JJnet Duel Tournament v2.0 Level Contest
 

As the JJnet Duel Tournament v1.0 was successful after all, I'm planning to hold a v2.0 on the upcoming Summer/Fall, starting from August. I'm aiming to make it an even bigger tournament than last time, target being a total of 48 players. Of course there would be a very much different mappool than previously. The mappool used in the first edition got criticized as it included some levels that weren't after all very duel-suitable. I picked levels by the popularity- and tradition-factors rather than size- and gameplay-factors. I have learned from this by focusing on the latter in the future.

I have a mappool planned pretty far for the next tournament, but it's not complete yet. To find some variety, and due to the lack of good duel-levels in this game and community, I am challenging you to a duel-level creation contest. The best 1-3 maps(depending on the amount of decent entries submitted) of the contest would be added to the final tournament mappool. Now here you have a chance to affect. Also I will be looking for 1-3 referees/judges to judge the entries at the end of the contest. The more entries, the more I need points of view to make proper conclusions.

Here are some questions that might possibly come to your mind in the first place.

Q: If I take part in this contest, am I allowed to take part in the upcoming tournament?
A: Yes. It does not matter does your entry make it to the mappool or not, you are still allowed to play, and of course play in your own map in the tournament. Same applies to referees.

Q: Can I be both a participant and a referee?
A: No you cannot. It would be probably wise to be patient with your decision. I don't pick the referee(s) by who signed up fastest, so you can consider if you feel more like creating a level until the deadline. If you didn't end up participating, you can still nominee yourself as a referee for me. Some requirements for referees are long experience and knowledge of level creation, and of course at least some reviewing-experience.

Q: If another contest pops up, am I allowed to take part with the same entry?
A: Yes, you are allowed to take part in any other contests there may appear during the same period(which is unlikely though), as long as it's fine for the other contest's holder.

Q: Am I allowed to submit more than one entry? Also am I allowed to collaborate with somebody else?
A: Only one entry from one person. Collaborations are allowed without limitations of people taking part in the collab. However a collab counts as 1 total entry for each person in it, no matter how big percentage he/she helped.

Now some rules and advices about the actual contest here:

• Level type must be CTF. No other game types are accepted.
• The level must be playable in 1.23. Lori support isn't required.
• Use only MP-start positions for your level.
• Your level must be fresh. Any 'official' levels(meaning that they were submitted somewhere for public use, for example J2o before) are not accepted. Anything that was uploaded to public before this date (June 1st) cannot be submitted to this contest. I suggest you to build a level for this contest from blank, but you are also allowed to use an unfinished level which you(not another person) started earlier, or a finished, but private level of yours.
• Level editions are not allowed.
• There is no exact size-limit for the level since the playable area and flow is what matters. Single-screen CTFs aren't appreciated, nor are XL-sizes that have potential of making the game crash.
• Try to keep as much focus on the gameplay as possible. Remember that you are creating a level that fits 1on1-matches in the first place. The other match-types are unimportant. Try to keep things simple yet don't make it too linear. Also try to keep the level fast-paced enough, but avoid making it too chaotic and random.
• Both symmetric and non-symmetric levels are accepted, as long as there is a good balance between blue and red sides. Neither team mustn't have any major advantages over another.
• Also some small gimmicks and originality are nice bonus, but not a requirement. Your level can be simply just decent, as long as it doesn't directly rip-off any other existing levels. Also gimmick-only levels such as 'Mulch', 'Malch', etc. aren't appreciated.
• Try to keep the level good-looking enough so that it looks interesting for players new to it. The eyecandy however shouldn't distract a player too much, nor should it cover too much of the play-area.
• Don't fill up the level with useless pick-ups. Have a good variety of ammo perhaps. Just default Bouncer and Toaster might make the level dull even if the design would be good. Consider what ammo are good especially in your level. You are allowed to put in food, but not in excessive amounts. Coins and coin-warps are allowed, but keep in mind that there shouldn't be any outlying bonus-rooms where a player can hide for ages without any chance of getting roasted.
• Avoid making the level too campy in overall. Small dead ends don't matter, but bigger ones might be annoying. Give players enough of choice during movement. Don't make players too reliable on some events such as copters when trying to reach some certain area.
• Tileset choice doesn't matter as long as the tileset doesn't have a very ugly or confusing palette.
• Some players also still listen to the game-music itself(like me mostly), so it might be a good idea to use a fitting music-track for the level to keep the player interested. At least don't pick a too distracting music-track. The track can be an already used one.

With that in mind, you are now ready to take part in the contest. The deadline is set to August 1st, 2010, 22:00 GDT, so you have exactly two months to create your entry-level. You don't have to separately sign up for this contest, although I don't mind it. Important is that when you're done with your entry, you pack your level+tileset+music into an archive and either upload to J2O or another similar place, or send me via E-Mail (Vivando[At]luukku[dot]com).

Remember that I probably won't accept any rushed entries which are made in just a couple of hours. Put effort on designing the level and think about the advices I mentioned above.

Once the deadline has been reached, I make my decision about the referees/judges and aim to start the tournament a week after that with the final mappool combined. If you have any more questions related to this topic or contest, feel free to ask them here or via private messages.

So I wasn't planning on making multiplayer levels for jj2 again, but this contest motivated me and I have an almost finished level for this.

I've been playing around with making 1vs1 ctf levels lately. All of them are gimmick levels (I've hosted a few of them), but I suppose I could make one that is normal. Or at least, normal compared to the other ones. I still reserve the right to do something stupid. It will just be a smaller kind of stupid, which people can have an easier time accepting.

All I need to find is a tileset to use.

Sounds good. I don't expect there's going to be a lot of entries, but if there are even 7-9 in the end, that's already very good.

Well, I am trying to make a pack with 5-6 levels, but they're not CTF/Battle or anything else what was playing in JJ2 all this years. That levels are DeathRun Levels. I won't talk anything about them yet until I finish them (at least 1 of them), but I have started one CTF level some days ago, and I will try to finish it soon. Just 1 thing what is not clear to me... does the level needs to be small one or it can be 150x70. (I can see in your post, Viv, that level size is not matter, but that levelsize for 1v1 is not maybe good, I mean... maybe matches can take too much time and finish with 0-0)

The level size shouldn't be anything really big. 150x70 sounds like a typical 2vs2 or 3vs3 level size, and it makes a total of 10500 tiles. For example BBLair has got a size of 128x66 and is already slightly too big for duels, although the gameplay helps there(2 carrots and warps as shortcuts.) I would suggest not to exceed the limit of 8000 tiles total. That way your level should end up small enough, depending on how open it will be. Most importantly, don't divide the level into floors in a similar way like Security Breach v2(which is much more a level for teamgames anyway), as that gives players chance to freeze a game entirely.

I have absolutely no expirience in making CTFs, but since level contests are quite rare now, I'll try anyway. And since it should be a duel level, I will be even able to betatest it myself. Don't expect to see it though, it'll probably suck too much to send it.

I'm posting this to the front page of j2o so more people see it.

Thanks. That helps.

well I will try to re-size my level because it is not finished yet... just started :)

Hmm. Just finished a level, and it seems to be quite good.

I'm in, and i guess BBlair feels big because all the masked paths are small and thin.

What do you all honestly think of this level making style?

The design does have merits, as it allows for a more complex layout within a smaller space, and can create some interesting gameplay scenarios, like the carrot area in Semi with its myriad of "tricks". However, it is often hard to make a level like this look aesthetically pleasing, which is why it is not a popular design style anymore.

Oh, I have to ask, can we switch our entries once we submit them?

You can change/remake/edit your entry as much as you want until the deadline if you don't happen to be satisfied yet. You can make use of all the time you got.

Currently, my level has a somewhat decisive gimmick (similar to using a trigger crate to open pits in Distored Research Site, but I'm not using the same concept). Is that alright or would it be too much of a gimmick for this contest?

Vivando, in case you haven't noticed, I submitted Abandoned Park to J2O's dl section :P
Aka here.

@FS: What I forgot to point out was the policy of death pits, which is that they are allowed as long as they aren't excessive. Meaning that more than half of the floor-width kills you. About the gimmick itself, it's hard to tell yet until I see it. But I personally wouldn't call what P4ul did too gimmicky yet, but keep in mind if you put in too much of open floor, a majority of players will probably VETO your level in "fear of pits."

@Jake: Noticed.

My level http://www.jazz2online.com/downloads/6163/desert-fight/

Way to rush the entries, there's a lot of time. :p

Idd, now I have an edit #9001 on my upload :P

I like Jake's level. Just compatible for duels :). I wish this level be in this duel tournament and I will pick it for sure! ;).

EDIT: I saw in rules that you can't ask someone for help. But can some other player help me with level, or can the whole clan (like XLM/OLC etc) make a level?

level making group? :p

There I quite clearly stated you CAN do teamwork, without ANY limitations on the people taking part. So yes, practically an entire Level Making Group can create a level together, but that means none of them can submit another entry on their own anymore.

@Laro: Thanks!

Vivando, I think I edited my level for the last time.

http://www.jazz2online.com/downloads/6163/desert-fight/

Looks like my level become more famous. :P

When Laro had just made his CTF lvl, he didn't even know about this contest. But then I suggested that he should submit it. Soo it's pretty much a coincidence. Kind of.

What Treylina said. If you guys want to try out Desert Fight, go to Zeal Duels and login and type /c Desert Fight.

3vs3 may be chaotic though...

Neat!

-stripe

Im in.

That means I can expect BloodBunny to sign up as well. (y)

It's possible, I did see Bloodbunny active a few years back, not too recent but I think it shows he's still interested in the game.

Four entries have been submitted so far, and I guess that means a chance for 2 maps already. Also as you can see we have an oldie taking part, who mailed his entry for me, so I had to use my own upload-site to make them public. Of course I asked his permission to do this. I however wasn't able to upload the files as a pack for unknown reason, so they are there separately. Enjoy the submissions! :)

More like two oldies :D
Awesome.

He started making a tileset to use for a sequel to bblair, it looked really cool but I don't think it ever progressed far (I only saw a few random tiles). It looked really cool though.

lol just found this on jazzjackrabbit.net:

That's my only decent level!!! Maybe I shouldn't enter this contest after all :p

On the other hand, it's also the 4th most liked level (tied - in the second poll), so it can't be all bad!

Yeh, I like that poll better. My level is progressing very slowly, I'm out of practice.

My levels progress quite slowly too, and I'm a fairly new and well.. somewhat experienced<--- *cough* levelmaker... you aren't really the only one who takes ages on making lvls. Perhaps you could host yourself (or ask someone else to privately host your work in progress) and every now and then ask them on how to improve it. I think some parts of the lvl epitome itself suffer from the somewhat hard to move parts (yes, I've used Spaz before too) and "stay there for an eternity and shoot so you'll barely have to worry about a thing" parts of the level. And maybe that dead-end placed bouncer PU too. Well that's my reasons why some people dislike it.

I have decided to not take part in this, since SJ is my good friend, to prevent possible biasement.