Putting it up as a poster in an observation room, elevator video, or rattman den/other hidden area seems perfectly acceptable to me. In-universe maps should all have one or two of those things anyway.

vanSulli wrote:
Putting it up as a poster in an observation room, elevator video, or rattman den/other hidden area seems perfectly acceptable to me. In-universe maps should all have one or two of those things anyway.

I'm not saying 'don't do it', i'm saying 'don't reward people for doing it'.

Plus how do you know it's in-universe? What if it isn't?

There are really very few ways that it couldn't work except a few really dumb things like plastering it everywhere or overlaying it on top of panels or pistons or something stupid like that. I know its in either the primary Aperture timeline or the PTI one because it was stated in my ruleset. This is to keep things portaley.

vanSulli wrote:
There are really very few ways that it couldn't work except a few really dumb things like plastering it everywhere or overlaying it on top of panels or pistons or something stupid like that. I know its in either the primary Aperture timeline or the PTI one because it was stated in my ruleset. This is to keep things portaley.

In that case then I think we should make overlays they can use. If that's satisfied then I am good.

groxkiller585 wrote:

vanSulli wrote:
There are really very few ways that it couldn't work except a few really dumb things like plastering it everywhere or overlaying it on top of panels or pistons or something stupid like that. I know its in either the primary Aperture timeline or the PTI one because it was stated in my ruleset. This is to keep things portaley.>

In that case then I think we should make overlays they can use. If that's satisfied then I am good.

I'll make official vtfs of the logo. If anyone else does it, I'm sure it will be a pixel mess being that I have the vector version of our logo.

...Someone needs to make Elevator Vidyas too. I updated the ruleset proposal to fill out a lot of gaping holes and to make it more fair to people who don't have a team that produces every kind of content and to not reward teams that do.

vanSulli wrote:
...Someone needs to make Elevator Vidyas too. I updated the ruleset proposal to fill out a lot of gaping holes and to make it more fair to people who don't have a team that produces every kind of content and to not reward teams that do.

Yeah, some people may just wish to work solo also.

I'll get right on those textures.

I must disagree about blocking PTI users.

We should embrace these Addons, not shun them. Sure, maps aren't going to win unless they're amazing. But we shouldn't disallow them. I plan to enter, not in the PTI, but in hammer.

I am often placed in Community management as I listen to the community. To what pages they want, worries they have and the like. It's what's made me liked by those I help. I feel, if you exclude PTI maps, it will be detrimental to this contest.

Will they harm our site or competition? No. Will they win? Likely not.
Will they help contribute to our overarching goal of launching this site? ABSOLUTELY!

We have lost sight over the reason this contest is even going out.
We may be running a contest, but the REAL reason we are running it is to get more users to notice us. To launch the site. With the PTI disallowed, we lose any type of advertising these maps ( and not EVERY PTI map of bad) contribute.

If you must, state original maps made by the authoring tools have a higher chance of winning. But I'd strongly, strongly advise against blocking the PTI. If you do, it can only be detrimental to this contest. And why would we damage our own contest's main goal?

The core problem with allowing PTI maps is that you're going to get dozens, maybe hundreds of submissions from people that probably haven't read the rules, probably won't be back to check on things, will be next to impossible to get in touch with if needed for whatever reason. And, worst of all, you have dozens, maybe hundreds of maps that aren't worth playing that you're going to have to waste time judging anyway.

During our last contest, which did not allow PTI maps but did strongly recommend that maps be uploaded to the workshop, we had something like 15 people "submit" their "contest map" by posting a comment on the steam group saying something like "here's my contest map pleace rate 5". Have fun following those people down; it will be a full time job.

Kizzycocoa wrote:
Don't block PTI maps.

Because we want to show ourselves off as a mapping/modding site with experienced and mature members, we need to encourage entries that are good-looking, (preferably use custom content because it is one of our strong points and the presence of that strong point makes us somewhat unique as a Portal community) be well optimized, and play well.

You can make an awesome-playing map with the PTI, but even at best they look boringly lit (examine one in Hammer to see why), they cannot support any kind of custom content, and they are by nature terribly optimized.

Even if we allowed them in a non-custom-content-encouraging contest, most of them would be disqualified anyway. Its a pretty easy way of filtering. If turning a deaf ear towards part of the community means censoring the lazy and the 8-to-10-year-olds that cannot (and cannot legally) contribute to a forum discussion or produce good content, I'm all for it. That being said, if you're an 8-to-10-year-old willing to work hard or already able to make good content, welcome. You should probably be a little quiet about that fact, though, because technically you need to be 13.

...What msleeper said holds water too; its a lot of extra judging work and, again, almost none of them will actually qualify (the few that did wouldn't win).

I would like to rescind my previous suggestion that members be able to work on more than one team; this could encourage idea bleeding, and may end up with some participants being more likely to win a prize than others. "You may only belong to one team" sounds much better to a slightly older and wiser me.

Then a new rule. A thread required for each entry in a special section of the forum. We get more visitors, and we choose from a list that is regulated, to an extent, by the fact you must sign up.

Perhaps make it mandatory to use the PTI feature that were working on adding to map uploads.

Regardless, to ignore and shun the PTI is simply insane. You are outlawing something valve spent lots of time putting together, not only is this damaging our overarching plan, but we're going against what valve have spent time and money setting up so communities like ours can stay alive into the future.

vanSulli wrote:
...Someone needs to make Elevator Vidyas too.

If you're going to go the Workshop route, don't bother. Due to whatever order of operations for content that's loaded, you can't pakrat a BNK into a map and have it play. You could always require people to download a "content pack" with videos and other stuff, but then you're gambling that players actually do that.

Kizzycocoa wrote:
Then a new rule. A thread required for each entry in a special section of the forum. We get more visitors, and we choose from a list that is regulated, to an extent, by the fact you must sign up.
Perhaps make it mandatory to use the PTI feature that were working on adding to map uploads.

Could you elaborate? It could very well work, but I don't really understand what it would accomplish.

Kizzycocoa wrote:
Regardless, to ignore and shun the PTI is simply insane. You are outlawing something valve spent lots of time putting together, not only is this damaging our overarching plan, but we're going against what valve have spent time and money setting up so communities like ours can stay alive into the future.

They reinvigorated the mapping community at the cost of promoting poor-quality content. We want good quality content. The PTI stinks for making high-quality environments, and I don't see any arguments to counter that. Again, we would lose most of those people anyway simply because the content would be lower-quality than most custom maps and therefore be ignored.

msleeper wrote:
Elevator Vidyas won't work in Workshop.

I think p0p didn't want the Workshop Integration to be mandatory; your previous points and Kizzy's suggest that encouraging interaction with the Steam Workshop is a good idea. I'd really like to see the logo in an elevator video, but at best it'd be just an alternative to a poster somewhere.

msleeper wrote:

vanSulli wrote:
...Someone needs to make Elevator Vidyas too.>

If you're going to go the Workshop route, don't bother. Due to whatever order of operations for content that's loaded, you can't pakrat a BNK into a map and have it play. You could always require people to download a "content pack" with videos and other stuff, but then you're gambling that players actually do that.

That, and I noticed a while back when I was working on Tornate that placing elevator screens without using an instance is just impossible since the release of PTI.

And the whole "You could always require people to download a "content pack" with videos and other stuff, but then you're gambling that players actually do that." is exactly why I did not release Tornate outside of the workshop. I had it already to work both ways, but it never shipped.

We should be working with the Workshop making sure that maps display the elevator screens, chamber signs and if you want, Cave's Dialogue, just in case your map really needs an intro voice. However, taking this route of the workshop will make submitting original Portal maps redundant as the Portal 2 maps would get more noticed, but on the other hand it would be equally judged. Keeping original Portal equal to it's sequel is something I want this site to feature, although it is not as popular.

vanSulli wrote:

Kizzycocoa wrote:
Then a new rule. A thread required for each entry in a special section of the forum. We get more visitors, and we choose from a list that is regulated, to an extent, by the fact you must sign up.
Perhaps make it mandatory to use the PTI feature that were working on adding to map uploads.>
Could you elaborate? It could very well work, but I don't really understand what it would accomplish.

Kizzycocoa wrote:
Regardless, to ignore and shun the PTI is simply insane. You are outlawing something valve spent lots of time putting together, not only is this damaging our overarching plan, but we're going against what valve have spent time and money setting up so communities like ours can stay alive into the future.>
They reinvigorated the mapping community at the cost of promoting poor-quality content. We want good quality content. The PTI stinks for making high-quality environments, and I don't see any arguments to counter that. Again, we would lose most of those people anyway simply because the content would be lower-quality than most custom maps and therefore be ignored.

1) a post on the forums in a special contest section is mandatory. Perhaps it could be automatically entered. We know posting a map posts a thread.

2)poor quality? You can sift through that easily with the filters they have added.
Let's look at it this way. If we have all maps uploaded here, with a mandatory screenshot, with rules stating there must be an accompanying screenshot (there should ALWAYS be one anyway), we will easily skim the list to many, but none of the low quality rubbish.

3)if we disallow the PTI, we are directly targeting new (good or bad) mappers, and going against VALVe. This makes no sense whatsoever.

I'm not sure I've made it entirely clear how contest submission will work (this is probably one of the least flexible points here)

To submit a map, you upload it to the site via the normal way, except on the upload page you tick a box that specifies that "this map is entering in the contest" (with maybe a link on that if people don't know bout it)

Threads are a moot point as the system automatically creates threads for each map. I'll add a contest section and retrofit the upload page to post there if the map is a contest entry.

I realize that a significant, nay, overwhelming portion of the current portal 2 workshop community is primarily PTI maps. And maybe it's not out of the question to allow them, since all entries will have to be filtered through the site to count anyway. It seems contrary to our cause, though, to accept low-quality, low-effort puzzles in this mapping contest.

Kizzycocoa wrote:
Post on the forums in a special contest section is mandatory. Perhaps it could be automatically entered. We know posting a map posts a thread.

Okay, sorry. Yeah, autothreading already exists, and contest entries will probably be flagged and moved to a subforum automatically.

Kizzycocoa wrote:
2)poor quality? You can sift through that easily with the filters they have added.
Let's look at it this way. If we have all maps uploaded here, with a mandatory screenshot, with rules stating there must be an accompanying screenshot (there should ALWAYS be one anyway), we will easily skim the list to many, but none of the low quality rubbish.

You really can't disqualify a map for having a shitty screenshot.

Kizzycocoa wrote:
3)if we disallow the PTI, we are directly targeting new (good or bad) mappers, and going against VALVe. This makes no sense whatsoever.

Going against Valve is where you lose me. They exist to serve their communities, not the other way around. If the people want quality, let them eat cake or whatever. Even barring PTI entries, I think Valve would still give us a mention on Facebook or something like they did with TWP if we have nice prizes and have our shit together, and that's basically the best we could get from them either way.

This sort of comes down to the custom content theme; if most people like it, then PTI maps are excluded because they do not support custom content. If we go back the other route, PTI maps are still a possibility.

Just a question, are the updated rules allowing for Portal 1 submissions as well? I recall that being discussed earlier but haven't seen anything about it in the recent posts.

Good question. Yeah, Portal 1 and 2 entries would be allowed unless people want otherwise. We want to encourage good gameplay ideas too, so SFM is probably out of the question.

Coppermantis wrote:
Just a question, are the updated rules allowing for Portal 1 submissions as well? I recall that being discussed earlier but haven't seen anything about it in the recent posts.

All the rulesets I've discussed so far allow it.