score a goal from the moment it spawns until it's in the goal within 3 seconds by just lasering and kicking/shooting at the same time so for sure, a map with laser on it would need a lot more obstacles on it. Still, this map has an original concept and i still enjoyed playing it.

Map 4 - CB Nexball - C. Brutail

Originality : 9
Gameplay : 6
Eyecandy : 8
Overall : 7

This map looks the business and the idea is still rocksolid. But the more we've played it the more the gameplay appears to lack. Although it would make the map look less cool (and the name would be not very suited anymore) but I would prefer the platforms to be over water and to be much lower, at least at some parts, so you could get back on the platforms. Right now, a steal means a frag I really enjoy this map though

Map 5 - Second Stage - TVR

Originality : 7
Gameplay : 7
Eyecandy : 5
Overall : 7

I like the way you improved this map, the slanted platforms in the middle should make for some interesting gameplay. Maybe the lower part should be made less attractive to play right through, so that you're more likely to take the high route. The shape of the goals is a nice idea and made me wonder if there should be a ledge in fron of it so you really have to bounce it in the goal. Graphics are still somewhat rough, missing textures should have been replaced for this version. I'm still missing hint brushes by the way.

Map 6 - Rock 'n Ball - morphed

Originality : 8
Gameplay : 5
Eyecandy : 9
Overall : 8

This map is certainly an improvement over the first installment, unfortunately there are still some bugs remaining. The eyecandy is just fabulous of course, but it's very hard to score. The jumppads don't shoot you up high enough to really be able to score from them. I do get a really happy fuzzy beach feeling when playing on this map.

This means that the final scores for the final round are as follows:

CB Nexball - C. Brutail

Technical points : 5 + 5 = 10 -> x1 = 10
FruitieX : 9 + 8 + 9 + 8 = 34 -> x2 = 66
Merlijn : 9 + 8 + 9 + 9 = 35 -> x2 = 70
PinkRobot : 9 + 6 + 8 + 7 = 30 -> x2 = 60

--------------------------------------------------------> total points : 206 (1st place)

Rock 'n Ball - morphed

Technical points : 5 + 5 = 10 -> x1 = 10
FruitieX : 8 + 5 + 9 + 8 = 30 -> x2 = 60
Merlijn : 9 + 8 + 9 + 9 = 35 -> x2 = 70
PinkRobot : 8 + 5 + 9 + 8 = 30 -> x2 = 60

--------------------------------------------------------> total points : 200 (2nd place)

Second Stage - TVR

Technical points : 5 + 5 = 10 -> x1 = 10
FruitieX : 7 + 4 + 7 + 6 = 24 -> x2 = 48
Merlijn : 8 + 7 + 7 + 8 = 30 -> x2 = 60
PinkRobot : 7 + 7 + 5 + 7 = 26 -> x2 = 52

--------------------------------------------------------> total points : 170 (3rd place)

No Arena - Ai

Technical points : 5 + 5 = 10 -> x1 = 10
FruitieX : 7 + 4 + 7 + 6 = 24 -> x2 = 48
Merlijn : 8 + 5 + 7 + 6 = 26 -> x2 = 52
PinkRobot : 7 + 5 + 8 + 7 = 27 -> x2 = 54
--------------------------------------------------------> total points : 164 (4th place)

So C. Brutail is still the winner! You get to keep your trophy man What a small margin though, only 6 points between first and second place!

Once again, thanks to everyone who competed in round 1 of this Nexball Mapping compo and especially to our competitors in round 2, good work on updating your maps all round! Also thanks once again to FruitieX and Merlijn for helping out by judging the maps!