As you know, I've run the last couple of competitions on the site. Mini competitions that tend to span no more than four weeks. Both of these have had a moderate turn out and produced some fun little maps, and even introduced some new members to the community, some of whom have stuck around.

You may also remember TWHL Tower, a collaboration project which I also headed up back in February 2015 and released a year later.

Both of these have their pros and cons and I was just curious as to what people would be interested in seeing more of in the future. Would you want to see more quickfire themed competitions which can be hammered out within a month or are you on board for more collaborations, ultimately much longer in development but releasing in a much more polished format and more easily shared with other mod sites?

Competitions

Pros

• Shorter development times
• Freedom of choice for engine and base game
• Single, multiplayer or coop
• Little expectation for plot
• Potential prizes!

Cons

• Limited time for testing and polish
• Entries will be lost in time (like tears in rain?) after the voting period is over

Collaborations

Pros

• Plenty of time to developer and polish your contribution
• Testing and feedback from everyone involved in the collab
• A full mod/map pack release, shared across multiple sites and communities

Cons

• Overall plot can mean a stricter focus on consistency.
• Limited to a single engine or base game
• Singeplayer only (a pro in my eyes, but not everyone is experienced with SP mapping)
• Internal debates regarding plot, theme and individual entries

I was just curious what you guys and gals think. I personally enjoy working on larger collaborations, but my time to manage such a project can become very limited (which ultimately lead to the death of TWHL Pockets last year). Also, bear in mind that if I were to head up another collab project, it would be limited to GoldSRC as I do not work with Source. That still leaves things fairly open in terms of the game, be it Half-Life, Opposing Force, even a Sven-Coop entry we can all play through together when it's done.

You may prefer the simple and more rapid fire nature of the mini competitions, and that's fine too. As I said, I'm just curious.

I'm a bigger fan of these minicompetitions. If you don't like the premise or don't have the time, it's not too long you have to wait before you have another change to get involved. Also you can just separately upload competition maps to the vault if you don't want them to get lost to time.

I wouldn't mind another collaboration like TWHL Tower (even just a TWHL Tower 2019), because they usually have some kind of interesting restriction, and a longer project time. I'd be willing to pitch in with the intro or outro maps if your time becomes limited.

It could be the type of bigger project we occasionally fit in between some mini-competitions.

I prefer mini-competitions. You do everything the way you'd like it to be, the time to do everything isn't really short at all, you don't need to build a whole new game for your entry in order to pass. If this thread was a social test then I'm not a fan of group projects. :^)

I think your multiple choice idea would work well for a collaboration project. Every mapper would have one env_global to use for their map. It would have different environment styles to choose from (underground, docks, city...). The middle map would have parts from all of them. Once all of the maps are done, it would have a final big fight/puzzle in the middle map.

Honestly, I think all options are good. Mini-competitions allow for quick, fun and quirky maps to be made to keep a constant flow of new content. Long form competitions should happen maybe a handful times throughout the year; This allows longer and more detailed content for everyone to enjoy. Collaboration projects are something that is interesting to me, and I have worked on a couple, although doing it with just a couple of other people rather than a whole forum. I'd rather much have a long-form competition in which I work with another person than a big collaboration however.

My Bottom line: Keep doing mini competitions and throw in longer competitions every once in a while. Collaboration projects seem like a fun idea.

I am a huge fan of mixing things up. I'd love to see some collab projects among the mini-compos, even small ones like TWHL Tower 2 like someone mentioned.

Yeah, I think that they're both valid. Doesn't seem like there's much reason to go all in on one over the other. Keep it fresh, mix it up. Have some collaborations, and throw mini-competitions in the gaps to keep the maps flowing.

Ultimately, if you're looking to helm them, it's up to you. No-one's gonna demand anything of you that you don't wanna do.

I enjoy the mini competitions but as a few people have said, variety is the spice of life. Smaller collabs could definitely be a nice shout, and even some of the older "map a room" / "map from layout" competition styles would be interesting to try again.

On the collab note though, it would be comfortable to have the competition run on for a little bit longer. The nature of collaborations is a bit sporadic as it depends on the time available of the collaborators - one could say the current lengths require you to be on the ball, but when it now involves communication with multiple parties, it might prove a bit too tight.

Well, it seems that a lot of people still like the mini-competitions. Very well. As mentioned on Discord, I will aim to keep them coming and possibly extend them by a week or two, but I'm unlikely to enter them myself.