:3

I haven't been very active with mapping at all ever since the last Music Translation Contest, but it was my favorite contest so when I heard there was gonna be a new one I got very excited.
I really love this contest cause instead of my usual mapping where it's more location based and has a video game song playing in the background that fits the vibe of the map, it encourages me to do something completely different and experiment with some different styles that I'm not as comfortable with. 
I had some video game soundtracks on my list of songs I wanted to use for this map, but it would just feel like I'm making another regular map.

I spent like a week trying to decide on what song to use and get some inspirition for it, and there was one song in particular that I got pretty excited for, but had a hard time visualizing in my head.
Then I happened to start a Big Time Rush binge watch and watched the whole show in like a week and it was my first time watching in like 10 years.
I really enjoyed it and the timing with MTC2 was perfect so I basically HAD TO make a map with a Big Time Rush song lol

Paralyzed is my favorite song from them (both as a kid and now lol) and when I heard it I suddenly got sooooo much more inspiration than all the other songs I wanted to use and when I finished the show I immediately went to mapping with the song.

For the gameplay I kinda had the idea to have something "paralyze" when you get in sight of it, and Melvins in combination with a time stop field seemed to work pretty well with that.
The only downside is that I wished I could have them "paralyze" individually, and not have the time stop for everything, but I couldn't really figure that out so I went with this.
I wanted to have some extended variants cause I just love mapping with those, and I wanted the movement to feel a bit more fast-paced.
The gameplay might be a bit too hard and unbalanced, but I just went with whatever I felt worked and I'm pretty happy with how that turned out. The 2nd room became my favorite because it feels more fast-paced.
Oh and I apologize for my terrible camera skills

For the deco I wanted it to be better than the first MTC because the deco there was kinda meh.
I was very much inspired by the black and red colors from the 2022 version's cover art.
I think the red pulses in the background worked pretty well as little pulses that fit the intensity of the song.
I wanted to use a custom foreground tileset, but when I did some temporary tests with vanilla recolors I actually really liekd the scifi blocks and decided to stick with it. 
I still wanted to do custom bgtiles tho, but not in the usual way where it covers a big area. I wanted to have this sort of lightning shaped look to them, and zucchini's digital tileset seemed to work really for that. It did take a while to grow on me tho honestly, but after the first gameplay room I started to quite like them and I'm really happy I kept them.
I added A LOT of lightning, because it just fits very well with the theme obviously.
I wanted to add more lightning related decals, but I would've had to make custom assets for that and I didn't really know what would work well. 
For the longest time I had the stylegrounds be just empty with only those red pulses, and it didn't look bad, but I really wanted more, so I added some lightning shapes like on the cover art and I really like them :)
There's also a random chance of lightning occuring every now and then which I think is pretty neat. I tried not to make it too obtrusive because lightning can be quite like that, but I think the way I did it was pretty well done.
At first I also wanted to have a little lightning effect whenever you go into one of those time fields to kinda visualize the "paralyzing", but since those fields stop the entirety of time I just couldn't make it work.
The last addition where the red scifi tiles with the white lines. Like the background, it was just the set tileset used throughout the entire map, and I did try to make the shapes a bit more unique with little holes in them, but it just wasn't enough. Then I tried to see if I could do a black recolor of the scifi tiles, but it didn't really work, so then I tried the same red tileset, but with white lines and I feel it really helped pop out the tiles a bit more.

This kind of deco style where it's not really a location but moreso a visualition of something, isn't a style I'm very confident or good in (which is why I scored pretty low on the deco in the first MTC with The Weekend Whip), but I really wanted it to be better this time around and I'm super happy with the result. The gameplay maybe suffers a bit, but I'm still quite proud of what I've made :)

The song Paralyzed has two different versions, one from 2011 which was never officially released, and one from 2022 where they rerecorded the song, and I used the newer version and built the map around it because I like it more, but I left the old version in there as an optional thing, and I honestly think the map matches that version of the song quite well too.

I did start with the map quite a while in advance of the deadline, and finished the first gameplay room within the first week of starting, but then as usual I started struggling with trying to get myself to work on it (curse this ADHD or whatever it is) and did the last two rooms in the last week of the contest, so I sadly couldn't make it as polished as I had originally hoped, but luckily Ridg helped me stay motivated for the last couple days cause there were moments where I just felt like giving up, but I'm really glad I didn't.
I still hope it's at least decent enough for a good score lol, but there a shit ton of entries this MTC so I don't expect a lot. 
I had a lot of fun tho. I feel like I learned a lot again about mapmaking and I'm very excited for the next MTC (if there's gonna be another one, please) to make something even greater :), I've already got ideas to make something hopefully even greater.

That's about it. Sorry if this is long, I just like to ramble about the things I make and I feel like this is a nice way to explain some more of the "music connectivity" decisions I made for the judges.
I'm really happy with how this map turned out, so I hope you liked it <3