In August/September of year 2011, the JJnet Duel Tournament is returning again! This time it's the third edition. The tournament size will be probably the same, but to keep things nice and interesting, I am proud to present you; JJnet Duel Tournament v3.0 Level Contest. This contest is being held the second time, and the idea is pretty much the same as last time: Create a suitable, yet interesting duel-level!

If you didn't take part in the previous contest and are new to this, you might be wondering what is the prize. The purpose of this contest is to support the actual JJnet Duel Tournament with new additions to the tournament's mappool. So, the top 1-4 levels(depending on the amount of submitted entries, and their average quality), get their place in the new tournament mappool, as a prize. Also, if your entry makes it to the mappool, you can of course use your own map when you can in your matches, if you wish to take part in the actual tournament.

Also like previously, I'll be needing 1 to 3 judges/referees to help with judging the entries after the deadline has passed. Here are some questions that might 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 doesn't matter does your entry make it to the mappool or not, you are still allowed to play, and of course use 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.

Q: If I took part in the previous level contest or was a referee, am I allowed to enter again?
A: Yes, of course. The current contest is all new, and separate from the first contest. Also the past results have no effect on the judging of the current contest. However keep in mind, if you wish to be a referee for the second time, I might pick over someone else who didn't referee previously(in case the other volunteers meet the standards.)

Q: I have already submitted my entry, but I think I wanna edit it a little bit, or I could make a brand new level, can I?
A: Yes. You can edit/fix/remake your level as much as you want until the deadline has passed.

Some rules and advices you should take into consideration when creating the level. They are the same as in the previous contest, except for one change. That one is bolded here:

• Level type must be CTF. No other game types are accepted.
• The level must be playable in 1.23. The level must be properly playable with all characters(also Lori. Important is that all characters are able to reach all bases, carrots, and power ups. No character must have major advantage over each other. Minor differences with flow, for example don't matter.)
• 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(minidw, minisemi, etc.)
• 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, 2011, 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 shortly 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.

Entries submitted so far:

• Magically Abnormal Playground by Jgke
• Space Cheesecake by Galana and Archer
• Calypso by Toni_
• Tyuka's Realm Forsaken by FireSworD
• Sandy Canyon by Zoro
• The Brawler's House by ThunderWalker
• Get dath flag by Zerg
• Proteus by Laro B.
• Fukushima by Loon
• Mechanical Magma Machine by DarkSonic
• Dead Meadow by Sir Ementaler
• Frontier Falls by FawFul

CONTEST CLOSED!

I'll probably be submitting a level. 2 moths to make a duel level should be enough time to come up with something good.

How convenient, I have a nearly finished level that has been laying on my HD for quite some time.

I have a level coming up that I could enter as well.

Oh yeah, and I'm making a "democratic" level again. So all the level abusers can whine.

I'm making a level with half of it covered in water.

I'll come up with something

Level is done, please check j2o.

There is one concern I have, about character biases:

I have tried to make key items and situations readily usable by all chars, and I've made the level reasonably open to enhance heli-earing abilities, but overall spaz is still a more "talented" character in the level (for example, a certain rf climb which is possible with all chars, but much, much easier with spaz). Is that all right?

Thanks FS. And for the rest who haven't been around, just a reminder: You got 32 days remaining to work on your levels.

About the characters: I recently updated the 2nd advice/rule in the first post a bit to make it more clear what I'd want from the levels. So, considering that at least your description about the level sounds alright, FS. I should probably check it out soon myself.

EDIT: Checked. The flow seemed ok. However I have a question; Since the bases are placed in tubes, where would you suggest players to start a duel to keep it fair? The same spot wouldn't be nice obviously. How about top-right and bot-left corners with PUs since the players can have full ammo in the beginning anyway?

I was worried about that, hmm, I think it's mainly up to the players, but your suggestion seems fine too.

I have done level for your level contest. Lost 2-3 months...

Already uploaded it in J2O.

Finally, my level, get dath flag is finished

Enjoy

Thanks Zerg!

A note to ThunderWalker: To be able to enter the contest appropriately, please convert your level to 1.23 first. EDIT: Thanks, entry accepted.

Sorry SJ, but you have to readd my level... It has a new link now.

Alright, done.

ATTENTION: If you still have a level in the works, this is your last chance to finish and submit it. The contest will be closed in less than 24 hours, and I won't be extending the deadline in any case. If you can't manage your entry, you can of course volunteer as a judge, but you should preferably do that before the deadline as well.

I can judge.

As can I.

I can also!

Contest closed. No more entries accepted. I will inform the judges shortly and try to do the judging within a few days.

So, here we are. At first, thanks to everyone who was inspired to make a level and put effort on it to enter the contest itself. This time we ended up with a total of 12 entries, which is 1 entry less than last time. The overall quality of levels was slightly lesser than previously as well, although nothing dramatical. However, after careful judging and consideration, I have decided to give the top-3 levels a ticket to the tournament mappool.

The total time spent on judging through all the entries submitted, was around 4,5 hours at once, which is fairly long. The assistant judges were CelL, cooba and Snooze. The result was decided upon the same methods as last time. Each level was reviewed and playtested in duels together by the judges and given positive and negative points. Also each judge gave a rating with J2O's rating-methods. The average ratings were looked upon, when deciding the winner(s.)

So, congratulations to the 'Terrific Trio':

(Average ratings in brackets)

1st Place: Frontier Falls by FawFul (8,375)

+
• Impressive, detailed eyecandy. Perfect dueling atmosphere.
• Interesting, semi-symmetric yet balanced layout.
• Pickups scattered well thorough the level.
• Uses a simple, yet handy warppit-concept.
-
• Bouncers are hard to see on the top-level.
• Bases slightly too close to each other/too easy to reach.

2nd Place: Tyuka's Realm Forsaken by FireSworD (7,925)

+
• Interesting, atmospherical level-theming.
• Cool and original layout, with an unconventional base-concept(recycled one though)
• Different benefits for different characters, balanced thanks to the base-concept as well.
-
• Scoring is possible with copter below the bases. To-be-fixed.
• Slightly distracting eyecandy at times.
• The level has an unconventional base-concept, and thus leaves start-positions to be worried about for the players(Latest GMR detects sucker tubes)

3rd Place: Fukushima by Loon (7,775)

+
• Good, but slightly excessive eyecandy.
• Generally a working duel-level, with a fine flow.
-
• The two minor carrots might be too little to fit with the powerful ammo here.
• Questionable balance between teams. Some stuff seems to be slightly closer/easier to reach from red base.

---

The rest of the levels given feedback in no particular order(except by the dates submitted):

Magically Abnormal Playground by Jgke

+
• Reasonably fast-paced gameplay, reasonable level size in general.
• Minimal camp-factor.
• Balanced gameplay between teams and characters. In addition, each character has it’s own small benefits with gameplay(Lori as well).
• Good coin-warp concept.
-
• A bit too gimmicky in general/Overcomplicated.
• Weird, distractive eyecandy.
• Flow leaves more to be desired.

Space Cheesecake by Galana and Archer

+
• Clean and consistent eyecandy.
• Good choice of pickups.
-
• Hard to navigate, rather useless warps. Rather bad, spaz-biased flow.
• Despite that ammo is scattered well, the key-pickups are rather questionably placed, which makes red team slightly better.

Calypso by Toni_

+
• Balanced, easy to learn.
• Average eyecandy.
-
• Very distractive flow. The springs don’t work well with the layout.
• Dull, linear layout.
• The full carrot is annoying to reach, and the minor carrots have probably too long spawn-times.

Sandy Canyon by Zoro

+
• Nicely open, yet not too excessively.
• Looks good for most parts, contains no distracting eyecandy.
• Balanced teams, and characters.
-
• Campy Powerups, and full NRG.
• Hard to navigate, and there are some rather useless platforms.
• A bit too straight-forward, not really interesting layout.
• Slightly too big size for duels in general.

The Brawler's House by ThunderWalker

+
• Fun, yet chaotic gameplay, literally.
• Not too confusing eyecandy, although a bit bland at some sections.
-
• Very random and confusing layout.
• Moving and navigating in the level is extremely hard to master. Way too cramped level in general.
• Carrots are weirdly placed, especially one located in top-left of the level, which is a lethal dead end.

Get dath flag by Zerg

+
• Some parts of the level seem creative.
• Good base-placement.
-
• Distracting foreground layer.
• Overall very buggy eyecandy.
• No clear balance between teams, shapeless layout.
• Excessively campy room in top-right of the level.

Proteus by Laro B.

+
• Looks nice, though grayish
• Solid, symmetrical layout
• Tactical warp/carrot concept.
-
• Slightly cramped, zigzag between bases.
• Weird belt-events below full NRG, something doesn’t work here?
• A bit irritating flow in the middle with small platforms.

Mechanical Magma Machine by DarkSonic

+
• Decent eyecandy.
• Easy to learn, but limited gameplay. Balanced.
-
• The bases are too easy to reach from each other. Everything else is drawn out(start positions as well), which makes rushing too easy.
• Not really a handy layout.
• The vines are kind of redundant everywhere.

Dead Meadow by Sir Ementaler

+
• Good flow for all characters.
• Interesting, original carrot-concept.
• Fine graphic-side, although the background could be better with a translucent-fade.
-
• Feels empty overall.
• The Powerups are placed in annoyingly cramped dead ends.
• The bases are far too easy to camp, very limited layout.
• The whole bottom-level is redundant except for the PowerUps.

All the levels have been added to at least ZD-levellists as far as I know, so you may train and play any of them together with your friends in a handy way from now on, as you like. If you're planning to sign up for the upcoming duel tournament, you might want to focus on training the winner-levels though.

A note to FireSworD: To keep your level valid for the tournament-mappool, you should fix the issue with bases mentioned in results as soon as possible.

I will also make it clear in tournament-rules/mappool/news that the players can agree on custom start positions themselves in Tyuka's Realm Forsaken. However if no agreement can be made, the default way to start a duel would be to restart the level and begin immediately with no ammo. In nutshell, use /autostart on, /r commands.

In addition, if any bugs/major flaws are to be noticed from the three levels that passed, they can be modified/fixed for the mappool(with my permission.)

FireSworD's level has been fixed. I suggest everyone who already downloaded it to re-download it from J2O.

Also FawFuL will be making a few minor changes/fixes once he's back from holidays within a week or so, so that level isn't the final version yet. Please be patient.

I will be on holidays for a fair week as well, so I'm planning to publish the final mappool and open the sign-ups for the tournament itself on August 16th.

FawFul's level has been updated. Re-download recommended.

UPDATE: The sign-ups for the tournament will open with a minor delay, due to that I've had other duties, and that the tournament-system needs to be archived and re-installed still. Sorry for the inconvenience to the ones who've been eagerly waiting for sign-ups.