As the JJnet Duel Tournament v1.0 was successful after all, I'm planning to hold a v2.0 on the upcoming Summer/Fall, starting from August. I'm aiming to make it an even bigger tournament than last time, target being a total of 48 players. Of course there would be a very much different mappool than previously. The mappool used in the first edition got criticized as it included some levels that weren't after all very duel-suitable. I picked levels by the popularity- and tradition-factors rather than size- and gameplay-factors. I have learned from this by focusing on the latter in the future.

I have a mappool planned pretty far for the next tournament, but it's not complete yet. To find some variety, and due to the lack of good duel-levels in this game and community, I am challenging you to a duel-level creation contest. The best 1-3 maps(depending on the amount of decent entries submitted) of the contest would be added to the final tournament mappool. Now here you have a chance to affect. Also I will be looking for 1-3 referees/judges to judge the entries at the end of the contest. The more entries, the more I need points of view to make proper conclusions.

Here are some questions that might possibly come to your mind in the first place.

Q: If I take part in this contest, am I allowed to take part in the upcoming tournament?
A: Yes. It does not matter does your entry make it to the mappool or not, you are still allowed to play, and of course play in your own map in the tournament. Same applies to referees.

Q: Can I be both a participant and a referee?
A: No you cannot. It would be probably wise to be patient with your decision. I don't pick the referee(s) by who signed up fastest, so you can consider if you feel more like creating a level until the deadline. If you didn't end up participating, you can still nominee yourself as a referee for me. Some requirements for referees are long experience and knowledge of level creation, and of course at least some reviewing-experience.

Q: If another contest pops up, am I allowed to take part with the same entry?
A: Yes, you are allowed to take part in any other contests there may appear during the same period(which is unlikely though), as long as it's fine for the other contest's holder.

Q: Am I allowed to submit more than one entry? Also am I allowed to collaborate with somebody else?
A: Only one entry from one person. Collaborations are allowed without limitations of people taking part in the collab. However a collab counts as 1 total entry for each person in it, no matter how big percentage he/she helped.

Now some rules and advices about the actual contest here:

• Level type must be CTF. No other game types are accepted.
• The level must be playable in 1.23. Lori support isn't required.
• Use only MP-start positions for your level.
• Your level must be fresh. Any 'official' levels(meaning that they were submitted somewhere for public use, for example J2o before) are not accepted. Anything that was uploaded to public before this date (June 1st) cannot be submitted to this contest. I suggest you to build a level for this contest from blank, but you are also allowed to use an unfinished level which you(not another person) started earlier, or a finished, but private level of yours.
• Level editions are not allowed.
• There is no exact size-limit for the level since the playable area and flow is what matters. Single-screen CTFs aren't appreciated, nor are XL-sizes that have potential of making the game crash.
• Try to keep as much focus on the gameplay as possible. Remember that you are creating a level that fits 1on1-matches in the first place. The other match-types are unimportant. Try to keep things simple yet don't make it too linear. Also try to keep the level fast-paced enough, but avoid making it too chaotic and random.
• Both symmetric and non-symmetric levels are accepted, as long as there is a good balance between blue and red sides. Neither team mustn't have any major advantages over another.
• Also some small gimmicks and originality are nice bonus, but not a requirement. Your level can be simply just decent, as long as it doesn't directly rip-off any other existing levels. Also gimmick-only levels such as 'Mulch', 'Malch', etc. aren't appreciated.
• Try to keep the level good-looking enough so that it looks interesting for players new to it. The eyecandy however shouldn't distract a player too much, nor should it cover too much of the play-area.
• Don't fill up the level with useless pick-ups. Have a good variety of ammo perhaps. Just default Bouncer and Toaster might make the level dull even if the design would be good. Consider what ammo are good especially in your level. You are allowed to put in food, but not in excessive amounts. Coins and coin-warps are allowed, but keep in mind that there shouldn't be any outlying bonus-rooms where a player can hide for ages without any chance of getting roasted.
• Avoid making the level too campy in overall. Small dead ends don't matter, but bigger ones might be annoying. Give players enough of choice during movement. Don't make players too reliable on some events such as copters when trying to reach some certain area.
• Tileset choice doesn't matter as long as the tileset doesn't have a very ugly or confusing palette.
• Some players also still listen to the game-music itself(like me mostly), so it might be a good idea to use a fitting music-track for the level to keep the player interested. At least don't pick a too distracting music-track. The track can be an already used one.

With that in mind, you are now ready to take part in the contest. The deadline is set to August 1st, 2010, 22:00 GDT, so you have exactly two months to create your entry-level. You don't have to separately sign up for this contest, although I don't mind it. Important is that when you're done with your entry, you pack your level+tileset+music into an archive and either upload to J2O or another similar place, or send me via E-Mail (Vivando[At]luukku[dot]com).

Remember that I probably won't accept any rushed entries which are made in just a couple of hours. Put effort on designing the level and think about the advices I mentioned above.

Once the deadline has been reached, I make my decision about the referees/judges and aim to start the tournament a week after that with the final mappool combined. If you have any more questions related to this topic or contest, feel free to ask them here or via private messages.