Common Sense In Level Design

[-:Nighthawk:-]

Maybe this "DaveJ" character and our local no-talent hack narby could get together and work on a map collaberatively. I'm thinking the popular map likely to come from the two of them is de_lamppostdust or something to that effect.



On a more serious note, though, it's good of you to put out an article like this, DaveJ. Pity I seem to always give up in frustration after trying to use anything that deals with 3D modeling in under 5 minutes. Site's looking slick as ever, been a while since I last visited.



But yeah, good article, nice that it's not only geared toward CS mapping (though still quite applicable), so a wider audience should be able to benefit from it. :)

[David Johnston]

Generalised mapping 'insights' are the way forward! Yay! Glad you lot like the read. Anyone notice the site is now green? Changed it yesterday, just for variation...



Incidentally, does anyone think the Torn layout analysis was perhaps unfair? I drew out those routes and was actually quite shocked to see how many there were. Was I right to highlight the difference between that and Aztec? As much as I like the appearance of Torn, and indeed Crinity (awesome designer imo), the layout could do with some simplification... but I felt really bad highlighting it.

[Ghengis]

yes n no, see torn, can be gerat fun when played with players who have taken the time, to say, oo pretty, lets learn it. Then the complexity of the routes is not too bad, (However maybe htats because i play it n pwn hte nubs who dont, ?)

I am a big fan of chateux, but hardly ever have enough players on it, Storm is dull n dark n generaly boring, need some moh mappersd to invigourate that game, objectives are there, just need schallenging scenarios..

[David Johnston]

Eek, just noticed that the online version of that article differed to my local one. Just fixed it - the article is now even more fun and useful due to the bullet points at the top of each page, and the various notes scattered through the whole doc.



Fixed it now though, it's probably worth a second look if you've already seen it - just skip through each page and look for the grey boxes with text inside them.

[Blankster]

Yea i sorta agree with Ghengis, maps need to be challenging for both teams, you need to be harder to hit for bother teams, and just a lot of light areas and dark areas

[Vayalent]

Lovin that article, i read it earlier, good stuff

[abel]

That explains why narby got rid of the uber-rare random lightning death on aztec.. Man I miss that though, it was rare enough that it didn't distract from the map's awesomeness. Hell, the one time I ever died from it, I laughed my ass off (after wrapping up my hand in ice).

[Coolleroy]

I once made a big box room with some boxes in it and guns on the ground, and I made it a de map so when the bomb went off everyone went down with it. Yes it was possibly the worst map ever and it was just for a lan anyways.

[Softy's 24/7 Fraggin]

one thing not touched on in the article was the number of players a map can comfortably hold or needs to play well. large DE maps (like aztec) where the bomb-sites are far apart need more people on both sides to play well. as more people get broadband and the price of bandwidth goes down, i think we will see the average server size increase. dust in a CAL style match plays different than a 20 person pub.

[PCF|Herman]

Edited by [user="21273"] @ [time="1053549304"]

Cool article. Hammer scares me

[David Johnston]

Edited by [user="157"] @ [time="1053534784"]

Softy's a Fragaholic wrote..

one thing not touched on in the article was the number of players a map can comfortably hold or needs to play well. large DE maps (like aztec) where the bomb-sites are far apart need more people on both sides to play well. as more people get broadband and the price of bandwidth goes down, i think we will see the average server size increase. dust in a CAL style match plays different than a 20 person pub.

There are a few things I didn't include, and that's one of them. I did go onto ramble about textures and stuff, but deleted that because it just went downhill from there.



32-player Dust (well, 28, or whatever the limit is these days) is crazy fun.

[[SWE]Twiggy]

cheetarah654 wrote..

a lot of free time is needed, especially to just learn the damn program

well....it took me about a year to learn "everything" about it...with "everything" i mean everything i need to know when i map =D (btw, look around for aim_googish, the best aimmap around)

[Gpig]

David Johnston wrote..

32-player Dust is crazy fun.

I'm sure if you look around you can probably find a mailbag response or something like that where rizzuh uses that as an insult.

[PCF|Herman]

Why do people think that level editors should be easy programs? Valve /didn't/ make the mistake of giving a fisher price version; at the end of the day, any program on the same scale will take a long time to learn. Think 3D Studio et all.

[orion]

Keep

It

Simple

Stupid



More or less, a very key element to mapping, but obviously Narby and DaveJ know a lot more than any of us will ever know.