Stats as of August 20

I haven't been playing much lately...

I'm surprised they're still using the flash forum. I used to browse the old forums a lot even though I didn't post much. I liked looking through the map and artwork sections, but that seems too hard to do now that you can't open multiple tabs or bookmark links or right click... I don't think it was a big reason why I stopped playing, but I do miss that sense of community.

Anyway, here are the current stats. Most maps have only gotten about 600 votes since I checked four months ago.


   Number  Status  Votes   Description

P4 - Shaman:
   188821  P  34%     69   ice chutes

P5 - Art:
   315632  P  --       0   owl
   341270     49%    258   forklift
  1451303     --      26   butterflies
  1749688              0   bunny
  1756348              0   awesome map

P6 - Mechanical:
   108982  P  66%    251   exploding, tall button
   113235  P  61%  12700   falling pyramid v2
   126151  P  63%   3100   raising exploding bridge
   126606  P  65%   4000   lowering then raising bridge
   155591  P  55%   8700   ice in the way
   158569     56%  23600   reup - leaning planks
   314854  P  --      17   puzzle 3
   323503  P  --      17   puzzle 4
   327448  P  44%    117   march freestyle
   339035  P  --       9   shaman rain
   348918  P  59%    372   temple 4 v2
   364127  P  49%    537   april trap
   392709  P  58%   2600   slingshot
  2036283     55%     52   eternal walljump

P7 - Racing:
   314806  P  61%    299   runner
   321268  P  55%   1300   treadmill maze
   327447  P  --      32   march night
   337813  P  47%    102   stairs 2
   724780  P  60%   3700   hurdles
  1959015             48   room to stand

P9 - Miscellaneous:
   165264  P  57%   5500   chain lock

blueprint - 1959015 - room to stand

Not a terribly complicated mechanism, but it produces a really cool "shrinking ground" effect:

http://i.imgur.com/CTXal.png

The "Piston Elevators" map I reference is long dead, but you can see a picture of it here.

2072480 - grass skew

The ground skews left/right which makes it hard to climb. Unfortunately, like a lot of maps, sync and lag can alter the timing by a little bit, and mice can get stuck inside the grass (temporarily).

2036283 - eternal walljump

How to make wall jumping more annoying? Make mice jump up the same walls over and over again... There's extra friction on the right side to help with the wall jumping with cheese.

Stats as of April 18

Not much response for the blueprints so I guess I'll stop them for now. Only about 100 more votes for maps since I checked three weeks ago...


   Number  Status  Votes   Description

P4 - Shaman:
   188816  P  43%     81   shaman cannon squeeze
   188821  P  34%     69   ice chutes

P5 - Art:
   315632  P  --       0   owl
   327449  P  --      34   march soundtrack
   341270     49%    245   forklift
  1451303     --      26   butterflies
  1749688              0   bunny
  1756348              0   awesome map

P6 - Mechanical:
   108982  P  66%    251   exploding, tall button
   113235  P  61%  12700   falling pyramid v2
   126151  P  63%   3100   raising exploding bridge
   126606  P  65%   4000   lowering then raising bridge
   155591  P  60%   4300   ice in the way
   314854  P  --       1   puzzle 3
   323503  P  --      13   puzzle 4
   327448  P  44%    105   march freestyle
   339035  P  --       9   shaman rain
   348918  P  59%    372   temple 4 v2
   392709  P  58%   2600   slingshot

P7 - Racing:
   314806  P  61%    299   runner
   319632  P  39%    106   treadmill
   337813  P  47%    102   stairs 2
   724780  P  60%   3700   hurdles

P9 - Miscellaneous:
   165264  P  57%   5500   chain lock

1959015 - room to stand

I redesigned the mechanism for the shrinking/growing ground because lag sometimes causes the timing to be off. (I should probably replace the mechanism in the previous maps but I haven't done so yet.) This map is collision, so mice will have a fierce battle to stay on the grass as it gets shorter and shorter...

1946658 - grass grow 2

Mice must wall jump up the moving grass this time.

1946401 - grass grow 1

The grass grounds grow out then shrink back.

1939321 - cheese chase 2

Mice must time their jumps right to catch the moving cheese.

1933292 - cheese chase 1

Mice must run after the cheese.

1928572 - cursor

Mice must fly off the mouse cursor to get the cheese. (There's two in this screen, can you spot the real one?) This uses a mechanism I've had sitting around for a while.

1910619 - magic carpet ride

Thanks to Seeteegee for the idea for this one.

1908707 - cookie monster

Mice must ride the cookie, which continually flies into Cookie Monster's mouth. The dark clouds and graveyard represent his internal struggles with addiction.

1889794 - peacock

The tail folds up and spreads out, over and over, kinda like what happens with a real peacock...

1886198 - pink teleport

This was a map (or idea) I wanted to make a long time ago, but couldn't because the shaman could easily crash the map. But now we can make grounds that don't interact with grounds or shaman objects, so crashing isn't a worry.

1852784 - puddle drops

Mice must run across the falling circles to get the cheese and come back.

1842291 - countdown

I originally wanted to make a clock that would be accurate and count the whole two minutes, but I realized that that just wasn't possible with 50 grounds. So I settled on doing a countdown from 10. What happens when it reaches 0?

1814267 - underground tunnels

Another map using dynamic invalid rotation, this time with angles around 27000. In this case the shaman/sync sees and feels blocks at their true angle (instead of -8 degrees) and mice/non-sync see and feel them rotated -110 degrees from that. The screen shown is what the shaman sees; mice will see the paths go in the opposite direction, \ / \ instead of / \ /.

1804520 - transparent

The idea for this one came from Buginclaws's @1790464. I wondered if I could make a version where the blocks moved, and this was the result.

blueprint - 1749688 - bunny

I talk about hiding anchors.

http://i.imgur.com/CWekp.png

blueprint - 1756348 - awesome map

Two mechanisms in this map.

http://i.imgur.com/0DUj5.png

The hardest part was getting all the art to fit using only 50 grounds.

blueprint - 339035 - shaman rain

I talk about invalid restitution in this one:

http://i.imgur.com/WKGNX.png

This is one case where the xml might be a little misleading. In my map, @339035, the falling blocks also have invalid restitution but they don't actually need it. Just the one IR ground is enough to move the contraption and all the falling blocks. I think I must have been trying a lot of different mechanisms and just never changed the restitution values back once I settled on this one.

blueprint - 1770857 - red-green gap

In this one I talk about dynamic invalid rotation. I guess it's a little advanced, but we'll see how things go:

http://i.imgur.com/rZ6I2.png

Again, feel free to reply with comments/questions...

blueprint - 1433915 - side teleport

I think I'll link directly to the blueprints instead of having a small preview image like my map posts. So this is the first:

http://i.imgur.com/AowiK.png

Let me know if you have questions or comments or if things aren't clear. These blueprints are just rough sketches giving the general ideas--nothing is to scale and I omit a lot of "unimportant/irrelevant" details. But you can ask about anything and I (or others) can try to help.

Blueprint Requests

I decided I'll do the tutorial/whatevers, at least one or two and see how it goes. So this thread (which I'll no longer keep at the top of the blog) is for you to request maps for me to make blueprints of.

Stats as of March 27

I redid Bird v2 @374858 because it moved too fast:

Now it goes too slow, but you can still play the old version at @321052.

I love the new grounds and options. There's tons of amazing art maps.


   Number  Status  Votes   Description

P4 - Shaman:
   188816  P  43%     81   shaman cannon squeeze
   188821  P  34%     69   ice chutes

P5 - Art:
   315632  P  --       0   owl
   327449  P  --      34   march soundtrack
   341270     49%    245   forklift
  1451303     --      26   butterflies
  1756348              0   awesome map

P6 - Mechanical:
   108982  P  66%    251   exploding, tall button
   113235  P  61%  12700   falling pyramid v2
   126151  P  63%   3100   raising exploding bridge
   126606  P  65%   4000   lowering then raising bridge
   155591  P  60%   4300   ice in the way
   314854  P  --       1   puzzle 3
   323503  P  --      13   puzzle 4
   339035  P  --       9   shaman rain
   348918  P  59%    372   temple 4 v2
   392709  P  58%   2600   slingshot

P7 - Racing:
   314806  P  61%    299   runner
   319632  P  39%    106   treadmill
   337813  P  47%    102   stairs 2

P9 - Miscellaneous:
   165264  P  57%   5500   chain lock

1773454 - snowball pyramid

Mice must climb up the continually falling balls to get the cheese.

1770867 - red-green choice

The last of the red-green maps. Thanks to Impuredeath for asking me about dynamic IR, which caused me to figure out how it actually worked.

1770863 - red-green high

Actually I changed this map and the previous one a little bit, the screens are for the first version.

1770857 - red-green gap

The first of a few shaman maps using dynamic invalid rotation. The shaman/sync can't cross red and mice/non-sync can't cross green.

1764178 - iris

The black circle continually grows and shrinks.

1756348 - awesome map

From :| to :D... :)

1752629 - running bear

The bear moves slowly, can you beat him to the cheese?

1749688 - bunny

The bunny lifts mice to help them get to the cheese.

1696295 - freefall

A clone of Map 11, where I inverted the cloud and green grounds. The picture was taken before we could place holes and cheese on top of grounds; I've since updated the map.

1645185 - pyramid

Mice have to climb over the sliding pyramid to get to the cheese and then back.

1610463 - trampoline world

A clone of Map 14, but now the walls bounce you! Or something...

1608370 - seesaw

Hop on the seesaw and the kid will bounce you to the cheese.

1604200 - waves

We can't make dynamic water, so I guess we're stuck with waves of sand.

Tutorials?

When people ask me about how my maps work I usually just point them to this blog where they can find the XML and see for themselves. But I realize it can be hard to decipher the XML, to figure out which ground's connected to which because of Rype's glitch, and to even know where the grounds are now that we can make colored grounds to match the blue background. But even without these difficulties it can be hard to figure out what properties are important and which aren't--does it matter that the mass/friction/restitution/etc. is a particular value or not?

So I'm considering making "tutorials", although that might not be the best name for what I'm envisioning. What I mean is for a map I'd make a general sketch of the mechanics, show how things are connected and what properties are important. Basically, a skeleton of the map. I wouldn't explain how to use the map editor or edit XML, or any basic concepts or glitches--I'd be assuming that you'd know almost everything in the Map Editor FAQ, for example. And I wouldn't have any step-by-step instructions or videos (you can check out Impuredeath's here), it'd just be one image per map.

So, periodic visitors to the blog, what do you think? Would this be useful to you, or is having the XML enough? I'd take requests for maps instead of doing every single one.

Stats as of Feb 13

I like the new rotation, I've been saying for over a year that they should change the rotation so permanent maps are played more. And now they are, or at least some of them. The "best" maps are promoted to P4, P5, etc. depending on their type and are put into the official rotation, which goes like:

Vanilla / Normal or Protected / Very good map / Art map /
Vanilla / Normal or Protected / Halfway between Protected and Very good map / Racing /
Vanilla / Normal or Protected / Very good map / Cooperation map /
Vanilla / Normal or Protected / Shaman map / Mechanism map /

There's around 100 maps in each of the P4+ categories, so you can expect to see one of those maps about 1/1600 of the time. How does this compare to normal maps? CFM says there's 120k maps in rotation but I have to believe that's a huge overestimate, as it doesn't remove deleted maps right away. I remember a number closer to 15k last year, but maybe there's a lot more since there's a lot more maps being made. (We're almost to 1.5 million, and 1 million was just two months ago.) If we guess at 40k maps, then you can expect to see one of them 1/160000 of the time. That is, maps in the P4+ categories get played about 100 times more often than normal maps. I actually see some of my maps now!

The P1 category has been loosened (which doesn't matter much, since they aren't played any more often than normal), over 4k maps now compared to under 1k a month ago. I can only see if a map is permanent when I check in the editor, so the categories I have here I got from CFM. I didn't post a picture for Chocolate Wall, as it was a clone of Map 74, In the Mud. Tig still hasn't fixed the clouds passing through clouds bug, which is quite annoying, as all of my wires maps are broken because of it, and a few other ones as well. Anyway, here are the stats:

1459650 - indiana jones

This map was a long time in the making. I originally planned something like this in the early days of map editing, when we only had 20 (!) grounds to work with. I wasn't satisfied with it so I never finished it. Then I got reinspired and planned on doing a whole series of maps, all looking the same but each with a different trap. (This is the new series I was referring to back in November.) But the actual creation of the maps was less fun than designing them, so I kept putting it off. Then we had the update that raised the limit to 50 grounds, and I thought I could now probably fit most of the traps into one map. So, the map finally got finished.

This was the idea for the original map (I still had the XML):

1451303 - butterflies

Hope a ride on the butterflies!

1445064 - spinners

Another map using the spinning glitch. (Thanks Tktkj's maps for inspiration.)

1433915 - side teleport

A boring map, but was just testing the idea.

1413304 - void moon map

For Voidmoon's birthday.

1405726 - ball circle

Pushing the button will cause the balls to go a bit crazy.

1311628 - temple 6

About 30 seconds in the temple and trampolines burst up, destroying whatever construction the shaman had started.

1262615 - adell map

A map for Adell's birthday.

1219539 - cheese troll

The cheese hops around. (It's a better effect with only one mouse.)

Stats as of Jan 14

Tig fixed the "invisible barrier" bug last week, but... now cloud grounds pass through other cloud grounds, so my maps are still broken, just in a different way. But, I did fix a bunch of old maps that were broken when grounds were resized last May. (Thanks Utro.)

I'll start listing the stats differently starting this week. Also check out the Map List.

Map Contest Winners

Here's a list of the winners of all the "official" map contests. Hopefully this list is complete--I didn't include Paradigm Shift and other contests where permanent maps, cheese and forum titles weren't awarded. As of the start of January there've been 14 contests with 148 prizes given out to a total of 81 mapmakers. There've been several multiple winners, led by Ninguem, Kenoriga, Nyoibou and Viprin, each of whom has taken three golds. I've included the @codes and forum titles if I knew them, as well as small pictures of all the maps.