Your Ad Here

Subscribe
 Post #1
 5th July 2010
GMOD Moderator
grea$emonkey's Avatar
May 2007
9,015 Posts
The judging for the Experimental contest is finally over! The three judges selected from the FacePunch community were: CowThing, Disseminate, and Robbis_1.

First off, I wanna give my thanks to all the entrants, judges, and donors. You guys made this possible.

As you may know by now there were three entries, each completely different from each other, and here's what we had to say about each one:



Nascan Racing - ZenX2
CowThing posted:
This gamemode has a great idea, it's a lot of fun racing around the track as a can. The controls are simple and work well, although if you go fast enough and look straight up you'll start to fly. There are some issues, like getting stuck on walls with the flat end of the can. Also, why is the map made of props? I'd say it matches the theme nicely, a lot of people are entertained by Nascar.
Place: 2nd
Disseminate posted:
When I joined the server, the gamemode was broken, but that was probably because of the server itself. Nevertheless, we enjoyed shooting each other in a box area for five minutes. I then had to leave for a few minutes, and when I came back, the testers had moved on. I decided to test this in singleplayer as just skipping it due to bugs is a bit dickish. So, I started it up, and was greeted with a substandard map and something that might pass for a HUD. The level design for the gamemode was nonexistent and fairly ugly to be frank. You could see cracks in the geometry everywhere, couldn't go over some ramps, etc. The HUD was two lines of plain text in the upper left hand corner, speed and lap. This had so much potential for a HUD, but just skimped out with plain text. The scoreboard was really messed up in SP, unreadable. If you went off the course and fell, the can exploded and gave me line upon line of repeated error spam. There was an unbeatable ramp halfway across the map - you fell after going off it - so I decided to go inside the gamemode and fix it myself. When I did, I got across and finished the lap, which simply gave me another tick on the sub-par HUD. The can also had issues with collision - it would hit an edge of the track and be stuck there, not being able to turn. On the plus side, driving was really smooth as was the single effect that came out of the back of the can.

Pros: Smooth driving.
Cons: Ugly, basic, buggy, frustrating, physics issues.

Because of the ridiculous amount of issues with the gamemode, I'm forced to rank it 3rd. However, if the gamemode creator fixed all of the above glitches, it could have potential to be a really fun fretta game.
Robbis_1 posted:
Nascan #2:
The gamemode itself didn't work at all (almost), luckily you could play it while being on team unassigned. There is still a lot to fix, but the gamemode we got was a proof of concept and it has a fair chance of becoming a good game.
Powerups and such as turbo on the ground and pickupables could bring a nice touch to the game. The map could use some fixing, almost all brushes are off and it needs a lot of tweaking.



Melon Tag - bekka2712
CowThing posted:
A very nicely made gamemode, with very few bugs. The music was great. Having every round start in a different area of the map kept it fresh and fun. I didn't really like how you had to chose the abilities with the numpad, being able to scroll through them, or use the regular number keys would be better. The "entertainment" theme was a bit broad, and I don't know if tag would fit too well, but having music sure made it more entertaining.
Place: 1st
Disseminate posted:
This was the funnest gamemode out of the three we tested. Like, really, extremely fun. The HUD and graphics were way above what I expected. The gameplay was really chaotic with melons bouncing everywhere, trying not to get smacked by one. The spazzy camera only added to the gamemode, jittering at the best times. This got really chaotic on some of the great levels - for example, there was one with moving platforms, one with zero gravity, one filled with small tunnels, and a water level where all the melons float in water. My favorite level would have to be the level with the giant rotating platform with a ton of melons and boxes dropped on it. The numpad was used to select powerups for tagged melons, such as a gravity field or invisibility - however, the numpad stuff had to be told to me as I would never have learned it myself. Jumping was a bit frustrating as it only responded half the time due to the melon bouncing all over the place. There was the occasional camera clipping through the level, but nothing drastic. A huge bug was found if a player was alt-tabbed when a round started - he would remain frozen in midair, with no tagged melons able to touch him.

Pros: EXTREMELY fun and chaotic. Great map and camera work. Powerups are kind of neat.
Cons: Powerups are a bit confusing to start with, jumping, alt-tab bug.

Melon Tag gets 1st in my books just due to how fun and slightly addicting it was. Hope to see future development on it!
Robbis_1 posted:
MelonTag #1:
MelonTag is an original melons, extremely fun and addicting game. There are a few bugs here and there, but only trivial ones. Could definitely use some help documentation on how it works, but it's pretty straightforward.
Not much more to say, the game could always be polished, improved with effects and such, but the core gameplay should stay.



Russian Roulette - Levybreak
CowThing posted:
This gamemode fit the Risk theme perfectly, though just standing around and shooting yourself was kind of boring. More effects and a custom map would make it more fun.
Place: 3rd
Disseminate posted:
I was slightly confused as to what to do in RR but with time it became easier. There was some nice camera work, which was slightly glitchy at times, but it served the purpose. Positions of players were locked, which was probably so that other people would look at the player with the magnum at all times; however, that could have been done with a nice HUD. I really loved the sound effects (ie. stuff like 'that was a close call' or 'I'm afraid to move'). Points in the game were based on surviving the shots, which were pretty much useless as there's nothing to do with points other than compare with other people. Models ingame were forced to Dr. Breen, which is another pointless thing to code. A major bug was that the 357 didn't shoot but rather gave me another useless thing - a lua error. We also had some nice surprises, such as an AFK kicker that grea$e inadvertently caught. All in all, there wasn't that much significance to the gamemode, not much spark, as the gamemode boiled down to "click the 'just pull the trigger' button".

Pros: Camera, little bit of derma, sound effects.
Cons: Glitchy at times, pointless features, no spark, boils down to click a button when it's your turn.

I'm ranking this 2nd because of the, well, boring gamemode. Of course, what do you expect from Russian Roulette?
Robbis_1 posted:
Russian Roulette #3:
This was the only game which had a different Twist. But unfortunately that alone didn't help the game.
I can't really imagine russian roulette to become a fun game no matter how hard you try. Nothing wrong with the idea, but the end result was a disaster.

So to sum things up, here's how our judges voted:
The Judges posted:
Nascan:
  • CowThing - 2nd
  • Disseminate - 3rd
  • Robbis_1 - 2nd
Melon Tag:
  • CowThing - 1st
  • Disseminate - 1st
  • Robbis_1 - 1st
Russian Roulette:
  • CowThing - 3rd
  • Disseminate - 2nd
  • Robbis_1 - 3rd
So there you have it. Our winning game is Melon Tag by bekka2712!

I think I can speak for the rest of the judges when I say it was fun judging these games. They all have a lot of potential. Thanks for reading!

The next contest will be starting shortly.
 Post #2
 5th July 2010
Gold Member
CowThing's Avatar
November 2006
2,829 Posts
The gamemodes were a lot of fun, great contest!
 Post #3
 5th July 2010
GMOD Moderator
grea$emonkey's Avatar
May 2007
9,015 Posts
Oh yeah, I'd like to thank CowThing and Robbis_1 for stepping in as judges on such short notice.
 Post #4
 5th July 2010
failcake's Avatar
October 2009
40 Posts
Good to know you liked ma crazy map ^^
 Post #5
 6th July 2010
ZenX2's Avatar
February 2009
611 Posts
I probably should have worked on mine more.
I guess the first thing I should do is learn how to use fretta.
Reply

All times are GMT. The time now is 06:43AM.

Facepunch Studios 2010 - Server 'MARGE'