$500 Mapping Contest! Sci-Fi/Horror Theme

UPDATE: Contest is over! See the post below for final results
Make sure you sign up for the newsletter at "www.probuilder3d.com", to stay up-to-date on the this and future contests!
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ProBuilder Mapping Contest #2
Theme: Sci-Fi/Horror, H.R. GigerTimeline: Deadline Extended to April 1oth!

Prizes:
Overall Best: $500, 1 Year Membership to CG Cookie
Runner Up: All 6by7 Tools, 3 Month Subscription to CG Cookie


Entries will be judged by a panel of industry professionals
Detail meshes and textures are encouraged for this contest
FreeSci-Fi textures pack provided by www.GameTextures.com!

Time for a serious mapping contest with ProBuilder!

For the second ProBuilder mapping contest, we want to see what you can really create, with the full power of newly-released ProBuilder 2.0. This is your chance to go all-out and show off a truly awesome level design, and compete to win a $500 cash prize.


Deadline
Contest deadline extended to April 10th! All entries must be submitted by 11:59 CST.

Detail Meshes
Detail meshes are heavily encouraged for this contest. We'd love to see maps that could be part of a real game, with details like light fixtures, crates and barrels, wires, anything that brings realism, life, and visual interest to your map. Of course, ProBuilder geometry should make up the majority of your map (around 85-95%). Also, to keep competition fair, any meshes must be either your own, or available completely free for anyone else to use as well.


Theme and Reference
The contest's theme is "Sci-Fi / Horror", and extra points will be awarded for any H.R. Giger style influences you can add. Some great reference materials are Alien, Prometheus, Dead Space, Doom 3, and Event Horizon. To help with this theme, the awesome folks at GameTextures are providing a totally free pack of their top-quality Sci-Fi textures, to everyone entering the contest. You can download the pack here: http://bit.ly/WnKcZv


Entries and Copyright
To participate in the contest, you will need to submit a zip file containing at least 3 in-game screenshots (no retouching) of your finished level, plus a copy of your full project. We prefer you simply send us a DropBox link, or similar. Your work remains entirely yours, including all rights/etc. We will only use the projects to verify your screenshots, and for judging. The images will be used in the contest and elsewhere for marketing ProBuilder, and will always display a link to your own site, along with the ProBuilder logo.

Judging
A panel of industry professionals will be judging the entries, and choosing a winner- no "popularity contests" here. Your entry will be judged on it's overall look, and adherence to the theme. Judges are:

• Samuli Viikinen (Max Payne, Alan Wake, Rochard)
• Eric Von Rothkirch (Quake 3, No One Lives Forever 2, Duke Nukem Forever)
• Spencer Kern (Offensive Combat)
• ...more to be announced soon!

WIP Prizes
Throughout the month, we will also be giving away smaller prizes for the best WIP art, so be sure to drop by the Unity Forums thread (http://bit.ly/VOQMpg), and post your work as it progresses!

Best of luck to everyone!
Questions/Comments/etc? Just ask!

 

1st Place


Brotherhood will receive the top prize of $500, and a full year subscription to CG Cookie! Congrats Brotherhood, and thanks for making such an awesome level with ProBuilder!

Runner-Up


Zedalis design will receive the runner-up prize of all SixBySeven tools, plus a 3 month subscription to CG Cookie! Amazing work Zedalis, I'm sure we'll see more from you in the future too

Honorary


AlexM_Infinite takes an honorary win- so we'll honor him/her with any SixBySeven tool for free, just choose. Great work, especially for a first time ProBuilder user!

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That's a wrap for Mapping Contest #2, folks- my sincere, humble thanks to everyone for participating, especially since I know many of you are first-time or early Unity/ProBuilder users. Your creativity and willingness to dive head-first into a challenge like this, is what makes the indie game-dev revolution so powerful! Keep at it!

Of course, thanks to the Judges as well! Much appreciated, having your votes and input really makes the contest more fun and serious at the same time. So that's a big thanks to:
Simon Dean of Games Foundry - http://www.gamesfoundry.com/
SamV - http://www.rochardthegame.com/en/
Megafiers Team - http://www.west-racing.com/mf/
EricV - http://www.redchurch.com/
BenColeman of U4iA - http://u4iagames.com/
Jess Rahbek of Zero Point Software - http://www.interstellarmarines.com/

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As always, all contestants can pick up ProBuilder, or any other SixBySeven tool, for 25% off- just email/PM me

Mapping Contest #3 is already being planned, and for various top-secret reasons, I am especially excited about this next one! Details will come in the next couple weeks, you can stay up-to-date via our facebook, twitter, or by signing up for the Newsletter (lots of goodies in there!). Thanks all!

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A note on final score calculation:
Rank 1 was given 3 points, Rank 2 gave 2 points, Rank 3 gave 1 point.
Total Scores were 19, 14, 9, for Brotherhood, ZedalisDesign, and AlexM_Infinite (respectively)

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Gallery Links for All Contestants:

 

Hi Pedro! I'm actually going to just post a link here in a couple hours, sorry for the confusion. Packaging the textures+materials for Unity right now!

 

Awesome! Looking forward to your work on this contest as well, Mirt- thanks for joining up!

Sure thing! Just provide an image of where your current game/level is at, as of now, so we can be sure a month's worth of work is being done for the contest, of course. Great to have you participating, looks like your game is coming along well!

In TerraMelior's case, he's been building everything in ProBuilder already, so I'm not worried about outside geometry. Although, limited use of detail meshes is perfectly fine, if they are entirely your own work or freely available to all. That's important to keep things fair! Also, they shouldn't "overshadow" the ProBuilder geometry, naturally. Thanks though, StroggCmd! Judging by your name...any Quake re-makes coming to this contest?

If anyone isn't sure whether a mesh they are using will be allowed, just ask here!

 

Awesome! Looking forward to that

 

Thanks, probably just the lightmap rez indeed. Keep us posted!

 

Some inspiration for everyone! A quick Sci-Fi "corridor" created with the very sexy textures provided free by www.gametextures.com:

 

Thanks Johny, glad your Hammer experience is transferring over well Could you re-post that image? I can seem to see it at all, thought it shows an "Attach" in the quote here...odd.

Just screenshots! Since the Free version of ProBuilder doesn't include optimization methods, it wouldn't be fair to require playable maps. But they would be great to see, if you can!

You bet! I really enjoy seeing what people create, and decided to push this one even more with a "cash prize", since ProBuilder could really use some more display art to show off it's abilities. Looking forward to your contest entry, good to see you back!

Sure you can! Nothing says this can't be greybox, and at the very least you could win some of the WIP prizes

 

Hi BigBite! This is a good question, and there isn't really a perfect answer. The purpose of the contest is to generate top-quality demo art, which ProBuilder really needs, hence the $500 out of pocket that I'm dropping on it. So, the scenes do need shadows, GI, textures, etc, in order to look their best. Especially, as you mentioned, for the dark, moody, atmosphere of this theme.

Personally, I've formatted and re-installed my entire windows installation at least once, in order to regain the Unity Pro trial, for various other contests. But I'm the geeky kind of guy who actually enjoys that, ha, so I'll look into better options for non-Pro users. I'd hate to exclude anyone!

 

That's true! Don't forget to also bake in Ambient Occlusion, that adds a lot to the scene. Set the amount to 1.0 and distance to .75, works great for most situations.

 

No specific time, other than the final deadline. Just for fun, I'll be giving away special (smaller) prizes to the best WIP images posted each week, as well.

 

Great to hear! The Free version does have major limits compared to the Full version, but people should be able to work around that. You can still do quite a bit with it

Cool, I like that you are starting with 2D concepts. Keep 'em coming!

This is looking great, show us more!

 

Hmm, I think you might be underestimating the tool and yourself The original Greybox Contest show some AMAZING art created by users with the free version only, and that was with ProBuilder 1.x, which was, well...terrible compared to 2.0! Also, don't forget that if you use a standard cube, A) You can't modify it's vertices, B) You won't get the crisp, beautiful lightmaps that our auto-normalized UVs allow. C) It would be a nightmare to build anything complex (actually, impossible, since you can't edit the standard cubes verts). And that's just the Free version's abilities... Again, it's worth taking a look at the original Greybox Contest to see how much is possible with just the Free version.

Glad you like the stairs though!

Sounds awesome- agreed on the contrast+mood, especially for this theme.

Looking good, I really like that you have multiple levels- use those stairs! The soft AO/GI lighting makes for a very nice greybox too.

Ah, that's an area where the Full version helps- normally I create a custom collision item (see this tutorial) for the stairs, and disable the actual stair's collision. Much more efficient, and better game experience. For the Free version, you can cheat- just build a PBO-C like in the tutorial, then turn off it's Mesh Renderer, and also the stair's Collider. Not as easy to use as in the Full version, but it should work fine.

Just to clarify for viewers- ProBuilder has completely automatic UV Mapping, and you can control that UV Mapping in the Full version. You can also place any material on each individual face of any object. The Free version doesn't allow texturing or advanced manual UV Control.

I'm hesitant to allow exporting to outside programs, as that would not show a true use of ProBuilder. I'll think on this, but it's likely a no...sorry.

Thanks for the detailed info!

 

Hey Johny, this is looking very sexy indeed! Well, I can't see much because it's so dark, but what I can see looks very promising. Maybe find a way to bounce in just a bit more light...a skylight perhaps, or a few spot-beams/etc. Obviously, you don't want to ruin that mood/atmosphere, but light would be a big help.

Also, a webplayer would be great, but couldn't be part of the contest, sorry . What you mentioned about dynamic infestation sounds awesome, I'd love to see it, but it would be unfair to others to include "dynamically" in the final submission. Since not all of the contestants will be skilled coders/etc, and the focus is on the map itself. In the future, maybe we'll do a "Go all out do anything!" contest

 

I'd love to see the dynamic infestation you mentioned, even if we can't (sorry) use it in the contest. Sounds neat! Lighting == tricky indeed, especially when you need atmosphere like this.

There are some handy "autosave" tools on the Asset Store, useful!

 

Looking good, lots of detail in this already- interested to see the other rooms! Glad you are enjoying ProBuilder. Texturing without the full version will indeed be a pain, but we have to leave some things out, to get folks to purchase

 

Awesome, good to hear! Looks like you are making good use of the GameTextures library, those normals really pop, wow. Thanks for using the ProBuilder "created with" logo, too!

Feel free to list out those features you'd like! Always open to suggestions, and we might even be working on it already.

 

Ah, I now I see- cool, looking forward to more once you get that Pro code!

Neat to see more and more of this coming together. Bending those pipes shouldn't be too tricky, once you've snapped all verts on one segment? Still, tedious, yes!

Cool! Is some of that glass/etc, or all solid?

Very nice, this is looking great, especially for just a few hours! My only worry is it might not match the theme well enough just yet, although I know this is an early image. "Bioshock" is a whole genre/theme unto itself, and a very cool one at that. Might be a bit too steampunk for this though? Don't worry, I'm not killing your idea (I really like it), but it might be straying a bit from the reference- Alien, Deadspace, Event Horizon, Doom 3, etc. Looking forward to more!