- Missing prevent building volumes on custom monuments, paths and roads which would impact gameplay and balance.
- Roads too steep which made cars unuseable.
- Object poping which could have an impact on PvP and balance.
- World objects not removed inside monuments.
The Winner
The winning entry was submitted by a team that are well known in the Rust mapping community and have a ton of experience under their belt. Huge congratulations to Lone, WhoisMikeJones, CollapsedOrange and Nox for their submission "Gravis Island". I picked Gravis Island as the winner because it kept true the original goals of the competition and the overall polish and balance felt higher than the competition, I tried to find any faults within the map but there wasn't much I could find to critique. The team elevated the Rust world by many custom points of interest, unquie terrain and built upon existing monuments which I'm excited to see how players respond to.
What is Gravis Island? I'll let the map creators explain:
Gravis Island was developed with the intention of creating a familiar Rust experience while expanding on the idea of focusing on in-game items that are currently underutilized. Everything that has been placed on this map was handdone by four veterans in the Rust Map Making scene. This experience was more than just making something fun for players, but a great team building experience where we got to know each other more and shared some great laughs along the way. The map we made has some small additions to monuments we feel could help increase foot traffic, while also giving more reasons to explore more of the map. We implemented a network of mountain tunnels to allow the players to traverse the landscape in an easier way, with small wooden bridges, military checkpoints and more. To prepare for the future submarine update, we instituted ocean based monuments players could visit on their explorations out at sea. Just adding new content wasn’t our only focus, user playability, performance, and progression was a key component in our initial planning stages. We conceptualized many mockups of different styles of maps until our team felt we had something that was balanced. Our progression begins on the south west of the map and cascades to the north east. As a player moves from one side to the other, they will be met with better tier monuments and more difficult challenges along the way. The map also features a handful of various islands that players can travel to if they prefer the more secluded lifestyle. Every aspect of this map was handcrafted from beginning to end. We are very proud of what we accomplished in the two weeks we worked on this together and had a wonderful time making it.
Gravis Island will be running on Facepunch EU Small 1, 3, 6 and US Small 1 and 3 from August 5th. This will be the first time we've run custom maps on our servers and excited to read player feedback.
Runner Up
The runner up submission I found to be the most interesting map submitted but fell short on polish and attention to detail, it's a map I'd love to run on our servers one day with a few tweaks. Huge congratulations to FireCr0w and his submission "Cacatúa".
