I remember Aardappel saying never to make any room's walls the same -- make each area different to avoid monotony. (Or something similar) 

mapping "correctly." I read em all, but I don't remember any of it. 

[1] dont have largish or long empty areas devoid of monsters.

[2] dont have small boxy rooms with low ceilings.

[3]vary textures and have detailing in the textures, not just large bland walls.

[4]Interconnect your map so it feels like a real place.

[5] Think what type of mosters work best in what type of setting.

[6]if in doubt make gameplay harder rather than easier.

and lots of other stuff too. =)

hey go easy on me... this is a long post for me. :o 

As for #3, you have to be careful about the textures used in the sense that the majority of textures are there to hide the simple geometry underneath and help maintain the illusion of real objects.

There is an ugly trend that texture artist have been doing with the advent of high resolution textures and that is to dress up the textures in lovely and curvy scratch marks that call too much attention to themselves. You see this big time in the Quake retexture project, but it exist in a lot of current sets for Quake Arena and Unreal Tournament.

Gamers have come to expect it and one team, Eidos Invisible War crew that purposively avoided it for a more subdued look has come under heavy criticism by Dues Ex fans because they think they want their beautific squiggleys. Art movements have always been susceptable to ugly little mannerisms like this, like garish coloured lights in Quake II levels, but I think even the public will grow in accepting better defined artistic standards.

Rant aside, IMHO, best use of texturing EVER in a Quake map, Xenon's 100 Hours 'til Dawn. 

http://www.planetquake.com/teamshambler/theories1.html
http://www.planetquake.com/teamshambler/theories2.html

Those are quite old i.e. late 98 / early 99, but if you haven't got the intelligence to judge what might be outdated or what might need to be interpreted in a modern way, you shouldn't be mapping. 

[1] dont have largish or long empty areas devoid of monsters

Zer1m6 - True Love Waits

Headthump: Best use of texturing ever? Come again? Hehe... how many maps have you actually ever played? :-) 

DO keep your major architecture brushes aligned on a size 32 grid where possible. Preferably 64 for outlining walls/floors.

DO keep connecting corridors at lesat 128 units high & wide if you plan to have monsters in them.

DON'T use custom textures which you haven't seen in a map before (unless a.> you know what you're doing, or b.> they really are the dogs bollocks.. if in doubt post screenshots to hear what people think).

DO get people to betatest your map!

DO try & make lighting look interesting.

DO play other highly rated maps before starting your own, and learn from them; what makes them good, architecture, texture usage, layout, gameplay... etc. 

...use Quoole 

...zer1m6 doesn't really count. It was a huge, moody, tense, long, empty area that was devoid of monsters UNTIL you get to the very "end" and suddenly it's a huge, moody, tense, long area full of monsters and items and you have to fight your way through all the way back to the beginning. A rule-breaking masterpiece IMHO.

So maybe "Don't have largish or long empty areas devoid of monsters unless you effectively create a very tense atmosphere, or it's a DM map." :-)


BTW. I'm suprised (and a little disappointed) that Shambler or Vondur hasn't posted some advice along the line of "Don't waste your time and mapping talent doing stupid, pointless speedmaps." ;-) 

1. Play all the maps for the game and make sure yours is in the same style as a popular map, otherwise there's a good chance no one will play it.

2. Make sure your map is not of the same style as anything that exists already, what's the point? 

map 

Don't: listen to Speedy/Mapist

Do: flame him

Don't: hold back

Do: call him a trolling moron who can't map his way out a box or add in anyway to any discussion. 

most of these do and don'ts are stupid...

all you need is DO make good, interesting maps with cool architecture and good gameplay, and DON'T get lazy and make sloppy brushwork that only increases r_speeds and saves you nil time. 

he he -- You should know by now that whenever I use superlatives I am kidding, but 100 Hours is a handsome little map. The texture usuage and lighting make it appear there is more to the map than is actually there.. 

I think people are being too general in their advice. I was expecting this to be more "small tricks of the trade learned from hours of painful mistakes". Xen's "don't make a corridor less than 128 units wide" and stuff like that rather than "make interesting maps, not boring ones".

Necros (I think) once told MadFox (I think) in another thread "don't make water on the same level as the surrounding solids as it's totally ghay". That's useful.

Little gems of advice. As someone who's never made a map but might one day these are things that can save you days of dicking about. 

add enough details into the map, but DON'T make the map uberdetailed. there are reasons: uberdetailed map might look synthetic. you'll see all these brushes here and there. if you're skilled enough you can make detailed maps with some reasonable limits. the main point of this paragraph is that your brushes shouldn't be distinct. they should be as the part of architecture, so one won't be able to see the brushes in it. bleh, hope that was clear ;)

hmm, fuck with lighting till you drop. yes, this means you should fuck with lighting. there are no excuses. this is the part of mapping. tune it till death...

don't release maps like that dude, how's his name...ah, heretic and other similar individuals. such maps are betas or rather, they aren't maps but some tests. you'll be tortured by others here if you release such crap...

indeed, don't participate in speedmapping, you'll waste your time. better waste your time making longplay levels rather than making these crappy singles.

choose textures wisely. if you're not satisfied with selected set, try to find another, if that another won't do, then select next. if everything fails anyway - use id texes...

try avoiding sharp edges between lit face and black one, smooth lighting (hm, i'd bring this into the 'fuck with lighting' bit)

wot else...
play the best maps to understand what's quality map. just to avoid releasing some crap. this applies only if you cannot distinguish your levels from the other ones, you should learn then what's quality map.

and of course let the others (close circle of faithful betatesters) to fuck with your map. they'll tell you things you never expected to hear... your map could say another fucker things it won't tell you, believe me...

hmmmm, seems that's it 

I was going to say don't map too. It is a tremendous amount of work that should not be underestimated. It can be rewarding. It shouldn't need to be said, don't do it with expectation of praise or reward.

What I didn't expect is that when few or none like your map, you start questioning your own judgement and may even start believing them -- even when you *know* your map is good or at least successful in reaching your goals.

Anyway, 2 tips, mainly SP only:

1. Avoid the majority of the gameplay being greatly aided by backing up. The ability to navigate backwards while firing (or just turn and run) is perhaps part of skill, but not primary; also maps that constantly require such techniques are tedious.

2. More a rule of SF/fantasy writing: putting lots of apostrophes in your made-up words does not automatically give them a fantasy or alien essence. Actually, the practice is rather stupid as soon as you realize aliens, etc. don't use our alphabet anyway. 

also, I agree with Scampie, although I consider the term "architecture" overly specific and limiting. 

yeah, i did say that morfans :)

also, keep minlight very low as well as sunlight. minlight is pretty obvious, but i've seen some maps with bright sunlight values... these maps tend to look very plain in their exteriors because there's no room for contrast.

also, on lighting: negative lights are your friend. they add a lot of depth to otherwise bland areas, and because sometimes, too much light is bad.
use them to accentuate terrain, especially if there are flatter parts.

if you are working on rock faces, don't just randomly stretch brushes into odd shapes... these tend to look very strange and not very "rock-like". instead, try using 128x128 faces and to stretch the vertices around, but to make sure the adjacent brush vertices match up, this will give it a nice smooth apperance, but also make it look natural. in general, it pays to spend time on your rocks than just stretching brushes everywhere.

stay away from thin brushes which are part of an integral wall in the map. besides not making sense structurally (because supporting walls have to be thick -- and don't come up with stupid excuses like "but this is magical metal and it's superstrong!") it will look very strange, especially in the quake engine, which tends to favour thick, bulky brushwork.

this one is purely technical and has no bearing on what the player sees but if more for the mapper himself.
it has actually been proven that making thick (like 64 or more) outer brushes can actually decrease compile time by considerable amounts. (the test map was only a few dozen brushes -- imagine what it would be like on a 3000 brush one)
not only does it decrease compiling time, but it also looks much neater in the editor

if you're using quark, don't plan on loading your maps into another editor.

and the last one, that i'm surprised no one mentioned: MAP ON THE GRID! NEVER EVER DISABLE THE GRID! NEVER! 

[5] Think what type of mosters work best in what type of setting.

you know, i really don't like this rule. there are plenty of times where mixing monsters is completly acceptable.

in fact, i would rather rewrite it to something more like:
having base monsters in medieval or runic maps are fine (and vice versa).
i think it starts to look wierd when the two types are mixed together in a group in one attack... i mean, if you have two seperate attacks, on made of base, and one made of demonic ones, make them seperate ones, don't have grunts standing alongside fiends or whatever...
also, dogs suck... i find they don't really fit in with anything... plus they are annoying. 

[5] Think what type of mosters work best in what type of setting.

I interpreted this rule to mean you should place monsters in an effective mannor, not use monster sets that go with the visual theme. For example, don't place ogres below the player, because they won't be able to hit the player with their grenades. 

to the under lying Ogre is one who fires rockets. This can be a sweet suprise when the player is expecting an easy kill. 

DON'T map for Quake if you expect praise or reward other than personal rewards... other rewards may come but its not to be counted on. If you want praise go map for CounterStrike, or go submit just about anything pretentious to Deviant Art.

on the positive side of things...

DO learn all the keyboard shortcuts for the editor, its a lot faster that using the mouse to switch tools, etc. This applies to Photoshop and other apps as well. Know your enemy! (i guess WC isn't technically your enemy but it sure feels like it.)

DO build your curves using a variant of the czg technique wherever possible.

DO fix everything you can see that is wrong and you are able to fix. Sounds obvious, but a lot of new mappers release maps with flaws so obvious, they must have spotted them and ignored them. You can always get people to test your maps for you, and they will most likely spot problems you overlook...

DO use different attenuations and wait keys for your light entities. Try different combinations of multiple lights for a single general source....experiment!


maybe more later 

...map for yourself because you may find it harder then you can imagine to make a big impression on the scene. The bar is very high for SPQ1 and most new mappers will not come close on a first try.

Take some risks and be creative. Getting too boxed in by rules may prevent discovery of some interesting visual or gameplay ideas. If you are short on ideas - well, just produce another decent map of at least id quality - the raves may not follow but we all like to play some new maps.

Have fun. It is all about fun, right? 

its all about the benjamins