Announcing the 2nd Community Mapping Competition!

Announcing the 2nd edition of the

credit to Zuratu for the banner!

The Community Mapping Competition is returning! Our first contest produced 3 incredible finalists, which you can see in these threads: announcement post and results post. We are officially back for CMC2! There are some changes to the structure and rules of our contest, so potential submitters please read ahead to find out more about our contest!

The Community Mapping Competition is a circuit for melee mapmakers to compete in! The goal of our contest is to showcase the very best melee maps out there. There are many talented mapmakers in our scene, and we aim to bring the best of the best together and grow the mapmaking field with tough competition. Maps submitted for this contest should be designed to be immediately play-ready for tournaments and leagues.

If you wish to submit a map, read this whole post!

Timeline:

      • Submissions will open on October 18th (12:01am EDT) and will continue until November 8th (11:59pm EDT). Mapmakers will be limited to 3 map submissions per contest.

      • Once submissions close, judging will begin on November 13th and will end on November 27th. If you are a professional player or community figure and are interested in judging, please join our discord here and reach out to the admin team, we’d love to hear from you. The process is not too time consuming and we would extremely appreciate and value your input.

      • Once judging is complete, an announcement post will be made in the following days, and a public spreadsheet of judges scores as well as any feedback judges provide will be in the post. Some judges may choose to remain anonymous, and if they do so their scoring will still be visible on the public spreadsheet, just under an anonymous name.

The Rules for Submissions:

There are no categories but only melee maps will be accepted. Maps are aimed to be immediately play-ready for tournaments and leagues, but creativity is an important part of design, so these features are all allowed:

• Mineral Walls or Golden Mineral Walls (we suggest that mineral walls use ‘Mineral Field (450)’ as the mineral node for clarity. You can modify this node to whatever value of minerals you see fit below its default value. These values MUST be noted in the Features Description (see more under How to Submit)

• A maximum of 5 of pathable cliff levels

• Inhibitor & Accelerator Zone Generators

• Non-standard mineral node count or vespene geyser count such as 12mineral node 0 gas bases or 3gas bases (BUT no changing individual nodes or geysers from default values)

• Rich Vespene Geysers

• 3player+ spawn (but still designed for 1v1) maps.

• Xel’naga towers that cannot be activated until destructible rocks placed on them are destroyed

• Custom Textures

• Overlapping rock towers and overlapping destructible rocks (An example would be 2 6x6 rocks to cover a 3-wide ramp, or two rock towers facing opposite directions placed directly on top of one another. Do not stack destructible rocks directly on top of one another)

These features are explicitly disallowed (anything that makes your map non-melee is also disallowed). If you’re not sure if a feature is allowed, reach out to us:

• Destructible rock towers that destroy geysers/minerals/xel’naga towers/town halls/IZG/AZG

• Neutral creep tumors, neutral buildings, neutral units

• Creep, forcefields, Renegade missile turrets, portals/teleporters, healing shrines

Restrictions to Submissions:

      • Any map that has been a finalist in TLMC, has been on the competitive ladder, has been used in the GSL, or has been a finalist in a previous CMC is not allowed to be submitted.

      • Map files and an overview picture will be required for submissions. These overview images must have their Image Size X and Y boundaries set to the map boundaries, then with a single 0 added to the end of the value. For example, if your map is 156x164, your X boundary will be 1560 and your Y boundary will be 1640. This is to ensure all overview images are as legible and clear as possible. These overview images must also have ‘Points’ and ‘Points – Start Location Only’ enabled in View Options.

      • Mapmakers will be limited to 3 map submissions per contest.

QA (Quality Assurance) is of extra importance. As a map submitter, you will be required to fix any and all QA issues regardless of how small or large they are. We are supplying a QA checklist as an excel file here that you can view to help you understand where potential QA problems may exist. Please use this checklist as you check your map for potential QA issues. Maps should be as close to immediately play-ready for tournaments and leagues as is possible. Spend the time testing your map to make sure it is ready.

Judging & Scoring:

Our current judging team is composed of highly qualified mapmakers, and we are reaching out to knowledgeable community figures, streamers, and professional players. If you are a professional player or community figure and are interested in judging, please reach out to the admin team on our discord here. Any mapmaker who is a judge CAN submit maps but CANNOT vote on their map (to address potential conflict of interest).

How does judging/scoring work?

• After the submission period ends, all maps will be looked at by judges.

• Each judge will be given a set of ranked choice votes, where the number of votes is 25% of total submissions, rounded up. For example if there are 60 submissions, (60*.25=15) there will be 15 ranked choice votes for each judge to use, and if there are 59 submissions (59*.25=14.75, rounded up is 15) there will also be 15 ranked choice votes for each judge to use. Essentially they pick their top maps based on how many submissions there are.

• Each judge will use their votes to give maps points. For example with 9 ranked choice votes, a judge will give a map 9 points (the maximum), another 8 points, another 7 points, etcetera until they give one other map 1 point (all other maps receive 0 points from this judge). They will not be able to give any other map points. This means some maps will receive no points if no judge chooses them in their ranked choice vote. Essentially they are picking their top maps, and these maps get more points the higher up on their list they are.

• Judges can discuss maps amongst themselves during their voting, but cannot directly share their scoring with one another. Discussing maps is highly beneficial for quality judging.

What is/are the judging criterion?

The criterion judges will be using to assign their ranked choice vote is as follows: “Give your ranked choice votes to the maps that would provide the highest quality of games and best gameplay for the competitive ladder and professional scene. Rank your top <number to be determined> maps in order, with no ties.”

Transparency?

Judge scores will be PUBLIC in a spreadsheet file, alongside any feedback judges provide. However, judges have the option to make their name private. If a judge’s name is not disclosed, a placeholder name (such as Judge A) will be placed in the spreadsheet instead, so people can still see the voting pattern of that judge.

Finalists:

• The finalists are chosen as the maps with the highest average amount of points. Essentially each judge picks their top maps, and these top maps are averaged to show which maps were viewed as the best by the judges (on average). The number of finalists for a given contest is determined by 10% of total submissions, rounded up.

• Any ties between maps that would decide eligibility for being a finalist will both be included as finalists (for example with 5 finalists: a clear 1st through 4th place, but a tie at 5th and 6th place with the same average score on 2 different maps. Both the 5th and 6th place map would be finalists making a total of 6 finalists where there would normally be 5).

• There will be tiebreakers for deciding which of those maps gets placed higher. Tiebreaker 1 will be the number of votes a map received (so if map A and B both had a score of 2.4, but map A had 5 votes and map B had 4 votes, map A would win the tie). Tiebreaker 2 will be which map has a larger number of high place votes (so if map A and B both had a 1.8, but map A had a 3rd place vote as it’s highest but map B only had a 4th place vote as it’s highest, map B wins).

If they wish, judges may also choose a map that did not make the finalists as an ‘honorable mention’ which will be noted in the results announcement post. No prizing is given to these honorable mentions.

Prizing:

• The prize pool consists of ~~$210~~$260 USD. Amount increased due to donations!

• All finalist maps will receive an equal percentage of money from the prize pool (so if someone gets 2 maps out of 5 finalists, they will receive 40% of the prize pool).

• If you want to donate to the prize pool, view our Ko-fi page here! All donations to our Ko-fi go DIRECTLY to our prize pool for our mapmakers.

How to Submit:

If you want to submit a map, send an email to communitymappingcompetition@gmail.com with the title “(Submission) Author - Map Name” where Map Name will be replaced with the name of your map, and Author will be replaced with your name. For example, if your map is named Catalyst, and your name is voidraygod69420 your email title will be “(Submission) voidraygod69420 - Catalyst” with nothing else in the title. Send a separate, new email for each map.

It is your responsibility to have your map meet QA standards. If you have any updates to your map before submissions are finalized, reply to your original submission email to keep everything contained within a single thread and update the map file & overview (and any other parts of the submission that change).

Your map will have two descriptions: the first is a Public Description, which can contain whatever information you’d like to give about your map. You can describe how gameplay will play out, what unique features make it interesting, anything you’d like. If your map becomes a finalist this Public Description will be used in our results post for the public to see. The second is a Features Description for our judging team, which will list and describe any and all features that were used from the allowed features above under The Rules for Submissions.

If you use a mineral wall, you must denote it and describe where and what values your nodes use. You must note if you use any IZG, AZG, or rich vespene geysers. You must describe any non-standard mineral lines (Example 1: The linear 3rd base has 10 minerals and 1 gas geyser, Example 2: The natural base uses a standard mineral line but a Rich Geyser). You must denote any overlapping destructible rocks or rock towers. If you use custom textures, state that and describe which textures are custom in the editor. You must describe any Xel’naga towers that cannot be activated until destructible rocks around them are destroyed.

Copy and paste and fill out the information below into the body of your email:

Map Name: <name here>
Map Dimensions: ###x###
Public Description: <info here>
Features Description: <features here>
Main to Main: ## seconds
Natural to Natural: ## seconds
# of Pathable Levels used: # levels
Map Image: <image link here>
Download Link: <dl link here>
Published as:
Published on servers: US/EU/KR/CN

For example, let’s use Catalyst LE (information on that map is available on Liquipedia here (Wiki)

Catalyst LE), this is how the body of my email would look:

Map Name: Catalyst
Map Dimensions: 136x144
Public Description: <info here>
Features Description: <features here>
Main to Main: 45 seconds
Natural to Natural: 33 seconds
# of Pathable Levels used: 3 levels
Map Image: <image link here>
Download Link: <dl link here>
Published as: Catalyst LE
Published on servers: US/EU/KR/CN

Please note that Main to Main and Natural to Natural time should be measured from the center of the 5x5 grid where town hall structures will be placed. If your map has 3 or more spawns, do your best to describe each rush time for each spawn combination.

If you have any questions please first read through this thread carefully to see if your question can be answered in this post or in the comments of others. If it is not answered, please comment in this thread, or ask a question in our discord here. Lastly, double check that your map image and download link are in working order! Good luck to all submitters!

Announcing the 2nd Community Mapping Competition!

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