MapJam Community Poll + MapJam Winners

bacteriophage

Yep, sadly our models weren’t fitting to the Unturned theme.

Eh the wrecked ship looks fine for the style

1 Like

That’s what I thought, it was the only critique we received, however all the other teams only had improvements suggested. But I’m not gonna keep complaining, I got 3rd and that’s good enough for me.

congrats boiz

I booted up the map sometime this morning since I had planned to look at it and Botana, and I’m inclined to agree with the judges. The map is gorgeous for sure, but some stuff just feels out of place.

Canyon Arena

Of course, a majority of the assets used are from Canyon Arena (and not your own). Personally, I just didn’t think the assets fit the map (even though they fit the theme). They worked on Canyon because they’re almost literally the only assets you see (including the actual terrain you fight on being actual models).

But the assets aren’t something I’d ever really expect to see in vanilla Unturned, mixed with other vanilla models and a map meant to actually show normal ground terrain. Several assets just feel overly cylindrical and over-touched (i.e., lanterns and fences).

Custom Assets

But then there’s the assets you guys made. For me, I found the sails to feel out-of-place. There’s not much of a reference for content creators to go on to begin with, but I would’ve added a wind shader so they at least weren’t static.

There was also this vehicle (of which I assume to have been the worst) which had a lot of these thin, narrow logs packed tightly together. It felt excessive, and I honestly just thought that fewer, thicker logs would’ve worked out better.

The weapon selection was nice enough (although the melee weapons and cannon looked a bit odd). The clothing variety was nice too, and I found the medicinal items to be quite clever.

There wasn’t anything graphically that made really me dislike the map though, I just found that some of the assets looked off.

Gameplay

At its core, it’s going to be feel like another run-of-the-mill arena map because it emulates an experience akin to Alpha Valley or Washington Arena. That’s perfectly fine by me, as long as it’s an enjoyable experience.

I loved the boats. I also realized that they’re super slow and leave you quite exposed. I really wanted to enjoy the boats, but they’re just not worth it.

Loot spawns felt kinda inconsistent. With how much moving around players might have to do to get loot (especially ammo sometimes), and the likelihood of people dying in water (which means their loot is basically gone), it’s just not that great sometimes. Too much RNG in hoping the map spawns decent loot.

At first I thought maybe you guys didn’t put down enough loot spawns, but I checked in the Editor and you guys have put down quite a bit. Yet, I end up with something like this (with the rest of the items not picked up being shirts and melee weapons):

IMO, I would’ve made all players spawn with clothing, and at least one of the weapons (+ ammo if you guys made it a firearm). Alternatively, I’d say just redo the spawns so that there’s more consistency in it. It’d make the map more predictable, and gameplay would be more meta since people would know where certain loot is going to most likely spawn, but it also just makes the gameplay feel more fair.

Post-MapJam Suggestions

Since you can publish updates to your map now that the MapJam has ended and judging won’t be an issue for the MapJam team, I have a few suggestions.

  1. I think a shader should’ve been used to make the sails affected by the wind, which would’ve both been “totally radical” and probably have helped make it look better.

  2. Increase the usefulness of vehicles. They’re quite slow, and very exposed. I really wanted to enjoy them because I really liked them otherwise.

  3. The blades on the melee weapons should’ve been thicker. As it stands, they’re about half as thick as something like a vanilla knife.

  4. Add a safezone to the spawn.

  5. Tweak loot, or add loadouts?

5 Likes

That’s what we had done in the most recent update however we couldn’t update it without going beyond the map jam deadline. Players would spawn with smuggler loot then would have to get to red coat outposts to reach better loot. Then finally secret locations would spawn the highest tier of loot such as captain armour we had a captain hat on the way but could not create it in time and of course the best weapon in some peoples eyes the hand cannon.

Personally I thought this was already done, copying the effect from the flags within Unturned.

We tried to make vehicles as useful as possible without making them overpowered since we wanted to make players go to all Island tiers without skipping the mid tier ones, even though they do have a good chance of spawning decent weapons like the Bess and the Blunderbuss. Which would happen if they were made faster. Not only that but we were making the hanscannon chance smaller making people use the large ships instead since they have an on board cannon which does the same damage but has two flaws and that’s its movement and turning, since you cant drive and use the cannon at the same time and the turning of the cannon is limited to a 45 degree or something when aiming up.

Yes, we went through many variations of blades when we started, however not noticing the thickness of them, thanks for highlighting that for us.

We did add a safezone to the spawn but for some reason it causes players withkn the safezone to not spawn.

By the sails having the wind effect, they did :stuck_out_tongue:
You probably had your wind quality low but for us they did wave around so they wouldn’t feel static. the

For play style we hoped was that when you spawned you would have to start out with melee, things like the cutlass and dagger would be your choice of weapon until you got to the medium islands, there you would find pistols, blunderbusses and a low chance of a Bess (Musket),
Finally the main island where it would be the center point of the map and of course the best loot.
For us this was our first arena map ever and tbh I can see definitly where we went wrong, but as a first I wasn’t too upset with the final result.

1 Like

I know that the the destroyed sail in the cave is using the shader, and so are your custom flags. I was primarily referring to the vehicles, and to the giant non-destroyed sails on the main ship.

Also, to clarify, the wind shader is still in effect when it’s on “Low” (and I have mine set to “Ultra”, although I assume you probably meant “Off”).

1 Like

Ah yeah forgot the you could turn them off, thought the lowest setting was Low.
Wasn’t too sure about doing the shader effect on the sails but then again I didn’t make them, Maikee Mous did, We’ll add it in the next update of the Cove hopefully.

1 Like

To be honest I never knew vehicles could have animations like so.

They can do a lot. I made a truck that had canvas with cloth physics.

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I remember around when we first met and you sent me the legendary red prototype truck as a test for the canvas physics.

That was genuinely ahead of its time.

2 Likes

I actually think I still have that lying around.

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I was trying to look into cloth effect on vehicles that but unfortunately I did not have enough time to experiment during the event. Did you use the cloth mesh from Unity or did you separate 2 materials with one using the flag shader?

Before I forget, I didn’t really have the chance then but I would like to thank Mikey and Justin for inviting me. It was a great chance to refresh my knowledge for creating mods while working with you 2 and it was a great nostalgia trip too, with my first mod being the pirate ship back in 2016

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I used a cloth mesh from Unity. It resulted in the canvas being dynamic ingame, and when driving around it looked absolutely fantastic.

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Sweet thanks :ok_hand:

I will see if I can work on that for post-event touch ups if it does not impact the game’s performance too much

FPS impact is second to none, even on low spec PCs.

3 Likes