CrossbowVille Mapping Competition

30th November 2011

Single Player First Person Shooter Maps and Mods for Half-Life 1, 2 and Episodes 1, 2 and 3

I am pleased to announce the next mapping competition: CrossbowVille.

Full details can be found on the competition’s page: CrossbowVille.

I suggest you read the page carefully, because there is one new rule that is related to the sponsors that is very important.

I recently, posted an article about this competiton and ran a poll of the potential themes. BossVille came top, but as I said in the article, the vote itself was not the final decider. As much as I, and obviously you, would like to play that mod, it seems that many mappers were worried that creating interesting boss situations would be too much of a challenge.

I therefore decided on CrossbowVille, which I feel should provide enough focus for mappers to create something interesting, fun and challenging to play.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the sponsors, Steam Contests and Tt eSPORTS for providing the prizes, in addition to my cash amounts.

Good luck to all those who choose to enter and let’s hope this is competition sees some fantastic maps!

37 Comments

  1. The timing is incredibly bad, seeing as GameBanana has a mapping competition at exactly the same time and very similar.

    Unfortunately, I had this planned for a while and the sponsors already set up.

  2. Arma

    Oh well, guess I’ll wait for the next one, good luck to everyone entering though!

      1. Arma

        Well, I might reconsider. I just personally think it’s a pain to play with the crossbow. =)

        1. Think of it as a challenge. if it were too easy, then there would be no fun involved. Crossbow against manhacks might be fun, or how about trying to protect citizens from a swarm of headcrabs?

  3. Ark11

    Sounds like a nice idea, seems like an opportunity to make an “Assassination-style” map. I am working on a map for the Gamebanana Treasure Hunter contest at the moment. But once I have that done and if I come up with a good map design i’ll be sure to enter.

  4. Major Banter

    GameBanana finish their comp on the 13th, and the prizes here are way better.

    Come on people, if I’m the only entrant I don’t get anything! If there’s two of us, we won’t get anything! Get mapping you machines!

    1. Does that mean you are finally going to enter one of my comps? YAY.

      1. Major Banter

        Haha, at last, yes! Should be a nice change of pace!

    2. FYI, Banter: You are not the only entrant.

      EDIT: Wait, so now there are two of us. Just two……hm……

      EDIT 2: Get mapping, you machines!!!!

  5. Major Banter

    I took the courtesy of converting the two sponsor images to VTF format.

    Note that I literally just chucked them through VTFedit; no bumpmaps or VMTs, you can make those yourselves. They’re best applied to brushes due to their size. It’s just a helping hand for newbies.

    http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4384889/TT%20Esports%20VTFs.zip

    Enjoy.

  6. s.anchev

    It’s like SniperVille on The other side

    1. [insert Twilight Zone theme music here]

  7. Hec

    Should Crosbow, would be the only permited weapon????, Hell please noo!!, I hope the mods will center in the crosbow but not Only and Only in that wapon!!!!

    1. You can have other weapons, but Phillip states that you must provided limited ammo for those weapons. You do not have to limit the amount of crossbow ammo if you don’t want to.

      1. Hec

        Oh ok that would be different, it sounds ok.

  8. Shadowmancer471

    Would love to enter if I have the time, I shall endeavour to find it.

    However, question about the sponsor logo, does this have to be embedded within the bsp or can I download it, put it in and have it work? This is considering that phillip will already have the data files for the logos anyway

    1. It should be embedded. Use pakrat.

      1. I disagree. Phillip says that all entries must have the sponsor logo in the map in order to be eligible for a prize. Therefore, the logos (VTF files, that is) should be stored in the final mod’s materials folder so that all of the entries” maps can reference the directory’s materials folder. That way, Pakrat is not required.

        1. Major Banter

          That would involve every mapper using identical VMTs and identical VTF names.

          Embed people. It is not hard.

  9. Alex

    I don’t know if I should enter or not…I would like a keyboard or mouse though. The money doesn’t really interest me as the $50 is just £30 and the 25 is only 15.

    The Crossbow also doesn’t really provide much freedom…

    But the only real problem for me is the month, December always takes a huge chunk out of my life…

    1. I and I think many would disagree that the crossbow doesn’t provide much freedom. It depends on your imagination. Of course, there is little, if anything, I can say to convince you to enter. I would hope you entered for the challenge of the theme, rather than comparing the prize against time taken.

      Anyway, let’s hope you decide to make time and if you do, I look forward to playing your entry.

      1. Arma

        Actually I agree, the only time a player would really use the Crossbow is to snipe from a large distance, you couldn’t use it in a closed in area, and you can’t really have closed in areas since ammo is somehow limited with the other weapons (I don’t understand how that is even possible). Just my opinion, I think I have a good idea though.

        1. VoEC

          I disagree with you.

          Of course the crossbow is primarily a long range weapon but it can also be used in closed range and can create some awesome combat situations.
          While playing HL2 I sometimes had to switch to the crossbow and even in tight corridors it still played really well and fast paced (in contrast to sniper weapons in other games).

          On the other hand to low ammo for the cb makes it a bit hard to center the combat around it for a whole map.
          But I think it is kinda like with the GravityGun. You have to think outside the box.

  10. Spare

    Flag: Don’t drop weapons

  11. s.anchev

    I think there are great chances of this to be boring as hell 🙁
    Please, don’t do something like “you’re here, defend your position with the crossbow against 10 waves of Combine”… And good luck to everyone who enter it, I’ll definitly play it, whatever the result will be.

    1. hm, well I guess I have to quit the competition then. oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

  12. William

    Where’s 99Bolts when you need it?

    Look forward to the new ville.

    1. good question……………………………………

  13. MrGrandOp

    Count me in. I allways wanted to try my hand at single player level design, but never really had much reason to do anything in the hl2 engine.

    So ye… Thanks Phillip for making awsome level design Competitions. :3

    1. Consider yourself counted.

  14. VoEC

    I have a question about the rules of the contest.

    What exactly does “Limited ammo for other weapons mean?”. Is the limit the start amount (e.g. no additional ammo found in the level at all)?
    Because I want to have an emergency pistol for the player if he is all out of bolts and I want to give him really small amounts of ammo for it from time to time. Would that be ok?

    1. that is totally okay. my interpretation is that you can include other weapons but with a small enough amount of ammo that the crossbow will have to come in handy.

    2. I didn’t want to specify exactly how much ammo should be used because that would be difficult, so I just said “Limited ammo”. You can have more ammo than the weapon starts with, it’s your choice, but if I feel the focus of the map has been taken away from the crossbow than I’ll deduct a few points.

      Having an emergency pistol sound fine, although more than 50 rounds probably wouldn’t be a good idea.

  15. VoEC

    Just another quick question (I hope you still read the comments on this article) which might be a bit stupid but I never paticipated in any ville so here we go:
    Is it ok to have multiple maps aka 2 or more maps linked together via a level transition?
    I know, it is kind of stupid and my guess is that it would be fine. I just want to make sure because I already had some contest which were one map only.

    1. Yes, I am still reading comments on this article, in fact, I read every single comment made on this site.

      And again, yes, having more than one map connected is fine.

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