Official Level Design Collab - SRB2 Wiki (2024)

The Official Level Design Collab, abbreviated as OLDC and formerly known as the Official Level Design Contest, is a mapping event held regularly on the SRB2 Message Board and in the SRB2 Discord server. It ran, with several interruptions, from 2003 until 2015, before being restarted in 2020. The objective of the OLDC as a contest was for community members to create their own maps for SRB2. The community would then vote on the submitted maps and winners would be declared in multiple categories. Since the repurposing of the event from a contest to a collaboration in 2023, the competitive element has been completely removed.

The gametypes for which entries are allowed have varied over the history of the OLDC. The most recent contests include divisions for Single Player, Circuit, Match, Capture the Flag as well as the SRB2 Battle gametypes Battle (Control Point/Diamond in the Rough), Battle CTF and Arena. Due to its high exposure to the community, the OLDC is one of the most effective ways for users to get feedback on their maps.

For more information, see the thread on the SRB2MB.

Format

Submissions

Currently, the OLDC has up to four divisions, one for each of the following gametypes: Single Player, Circuit, Match, Capture the Flag. Maps entered in a Collab event may support other game types, but must work in their intended game type. Divisions that receive no submissions are omitted.

To submit a map, one of the authors must have an account on the SRB2 Message Board in good standing and be a part of the SRB2 Official Discord Server. A thread must be created for the submission in the Contest Submissions subforum, with the name of the level in the subject line. The thread must include the names of all collaborators, the map number and a ZIP or RAR attachment containing the map.

Maps that are unplayable in the gametype they were submitted in or intentionally of poor quality are rejected. Submitted levels must be normally accessible: For Single Player levels, this means they must appear as the first level when starting a new game, either by placing the map in the MAP01 slot, or by setting the SPStage_Start parameter in the MainCfg block accordingly. Multiplayer levels must be accessible via level select. Starting with the May/June 2008 contest, the number of submissions per author was limited to one in each division. From the Summer 2020 contest onwards, up to three submissions per author are allowed in the multiplayer divisions.

Entries may include custom resources (such as music, textures, sprites, SOCs or Lua scripts), but they must not interfere with other levels. This means that existing resources provided by SRB2 may not be overwritten, and any included scripts must not affect other levels. Custom sounds and music are limited to 3 MB per division. For the multiplayer divisions, this limit is shared among all submissions by the same author.

Voting

After the submission deadline, the submissions were compiled into three PK3 files: one for the Single Player divisions, one for the regular multiplayer divisions, and one for the SRB2 Battle divisions. Since the Summer 2020 contest, the Single Player file would include a hub map from which all maps are accessible, along with a map voting system taken from the SUGOI series of mods.

Once the files were released, a two-week voting period started. Users could submit their votes by making a thread in the Contest Voting forum. These threads were private during the voting period, but were made public along with the results once the voting period is over. Voting for a division was done by ranking the maps in order of preference, from favorite to least favorite. It was encouraged, but not required, to provide feedback to the authors about the quality of their maps. For a vote to count, all maps of the respective division must have been included and there could be no ties in the ranking. Users who had submitted a map to the contest were required to vote their own entries in first place for balancing purposes.

Once the voting period was over, the votes were tallied. For each vote, the map in first place would receive n-1 points, where n is the number of maps in the division. The map in second place would n-2 points, the map in third place n-3 points, and so forth until the map in last place, which would receive zero points. All votes were then added together to form the score for each map, and the map with the highest score won the division. Should there be a tie, the votes were calculated again with only the tied maps accounted for. If this still fails to break the tie, the tie stands and both maps were declared winners.

Until the May/June 2012 contest, votes were cast by giving each map a score between 0 and 10 without decimals, 0 being the worst score and 10 being the best. Entrants could not vote on their own map, but if they voted for all other maps in their division, the lowest score for their map was dropped in the final tally. Once the voting period was over, the votes were tallied by calculating the average score for each map. The map with the highest average won its division.

Until the 2022 Round 1 Contest, votes were cast by placing levels in sequence, usually top to bottom for readability, with the level listed on top as your best pick and the bottom for the worst. Entrants still could not vote on their own map, but if they voted for all other maps in their division and included their map as their top selection for the division they entered, the lowest score for their map was dropped in the final tally. Once the voting period was over, the votes were tallied by calculating the average score for each map. The map with the highest average won its division.

Starting from the 2022 Round 2 edition, voting is no longer a part of the event, though community members are still encouraged to leave feedback on each entry in the collab discussion thread if so they wish.

Awards

Every contest is registered on the SRB2 Wiki for historical purposes with a list of the entries and their scores. Winning maps are highlighted and screenshots of them are presented next to the list of entries. On the SRB2 Message Board, winners will receive a "Contest Winner" user title. This will last up and until the winners of the next contest are decided. Winners were also given special award badges for their Message board profile signifying what division and what years they won. This award was permanent and remains with every winner.

Collabs give everyone a special title on the Message Board and a special roll on the Official Discord server showing they participated in the Latest level Design Collab. Participants will also given a special badge for their Message board profile denoting what collab they participated in starting with the 2023 R1 collab.

History

The first mapping contest for SRB2 predates the OLDC. It was held in May and June 2003 on SRB2 World, a website run by SRB2 developer and community member a441. At the time, custom maps were rare because few users knew how to create them. To stimulate interest in level design, a441 organized a contest that asked users to submit Match maps using only textures and scenery from Greenflower Zone. While only two users besides a441 entered, this contest inspired fellow developer Mystic to create an official level design contest.

The first OLDC was held in July 2003 on the SRB2 Message Board. In its initial incarnation, the OLDC was held monthly and only accepted Match levels. Users rated the maps with scores between 0 and 10, and the map with the highest average score won the contest. In October 2003, the OLDC was interrupted by a SRB2 Message Board crash, which caused voting records for the first two contests to be lost. At the time, voting for the September contest had been underway. When a new message board was set up in November, voting for the September contest was restarted and the OLDC continued with the November contest.

For the December 2003 contest, Mystic attempted to change the OLDC format: The gametype would now change each month, rotating between Single Player, Match and CTF. The December 2003 had a Single Player division, but only three maps were submitted, so Mystic called off these plans and the OLDC reverted to only Match levels. Due to low turnout, the OLDC was canceled after the February 2004 contest. In December 2004, a441 restarted the OLDC and it continued in the same format as before for two more contests.

Afterwards, Mystic took over again and introduced a new format. Contests were now held bi-monthly instead of monthly and there were now two divisions: Single Player and Match. To encourage voting, if a contestant voted on all other maps in the division they entered, the lowest score for their own map would be dropped from the final tally. The first contest in this format was held in March/April 2005, but it received few submissions, so voting was called off. The next contest garnered more attention, however, and the contest continued in this format. A Capture the Flag division was introduced in January/February 2006 and a Circuit division in July/August 2006.

Apart from a single canceled contest due to technical issues, the OLDC continued uninterrupted in this format until the May/June 2009 contest. The July/August 2009 contest was skipped due to the release of SRB2 v2.0, but it resumed as usual afterwards. FuriousFox took over hosting duties from Mystic between July/August 2007 and November/December 2010, after which Mystic resumed, with Prime 2.0 as backup. The Circuit division was discontinued starting with the January/February 2012 contest because of low interest in the gametype.

In 2012, the number of submissions started to decline. After the March/April 2012 contest, Mystic announced that he would suspend the OLDC until the release of v2.1 unless the May/June 2012 contest attracted more entries. When it in fact did, these plans were dropped, but the next two contests had to be canceled due to a lack of submissions. The November/December 2012 contest had enough entries for voting to occur, although it had to be extended into January 2013. Afterwards, Mystic suspended the OLDC until the release of v2.1 as originally planned.

The November/December 2012 contest was the first to feature a new voting system, where maps are ranked in order of preference instead of scored on a scale from 0 to 10. This voting system was retained when the OLDC restarted after the release of v2.1 in May/June 2014. As during the v2.0 era, the number of submissions eventually started to decline, and the November/December 2014 and March/April 2015 contests had to be cancelled. After the July/August 2015 contest, Mystic announced that the multiplayer divisions would be discontinued, as they had received particularly little attention by mappers. However, when the next contest could not be held due to a lack of entries, Mystic decided to suspend the OLDC again.

In 2020, sphere and SeventhSentinel restarted the OLDC with a new format. Contests were now held seasonally every three months. The Circuit division was reintroduced, and new divisions for SRB2 Battle gametypes were added. The multiplayer divisions now allowed custom resources and up to three submissions per participant. The Summer 2020 and Autumn 2020 contests were held under this format. After the Autumn 2020 OLDC, contests were changed to be held every six months, to account for SRB2's much higher level design standards since the release of v2.2, and to allow participants more time to make their maps as polished as possible.

Sometime in late 2022, the decision was made to convert the OLDC into a collaboration. During this time, the Round 2 OLDC started out under Contest rules for the submission period; when this decision was announced to the community, the contest rules were done away with and the pack was released without any requirement to vote on the levels. As a result of this, entrants got a special temporary badge for their Message Board profiles and a dedicated role for their Discord profiles as proof of participation.

List of contests and collabs

Disqualified entries are not counted in the number of maps.