OSR-MapPack
Map Info
	File Name osr-mappack.zip Author OSR Gametype UT2k4 Other Date Added 01-23-2006 File Version 1.00 File Size 57.56 mb Player Count Unknown Map Description These maps were made for the Old Skool Rulz mapping contest held at Unreal Playground. This contest originated as an idea which Superchaz brought to me (King Mango) in IRC one night. We discussed rules, and before Chazzy even knew what was going on, I had totally taken control of things. It's a bad habit of mine I'm told. Sorry Chazzy! With the rules set or at least percolating it was time to start a hype thread to get everyone fired up about mapping for a new contest. I have to admit I had a LOT of fun teasing everyone that whole week. :D :D :D I initially proposed a prize fund of fifty USD and moments later received a PM from the mighty Spiffness generously offering to match what funds I was willing to put up and we each agreed to contribute fifty USD to be divided among the top three finalists. The contest rules were fairly restrictive: 1.) With the exception of movers and game related actors such as power cores, nodes, turrets etc... there were no static meshes allowed. The objective here was to concentrate on gameplay issues and also (maybe more importantly in the long run) to force mappers to come up with original ideas to trim out their maps. 2.) No fancy materials. I won't get into the full definition of this as laid out in the contest rules, but since the maps were going to be BSP, textures were limited to those which simulated the original UT look. 3.) The file size could not exceed 5 MB zipped. There were no external custom packages allowed. Everything custom had to be stored in myLevel to keep things simple. I think it's safe to say some of the contestants reading that last statement are saying to themselves, "wtf?" 4.) Mappers had just over two weeks to submit their entries. 5.) Discussion of maps during the contest was forbidden. Each map was to be a complete surprise. I didn't want anyone to NOT do a particular theme or idea just because they saw that someone else was doing it too. With the help of UP's venerable Kingster a special ftp location was set up specifically for the contest entries where users were given only write permissions in order that they not be able to see any of the other contest map names and thus get some idea of the map's theme from the name or gametype. 6. Maps must have OSR- as the prefix following the gametype. 7.) Porting over of an author's previous UT classic work was allowed permitted the mapper had not made any previous discussion nor had run any 2k4 beta cycles of the map he/she intended to convert for the contest. 8. Mappers were not allowed to make use of distance fog to aid in level optimization as this would detract from the old school feel of the map. 9.) Playable areas in the map were limited to a BSP triangle count of 5000 maximum. This rule started off at 1000 but it quickly became clear that due to the way the new engine handles BSP rendering, 1000 was too low. I personally felt it was possible, but many mappers voiced concern and in the spirit of the season I changed the limit to 5000. What a guy eh? :D 10.) In order to be considered as one of the three top maps, contestants must send tithing to me in the form of cash or pizza in order to secure- oh wait that's not a rule. Just a suggestion. ;) Mappers in this contest were allowed to submit as many entries as they could complete before the deadline. Some mappers took advantage of this option. *cough Blito cough* while some who vowed to participate wound up dropping out at the last minute due to personal or technical problems. As a result there are some notable mappers missing from this comp. Mappers were competing for a 100 USD prize pool to be divided among the top three entries in a 50/30/20 split. As of this writing the contest has just closed and results will not be available but if you are curious to see how the voting went you can visit http://www.unrealplayground.com/ and have a look in the 2k3/2k4 Level design forum to view the results. http://forums.unrealplayground.com/forumdisplay.php?f=129 23 maps made it into the final pool of qualified entries with some sneaking in barely under the wire with literally seconds to spare. There was good fun had by everyone, some bruised egos, sore bottoms and the best part of all, much was learned on all accounts during this endeavor. May I give one final congratulations and thank you to those who participated, and even to those who almost participated. Regards, King Mango 1-16-06 To install the files, unzip this archive directly to your UT2004 dir. This is C:\UT2004 by default Review Rating -- User Rating 5 Overall Rating --
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Map Comments
souldividersjosz 01-26-2006 08:22 PM MST   Woot! EDIT: Thanks to everyone that gives Gladius a compliment (or two :P), and hats off to KingMango for the great contest! (and Chazzy too) Tresset: The competition actually had a max workspan of 14 or so days, so the icing on the cake is mostly left out. Wesley "Boreas" van Dijk 01-24-2006 02:01 AM MST Rating: 4   EPILEPTIC WARNING: Do not play Space Valley Canyon of the Damned!!! This map pack contains a lot of sub-par work. Old school rules? Well, not in this case. BR-Remorse and CTF-Gladius are the only maps that can really be considered keepers. A few maps are clearly attempts to make something serious, but a lot clearly isn't. I spent about 2 hours checking it out, and it has been a total waste of time. I liked old school gameplay, but this gets a big NO. BR-Remorse: 7.5 CTF-Gladius: 8.0 The rest of the map: on average, I guess about a 4. With a negative score for Space Valley Canyon of the Damned... EDIT TO OSR: Okay, Tangent and Cheops are okay, but Rockmill? Wasn't that the spammy 'throw a few spider mines in the pit for a monster kill' map? Steamed has a nice feel to it, but every part looks and feels just the same. And I just really can't appreciate the anti-epilecptic/wtfdetailtexturetoo work. When download something this size, I expect something nice to come up. In a few cases, I did, but some of the works just drag the map pack down. Or do you take every piece of work in this pack serious? OSR 01-23-2006 06:25 PM MST   lol in most cases I don't mind flaming/harsh comments, but Boreas you're on crack if you think Remorse and Gladius are the only good maps in this pack. In addition to the two you listed, Rockmill Tangent Tanks-a-Lot UrbanDungeon Cheops Steamed are all maps with high replay value. RedFist it was just something that snowballed. I didn't anticipate it going forward with the momentum it eventually gathered and by then it was too late to post other places. BTW this is KingMango. Also five thousand sounds like a lot but that is compared to the old way UE handled poly count. When you look at how the engine handles poly counts now, a surface that would have been a single poly in UT can possibly be many more. A simple square would be 2. A square which has been clipped on all four corneres then becomes six. So the count is not at all similar to the same way it would be considered in UT. We found this out the hard way. :D redfist 01-23-2006 07:58 PM MST   5000 polys? thats a lot. 1000 would have been better. Another thing why does UP get info, but nothing about this contest at nalicity? I would have entered my ut04 version of Trenchdog, I am sure it went above and beyond the rules to go by. It's 631 polys, but i did use staticmeshes for some BSP pillars. ADD Ah I see, I did spend more time than a week on my plain map, but I was thinking for UT04 a good amount would be like 2000 polys. That would be flexable enough and still do ok.And having the map size like you had it,it would cover texture and or homemade staticmeshes. RichyB 01-23-2006 01:24 PM MST Rating: 6   OSR is correct. There are plenty of maps in this pack that has a lot of old school game play. My personal favourites would be Tangent, Gladius and Cheops. I agree some maps in the pack are bad but there’s still a lot to be gained by downloading this map pack. My score is on the low side as I am rating the entire pack as one. Hourences 01-23-2006 05:33 PM MST   Congrats, youre exactly the 9000th map on NC3 A lot of maps were really quite bad, gladius is sticking out a head lenght. Gladius = rock solid considering the concept. Only the lighting was either too black ish or too random coloured for me but the texturing etc was absolutely solid. Luv_Studd 01-23-2006 06:18 PM MST   Thanks for posting this here OSR - who ever you are ;) Next time an OSR contest rolls around - which might not be that far off - you all can have a chance to submit your work. So don't be a pussy about it, k? ;) Other nice efforts were Donator's DM-OSR-Rockmill and Lord Simeon's ONS-OSR-TanksALot hawkwind 01-24-2006 12:30 AM MST Rating: 8   understand people, that they had ten days to do this, within "old school rules", and i have seen some really great work. understand, i am a iCTF monkey at heart, so a special thanks goes out to Blito3. "this is some of the most beautiful work on the planet, you don't put much {sometimes no} work on candy, but dag,nabit, you know what makes this all so much fun, your ons map is fun as hell (i rush to put them on my server)" oh well, you will not find a map pac on this planet with so many class A authors. it shows how each and everyone of them loves the game. and Luv_Studd, you have a "knack", and i'm still waiting for a ctf level Hazel.H 01-24-2006 05:56 PM MST Rating: 7.5   "EPILEPTIC WARNING: Do not play Space Valley Canyon of the Damned!!!" Thanks for the warning Boreas, it would have helped if there was actually a warning in the map description, readme or forum where it was posted. I don't care how "elite" a mapper you are or how funny you think it is, there's no excuse to post stuff like this without a warning. I suffer from another kind of photosensitive condition, it was about 5 seconds after loading the map before I could hit the exit button but it was too late >:( I was ill for 2 days after Cheers On the plus side there were some excellent maps in the pack, good work guys. Ignoring the bad maps, I give this pack a 7.5 INIQUITOUS 01-24-2006 06:59 PM MST   *hugs hazel* ... and deletes Space Valley Canyon of the Damned!!! Tresset 01-26-2006 04:53 PM MST   The maps seem a bit rushed. BIOS 01-27-2006 01:52 AM MST   Best comment ever ^^ 4.) Mappers had just over two weeks to submit their entries. Kantham 01-27-2006 04:11 AM MST Rating: 4   I liked Slainchild's So if i have to rate this map pack, which some of the levels are a kind of joke, so that means about 3/15 good maps. Ugh, definately not worth the DL. Turns2Ashes 01-27-2006 09:58 PM MST   Agreed with Kantham on the not worth the download thing. I went in expecting stuff like Slainchild's map since I played it before I downloaded the whole pack, but most of these maps are horrible. A few look okay, and even fewer play okay, but most aren't even old school - they're just bad. Sjosz's map was 10x better than every other map in the pack (100x better than some), and the only other two that stuck out as being decently fun to play were the tank ONS map and the BR map. Imagine my disappointment when the first map I played was SC's, which was decent, then the BR one, which was fun, only to follow them up with tons of really, really bad maps. 100% not worth the download. The maps need to be released separately ASAP.