What do people want for contest levels?

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What do people want for contest levels?

Postby kingofthespill » Tue Jul 25, 2006 8:35 am

We may have reached critical mass here in contest level challenges and forming guidelines seems appropriate. If your not sure, take a look back in prior contests and think about how fun or not fun a level was as a contest challenge.

I will weigh in first.

Overall I think less is more for contest levels, and something with only medium difficulty to solve with expensive approaches. I like Void levels the most, and they seem popular enough. A few barriers are usually ok, but lots of connected rubber is frequently trouble. Barriers that connect beginning and ending places are also less fun and occasionally trouble. I guess it's difficult to know if an elaborate or semi-spectator level will be good for a contest beforehand.

I'll toss in that I like levels that facilitate interesting expensive solutions, but that seems secondary to being a fun level for everyone.
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Postby kingofthespill » Tue Jul 25, 2006 8:57 am

Furthermore I created a level for people to talk about. This shows what I consider plenty of barriers for a contest level: http://www.hevanet.com/bens/isthistohardornot.lvl

Do you like this, or is it too hard, too much, too much help, too easy, or not as enjoyable as some other challenge?
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Postby Skrying » Tue Jul 25, 2006 10:02 am

Not hard at all, but the level has no flow. :P

Anyway, I think BFC's level's difficulty comes in with the fact that you must get past a great distance and then go up. It takes a lot of thinking and not so much tweaking, which is where previous levels were heading.
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Postby kingofthespill » Tue Jul 25, 2006 10:28 am

No flow - exactly, that's what barriers do. I think folks prefer something that has more flow, right? Anyone else?
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Postby ?rjan Flatseth » Tue Jul 25, 2006 6:06 pm

kingofthespill wrote:Furthermore I created a level for people to talk about. This shows what I consider plenty of barriers for a contest level: http://www.hevanet.com/bens/isthistohardornot.lvl

Do you like this, or is it too hard, too much, too much help, too easy, or not as enjoyable as some other challenge?


I took a look at the lvl. I didn't play it. I have to say that this was too messy for my taste. I like it more clean and perhaps with a toutch of concept. Perhaps your lvl would turn out to be interesting to play but it didn't intuitively look interesting enough that I would want to use time on this one when there are so many maps around. Sorry 8)

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Postby kingofthespill » Tue Jul 25, 2006 6:57 pm

That is my point, that barriers might add challenge but are not widely appealing.

I think the current contest level actually has alot of flow for being so full of barriers.
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Postby dudiobugtron » Wed Jul 26, 2006 5:45 am

I like the more complex levels, simple levels are usually a contest of patience amongst the highly skilled, whereas there is much more room for 'imaginitive flair' being the decider in a complex level.

That's one of my 2 cents, the other cent is spent on this:

However, I am not a big fan of levels which need extra rules put on them to make them work (eg: don't break the feeble cloth barrier) - I figure the only 'restraints' should be the ones built in to the level, otherwise it's a bit annoying :P
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Postby BioDroid » Wed Jul 26, 2006 3:27 pm

I want not easy, but minimalistic levels wich many potential solutions.
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Postby kingofthespill » Wed Jul 26, 2006 9:00 pm

Would people be interested in two different styles of contests?
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Postby kingofthespill » Wed Jul 26, 2006 9:06 pm

DRAFT-

Contest Level Guidelines

    Remember that a contest level meant for lots of people to enjoy.
    Use the game as is, and resist the urge to enforce additional rules.
    Avoid designs that could result in the starting and ending areas effect each other.
    Even if you don't like destruction, remember it IS part of the game and plenty of people like it. Create a void or nearly void level to avoid destruction.
    Remember that barriers that add challenge also kill the flow. With rubber barriers consider using "dashed lines" if people might build off it, or offer nearby anchor points that are disconnected from spans of connected rubber.
    Try to support alternate solutions. Ideally you do not want to know the cheapest solution in advance.
    Avoid getting too tricky.
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Postby dudiobugtron » Wed Jul 26, 2006 9:22 pm

kingofthespill wrote:Contest Level Guidelines

    Remember that a contest level meant for lots of people to enjoy.
    Use the game as is, and resist the urge to enforce additional rules.
    Avoid designs that could result in the starting and ending areas effect each other.
    Even if you don't like destruction, remember it IS part of the game and plenty of people like it. Create a void or nearly void level to avoid destruction.
    Remember that barriers that add challenge also kill the flow. With rubber barriers consider using "dashed lines" if people might build off it, or offer nearby anchor points that are disconnected from spans of connected rubber.
    Try to support alternate solutions. Ideally you do not want to know the cheapest solution in advance.
    Avoid getting too tricky.


I like these!

'Create a void or nearly void level to avoid destruction' could be changed slightly (eg, to 'Create a void or nearly void level if you want to avoid destruction') to avoid possible misinterpretation - otherwise nothing I would change.
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Postby BioDroid » Wed Jul 26, 2006 10:11 pm

I like void levels. Ive been making challenges and solutions to them on my own the latest week 8)
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Postby Skrying » Thu Jul 27, 2006 2:21 am

kingofthespill wrote:No flow - exactly, that's what barriers do. I think folks prefer something that has more flow, right? Anyone else?


Not exactly. Barriers do not prevent flow. Flow prevention occurs when barriers are just randomly placed with no purpose or not thought on where they should be placed. A barrier placed in the exact right places can also be a great way of adding variety, there are many pay offs to a smart placed barrier. Just placing them randomly is in know way a to demostrate that they ruin flow.

Also, I disagree with some of the "guidelines." I disagree with guidelines in general for a game based around being creative.

Many of the void levels are simply breaking down to who has the most time to tweak the levels. Instead levels with certain rules that have a variety of pay offs and negatives and promote exploration and not tweaking.
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Postby BFC » Thu Jul 27, 2006 3:19 am

kingofthespill wrote:DRAFT-

Contest Level Guidelines

    Remember that a contest level meant for lots of people to enjoy.
    Use the game as is, and resist the urge to enforce additional rules.
    Avoid designs that could result in the starting and ending areas effect each other.
    Even if you don't like destruction, remember it IS part of the game and plenty of people like it. Create a void or nearly void level to avoid destruction.
    Remember that barriers that add challenge also kill the flow. With rubber barriers consider using "dashed lines" if people might build off it, or offer nearby anchor points that are disconnected from spans of connected rubber.
    Try to support alternate solutions. Ideally you do not want to know the cheapest solution in advance.
    Avoid getting too tricky.


I personally can live with whatever level wise. Some of this, some of that so to speak. Mix up the levels every week.

Perhaps just keep the size of the level to what the editor defaults to and go from there. No multi 'Dillo levels or anything fancy.

If there's a group of people that want a set of levels that are possibly more like the current contest level we could hold a different series for them. No medals or anything, just list the order of how people finished (like on the Eurogamer forum).

This way, people get access to more content and can choose to participate in whatever they like.

I can relate to different tastes in level design and if we cater to multiple styles we'll have a stronger community for it. Last thing I'd want is to reduce the fun level and I think offering more variety might help.

Perhaps all that simplified boils down to :

2 weekly contests

Contest A = Above rules posted by king for level design and perhaps my extra restriction of using the default editor space for the borders of the level

Contest B = much larger and/or complicated level designs for folks that want that


People are free to play both if they want of course.


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Postby kingofthespill » Thu Jul 27, 2006 5:08 am

We need a B guideline set then, even if it is loose. I don't want to be at the mercy of little "force" bugs or have one thing easily broken when working on another section.

The key thing for me is to minimize frustration, which is different than puzzling over something. I probably frustrated people a little with my restricted materials level, but people seemed to report that they really were puzzling over it and coming up with solutions.


A could be only void levels, too. That would keep things clearly separated.
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