Map Making Contest For May 2022

Hello all,

As many of you will be aware, Age of Empires 4 recently received an update to enable mods and maps to be generated by users! To encourage and incentivize all map makers to get creating, I am excited to announce a map making contest for the month of May 2022 with $1000 in prizes! The maps will be judged on the following criteria:

~ Creativity and Uniqueness
~ Suitability for competitive play
~ Fairness of resource allocation
~ Consistency of feature spawns (cliffs, ponds)

Rules:

~ Maps must be Generated maps, crafted maps will not be considered.
~ Maps must be submitted in this thread before 11:59PM (00:00GMT) on 17 May 2022 to be considered.
~ There is no limit on how many maps an individual may submit.
~ Maps will be judged based upon the ‘micro’ size of the map.
~ Maps from other games can be ‘ported’ across and entered into the contest, however, they may be judged more critically on the creativity and uniqueness criteria.
~ Do not copy maps submitted by others and lodge them as your own. Maps may be deemed as copies of other entries if they are too similar to other maps and will subsequently be disqualified. This rule does not apply to maps that have been ported from other games, unless there is an allegation of plagiarism.

Rounds:

There will be two rounds. The first round is open to all entrants. After the submission period has closed, a panel of judges will then vote which entrants they would like to see move on to the final round.

The second and final round will be made up of maps selected by the judging panel from the open round. Each judge will privately vote, and the results will be revealed after the votes are tallied.

Prizes:

1st - $500
2nd - $300
3rd - $200

Judges:

I will not be judging the maps that are entered, rather, judges will be enlisted from the pro scene, and include professional players and professional casters.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask!

Happy creating :slight_smile:

32 Likes

Yeah I can’t read, my question was already answered in the post :smiley:

But my other question would be >how to share the generated map? Do you upload the XML or is there a way to share a link to the mod/map ?

Hello, I am not the organiser but if I understand the post correctly, we can share the link to the mod section on this website (Mods All - Age of Empires).

For example this is the link to the Forest Nothing map (note to Aussie: NOT AN ENTRY)

You can find your own mods and maps if you log in through Steam or Xbox Live in that mod section on the website. In order for your mods to appear on the website, you need to upload it through the game.

3 Likes

Thanks for the information:)

Im just gonna add that i belive non generated Maps would be much easier and faster to create.
The editor for genrerated Maps is giving me quite a hard time.
(cant render your map in the editor, need to start the game every time + quite hard finding all the commands for newbies like me)

1 Like

Needs to be a complete video, showing how to make a basic generated map

As they are no other entry’s and I still think generated maps are a bit too hard for entry level map maker I will post my crafted map here :slight_smile:
Maybe someone likes it or can give some feedback

It’s inspiration is from command and conquer generals, a small 4 player map called tourna island I always liked to play :slight_smile:

1 Like

Heya im working on such a series: Any1 Can Map - Even you can make a generated map! - YouTube

Will try to publish more before the deadline cause I hope there is gonna be a lot of new generated maps for this mapping contest :slight_smile:

2 Likes

My entry: MirrorRandom

All major features (large gold deposits, holy sites etc.) are mirrored, with each team’s players on mirrored positions across the middle. There are a few randomly picked subvariants (more open land map, some watery map (but without deep sea fish), middle river).

5 Likes

My entry: Palouse

3 Likes

I have some ideas about maps based on Taichi, StoneHenge and Football pitch.
Sadly i find it too hard to finish by generated maps.

1 Like

My entry: The Turtle Island

Seeds that best shows how is our cute little turtle is supposed to look like: 618b6087, 72555f09 all for Micro 1v1 European Temperate

Known Issues due to map generation bug: Sometimes turtle legs misses relic, this is due to issue in tt_relic_spawner, which will be fixed in next patch.
Ideally pretend that each leg has relic, even if one is missing it will eventually get fixed in next patch :slight_smile:

image

6 Likes

My entry: Longest

https://www.ageofempires.com/mods/details/60168/

2 Likes

Great initiative and I hope you do this again once Relic fixes the modding workflow @AussieDrongoBBQ
Right now it’s VERY time consuming to play around with generated maps. Once Relic can figure out how to preview stuff right in the editor I believe we will start seeing some really awesome generated maps pop up.

1 Like

My entry: Gold Valley

An open plain with a valley in the middle, full of rich gold mines.
Gold Valley

PS: Could I upload multiple maps as multiple entries? @AussieDrongoBBQ

3 Likes

@AussieDrongoBBQ Thank you very much for organizing this great event. Please do more modding contest like this :slight_smile: This adds very good content to the game which makes the game better.

@All Thank you very much for all your hard work and helping making AOE4 better :slight_smile:

There is no limit how many generated maps and individual can make for the contest :slight_smile:

See the rules section of @AussieDrongoBBQ post:

Thank you very much for all your effort.

Kind regards

Ah thanks!
Here is my second entry: Oasis, based on the famous Age II Map Oasis.

I think people have many more ideas, but the editor lacks many interesting map elements like ashes, buildings & etc. It is not very user-friendly at the moment as well…

Let’s see what will happen to our created maps. If the good ones are going to be used for ladder and pro scenes, we can definitely try to create much more in the future. It is quite convenient to write the lua, just resource distributions puzzle people

2 Likes

What if I draw a really neat picture of a map. May I submit it? My mom told me it was super cool and put it on her fridge, if that helps at all.

Here is my entry: King of the Hill - Island Edition

It’s precisely what the name suggests, King of the hill but the hill is on the island.

Note: This is my first AOE-4 mod, so I haven’t added support for more than 2 players. Even though the map works even with 8 players, the resource distribution might be unfair for many players.

2 Likes