Ok. + Wrong Forum. + Contest should maybe be based on gameplay only, not map design or story. + Or maybe it should be based on inventing new tricks only.

Or maybe it should be based on inventing new tricks only.

Well I'm out.

Contest should maybe be based on gameplay only, not map design or story.

I like this idea. It will definitely make all the participants think outside the box and try to create something fun and interesting. This would also be good because I wont have to spend 3hrs making the map actually look decent.

Inventing new tricks? Gumble would win by default. No Gumble thinks he has a good idea.

We should have another map design competition in suppport of the new expansion Rasteve is realeasing. We can turn it into a community project over the christmas holidays. Instead of poor Rasteve inventing 16 campaigns each with 5-6 scenarios each, we can each select a seperate civ to create a scenario or two for, and Rasteve can choose to include some of them for his exapnsion. This saves Rasteve a lot of work, and turns the Age of Heroes expansion into a real AoEH team effort. a board of judges can be elected to rate the work based on it's creativeness and suitibillity for the new expansion.

The real benefit is that all the conbatients get to create scenario's for their favourite civs provided everyone agrees on which person has which civ beforehand. Time period should be the start of the christmas holidays to the end. This should give a good time period and ensure people actualy get it down. The winner get's personal mention in the expansion (ie a Hero name) as well as personal glory.

This is all with Rasteve's consent of course.

If you guys like this idea then Gumble puts dibs on the Roman Civilization. Gumble's favourite is Assyrian but he has some good ideas for the Roman civ (better than the Rise of Rome expansion at least).

Let's have a "Defend the Spot" contest. It's a simple, broad category. The other ideas here are good too, and the Age of Heroes suggestion might work well as a community project separate from contests.

Gumble - yes, this is a good idea (yet again, but no need to update the sig ). I have already designed the 16 campaigns (i.e. draft maps, objectives, stories etc) but if the community wants to design a campaign each from a list of civs/heroes then you have my consent. The only problem is that I will need to get a version with all the units, heroes and techs out before you can really begin making the maps.

I made a thread not long ago with some suggestions. One was to create AI + PER scripts for a computer war, with the only rule being to keep the game age in tool. There has been a lot of talk about AI/PER scripts on the forum recently so this may be appealing? This was partly inspired by the computer wars contest (which I missed out on) and several tool age dm games I have played.

I should still be making a new AoE comic contest.

I agree amking campaigns for Rasteves AoH should rather be a community project than a contest, as it might take quite some time. (Also, I want Phoenie, Carth or Assy. )

Also we should have a birthday thread with dancing bananas and stuff.

I really don't care what the contest is, provided that the time needed for creating the entries is short. Therefore, any contest requiring map design is out of the question for me (unless it's a screenshot competition).

I like Fruktfisk's idea for an AoE Comic Contest. Perhaps each person has to have the best comic strip for five issues. Each person has to enter in one issue a week, and each one has to have # of screenshots, blah, blah, blah.

Finish WW first it's been sitting idle too long

What about a modding contest?

I agree with zappy, WW should be finished before starting a new community project. It would be a shame to see this shelved behind anything else. I will support a community project for AoH campaigns, but let us concentrate on WW first (also, I need to get more content into AoH for anyone to actually begin designing).

Nacht, maybe you could put it down to a vote? We have a range of suggestions (AI/PER computer wars, screenshot/comic, modding contest...)

modding is too technical for most of the forumers (namely Gumble), and the computer wars only recently finished. Screenshot comic strip has been done before and we should have something new and interesting to commemerate aoeh's 12th birthday. Rasteve's expansion is so large it could easily be turned into a light competition/community project. Unless everyone is prepared to go in all guns blazing onto weekend warriors it is going to turn into a fail, as it has already kinda died a death. Its up to you guys, really, but you have to be realistic.

I would disagree that WW is dead. It'll take a lot of work and will probably need to be done mostly by one or two people but it is far from dead.

Another idea I had at one point was something like a '99 design contest. Basically designing like it was 1999 so no edited dats (i.e no EE or anything like that) and any language.dlls would need to be hex edited. I thought it would be interesting to see some of the designers today try it out.

I think i cvuld do that if i had time. I mean i've always designed using "1999 methods". But Uni absorbs all of my time.

Right, here are some things we could have the contest on in a list.

Modding
Gameplay-based scenario
New tricks-based scenario
Terrain rendering
Pre-1999 scenario
Defend the spot
Comic strip

I kinda like the comic strip idea myself.

designing like it was 1999

This is actually very challenging, I really like the idea. Modding would be to hard to do for most of us, so I guess that's off the list.

I like the 99 suggestion too. You could make it even more restrictive:

bitmaps from scratch - using paintbrush only
ai/per files from scratch - using notepad only
map design using only the original game
no changes to the dll files!

Contest name?
Noble Savage Contest - a more worthy, more noble creation than current methods

The comic suggestion would also be cool.

Personally I'd say hex edited dlls only.

-sighs- Fine but Gumble is gonna win. You have to accept that fact.

Question: Can we still use locked units like trade workshops, and nuke troopers, just as long as we have them snaped-to-grid?

What would be the scope of the 99' suggestion? 1 scenario? campaign? historic/fictional/theme?

No dll's at all, no locked units. No using anything at all that doesn't come either with the game or with the computer.

I also suggest historical theme since that's what most scenarios (and all EA scenarios) used to be.

[This message has been edited by MRCHEEZE (edited 10-15-2009 @ 09:27 PM).]

If it is a 99 design contest it should allow whatever there was in 99. If there where hex editors in the granary then hex editors should be allowed.

Yeah, I'll go with the whole backwards desaign contest idea, it sounds fun as well as not taking too long.

I think the Pre-99 Historical (Or Historical Fiction) Campaign idea would be best.

Can we choose any event from history?