Func_Msgboard: Rapid Map Development

Posted by Jago on 2009/11/01 14:29:55

I would like to hear what approaches other people take to speed up the development of their maps so that they actually see the day of release and whether that comes naturally or whether you end up having to focus on the issue of development speed.

Back when I first started mapping in 1997-1998, my first few maps took about 3-5 weeks to make each. Now obviosly since they were first maps, they were also really shit. Over time, I learned to understand what actually made any given map good, started paying attention to polish and detail and this has caused the development times to balloon completely out of control.

Apinaraivo / Monkey Rage, the Q1SP I released a few years ago took 6 months of active development time, mapping 2-4 hours pretty much every single day. Right now I also have an UT3 DM map in the works and while I admittedly have been quite lazy, that alone can't really quite explain the numbers: I take a new backup of a map file every new day I am working on the map, judging by the amount of backup files, I have worked on this map on 35 different days so far amd while it does have some interesting things, it not even remotely close to a beta.

At least in part, the problem seems to be that I am not easily satisfied with the quality of my work, random XYZ thing has to be just right before I can move on to something else and this often results in me rebuilding a small section of a map 10+ times, making tiny adjustments, moving things around, etc etc so that at the end of the day, a lot of work has been done, but I have very few things I can actually point my finger at and say that "this is new stuff I've added today", so the progress feels very slow.

And then I see some people making absolutely jawdropping releases using new, modern engines that they have not only made the map itself, but also had to build all the meshes and create quite a few materials, test, polish and release into the wild, all done in a timeframe of 3-4 weeks.

WTF?

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Rudl

#126 posted by Zwiffle on 2010/01/31 19:46:40

I didn't watch the whole thing, I mainly jumped around a bit and then sped up the last 5-10 minutes to 2x, but it looks like you spent 70 minutes making acouple of rooms. Cool rooms, admittedly, but still all that time for 2-3 rooms, when you could have tried blazing through half the layout in that time (assuming single player.)

I'm interested in knowing if this is a single player map or a death match map. I'd like to see the next vid focus on laying out the path the player will take over making some cool arches and cliffsides.

#127 posted by Ankh on 2010/01/31 21:25:25

What are those textures the guy is using in the videos posted by Zwiffle? It looks very interesting.

#128 posted by Zwiffle on 2010/01/31 22:51:54

The orange/grey textures are the development placeholder textures. If that's what you're referring to. Find them by searching for 'dev' in Hammer texture application.

#129 posted by Zwiffle on 2010/02/04 22:38:18

I've been reading this stuff I got from the worldofleveldesign.com site all about time management and how to just get shit done. I can't really go into it because by doing so I would be against the copyright laws (yeah, I paid to read someone's opinions on level design.) So I'm gonna try this out and see if I can get something done.

Zwiffle.

#130 posted by Shambler on 2010/02/04 22:41:40

Go map.

(That'll be $30 please)

#131 posted by Zwiffle on 2010/02/04 22:48:29

If you had read what I read, you'd know that's the exact WRONG thing to do.

#132 posted by metlslime on 2010/02/04 22:53:43

it's not a copyright violation to paraphrase, sumarrize, or otherwise convey the essence of a copyrighted work in your own words.

I Heard And Read

#133 posted by ijed on 2010/02/05 03:13:19

Th site a while back and found it too abstract and theoretical. Maybe I'm biased by what I've been hearing recently, but 'go map' does fucking work.

I'm tired of theory. I did that years ago, for years. 'Go Map - For Fun'

Intellectualisation is a retreat for not getting stuff done.

Or so I find. Another theory might be...

Quark Hollow Maker

#134 posted by ericw on 2010/10/12 21:26:06

Hearing the Quark digger mentioned in the mapping help thread reminded me of the hollow maker. It's an even more "extreme" version of the digger: it provides the outer bounding box brushes implicitly (and only digs against them, so you can put other brushes in the room with no problems). Basically you can map with one brush per room, and intersecting brushes in the hollow maker automatically become corridors.

I know this sounds like a recipe for disaster, but I was thinking that this could be an awesome tool for building a throwaway map prototype. It could at least improve your "sketching" speed, and get a map to a point where you can work on gameplay really quickly.

I haven't really tried doing a map this way.. so maybe it encourages box map design, but I'm planning to try it out on my next map.

http://quark.sourceforge.net/infobase/maped.tutorial.advanced.html#wallhollowmaker

#135 posted by necros on 2010/10/13 00:42:50

well, that's basically unreal mapping right there. :P

i guess if each of these hollow makers are only carving from themselves and not against other brushes, it'd be fine, but i dunno, it'd probably still be pretty messy. also, if it's auto combining other hollow brushes, if the joints aren't square, it could cause carving problems. no way to be sure unless you try i guess. :S

I Once Tried It

#136 posted by ijed on 2010/10/13 00:47:42

For a wheel type design - basically a big cube and a single complicated carving element. I built the single element then subtracted it from the big cube.

The cube ended up with the correct geometry and hacked to pieces, but I never edited the cube, just deleted it and edited the negative to make changes.

It seemed to work ok, but it was a small DM map.

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