To the members of the CAMP team:

How are CAMP maps selected?

By playing them, we discuss then those that have struck our interest. We then talk to the mappers if we agree, for them to either join the team or hand the vmf over for us to finish the work. Being a team player, and being able to take blunt feedback is required. Once the map is selected, it's understood it's a team effort, and not the original mapper's sole decision to go either way about anything in the map. If the vmf is handed over, the original mapper won't have a say in how the map is treated. However that's not a problem as the only case a vmf is handed over is when the mapper no longer has an interest in it, and doesn't wish to join CAMP.

Note: A custom map that's reached final status can not be selected, unless renamed (never seen before). Must be in beta/rc status

Great thread! I was curious about this too, but I was under the impression the map had to be finalized for some reason. I guess I read something like that in another topic, I suppose whoever mentioned it didn't have their facts straight.

ok ... hopefully you guys will pick some open outdoor/woods for some maps. The villiage thing is real old and overdone. Original maps would be nice too.

With the new technology coming soon, more open maps should be possible.

I asked the DoD France guys to send me a copy of that interview, save me the time of rethinking my answer here. :)

ok ... hopefully you guys will pick some open outdoor/woods for some maps. The villiage thing is real old and overdone. Original maps would be nice too.

With the new technology coming soon, more open maps should be possible.


With your maps, you of all people surely knows that the current engine couldn't cope with the large outdoor environments without having to sacrifice a lot. That sacrifice comes two ways: Heavy fog and very short drawing distance. Either one or both.

Churchyard is the best illustration of how open CAMP maps can be today. No heavy fog, and yet aggressive drawing distance...yet the map isn't even a large outdoor map.

Aggressive drawing distance makes a map feel cheap, poorly executed or just not fit. Immersion should play a role, and as you've seen in your latest release, people were complaining about this. On the other hand heavy fog draws people away like nothing else.

Flurry and Rive both were thought of as CAMP2 maps, and both got rejected for those reasons.

So yes, we've been following the Source engine improvements closely for a good while now, and we'll see what it can deliver. If "Episode II final Strider sequence scale" can be achieved in a multiplayer game, we're bound to know sooner, rather than later.

Merci pour le spoiler, Furyo ;)

Immersion should play a role, and as you've seen in your latest release, people were complaining about this. On the other hand heavy fog draws people away like nothing else.


Yes, 2 people complaining speak for everyone...dod_fall is b1, when the new engine update comes out, changes will be made as I already stated.

Goodluck with the CAMP series. Looking forward to some more villiages.

While you make a valid point that there are very few maps that are not villages, Furyo makes an equally valid point that maps with large open areas are not feasible on the current source engine.

I'm not a big fan of the CAMP map packs, mainly because it confines the community-made maps to an easily downloadable and, personally, very incomplete representation of what the community has to offer for all the players that don't have the time to care or look for these maps. IMO, stuff like CAMP shouldn't exist because it simply jeopardizes any other map that doesn't get selected. :\

New_b, I don't know how you manage to misinterpret everything we tell you about CAMP, but I guess you'll see a personal attack whichever way we answer you. We're all looking forward to seeing different things for this game, yet you put out just another snarky remark as if you hadn't even read my reply. What part of "OPEN MAPS EITHER DON'T PLAY WELL OR LOOK LIKE CRAP RIGHT NOW" do you not understand?

It's a good thing we all have different views on custom maps, but when you see Valve putting an ad for some community content on Steam, everyone, and especially in this forum, should applaud the gesture. The few custom maps that do get some Steam attention bring more guys to check out this specific forum and test other maps. Have you guys just looked at the average number of people browsing the Mapping forum? After the general section it's by far the most visited.

Seriously, people keep whining about Valve not doing anything for this game, some guys from the community try to get some momentum for the game and you're pissing down our necks? Screw that.

Thanks for your input Furyo !

:)

Well u aren't the only commuity out there LOL. Just make your own series, I'll host it!! Who has the say that they have to decide.... Would this forum support it though??

IMO, stuff like CAMP shouldn't exist because it simply jeopardizes any other map that doesn't get selected. :\

Funniest thing I've read in a while.

Actually, given the tone of this thread, I'm just gonna close it. It was flamebait to start, as the OP's consequent posts prove.

What we've done with CAMP is try and nurture talent and push that talent to put out the best possible map we can. Shane and I run the CAMP team like benevolent dictators. We cajole and push and prod and tweak mappers to a point where we feel the map has as good a combination of game play and looks as possible. We end up tweaking the devil out of some of these maps and in some cases the maps are turned over to a crew of mappers and in other cases they're not. We don't have iron-clad rules on anything other than Shane and I have final say. I will say we're subjective and we're arbitrary to some degree. That's what you get when people make decisions, not checklists.

The major thing that differentiates us from other map making teams is we do have Valves ear. Color us guilty but if either Shane or I need to talk to Mugsy or PIU or anyone on the DoD dev team we can usually get with them in a few moments. This didn't come by accident either...it came by years of relationship building, by Shane and others running CoJ and working the original DoDS beta testing, by me being a contractor for them for both DoD and DoDS…so our combined contributions to DoD and DoDS got our "feets" in the door so to speak. Because of us this relationship Valve was gracious enough to advertise our first CAMP. That said, we would not have had a second CAMP advertisement if the first had not turned out as well as it did.

So...I have nothing but praise for the mappers we've worked with and I know some of them are going on to real careers in the industry and that gives me great pride. I hope we work with many more over the coming months. All I can say to aspiring mappers is work hard, get your product out there, be flexible and playtest, playtest, playtest.