Duel Mapping Contest (sponsored by Sapphire)

1st September - 1st December

First prize: Sapphire HD 7750 1GB GDDR5 OC Edition

Rules
- The map must be designed for 1v1 with XPM tournament settings.
- All content used in the map must be opensource (GPLv2+), including the map source -- no exceptions.
- You are allowed to submit maps which were started before contest, so long as they were not fully released and of course are not remakes.
- No remakes.
- The logo/banner of the sponsors must be placed on your map (link: seperate, non-gpl pk3)
- You can submit multiple maps.
- To take part in the contest pack your map as pk3 and link it in this thread: http://forums.xonotic.org/showthread.php?tid=3438

Judging
The maps will be judged by a panel of experienced duel players and/or developers on gameplay (70%), presentation (20%) and originality (10%).

XPM
You might have noticed that some servers run the XPM mod. As opposed to CPM, the physics and weapons are the same as on default servers. Instead it represents tournament settings. The biggest change is the 100/100 health/armor cap which means that you can only stack up to 200/200 using mega-items and shards.

Important places
Xonotic Wiki
Map Releases & Reviews (you can create a thread for your map there and get feedback)
Editing and Concept Art
Tournament VODs

IRC - Quakenet:
#xonotic (general talk)
#xonotic.editing (questions regarding editing)
#xonotic.pickup (to find players to test the map)

Special thanks to Maverick Servers and eSports Republic for supporting us! Reply

Just a short question, how will the requirement of placing a logo of Sapphire on the map interact with the requirement of releasing the map including its entire contents under GPLv2? If I were a mapper, I would ensure I got Sapphire's written express consent before releasing an image containing Sapphire's logo under GPL, but I'm also very careful about such things...

Edit: oh, you noticed the license conflict already. Good work! Never mind me. Reply

Just a short question, how will the requirement of placing a logo of Sapphire on the map interact with the requirement of releasing the map including its entire contents under GPLv2? If I were a mapper, I would ensure I got Sapphire's written express consent before releasing an image containing Sapphire's logo under GPL, but I'm also very careful about such things...

Edit: oh, you noticed the license conflict already. Good work! Never mind me.

We're also discussing this in IRC at this very moment Reply

I am confused: is Sapphire the sponsor, or Maverick Servers? :p Reply

Maverick Servers has organized multiple mapping contests in the past, e.g. http://www.esreality.com/post/2310652/q3...n-judging/
We can use their name and connections to attract mappers who otherwise probably wouldn't have noticed this contest.

Sapphire is the official sponsor who provides the hardware prize.

Regarding that license talk, what do you people think of allowing non-gpl maps? Means in fact you have to provide the map source but you still can use free-to-use content like cgtextures.com. The big disadvantage would be that those maps can't become official Xonotic maps. The big advantage would be that mappers can go as creative as they want and we *might* get better results that way. Reply

I think it's good to have the requirement for the map to be usable as official Xonotic content. The game desparately needs more official maps. Reply

I think it's good to have the requirement for the map to be usable as official Xonotic content. The game desparately needs more official maps.

I second this. Also, releasing nonfree original maps doesn't really fit the spirit of this project and community. Reply

I'm in! But I have conditions:

Maps from the contast can become offical Xonotic maps (I thought thats the main purpose of such contests, but now I am completly bewildered with those discussions)
We can use content from offical Xonotic textures and also from pages like cgtextures.com. (there is allready plenty of great stuff there, it would be pity not to use it - at least at some part)

Where it comes to logo - I can put on my map whatever logo you like as far as it looks nice. Reply

Your conditions wont go well together as cgtextures' license does not allow to ship textures with open source projects like Xonotic. It's a pity but thats life.

I'm in too! Reply

Justin, the discussion was about the requirement of placing the "Sapphire" logo on the map. I highly doubt it would be allowed to use that logo and release it under GPL, which would mean any one could use the "Sapphire" logo, even in commercial context, at least license-wise. I didn't follow the discussion on IRC and assume it still would probably be an IPR infringement if you did. But licensing a company's logo under GPL sounds rather dangerous to me.

I also think the maps should be usable for official Xonotic, thus releasable under GPLv2. Having the logo as non-free content in separate pk3s would solve the problem to the extent that we could afterwards just replace the logo with another texture and include the maps then... but I'm not sure if that's very entertaining or amusing for Sapphire. Reply

Noone who participated in the Maverickservers q3 competitions and removed the logos post judging ever got sued for it so I don't necessarely see a problem with it.
The logo could just be replaced by a label saying "www.sapphiretech.com" or something like that.. Reply

No I don't think there's danger in removing the logos after the competition is over (you're free to amend your work and to re-license it). I'm just saying that releasing the map WITH the logo under GPL is a bad idea. :o) Reply

According to div, the best solution would be to release them under a modified GPL with an exception for the logo file, so that everything else must be GPL-compliant and derivative works (with the logo stripped) can be released under the unmodified GPL terms. Reply

Well can you set a modified GPL up for me? I don't have much experience with that kind of legal stuff.. Reply

About cgtextures - there's a reasonably good amount of textures on opengameart.org and you can filter by compatible licenses there so it should be a good resource if anyone needs more textures. Reply

Interesting! I´m in... probably... have to see whether I have time to come up with something. Reply

I'm excited to test out the maps that come out of this contest, the current duel ones have been quite stale lately. Reply

Cool stuff. Reply

Sweet! Reply

unfortunately ... I only have a laptop ... so a graphics card prize isn't of much use to me right now ...

I've got some other xonotic mapping related projects to work on too ... i'll sit out of this contest ...

I will host peoples maps on the ps server though ... Reply

Well can you set a modified GPL up for me? I don't have much experience with that kind of legal stuff..

Me either. Talk to div about this, I guess. Reply

Well can you set a modified GPL up for me? I don't have much experience with that kind of legal stuff..

Me either. Talk to div about this, I guess.

If Sapphire sponsors this and wants the logo included in the maps, shouldn't they be able to determine how they intend to license the usage of the logo? Maybe we should just inquire from them how to license the logo?

I would go for the solution you already proposed, asyyy, that releases the map under GPLv2 and puts the non-GPL content (i.e. the logo) in a separate pk3 which comes with a license to be provided by Sapphire, probably including a registered trademark notice along the lines "Sapphire and the Sapphire logo are registered trademarks of ...". Reply

I will stick with the separated, non-gpl pk3 for now. Reply

If Sapphire sponsors this and wants the logo included in the maps, shouldn't they be able to determine how they intend to license the usage of the logo? Maybe we should just inquire from them how to license the logo?

I would go for the solution you already proposed, asyyy, that releases the map under GPLv2 and puts the non-GPL content (i.e. the logo) in a separate pk3 which comes with a license to be provided by Sapphire, probably including a registered trademark notice along the lines "Sapphire and the Sapphire logo are registered trademarks of ...".

The GPL states that one can produce derivative works licensed under the GPL. If Sapphire wants to grant the mapper the permission to use the logo, they basically have to license the logo under the GPL so that the rest of the world may use it too.

A downside of the separate pk3 is that it won't look right on servers that don't have the sapphire logo pk3. That's what div's extended GPL solution aims to solve. Reply

Yes but you can replace the logo after the contest and have a fully GPL'ed map then? Reply