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Kona
Everyone works differently. I currently work on Quake stuff the way you're describing - what I'm interested in finding out is if this other way will work better. It's all about growth, man. :) cool. I dont exactly do it like that. Ill do the brushwork for an area, pretty detailed, than after it gets to a certain size Ill fill it with entities, than I expand out from there.
I tend to do all of the gameplay related entity work (triggers, monster positioning, ammo etc) after I have made most of the level, because I figure you cant really tell how the gameplay is gonna work out (generally) until all of the layout is done. I pretty much imagine my maps/area in my head and then build em. I sorta plan as I go. And for the first couple of years it was great fun! :) I think thats the difference in ethoses - it can be fun to do 1 map, or even 1 area while the idea is fresh and you're being openly creative. And it gives you satisfaction! But when that gets boring where do you go? The answer: you start thinking about making something more substantial. Like an episode! The satisfaction must be greater. But it takes a lot more patience. If doing it professinally I would guess that you have to work as a team, everthing must be delegated and broken down into phases, even the overall design stuff is probably done by a team of people, i.e. the brief..... Because you HAVE to get it done. Or else you arent being productive enough to support you organisation. How to make an interesting layout for a comprehensive progression: First you make the layout. I like to make a huge environment and then figure out how the player will be guided round it. You might start with an area which seems like it could be the start, but ends up being the middle, or part fo the middle. Whats more important is creating an immersive semi believable environment and then bringing it to life with gameplay. So getting stuck in the rut of room of badguys - corridor - room of bad guys - corridor (over-simplifying here) is just bland and boring. Being patient enough to finish the environment before being able to play your creation always worked better for me. Just my own thoughts/opinions....... I've never done much SP mapping but my thoughts about it has been that it seems like a good idea to first think though (and perhaps write down) what you want the player to experience both in terms of ideas going through their head and feelings. Then use your architecture/lighting/audio/whatever vocabulary to try to induce that. Play the player.
For MP I think it's better to do many finished maps that has gone through the whole process than to get stuck at trying to make the perfect level and just rebuilding the low detail phase over and over. "For MP I think it's better to do many finished maps that has gone through the whole process than to get stuck at trying to make the perfect level and just rebuilding the low detail phase over and over."
I assume you're saying here, "It's better to get some levels done so you can see the whole process than to get caught up trying to create the perfect layout the first time you make a map". That, I agree with. Get your "my first map" levels done and out the door (figuratively speaking). That experience is worth it's weight in gold. It depends on the map size. It's always better to have as few people working on a map as possible to avoid bad merges and corrupt data.
In a prototyping phase there'll be the full design team on the map or else making the plug in entities (monsters, props - template stuff) one in charge of the environment (layout) who gets his or her stuff from art (chunks or tiles) which they first passed to them as simple boxes from a 3D package. That's how we do it anyway. That looks pretty cool.
Does Toetag have a texture replace feature a la worldcraft? You just select one texture and then it can be automatically replaced across the whole map. Obviously can cause some headaches for sub-themes, but very useful. Although what you've got there looks like a castle format in theory there's quite a few different themes that could be applied. Giant reactor structures? Yeah, ToeTag will let me select a face and then select all other faces that match that texture.
ijed Yeah, a typical Gears of War MP level goes like this: - An LD makes a simple shell that can be played (has cover, collision, etc) - That shell is iterated on like crazy until it is deemed "fun" - An LD/artist does an initial visual pass on the level, adding meshes and lighting and establishing the theme for reals - An LD does a gameplay pass, making sure that all of the cover is still in place and no collision got borked during the visuals pass - An artist will typically then do a final visual polish pass where they add as much as memory/framerate will allow to make the level look as good as it can The "LD" mentioned in the various steps above doesn't always end up being the same LD. A level generally passes through many hands before going into the game box. Reflecting back on my previous work I am wondering if one of my main problems is that I nearly always end up creating gameplay around existing map layout and design features instead of doing it the other way around. It's very easy to get caught up in long flow of brain-to-editor creativity process and design a lot of stuff which does look good but then you try building some gameplay around the things you've built and you realize it's very clunky and end up having to rework the layout and visual features A LOT (often having to throw away and completely rework large chunks) until you are satisfied with both.
This is actually even more true for engines which have editors with proper lighting preview (read: UnrealED) because you don't feel the pressure to test the level inside the game too often. Actually, I just realised that my UT3DM map with 35+ different saves... I haven't yet launched it inside the game even once, I only used the "Play the map from here" feature of the editor which lets you run/jump around the map. This actually makes me quite scared of how many things might be out of whack "in reality" and will have to be reworked because I've neglected proper in-game testing. "Reflecting back on my previous work I am wondering if one of my main problems is that I nearly always end up creating gameplay around existing map layout and design features instead of doing it the other way around. "
Good point. I suffer from this as well. I don't dream up combat scenarios and then build the level around them - I fit the combat into the map after I build it. That always felt more natural to me but maybe I should consider at least planning out a few show piece fights and working the geometry to fit them ahead of time... mix both together. Like build the map using brushwork first but as you are building it think of gameplay scenarious for each area, like "Shambler ambush would be good here" or "there will be a couple of ogres up there, but as the player notices them a bunch of knights will come out of here" or "this would be a great room for a vore attack" or "I could really envisage the player getting chased back out by a hoard of feinds here, that would look cool" kindofthing.
I think I'm gonna give this a try this weekend. 5-7 hours of mapping, we'll see how it goes. Anyone want to suggest a theme/texture set?
koohoo? it's a great set and rarely used. quite a lot of variety, while still staying very green. :P
only thing it lacks is terrain textures (the rocks and stuff in there aren't made for large swathes or terrain) but that's easily remedied. incidentally, i really should look into my own mapping process. some good stuff in here. Im gonna use obtex2.wad, unless anyone wants to throw in a better suggestion? And it might be Quoth.
I could do a non-base map :O
Koohoo could be fun.... Or Egyptian. Or eldar type thing. I dunno. I'll sleep on it (yawn) 'mix a bunch of random stock quake textures and pull off a badass texture mix'... :P
I actually love the koohoo textures. I always try to use them to make a map but it ends up failing each and every time. :(
agreed.
I think it would be a beautiful fit for you with your style Zwiffle... And I'd love it if Ricky did a Koohoo... Or maybe like a jjspq3 style - clockwork kingpin style. not quite base but sort of. BSP2WAD on koohoo, koohend and start.bps, and compiled all of the textures into one wad using Wally. :S
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