Years ago Newdoom.com held a "Map in a week" contest. People had one week to build a complete map from scratch. To ensure that every contestant actually started when the contest began, Newdoom.com provided a base map with a few rooms which had to be part of the final map. Now, what about doing a whole project with several small maps that are based on the same layout but all of them looking totally different as every single map is finished by a different author?
The contest will run from January 15th till March 31st so you have about 2,5 months to plan, create and submit your entry which should be fairly enough for a good and solid map.
The map layout can be downloaded from this Dropbox link (important, updated on January 17th, please redownload). It's a ZIP file containing three wads, which is always the same layout but saved in different editing formats (UDMF-, Hexen- and Doomformat)
We set up a certain amount of important rules. These will ensure that the results can be compared to each other and that everyone has the same chances of winning. The list is not a set of guides but it's actually the law to take part here. Submissions breaking the rules won't be consideded. If you aren't clear about some points, feel free to ask us. Other than that, here we go:
- You may change any sector/line property (height, light, boundaries, shape, vertice position, linedef length/split, map size)²
- You may cut about 30% of the provided layout of necessary
- You may add custom textures/flats
- You may add custom actors (props, monsters, weapons)³
- You may add custom sounds (ambience, sequences)
- You may add custom music (midi, ogg)
- You may add custom graphics (w/o overwriting original ones)
- You may add additional rooms/space to your map's layout
- You may add scripts to your map (acs, dialogue)
- Your map must be vanilla-, boom-, zdoom- or gzdoom-compatible
- Your map must work with DOOM2.WAD (but it doesn't have to be only Doom-styled)
³don't go overboard, we don't need another Brutal Doom
To raise the interest and motivation to participate in this project, we didn't spare any effort and prepared some awesomely amazing prizes for the 5 winners, but take a look at them on your own:
- 1st place - Spikey, the plush imp (it's unique!)
- 2nd place - An amazing canvas print² of the Doom 2 box art plus an awesome² Doom poster (signed by id software)
- 3rd place - An amazing canvas print of the Doom 2 box art
- 4th place - An awesome Doom poster (signed with id software members)
- 5th place - An awesome Doom poster (signed with id software members)
Any submission must be posted to the Realm667 contest forum which can be found here. There is no need to sign up to this contest, it's enough to submit the results. You can upload them to any host or attach them to your post, anything is possible as long as we are able to download the submission and it's posted before the end of the day on March 15th (we will take your timezone into account, don't worry).
Esselfortium already put it into a nutshell some years ago when the idea was developed the first time:
Out of all submissions, the Realm667 stuff will choose a Top 5. We will not only consider the level of detail put into the layout but also the level of creativity involved by staying to the set of rules we've prepared. After the Top 5 has been chosen, the community decides, which one's the winner through a public poll that everyone can participate."I'm pretty sure the point is for each person to make something creative and interesting out of the layout, not for Torm to ask a bunch of people to detail the same map 10 times in slightly different ways."
We are looking forward to your submissions,
Cheers, good luck and best regards,
Tormentor667 and the Realm667 Team
