That concludes the round!
Names have been revealed.
Next round will start… I don’t know. I’ll keep you posted.
Also, if there are any suggestions in general for the contest, feel free to post them here, I won’t be closing the topic yet since the next round won’t be for a while.
Only suggestion coming to me at this moment would be to maybe alternate formats every other round, doing one as a freeform setup like it has been and then alternating so that the next round has like a pre-built concept with locked-in dimensions and a base tileset (palette optional), with features that are pre-placed and need to stay there, and then the rest of the map area is blank and it’s up to the entrant to determine how they want to fill the map out? (Think of it like Advance Wars where you have pre-deployed maps with no Bases/Airports/Ports and the player has to solve the map with what’s given to them versus an empty map with a few starting properties and bases and it’s entirely open-ended.)
Alternatively, maybe hold different tiers of contests at the same time with both types in play, giving something of a starting base for people that might not have a huge grasp on mapping or might be intimidated by the submissions that have come in already and might be more comfortable competing with others on a smaller scale as a way to break in to doing mapping and improve? I don’t know if there would be a demand from people on the site or Discord for this though, so it might just be wasted effort.
That’s certainly an interesting idea, having multiple categories for entry.
I know in the past we’ve done these sorts of prompts as the main prompt of the round, but I’m open to devising two different rounds. One would be similar to what we have now, open-ended, while the other would be a snippit of an existing map/map concept that you are to try and expand on.
i’m not planning on having winners pick contest themes anymore, and instead would prefer having community suggestions to choose from
this is to try and keep the contests from lagging behind, as well as letting different sorts of people give their own ideas for what to make next
if we’re talking about contests in general, they could be about anything, really.
we could even have contests sorted by rotation, each with their own theme.
for example: we could start with a round for portraits, followed by backgrounds, battle frames, animations( or eventually stills, why not ), maps, item icons, anything that comes to mind.
To anyone curious about my map, I wanted to use Gamma’s swamp tileset, but after looking, couldn’t find a released version, so I decided to quickly whip up my own… kinda. I started with western isles, re-colored the bits and pieces I used from black temple/desert tilesets plus the bubbles and matched them all to the water/cliffs palette. From there I went back to my mapping roots and put everything together in paint. The goal was to create something that should be totally re-creatable in Gamma’s actual tileset once released. Oh and I did use those cliff tiles from the first prompt so I could submit it on that merit alone, it wouldn’t be a submission of mine without doing something a little out there, I mean have you seen my stuff from the spriting comps?
Some suggestions for any possible future rounds:
A 15 tile wide map
A 10 tile tall map
A bustling canal
A familiar locale
A map with a boat
A castle with a moat
Riding across highlands
Storming around islands
Kinda quirky desert town
Ancient city underground
A generic seasonal theme
Great valley cutting stream
Discovering an ancient town
Just getting lost underground
An older FE map as a remake
A newer FE map as a demake
In the hall of the mountain king
In the court of the crimson king
These totally won’t work as themes for maps I still need to make for my hack
My swamp tileset’s been ready for a while and I kept forgetting to release it…
Funny, we both ended up using the same base components, but I think the Black Temple bits on yours look nicer than on mine. I guess this is sign enough for me to stop procrastinating and get mine packaged up for release!
@HyperGammaSpaces
I think the only differences are really just adding the water meta tiles into the reed tiles which of course is easy for anyone to do. Then the much more subtle adding water underneath the 2x1 root tiles, and the incredibly niche spooky eyes and skeletons in the corners. I forgot to use WAve’s cool dead trees though.
@ChivesKirk
Not at all It was one of the prompt options
The tile for tile recreation looked pretty boring though, so I went a little overboard with it’s unique features to GBA-ize it into my style, as I tend to do.