Tournament Idea: Brand New, Unknown Maps?

This sounds very interesting, as this could be a motivation to design new,
maybe themed maps for Zero-K.
I think this is more fair to lobsters, too, as the advantage of knowing the map
is taken from the more experienced players and the ability to quickly adapt
to new circumstances and environments will be of higher weight than experience
with the MM-pool and featured maps.

There`s potential for some unexpected battle outcomes between similar skilled, but not similar experienced players

step 1: take red comet
step 2: change the hue, call it "blue comet"
step 3: add invisible 100k metal rock feature
step 4: ???
step 5: profit

How about a mapmaking contest instead?

A typical ZK tourney needs about 5-7 different maps preselected for the first game in each round. If there are enough participants in the mapping contest, then you'll have a whole batch of maps required to run a ZK tournament on.

Fun idea! I think it'd be enough freshness if there was a tournament that consisted of (or at least included some) recently released maps that aren't in the matchmaking pool yet.

Tying a map's release date to the tournament date would be taking it a bit too far, and it'd introduce too many potential pitfalls.

quote: For this to work I think you would need to develop some map prototyping tools or guidelines.

Guidelines are the important thing. There are quite a few ways to prototype maps already:

- Scened is extremely rapid and WYSIWYG at this (but doesn't support 16-bit heightmap export on Windows).
- My Blender workflow is also extremely rapid until you get to fine details, and produces a reasonably high quality.
- Just use your graphics editor.

As for guidelines and requirements, it makes sense to align them with the tournament that they would later support. Maybe it makes sense to rule out some types of terrain (lava, acid) or climate. A theme - LD style - would also be a great thing to have.

For a serious-er type of contest, a set of features and textures to accomodate the tournament's climate could be presented before the event to make it even more easier to rapid-prototype a map. Generally, making the artistic style irrelevant and uniform means the actual map design becomes much more important.

Here's a bunch of requirement/guideline ideas that i think could work as an example an 1v1 / 2v2 type of tournament.

- Map size: 10x10 to 14x14 (non-square maps allowed but the most uneven would be 10x14 then)
- Climate: industrial wasteland (dirt, minimal vegetation, rocks, concrete ruins, asphalt roads)
- Up to 40 mexes valued up to 4.0 income, most should be 2.0
- Rotational or mirror symmetry
- Aquanim's water map design article contains some general ideas on how to design maps in general as well.

quote: the days between 24.12. to 30.12. should be probably a good time for mapping? so early deadline?

Deadline 01.1.2019, start 01.12.2018?

Additionally, a contest needs some judging criteria. I guess some players could be let loose to play all the prototypes, and anyone who played all of the prototype maps can then vote on them.

The prize, i guess, would be getting matchmaker-featured after the game tourney.

There's a quick tutorial here; it's not perfect but it's what we've got.

Here's also a documentation article for mainly ZK-specific mapping stuff (startboxes, lua metal config)

Another, possibly more detailed and better version, is here. It also contains links to more information.

You can also ask around on discord in #zkmap for details.

quote: Deadline 01.1.2019, start 01.12.2019?

Timetravel mapfeature incoming!

So i have a prototype 14x14 map without texture and still some questions:

1. Is there a good way/tool to do the map texture?
I dont want to start painting the diffuse map pixel by pixel in Gimp

2. I did upload my "prototype" without texture to https://springfiles.com , how can i download it in Zero-k now?
for anyone who wants to see here is a link:

https://springfiles.com/spring/spring-maps/map-last-standoff-no-texture

You can download it and put it in your Zero-k maps file and it should show up in skirmish map selection

3. I could need some help with minimap(just whitesreen in Zero-k on map preview/in lobby),
grasmap, etc. i am using beherith_mapconv_2.4 and dont know what i have to change
in the .bat file to start compiling them.

The reason I haven't made a mapmaking tutorial video is because I too need a mapmaking tutorial video.

I was also kinda waiting for scened/SpringBoard to be more readily available but that seems to be indefinitely impractical due to the 16-bit heightmap issues on Windows. Overall I'm honestly not sure how mapmaking should be approached, as there are so many tools and so few that work well on Windows, and most of what gets talked about involves stitching together Blender, GIMP, WorldEngine, and whichever version of MapConv is going to behave nowadays and hoping for the best, which isn't exactly tutorial- or user-friendly.