Terrain Contest #10 Idea Thread

[Chaos.]

Let's get this started

NOTE: When you post your own ideas, also take the time to comment on the previous ideas. Just write a simple yes or no telling whether or not you might enter if that theme is chosen. That way we can determine which themes will have the biggest chances of being a successful contest with plenty of entries.

So I will start with a few that I would like to do:

#1 - Playable Terrain - It would be quite interesting to start a new trend. Since TC5 was playable why not make TC10 playable. We would be doing 4 art terrains and 1 playable (Every 5th terrain contests is playable). I've also always wanted to do a playable terrain, and this would give me the motivation to finish one. Since the last one was ice we could make this one fire since people have been getting pretty good with the techniques for making lava and fire. Playable hell terrain?

#2 - Sillhouette - After the last contest sillhouette terrains have really grown on me.

#3 - Colossus - Basically, construct a giant.

#4 - Color - Make a terrain to show how it associates itself with a specific color that you have chosen.

#5 - Surrealism - Make a terrain having the disorienting, hallucinatory quality of a dream.

Let's hear your ideas aswell as your thoughts on these. As you guys post new ideas I will add them to this list for convenience.

 

[Megafyr]

Yes, playable definitely. With a theme like... Not blizzard. Making it seem like it was a non-blizzard piece would be really cool imo.

 

[M0rbid]

I agree and like the idea of playable terrain

But I must admit, that I also like the idea of the xxdeathhunterxx about the human body thingy. Only thing I fear about that is that, the possibilities for such a terrain are very limited caused by a to small amount of models and doodads that could be used .

That's why I would prefer the playable idea

 

[Piwlady]

I'd go for #2, imo it's best idea of those three because I guess it would gather most contestants because it's not so hard to make. I don't like #3 because I dislike terrains with creatures, robots or that kind things made of doodads. And #1, if this theme is chosen, I guess I wont join because I'm sick and tired of that.

 

[thedeathunterxx]

lol if it was silhouette id def get 1st place >=D ( lol jk)

but umm i like all these ideas,... slhouettte is my personal favorite. because i personally love the way all silhouette terrains turn out. however this might be too hard for some people to do because some people dont fully understand how silhouettes are made.

as for the giant thing, its already been done. not sure which contest but it has been done.

the human body thing now that i think of it sounds a bit too narrow of a topic. And for the playableness, i dont like it as much =/ its already been done as well ( was it TC 6 or 7 ? one of those. )

perhaps for an idea. we could instead have ....

Theme - The color [ insert color here ]
The ideea here is that what ever terrain you are making, it associates itself with a specific color such as orange or blue. i think it would be fun, generally creative, and a very broad topic.

 

[Chaos.]

-There was a contest with the theme "construction" in which a few entries had some sort of big monster thing. But we can't rule out colossus just because a few people chose to do something similar for their terrain in that contest.

-As for the playable part, you obviously didn't read what I posted beside it or else you would know that it was TC5, lol. There are two types of terrains: playable and art. Playable isn't a theme it is a terrain type. So it is something that can be done more then once. If playable is chosen then we can find a theme for it. Playable won't be the theme. It will just be the type of terrain that you have to make in order to show the actual theme.

-Just curious, how exactly would you make a terrain that matches the theme "the human body?"

-Color could work too. I'll add that Idea to the list.

 

[Mr.Goblin]

Playable terrain = could be fun.. but again, no imports aloud.

Silhouette = meeh D:, it's mostly = hey I can't place doodads but look at my sky!

colossus = could be damn fun , and I'm the champion in making doodad constructions >

Color = seen it..done it.. over done it.. over saw it... :\

----------------

why not giving players a description that they should reproduce? For example.

«As I walk by, down the path, I discovered the most beautyfull thing I've ever seen!, a hole new world! just under the earth, kept secret for all this time!.. blablabla»

a short description that members will have to remake the way they see it in their mind.. that would be interesting and would bring the ''terraining'' up a level!

-------------
No more terrain competition where we have to submit diffrent version of a terrain please D:

takes to much time..

 

[Belgarath]

oziris's idea of the "my home" where you would terrain some place in your home country/something that looks like it sounds the best so far to me.

playable is ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, its an ok kind of thing really, but these contests have been pretty focused on terrain art
the two types are pretty much the same, you can use playable terrains for art - use a static camera. they're not far apart enough to be called two different types.

silhouette sounds lame to be honest. they're cool from time to time but overall they're pretty poorly executed and often take extremely shortly to make

colossus - sounds absolutely horrid

colour - we already established that apparently a colour is too broad a theme or some shit like that
it would have to be, if anything, the contest as one colour, otherwise you could just go off and terrain everything in one colour. which is pretty retarded

 

[Fussiler1]

Erm, what about some dream-like theme?

 

[Arcany]

I think surrealism would be a good theme.

 

[Oziris]

Yeah, i think it would be really cool for people to show where they live and to actually show how there countryside is really beautiful despite the democracy and politics. Lets say America for example, most people don't like it because of politics, but you can show how it's beautiful and why to love it even if it has its own bad sides.

1. Playable, we had it. Maybe some other time.
2. Sillhouette as Belgarath said.
3. Colossus we had 2 contests based on this, i think we can give it a break.
4. Color, it's kind of gay theme. You can make anything, red as in lava, blue as in some frozen land, green as in a green valley etc.

How about "My Home" ? as i said "showing off your country".

 

[Arcany]

How about "My Home" ? as i said "showing off your country".

Yeah, except for the fact that this is about all there is to see where I come from^^

 

[Oziris]

Oh come on, don't lie. Here are some pictures from Holland, http://cycling.skedaddle.co.uk/content/images/holidays/64_main.jpg http://aminus3.s3.amazonaws.com/ima...61/265dca649ab2c88922487479798c56f5_large.jpg http://worldoneness.tripod.com/england_windmill.jpg etc. You can find good stuff. and you can make it really beautiful. That's the point of the contest.

Here is mine for example http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/01/0e/df/0d/serbia.jpg

 

[Jaret]

Well... I would go with the first one. Let's make a tradition that every 5th terraining contest should make some playable terrain. But, please, no fire... The 9th terraining contest basically was fire (end of the world)... Some maybe sick of fire... why not, something like... well, I dunno, but not fire.

 

[WherewolfTherewolf]

The playable non-blizzard thing is pretty cool

Another idea could be abstract terrain, basically something that is just for the love of the shape and not supposed to be much more.
For something a bit more specific, how about surrealism?

 

[Megafyr]

I don't like the "my home" idea, because it kills imagination. Surrealism, however, would be really awesome. Surrealism playable perhaps?

 

[M0rbid]

I like it

Surrealism would really be nice.

 

[WherewolfTherewolf]

Being both surreal and playable would be a challenge

 

[Belgarath]

good point there with the lack of creativity within a 'my home' contest, though the creativity judgement could be replaced with how closely it fits the base landscape/picture/whatever

surreal sounds cool
surreal playable sounds cooler, but it seems to me that you'd almost have to use triggers for this kind of thing to be REALLY cool

 

[Megafyr]

Maybe surreal playable is actually is too heavy We should team up with some jassers to make our playables more interactive haha!

Anyway, not that I want to advertise or something, but if you click the link in my signature for the third person tutorial, there is a test map. That camera system would be awesome for a playable terrain contest. I could easily put the system into an UTM, so that people can create their terrains, and then walk through them with a unit. How about that?

 

[WherewolfTherewolf]

Hmmm that seems interesting.

It's a terrain competition, but it essentially works like a cinematic competition as the effect is to be in game and not just from the editor.

Probably some things that would have to be made clear:
-Interactive or passive?
Basically, is it like a cinematic where everything is done for you, or can the player control moving around the terrain and things like that, even to the point of interacting with it.

-Would you have to do all the work yourself, or would it be possible to have someone else do the triggers for it?

 

[Chaos.]

Surrealism looks awesome and makes great paintings, but when I really think about it, I doubt there are that many terrainers with sufficient skill to pull off a good surreal terrain. Try not to let your imagination surpass your capabilities. It happens to me all the time. I see an awesome picture and say "Hey I can do that" but then when I try, I fail because I underestimated the amount of work required to pull it off. I'm sure a few people will be able to make some interesting terrains but I can't imagine it getting that many entries. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against it and if it gets chosen I will definetely give it a shot, I just believe that the other themes will bring forth a more successful contest with many more entries then surrealism could. But that's just my opinion.

As for Megafyr's suggestion, I actually had a similar thought to that. I like the idea and it would also be easier to judge the actual playability of the map instead of just looking in the editor and saying "Yup, it looks playable."

Also here are a few suggestions if playable terrain gets picked.

-Map file size limit of like 8Mb maximum. People need to download several maps for testing and I personally would hate to spend a day downloading maps just because several users decided to use the High-Res maps (about 50Mb each)
-No restrictions on imports (except for size of course.) Let's not limit the terrainers this time by restricting them to THW and WC3C only. If they want to use some doodads from any other site then I say we should let them and if he wants to make his own doodads, then bonus for us: more doodads to use in the future. The restriction rule caused a great entry to have to forfeit in the last contest.
-Doodad limit set to 8000. I remember Lexandritte's entry to the terraining duel on XGM. He had over 24 thousand doodads. I couldn't do anything it lagged so hard. A limit would prevent the terrainer from going overboard so that his terrain can actually be tested and judged.
-Map size 64x64, So that we can focus on detail instead of having to save doodads to fill in the empty spots on the map.

 

[WherewolfTherewolf]

Well isn't adding some challenge to it better then making a boring theme?

I'm sure enough people can pull off surrealism to make it seem worth while.

 

[Chaos.]

I could be wrong. That is just my prediction of how it will turn out. I wouldn't mind giving it a shot though. You can expect an entry from me what ever the theme may be even though my preference is playable. I've added surreal to the list.

We could sit here for a month suggesting new ideas and then have other people pull out all the flaws that it could bring and there are going to be several people against it no matter what the theme is. That's just how it is. So let's not turn this into any other idea thread that drags out for ages. Let's make it simple. Pick the one that you like best and put it in bold, underline it, and put it at the bottom of your post. This will help us find out which one is the favorite and then we can get TC10 going sooner. Here's my example:

Chaos. - Playable

 

[WherewolfTherewolf]

Well ok then

WWTW - Surreal (and/or) Playable

 

[M0rbid]

M0rbid - Surreal (and/or) Playable

 

[Megafyr]

Megafyr - Surrealism (and/or) Playable

 

[Arcany]

I'm definately for surrealism, but making it playable might be a step too far. Surrealism in a passive picture presents a challenge on its own. The playable requirement would mean the requirement for knowledge about cinematography and triggers.
Yes, this would be cool to do but imo this changes the whole thing from a terraining contest into a mapping contest.

Also, maybe you should create a poll for choosing the theme

 

[Dr. House]

Playable terrain = yes but with Fire = no we just had a contest that involved somthing with fire and destruction so i would like to have somthing else than that now.

 

[Belgarath]

playable surreal


just one thing - this is going pretty quickly, we might want to wait a while before we decide on our theme. the last contest barely ended, but yes, we should get this one going very quickly.

the thing with surreal playable is that yeah, it would be absolutely amazing teamed up with triggerers. what i see as surreal would be a kind of dream - walking around in a forest and at spots, the screen flashes, an "alternate universe" or whatever shows up and the 'other world' contains a burned up version of the forest, demons charging across it etc. but yes, that's going a bit further than just the terrain - non-triggered will suffice, though the daylight models trigger should be allowed. unless we really want to go the extra yard for #10. up to keiji really, i would most definitely do it.
i dislike the idea of the camera though, adds a huge restriction on it, should be up to the user to decide between that kind of camera or standard, or a mix of both

agreed with chaos's restrictions.

 

[Megafyr]

Yes, scripts in a playable should be optional.

 

[Oziris]

I don't like the idea making it playable or putting any kind of triggers in it. It makes it unfair for some, like me

 

[WherewolfTherewolf]

I don't like the idea making it playable or putting any kind of triggers in it. It makes it unfair for some, like me

Well you can always team up with a triggerer if you can't make your own

 

[Oziris]

I don't want no triggers ffs. It will ruin the contest for me. Its a terrain forum, go to the map contests and make this theme, not here!

 

[M0rbid]

I guess, including triggering would actually not count as a terraining contest!

The idea is good though, why not seperating it and make such a contest, too.

BUT FIRST: Let's organize this terraining contest!

 

[Megafyr]

A terrain in 3D is still a terrain, and together with triggers it could become even more awesome.

 

[Oziris]

Well, i don't know for you but if you like it make it in spare time, the contest wont be so populated if your adding all the funky stuff in it. No triggers god damn it, its not a Map Contest, its a T-E-R-R-A-I-N Contest.

 

[WherewolfTherewolf]

Well, i don't know for you but if you like it make it in spare time, the contest wont be so populated if your adding all the funky stuff in it. No triggers god damn it, its not a Map Contest, its a T-E-R-R-A-I-N Contest.

And terrains are used within maps. The point is not to create gameplay, but to create an interesting terrain which is to be enjoyed in game.

If you don't want any triggers, just make something that's beautiful from the normal game perspective

 

[Megafyr]

Yeah, I honestly don't understand what is bad about scripts for visual effects. This might actually pull some jassers into the contest, that wouldn't stand a chance otherwise. Why not make use of it?

 

[Oziris]

There aren't much jassers for everyone, am i not correct? You only have a few of them. Hm, i would only agree on this if its not wanted in the rules to make it playable and to have triggers. I have another solution how to make it, but ofc, i ain't sharing it

 

[WherewolfTherewolf]

There aren't much jassers for everyone, am i not correct? You only have a few of them. Hm, i would only agree on this if its not wanted in the rules to make it playable and to have triggers. I have another solution how to make it, but ofc, i ain't sharing it

Har har, well then if a playable theme is what's finally agreed upon have fun not participating

 

[Chaos.]

Alot of complaining about triggers. Here is a suggestion to help relieve some frustration. The triggers won't be part of the judging. The sole purpose of the camera system would be so that the actual playability of the terrain can be tested. Any one can just say that their's is playable but when tested ingame it might be that you can't move anywhere or you can go through rocks due to lack of pathing blockers. So I suggest that once the contest starts (if playable is chosen), the host will find a triggerer who is willing to aid us through out the contest. If there is anyone who knows nothing about triggers, the triggerer can help him in setting up his camera system. Then people who lack trigger knowledge (like me) won't have to worry about such things and can focus all their attention on terraining.

 

[Megafyr]

Yup, that one earns my vote.

 

[WherewolfTherewolf]

In no where did it say that Triggers were counted in to the score anyways

It's still a Terrain contest, it's more like an applied terrain contest

 

[M0rbid]

If playble plus triggers come, I would like to judge instead of joining the contest

 

[Oziris]

How can you make it playable i just don't get it?? -.-
http://www.grudart.net/images/stories/ARTHISTORY/art for blog/surrealism-painting01.jpg
Explain please.

 

[WherewolfTherewolf]

Surrealism doesn't inheritely mean to scatter headless bodies of naked women into your terrain.

And the ground around that tree could be playable, doesn't mean you have to be able to walk up that - just like you can't just walk up the sides of houses their's barriers and the such irl.

Because the whole thing is that it is meant to be enjoyed in game, and not just in an image.

 

[Belgarath]

what you were going to terrain a body of a naked headless woman/tree?

there do need to be a few parameters on how much the triggers can do - for example flashing and changing of "universes" or whatever like i said, or just a camera system. a forced camera system would be lame imo, let the contestant decide on what he wants as the camera. the triggering itself wouldn't be judged, it could be leaky as shit (of course that's not cool) but maybe the effects of it would be judged -- part of a section of the judging called like sfx, in which triggered and static special effects are included. just an idea
also trigger-changed terrain should be included in somewhere y'know.

what I think the triggering should be allowed to do:
- camera system
- special effects (not massive elaborate ones, flashes)
- terrain changes (adds to the surreality of the terrain if it changes at points, not necessarily permanently)
- - - - ?

just ideas


also anyone know about what keiji's saying about all this? after all the final shot is up to him

 

[Chaos.]

Well my vote would go towards no triggers except a camera system, even if it is just a simple "lock camera on unit X" or whatever. In my opinion, for a terraining contest, anything extra (like triggers) that may affect the opinions of the puplic or judges should be excluded. If triggers become a part of the judging, for either the poll or the judges, then it defeats the purpose of a terraining contest. However, that is just my opinions for this contest. It's up to you guys. I will still participate with or without the use of triggers. I just want to terrain.

People can still keep posting their thoughts and recomendations on the other themes. Playable isn't final yet, however we need to start thinking of some more themes for playable just incase we come to a conclusion that TC#10 will be playable. So let's hear your ideas for that.

Something that you should keep in mind while brainstorming: a contest is successful when there are alot of entries. TC#7 was a very successful contest with 17 entries. About half the participants of almost every contest are the lower level terrainers with little experience who want to give it a shot. So if you think about it, begginers help make a contest successful (in terms of numbers). Surrealism would be very interesting to see and I'm sure that we might get a couple of good entries. But it is a theme that, in my opinion, requires an advanced knowledge in terraining to achieve. It will be hard for a begginer to get an idea of a surreal environment and then recreate his invisioned "world" in WE. Surreal is a cool theme, but not a good one for playable imo. So try to think of a theme that gives great possibilities for the more experienced terrainer, but also could easily be achieved by a begginer wanting to join his first contest. That way we can get more numbers so that this can be a more successful competition.

 

[PROXY]

Well my vote would go towards no triggers except a camera system, even if it is just a simple "lock camera on unit X" or whatever. In my opinion, for a terraining contest, anything extra (like triggers) that may affect the opinions of the puplic or judges should be excluded. If triggers become a part of the judging, for either the poll or the judges, then it defeats the purpose of a terraining contest. However, that is just my opinions for this contest. It's up to you guys. I will still participate with or without the use of triggers. I just want to terrain.

People can still keep posting their thoughts and recomendations on the other themes. Playable isn't final yet, however we need to start thinking of some more themes for playable just incase we come to a conclusion that TC#10 will be playable. So let's hear your ideas for that.

Something that you should keep in mind while brainstorming: a contest is successful when there are alot of entries. TC#7 was a very successful contest with 17 entries. About half the participants of almost every contest are the lower level terrainers with little experience who want to give it a shot. So if you think about it, begginers help make a contest successful (in terms of numbers). Surrealism would be very interesting to see and I'm sure that we might get a couple of good entries. But it is a theme that, in my opinion, requires an advanced knowledge in terraining to achieve. It will be hard for a begginer to get an idea of a surreal environment and then recreate his invisioned "world" in WE. Surreal is a cool theme, but not a good one for playable imo. So try to think of a theme that gives great possibilities for the more experienced terrainer, but also could easily be achieved by a begginer wanting to join his first contest. That way we can get more numbers so that this can be a more successful competition.

totally agree about the trigger part