Saint Martin Island Map, City Building Contest, Fall 2016

@XOUSTE. That's fantastic. I 'd like to see more of the rest of the island but i like what i see a lot.

 

Awesome stuff, @XOUSTE , I really like the skyline with the bridge in the foreground
And that container port looks lovely. It will be a tough fight for the best harbour

 

@nicknick , I have to interject here. First of all, people cannot vote for themselves. That was a feature that @IcyHot introduced after the first challenges.

And even the players who participate and who are also part of the jury for the category winners, they do not vote for themselves.

And if it is about comparing a mediocre city with a diamond, I do agree with you. But what do you say about comparing two diamonds when one is Photoshopped, and the other is not?

 

If it's two diamonds of the same value? same artistic? same complexity? same effort?

I will vote for the one that is also more pleasant to the eye.

Talking about similar cities with similar "value", regardless how this is measured. . . i 'll vote for this presented better. That's just me.

I am not against Photoshop, as i am not against skyscrapers. I see the "oh, too much Photoshop" or "too many skyscrapers" comment now and then and i am ok with it, since it's different people, different ways of seeing the world.

I just dislike restrictive regulations in something that at the end of the day i consider a form of art. That's all about it and just a personal opinion.

---------------------------

As for the self vote, i am not talking about the category winners but the main vote, this getting the winner of the whole thing.
So, i am talking about the main vote.

Official 2016 "The Inlet" Map Contest Vote / 6 out of the 17 submissions have been voted by their own creators.
Official 2015 "Gonaives[戈纳伊夫]" Map Contest Vote 8 out of the 15 submissions have been voted by their own creators.

( i think i counted it out almost correctly )

 

Thanks for all the comments of you all,im glad that you like my city and give me a strong motivation to move on ,to finish this project as soon as possible.To be honest i didnt realize that futuristic cities style can be more easier for me.everything in the city can be possible and more creative than real world.For example the large port in my city,for many of you might think that its sooooo unreal and a little bit weird.Somehow this port gives my city a sense of scence and technology feeling,or some sort of visual shock...all in all,Eveytime i decied to take part in the contest has a reason, making difference,trying new things!

 

I really like the port and i really don't find it unreal. On the contrary.

I actually find the idea of using "land reclaim" especially at the end of the map a very very clever choice. Somehow it DOES justify how this place does have scyscrapers. . . i 'd really like to see more.

I value every submission hugely, even if unifinished. And the best part for me is that i see different interpretations to the same map. Every competition has been different from the last one and i eagerly await this one too lol

Another great thing is that i wait to see what every player i know will bring in the table. I am not very familiar with every player's style, but i mean. . . when i see something from each player i like to compare with older projects and see how personal style has evolved.

 

I must admit that you have done a great job

 

Well, you are right regarding the voting system. I thought that IcyHot had implemented a rule to avoid voting for yourself. I mean, I KNOW that I had spoken to him about it in the chat.

But your argumentation regarding the way to compare two cities with same value but different presentation is not quite convincing:

1) it is a city building contest. So the only thing we SHOULD argue about is indeed the number of skyscrapers, and not the amount of Photoshop used.
2) the good versions of Photoshop are not freely available. And it takes time to learn GIMP or Paint.Net, and you know this. So being an expert in using these tools pays off. But once again, is this the thing we want to compete about?
3) Photoshop and other tools are indeed giving an opportunity to make cities look even closer to reality, and I like that a lot. But maybe we try a comparison to the Olympics: you should be good at your arts without using illegal doping methods (e.g. Photoshop)

 

Comparing Photoshop or a free version of it like GIMP which is what i use to illegal doping and steroids is beyond any grasp of valid conversation to me. Sorry

And srsly, this is a contest. Yes, we are "competing". . . but more about it, at least speaking for me is the fun and the "share" and "educate", "show our work" thing in there. So, i really don't care a lot about the competition side of the whole thing.

I more try to present something new, fresh and something that will trigger other players to try new things in their gameplay. But i speak only for me.

I really don't care about Photoshop, or skyscrapers As long something is offering something, like good execution, good plan, some realism or even lack of realism. . . i am happy And if it's nicer to my eyes, i will vote for it. It is one of the things i look for in a journal and this is just how i think and i see the world

 

Why that is suddenly beyond any grasp of a serious conversation to you?

I mean, the basic comparison should be allowed: players from all over the world come together to show off their creations on a certain theme. Like spear throwers they use a specific tool, Cities XL. More experienced players may have advantages, but talent will still pay off, too.

And like a spear thrower, you only have a certain amount of tryouts to show your brilliance, i.e. 10 photos to show.

And we are still having a lot of fun, do we not have? And are we not helping each other?

 

I used the world "valid". Not "serious". Consider it a mathematic term

Again: In my mind i cannot compare use of Photoshop in a game competition to illegal steroids.
Comparison lacks any size of relative analogy to make it valid. Simple. First is legal, second is illegal and a crime.

Except if we end up deeming Photoshop "illegal" for a game competition by implying it's cheating just because many players cannot use it, when at the same time half of our top rated journals make some or heavy Photoshopping use and people rate it as a good result massivelly. If we eliminate Photoshop from the competition we should also throw out these Journals and censor them

I find a "no Photoshop" rule in a pictures competition unprogressive, srsly limiting and so so so 1940's in a world that will have VR in cellphones in less than a decade. Again personal opinion.

At the end of the day this is a pictures competition, otherwise we would compete with city's statistics and no pictures really.

Let's get this on at a private chat or the chat channel or another devoted thread. It's not completely related to the ongoing competiition and probably moving the focus from the whole thing to something not completely relevant to the thread topic.

 

Okay, then let's say "medicine" instead of doping. I guess that is a better term, as there is legal medicine for all the athletes, as well as medicine that is increasing e.g. the body's breathing functions, etc. ...
Also, keep in mind that we are discussing whether something allowed should be restricted

And yeah, it is about photos in the end. Spear throwing is also about how far you can throw a stick. Nonetheless, the stick has to support certain measures.

Edit: but okay, if you want to proceed with discussing it in the chat...

 

So you really feel that last competition results were unfair because of the winner using Photoshop?
Because this is what i am getting here

You do understand that 8 out of 9 top winners in the three competitions offered fantastic submissions ALL using photoediting.
And all of them were voted by the community that preferred such a result over many other cities?

What's coming next? Limiting the competition even more just to Cities XL and "restricting" use of XXL because it offers better graphics and nicer sky?

Cause if you restrict Photoshop with a set of not understandable criteria, then XXL is out of the question too for those using it. There is simply NO comparison to the result XXL can provide compared to XL and i am talking about vanilla shots.

 

More details

 

Well, I guess it is rather that e.g. RedZone19 kind of overkilled it in my eyes, regarding the last contest: he created a photorealistic scenery, which is far beyond anything that the other 7 out of 8 winners who used Photoshop did.

I don't mind Photoshop (or GIMP, ...). But here we have differences in the amount it has been used. It was not only the sky that was altered, there was also an atmosphere created. And it holds similarly for the images that you presented in the Gonaives Contest. Yeah, it may not have taken you a long time to alter them, but this most likely because you already knew how to properly edit the images in GIMP.

So for me, it is a dilemma: on the one hand, I would like to see what people do with Photoshop/GIMP/... . On the other hand, these tools are either not freely available, or it just takes quite an amount of time to get used to them, even using video tutorials.

So participants do not even have to master XL/XXL and all ist bugs to have a good chance to win. No, they also have to learn Photoshop or other tools just to have a very small chance to probably get one or two votes.

So, @nicknick, how do you sell that to all the newbies? Stay away, you don't have a chance when you don't have a clue about Photoshop/GIMP?

 

Hrm...

A city journal has nothing to do with a contest. It's about showing the history of one's city, telling a story about a city or just showing pictures - whatever the creator likes to show. And I think that any picture editing should be allowed there- I love seeing lmiguel's pictures with all the photoshop done! A city building contest on the other side should have equal conditions for everyone taking part... at this rate, everyone is allowed to edit their entry pics which is ok. But this is a disadvantage for those who cannot use PS whatsoever, either if they don't have the skills as others or they don't even have PS/GIMP etc...

Just my opinion

 

I can't join the contests anymore because of my faulty CitiesXL, but I'm with Kitsunebi and Kipate on this one. I'm not calling out any previous winners or anything, they've done very well. But, having advanced photoshopped contest entries puts those who don't know how to use it at a disadvantage. They're all here afterall to showcase their cities and the time/effort they've put to it, not their photoshop skills on top of that.

Maybe keep the photoshop entries for the CJs? Leave the contest raw? Either way, I'm sure contestants will still use photoshop for basic edits like brightness/contrast and colour corrections (I did, lol). I don't know, I'll leave it up to the public to decide.

 

Well. . . the current competition cannot see its rules changed. It is running for weeks now, so i 'd consider it a done case. Changing the competition rules in the middle of its duration, to facilitate players that don't want or cannot use a specific tool or players that want to win a specific category by any means is really absurd.

So, if we are talking about the next competition then the site management can do anything they want, this is their competition anyway. . . but for this one i 'd consider this a done thing. Changing the rules right now is cheating and moving the goalposts when someone is trying to play.

Personally speaking i voted for Red Zone's 19 submission and i find it right on spot, very clever thought and a bliss compared to a sequence of somewhat overworked submissions. Sometimes less is more and this is what voters went for. Red Zone presented a fantastic result in my eyes and definitely something more than "just a 5 minutes work pier".

I 'd prefer any time of the day a submission that has been photoshopped rather than a gigantic meaningless port of excessive size, almost fully on land reclaim that makes no use of the given map, full of oblique corners that really do not exist on reality and would be traps for the docking ships and a small city surrounded by it, whose residents would be suffering everyday by the noise of the adjacent gigantic port and all the cranes

Photoshop or not, i find attacking a specific entry and the way a player is presenting its work really distasteful and not welcome in a friendly competition. Except if the passion to win a specific category is so big that makes us think everything is welcome. And if we go this direction, then anyone is entitled to trash any submission really.

So, here is the end of the conversation for me, cause i really think attacking a specific player or campaigning against him publicly during the contest vote is something really worse than editing photos in a game. I 'll now focus on my presentation and commenting current submissions rather than reading comments degrading past submissions through sarcasm.

 

This is my last comment on the conversation aswell, but its not really fair to us to claim it as an attack on a specific entry (RedZone19's) just because we collectively agree on something. Speaking on my behalf, I voted for him aswell as I love his entry the most. I think we're just pointing out a flaw in the competition (not the entry), but his entry just happens to be the freshest one in memory and stands out the most. Call it jealously or whatever assumption people may have of us, but its just a problem to bring into discussion to make the competition better and fairer, not to restrict it into a Nazi-run olympic games. If other users or admins disagree with us, well then I guess we're wrong. I don't want this dragging out to a bitter debate. Just a friendly discussion among lovers of the game

Photoshop or not, I'm still gonna be on this site everyday and will vote based on what looks best than out of favours. Even if I can't play anymore, I still love seeing all these entries. I agree that its too late to change the rules and it will be unfair if they changed it halfway.

THE SHOW MUST GO ON. A month+ left to go guys, on a very challenging map aswell.

 

Or the passion to win is so big that you invest even more time into altering the photo via some tools
And this albeit you could spend the time to change your city in XL instead, not?

Oh, and @nicknick, don't be so hypocritical when it comes to naming specific entries. The last time you spoke about someone specific (on old XLN) in an abstract way, the certain person didn't like that way either and almost his splendid CJs. So we will do it wrong no matter how

Also, you can state whatever regarding your choice pro RedZone19's entry, but I tend to believe that anyone of us was biased. So, yeah, this will hold for other entries with altered photos as well, hence the question to go back to the old times And it even includes entries of myself

But the rest can be left to the moderators.