This is the Thread to Vote for Snowflake, a map submitted under the Holiday Theme for the Winter 2008 Mapmaking Competition. Read the discussion below by our judges and then post your score for the map and leave comments in the thread below. Score once for each map, 1-10 points. Voting Closes at the end of March.

Part of the judges discussion is below... the full text will be made available before the judging ends.


--------------------

Enginerd: Good Evening.... it's a lovely cold day here today.... only got a little bit of snow last night.
Pawel: good afternoon, now it's cold here too, but earlier the snow was melting
Enginerd: We get a few snow storms during the winter, some ice storms, not too bad really.
Pawel: ice storms? Like the aow ones?
Enginerd: lol.... sometimes... tree branches falling off trees, lose power, that sort of stuff.
Pawel: we don't have such things here, at least not often
Enginerd: So... today's agenda: Snowflake.... then CTF, right?
Disenchanted: right
Pawel: ok
Enginerd: Let's get started....
Enginerd: Snowflake by the Preachr, for the Winter Theme. This is a 1v1 map, highmen vs undead set in a "wintery" world. Thoughts?
Pawel: it fits the winter theme, and that's all good that I have to say about it :P
Disenchanted: yeah
Enginerd: Yes, it is a pretty snowflake so I guess the name fits the map too.
Disenchanted: I was thinking when you want to criticize someone you're supposed to "sandwich" the criticism in between 2 compliments… but I was having a hard time coming up with 2 good things
Enginerd: Well... let me help "moderate" and see what we can come up.....
Enginerd: Small map, meant for a quick play?
Disenchanted: yes it was over very fast...that was the other good part
Pawel: yes
Enginerd: Oh this is going to be rough......
Enginerd: OK... Balance?
Pawel: perfect
Disenchanted: ok, it's symmetrically balanced
Disenchanted: thanks for pointing that out
Enginerd: See I knew you could find more good things to say.
Enginerd: Anything else you want to say about the balance or does that pretty much sum it up?
Pawel: it's symmetrical, what more can I say?
Enginerd: All right.... Theme, check.... balance, check.... here goes.... how about playability?
Disenchanted: well as a general point it's easy to make a symmetrical map, so even if it were otherwise good I wouldn't give it much of a bonus for being balanced
Pawel: the first thing I did when playing was going to a teleporter
Pawel: and it was a mistake
Disenchanted: like CTF is symmetrical, I won't penalize it for that but it doesn't get bonus points either
Disenchanted: yes teleports all go to 0,0 which is off the map...
Enginerd: My guess is they were intended to take you around the snowflake in some way... but the mapmaker forgot to do that.... or they're just pretty decorations.
Pawel: he forgot about some other things too...
Disenchanted: yes I was just typing a few of those in notepad:
Disenchanted: story = nonexistant
cities are all called noname
2/3 of cities can't be used due to alignment problems
no custom heroes or items
leaders have no spheres
there are nodes but no spellcasters
Pawel: yes, that's what I was going to say (and more)
Pawel: well, it's normal in aow that sometimes you have to migrate
Disenchanted: yes but I don't think it was a good idea on such a small map to have so few usable cities. And I thought the frostlings were part of the theme
Pawel: it would be better if the player had other races
Enginerd: What about them all being lvl 1 cities?
Disenchanted: yes and upgradeable cities
Pawel: highmen and undead are the only 2 that can't use frostling cities
Disenchanted: I was going to add: all the cities are level 1 so at best you end up with a big archer fight (zzzz....)
Pawel: yes, it's boring when all cities are lvl1
Enginerd: Anything else on the playability?
Disenchanted: can't really think of anything right now
Pawel: me either
Disenchanted: map design: snowflake design is kind of cool, but there is no terrain
Pawel: the map looks like made in 5 minutes, all defenders on mines and nodes are the same
Enginerd: Any final words of encouragement for our mapmaker (or any other closing thoughts)?
Disenchanted: well we could focus on how to improve it
Enginerd: Let's hear it.
Disenchanted: although as usual that starts with fixing the issues we mentioned... like add some terrain
Disenchanted: Also I think it would be helpful if there were some "nodes" where 2 paths intersect and you can attack from more than one direction, like in CTF, otherwise, trying to take a bridge defended by 8 archers with only 8 archers is a pain
Enginerd: especially in FC
Disenchanted: and of course he could put some bigger cities at key locations, like at the center for example...now that I think of it, the one interesting part is the ice altar gives you a way to outflank the enemy, so that's another good thing he put in
Disenchanted: maybe put in more of those?
Enginerd: How about a builder... maybe build a shipyard...
Disenchanted: and a fire altar...if you capture it you can drown the troops by removing the ice...bwahahahaha
Pawel: some kind of story would be nice too
Enginerd: If there is nothing else are we ready to give out the scores for this map?
Pawel: I have a message to the mapmaker: if you really want to make good maps, put some work into it
Disenchanted: shipyard is a good idea...or maybe a frost queen
Disenchanted: I agree, and add: try not to be too discouraged by our criticism, it's a first map and the basic idea was fine, it does need some work of course
Enginerd: Great ending comment, lots of constructive criticism in this one for the Preachr, on his first map ever submitted. Hats off to a rookie for stepping up to the challenge.
Enginerd: OK.. Scores?

------- come back next week for judges scores

Pawel: what's the minimum score? 0 or 1? (No I don't want to give it to this map, I just want to 'scale' my score properly)
Disenchanted: I'm afraid to be the first one to give a score
Enginerd: scores of 1-10
Disenchanted: but it's probably going to be 2 or 3
Pawel: I'll give it a 3, I saw worse maps
Disenchanted:
well I haven't seen a lot of maps
Enginerd: 2...3... or 2.5?
Disenchanted: actually I think it's more because the ones I downloaded were all good...I was filtering carefully for good ones
Disenchanted: 3
Pawel: I saw every map downloadable from the AoWH site (including the "ancient maps"), because I was searching for good maps to use with my mod, so I can assure you there are worse maps than this
Enginerd: There you have it.... Preachr gets a 3 from both judges.

-------------------------

[This message has been edited by Enginerd (edited 03-23-2009 @ 07:17 PM).]