My answer is: if we can prove the map was released before its a definite no. Other than that, we can't prove anything. Its less fair to others, but to say its forbidden...

Basically the reason a map has to be unreleased is because that way you don't know how well it is received in the compo. If you start working on the map at the beginning of the compo, you have the same amount of time as others. Now I do realise that with hammer there are a lot of factors in play. For example, if you have made lots of prefabs in the past that you use to quickly build maps you have a huge advantage to people that do not have this. This can't be proven, and for the sake of just having a competition, I'd not want to forbid this either (at this stage).

So because the map is unreleased, I wouldn't mind.

I meant that if people can't team up in the first place they can't vote.

This has been on my mind too actually. The biggest problem is that it requires players to team up, which can become a problem for voting.

I've given it thought and am going to look into how easy/hard it is to setup playing a co-op map solo on your computer. If its doable, I'd like to suggest as a rule to make sure that all actions for both players do not have to happen at the same time, so it can be played solo. (basically if you can betatest it in the PeTI editor alone without requiring a 2nd player or really fast reflexes or a script or whatever, it would be allowed.

All my co-op maps, with the exception for one small part in my latest co-op map, can be solved this way, yet you cannot solve the map alone.

Current stage: The competition is over

This challenge was submitted by: Mevious
The idea for this challenge is to do the following:
Since Lawliet and I were so close this time, I asked him for input. We were thinking about combining rules (one from me and one from Lawliet) but that ended up being complex and arbitrary. I just decided to go with what is mostly Lawliet's idea.

The level must contain at least two excursion funnels. One must be always blue (push) and one must be always orange (pull). The solution needs to make use of both. These funnels can have buttons to enable or disable them (or change their speed if you're using hammer), but they cannot be reversed. You can include more funnels with polarity switching, but they won't count towards the requirement.

And we have a winner!

...with a nice total score of 21 points.

This weeks runner ups are: Praf (Paul) who came second with 15 points, and Domitar2 who came third with 14 points.

Mechtakendall, you are entitled to give us the next weeks challenge. Can you reply here before the end of sunday GMT +0, and tell us what you'd like to see in the next competition?

Originally posted by Mevious:

It sounds like this was just an off couple of weeks for people. If that's the case, I'm all for just keeping voting the way it is, along with a personal resolution to vote more and keep it casual.

Yeah, it might just be that. Perhaps its a good idea to keep things like they are for now unless other people chip in here with more information about how they look against it and what they'd do to solve it.

Originally posted by Mevious:

I would like to reiterate what mechtakendall said about the average difficulty for these competitions being very high. I've noticed this too and haven't been able to complete a lot of the levels recently. Walkthrough videos are helpful in judging and it might be a good requirement to have everyone submit a video or demo with their map submission. Maybe if people don't want to link it to their map they can just attach it in the thread when they post the map.

I agree. I always have found that some people make really hard maps in this group. When I can't finish a map in say 45 to 60 minutes, I usually just stop, and post in the comments that I was unable to solve it requesting a hint or eventually just the solution.

It wouldn't hurt to just add your solution if you know you made a hard map. I'm in for that! Definitely.

Originally posted by Mevious:

Originally posted by LPChip:

And note that you can always play maps as soon as they are posted in the topic, which should give you a head-start.

I was actually curious about this. A lot of judges play and comment on the maps before the deadline. Many if not all of them also replay the final version. Is it acceptable to play the map once as soon as it's submitted to the thread or are all judges expected to also play the final version after the submission deadline?

Once you post your map in the topic, everyone can play it and you are not required to redownload the map again and play it again. After submission ends, you are not allowed to update your map anymore, but people do update their map if some breaking has been done. I usually look if the map I already played and got updated did something to my breaking the map. If it did, I look into it again. If not, I don't replay the map.

Originally posted by mechtakendall:

Just to be complete, I voted very late, because it literally took me that long to get through all the maps and judge them appropriately. I still haven't solved one of the maps, because I couldn't come up with the solution after two hours of play, and I'm not sure there is a solution at this point, at least not a natural one.

I think there should be a time limit of what a puzzle should take. Just because you can make an uber difficult map doesn't mean you should for the competition. To me, I'm starting to get to the point that if a puzzle takes me longer than 30 minutes to solve, I've wasted alot of my time. The gamesmanship of design is very high here, and it might be refecting in the lack of votes. Just saying.

Anyhow, no idea how to solve the issue, or even if there is an issue.

Based on this part, the staff has decided to move the deadline of voting from wednesday to friday. So 2 additional days of voting time. And note that you can always play maps as soon as they are posted in the topic, which should give you a head-start.

Ah yeah. This is something Stagger Lee and I have been pondering about ourselves too.

Not being able to vote if you submit a map is definitely out of the question. That would just make it more likely we'll run out of votes quickly.

Forcing all participients to vote is also something that is something I'm not willing to do because sometimes you simply can't vote.

I am in for rewarding voting by giving points to the voter. The point is, I'd like to reward 3 points for voting, because thats the only amount of points that would make you think: I'm not nailing myself for not voting for the best map. But by doing so, I basically force everyone to vote.

As for making the voting blind, I'd rather not take that path unless its absolutely necessary. This competition is supposed to be fun, and by adding secrecy as part of the process, it becomes more of a serious security thing. Like we are forced to take this route because otherwise there can't be any compo.

Also, giving a point for voting that can be used for other reasons seems a bit pointless. The counterpoint has to be very strong otherwise people are still like, well, nice for that but I'd still rather not vote and have most chance of winning.

Anyway, the reason why I haven't voted is because I just don't have enough motivation right now. I'm in one of those periods where I don't play portal at all, nor making maps. I do this so I can return with fresh ideas and motivation etc. (and also my portal is acting weird and crashes in the middle of maps for no apparent reason on any map).

I appreciate all input from everyone though, so if you have something to add, feel free to do so. It'll help us coming up with a proper solution to deal with this.

It wouldn't be fair towards other people, but as long as the map is unreleased, there's no way for us to prove this.

Yeah, but my point was, if you have a laserfield, that deactivates with a weighted button, you still need a cube to hold it down. I guess the fizzler can be used to shoot a portal past. I didn't think of that one.

Given the above, I'm thinking of rebooting the hammer competition.

As for now, my idea is to make it an 3 month event. That'll give anyone plenty of time to make something in hammer while still competing in the bi-weekly competitions.

We'd start april 1st. You will have 60 days to make a map (basically until the 1st day of the 3rd month) then you have 3 weeks to vote for all submissions. And the remaining time until the end of that month is what you have to give a suggestion for the next competition.

I like the suggestion for automated portals, so I would like to propose something with that for the first ruleset.

Any feedback? If there's no feedback at all, I will assume there is no one interested in doing a hammer compo, and as such I won't make one.