planetquake.eu

To celebrate the launch of Quake 4, VIA CGA and Doom3World are teaming up to run a duel map making competition. Calling upon all talented mappers, we are issuing a challenge to create interesting deathmatch environments suitable for 1-vs-1 tournament matches for highly competitive players. The top 3 entries will be rewarded with prizes (hardware) in 1st, 2nd and 3rd placing categories and will be grouped together and released as a tourney map pack.

The competition commences on November 1st and will close on December 31st, and all submissions will be judged by VIACGA editor and pro-gamer 'Ms.X' (AKA Alana Reid), veteran FPS gamer and mapper 'b0rg' (AKA Josh Holmes) and Doom3World webmaster 'BNA!' (AKA Bernhard Grabowski). The top 3 submissions will be announced within 2 weeks of the closing date. Maps that raise our eyebrows with outstanding design and keep us engaged in tight visceral skirmishes into the wee hours are most likely to spark our continued interest. Note: we’re most enthused about maps that are suitable for tournament conditions and there are some good examples of this in the Q3A duel map section in the VIACGA file section

Criteria for submissions is as follows:

Playability:
- Must be of a suitable size for 1 vs 1 duel deathmatch games
- Should feature a high degree of connectivity with few or no dead ends
- Special consideration should be put into weapon and pick-up placement with evenly balanced layouts a priority
- Items such as Quad damage, Invulnerability and super weapons should be used with caution, or not at all.
- Frame rates should be consistent and high enough to ensure smooth playability on a wide spectrum of systems.
- Should have few or no annoying edges and snags for players to get caught on.

Cosmetics:
- Should be appealing to the eye with interesting geometry construction, finely tuned lighting and neatly aligned textures.
- Should contain few significantly dark areas
- Should contain no z-fighting (doubled up brushes), shadow bugs or any kind of noticeable visual anomaly
- Must feature the VIA logo in some form within the map*

* Inclusion of both VIA and Doom3World logos is mandatory, but how you implement it up to you. Our suggestion is to keep it subtle – it should be noticeable, but not in your face. It doesn't matter where they appear, so long as they are included. The logos could appear in the form of a texture, decal, projected light or geometrically. VIA and Doom3World logos can be found here.

Other requirements:
- Must be under 12 MB in file size.
- Must be totally complete and should include a levelshot image. Any maps that appear unfinished in any way will not be considered.
- Must be an original map. Cannot be a remake or remodeled version of a previously released map.
- Must be submitted in zip format. A read me doc must be included in the zip file.
- Maps should not be sent directly to us. Supply a URL instead and we will download it. If you don’t have anywhere to upload your map, please let us know so alternative arrangements can be made.