Have you created a fantastic map that you want to share with the world? If so, then you've come to the right place! Our map building competitions pit the great minds of our gaming community against one another to come up with some of the most original, compelling, and challenging maps. We know you have some seriously cool ideas, and we want the world to know. As such, maps that win one of our map building competitions will go into the game as part of an official downloadable map pack - and your name will be listed in the credits as the contributor for your map.

The rules for entering our map building competitions are as follows:

1. You may enter any type of map you please.
2. You may enter as many maps as you like.
3. Maps must be original works (created by you).
4. Submission files must contain exactly one map.
5. Maps must have a solution and be "complete".
6. Maps must be unique (not simply variations of other maps).

Each competition round will have 10 winners. We will be looking at submissions independent of the account from which they were submitted, so if you enter multiple maps, it is possible that we could select more than one of them as a winner.

Submit maps using the web form under Competitions » Submissions » Submit. You must have an account on Fractured Sands and be signed in in order to submit maps. Submission details including the map name and your username, will be posted to the public status boards but only judges will be able to see the maps themselves. The status for a submission will also be published to the public boards (accepted, rejected, pending). Make sure you are ok with this information being published to the public boards before you submit a map.

We may evaluate maps on a rolling basis within the competition window. Primarily this will be to reject maps that do not meet submission criteria. Maps that have been rejected will be marked as such on the boards. Maps that remain qualified for the current competition round will have a status of "pending". At the end of a round, maps that are accepted will be marked as such and assigned to an official release pack.

You can manage your submissions using the page under Competitions » Submissions. You must be signed in in order to manage your submissions. You can only delete pending submissions; accepted and rejected submissions are locked. Note, however, that deleting a submission will not necessarily remove it from the competition - we may have already evaluated the map and its status may simply not yet have updated to reflect the change (though we expect such occurrences to be infrequent). You should always delete an old version of a map when submitting a new version of that map since old versions of a map are not automatically replaced by newer ones, and we may disqualify submissions that are too "similar".

If one of your maps is selected as a winner, we will attempt to contact you using the email address associated with your account in order to congratulate you and confirm your information for the quest credits. If we cannot reach you within a reasonable amount of time, we will simply credit you using the account information that accompanied your submission.

Note: Because our map building competitions are just starting out, competition rounds will be based on a minimum submission threshold rather than being time-bounded. In other words, rather than starting a new competition every few months, we will instead judge submissions and start a new competition once we have received a certain number of entries. At the moment, we are aiming for a submission threshold of 200 (pending) maps, though we may adjust this up or down as we gather more information on submission quality and volume.

Maps will be judged by Fractured Sands staff based on a variety of factors, including presentation, uniqueness, length, and difficulty. If we do not select your map for inclusion in a map pack, please do not be discouraged! It is possible that we simply had too many submissions with similar core elements, or that we could not match your submission with the theme of the current map pack.

However, there are also some factors that will force us to reject a submission. For instance, if your map has no solution, is incomplete, lacks structure, or fails to load. Make sure you've fully tested your map before submitting it! We may also reject maps that appear to simply be variants of another map you've submitted - if you make a correction to a map you've submitted, make sure to delete the old version before submitting the new one (new submissions will not replace old ones with the same name).

We will try to contact you explaining why a submission was is rejected, but depending on the number of submissions and the time available to our judges, this may not always be possible. We will, however, always make an attempt to contact you regarding an accepted map, so make sure your account email address is up to date!

The policies governing user content submissions to our site are outlined in our site terms and conditions. By submitting content to our site, you agree to our terms and conditions regarding user content. Please see the full document for details.

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