Good topic, or evolving into one.

Monsto: "do i map as a personal creative outlet [...] or do i map for people to play [...] never shall the 2 meet.

I'd certainly like to think everything I've ever praised was primarily a product of personal creativity, but I guess I can't know that. DM/multi -- which I rarely praise -- *is* different, so much a functional thing. Aesthetics do often provide the reason for preferring one map over are another, but only because functionalities can be evenly matched, which pretty much answers the original question.

But in singleplayer (at least), even trying to create a specific gameplay seems a personal creative thing, the only possible mapping "for people to play" would be to purposefully try to be ordinary or palatable. That and just getting the map out the door without bugs or weak spots. I say I start maps for my individual satisfaction, and finish them for people to play (not that it's completely successful).

pushplay: "I think you'd have more success making maps how you want it rather than complaining that no one is doing it for you."

Oh yeah. 

well I got into mapping in the first place because I have an over-active imagination to make crazy and cool places, not flat boxes that just happen to have a good layout.

I'll go out on a leg here and say that 9/10 mappers started mapping for the same reason (or something very similar) so I think nice looking and original maps are not dying down anytime soon.

I would think that in the future though more games will have a "pro tourney" mode in them and the maps will become more of a layout over looks affair, while the single player arena is where people will get to throw the eye candy around and create some lovely looking and playing maps. Just my 2p 

I do think that is totally possible to do an awesome good looking level and with an excellent gameplay too, only that it's difficult, needs effort, technnique and perhaps some luck =). 

sry, swelt's maps dont look good - they look like cpma maps with new textures. (no insult, uhm wait, im on func board, so insult intended :))

im a 'competetive gamer' myself, so i often try to accomplish great gameplay - but that itself is extremely difficult.

the main problem with complex brushwork is that you have to rely on some sort of 'lego-type building' - you create a series of patterns (walls for example) and then connect them to form a structure one might call a hallway, a room or a connection of rooms.

now the problematic part comes in: for competetive gameplay, you mustn limit yourself to such a blocky/pattern style of mapping. that form in most cases is boring (best example: ut2). So you have two possibilities:
1. build new 'patterns'(pattern is the wrong word here, as one piece is often used just once) for each of the connections that cant be expressed through one of the simple patterns created earlier. this leads to an inconsistend style (or at least in my definition of style - i tend to prefer very simple styles)
2. you try to break up your patterns (e.g. form a 90deg corner at 70$ of your 128u pattern), which in most cases is VERY difficult, often impossible.

of course both of these methods are quite hard to do well, thus the newb mapper, who is a competetive player himself and has the best idea of great gameplay, cant do this.

hugh 

sry, swelt's maps dont look good - they look like cpma maps with new textures. (no insult, uhm wait, im on func board, so insult intended :))

im a 'competetive gamer' myself, so i often try to accomplish great gameplay - but that itself is extremely difficult.

the main problem with complex brushwork is that you have to rely on some sort of 'lego-type building' - you create a series of patterns (walls for example) and then connect them to form a structure one might call a hallway, a room or a connection of rooms.

now the problematic part comes in: for competetive gameplay, you mustn limit yourself to such a blocky/pattern style of mapping. that form in most cases is boring (best example: ut2). So you have two possibilities:
1. build new 'patterns'(pattern is the wrong word here, as one piece is often used just once) for each of the connections that cant be expressed through one of the simple patterns created earlier. this leads to an inconsistend style (or at least in my definition of style - i tend to prefer very simple styles)
2. you try to break up your patterns (e.g. form a 90deg corner at 70$ of your 128u pattern), which in most cases is VERY difficult, often impossible.

of course both of these methods are quite hard to do well, thus the newb mapper, who is a competetive player himself and has the best idea of great gameplay, cant do this.

hugh 

The last game I played online was Counter-Strike (please, hold your tomatoes) and you start to notice that the most popular user made maps are total fucking pieces of shit like 'awp_map' which was literally a giant box filled with sniper rifles.

So there is definately a "market," if you will, of people who become mappers solely for the intention of making maps that they think their friends will get a kick out of. But the sad thing is these maps end up being the most popular sometimes.

Knowing most of you for almost 3 years now, I know that you guys make maps that try to surpass the original game's maps. You try to make original maps that stick to a theme and have a sense of style and tight, tough gameplay.

And that's the way it SHOULD be done, but how many people have the patience to do it? Not many. That's why this board thrives, because you mappers have the self respect to put the time and effort into a professional looking product.

You wouldn't put something out there that people would say 'oh this is fun because it has 1000 rocket launchers.' You put something out that would make people say 'I didn't see this map in the game, must be a free addon from the company'

So no scampie, I don't think 'gameplay' type maps are destroying the art of mapping. They've been around and they'll be around as long as people think they are fun. But we in the mapping community know better.

Therefore, at the very least, people will continue to make innovative, coherent, maps for the sake of those who do know good maps from shitty maps. 

I can't map worth crap, and this is evident in my various mods such as Battle Mech. The three maps I made for that game were terrible looking at best. I'm a coder - mapping's not my thing. I also don't have the time to learn that kind of detail and commitment (except to a mod).

I can't expect you guys to make maps for me, you have more important things to do. Pushplay was very gracious to make the three maps he did - and they look great to me. SkinnedAlive also contributed a couple nice maps, and I appreciate that. For the rest of you, I can't scream and yell and stamp my feet like a child just because you didn't all race in to do work for me. That would be selfish, stupid, and nieve. That's just the way it is.

And so I am forced to either make the maps for myself, get a friend to help me, or, heaven help me, hire the nearest "induhvidual" and pray he gives me a map with at least one wall and hopefully an info_player_start (if he's really feeling productive today). Mapping is a very complex and time-involving skill, and most people will vote to make something simple and "fun" (by their standards) in 10 minutes as opposed to something pretty that takes several months or more to make and perfect, and may just get scrapped in the process. You can have a lot of fun on a butt-ugly map that plays really well, you simply have to lower your standards - and this is easier for normal 'players' than experienced mappers.

I think this is why (well, no duh Wazat shuddup) we are seeing so many of these maps. They're quick, easy, and you can get the same effect as a pretty map (assuming your audience doesn't care). There's also a large audience for this type of map - quantity and immediate satisfaction over quality and beauty. However, if this is the first time this kind of thing has happened, Cranky Steve wouldn't have been so successful.

So I don't think this is the end. Too bad, this was almost a good excuse to not complete & release those maps everyone's been badgering you to finish (czg and rpg come to mind ;P ).

Keep giving us great maps, we appreciate them! 

1 map that has any originality at all

Hmmn. /me crosses his fingers . . .

In any case, I think you're overstating your case quite a bit. Yes indeed, "gameplay only" maps are what people want. But it's what *these* people want in *this* mod, and I don't see it as being representative of any sort of general direction for mapping (or even Q3 mapping) at all. I think there's still a hellava lot of creativity and visual wow to be mined out there, and I'm confident people will do so.

I think the fact that Q3 is a DM-only game has retarded some of the creative effort that you might have otherwise seen up to this point ever since it was released, but I'm very sure that you'll get your wish (i.e. a heaping assload of atmosphere and creativity) with Doom 3, HL2, and so forth.

Personally, I like mapping for CPMA just because I have fun playing those types of maps, and moving through them at supersonic speed doing cool trick jumps. It's the Q3 equivalent of a racing game. With guns. Or something. Can you really exercise all your creativity and do funky shit (tm) when mapping for CPMA? Nope. Working within the limits and expectations of the mod can be part of the fun though, if you're built that way . . . 

OK, so CPM maps are arguably visually boring and unattractive. I have a few points to discuss on this issue.

A.
CPM is named Challenge [b]Promode[/b] for a reason. When most of these maps were made, the maps were designed to show the gameplay possible with the new physics in the CPM mod. I can easily understand that some mappers would want their maps to last in the competitive community; to do this, they need to design killer layouts, not killer visuals. So stuff to add atmosphere like beveled trim around corners and poop-stain decals just are not going to be as high of a priority.

B.
Of the CPM maps, I think that the most attractive ones are the maps being played competitively. This may be coincidence, but these maps both look and play well: For 1v1 and 2v2, we have cpm1a, cpm3a, cpm15, cpm16, cpm19, and cpm21 being the tournament maps (among hub3aeroq3 and some osp maps, but that doesn't matter here). For 4v4 Team Deathmatch (TDM), we have cpm18i and cpm21 from the CPM* pack. Yeah, anyway, what I was getting at is that if you compare these maps to the other CPM maps that aren't played as much, they just look better. They also probably play better, but perhaps the better visuals of these maps helped them gain their more-played status. Actually, cpm3a is essentially a retextured version of cpm3; even though cpm3a looks better than cpm3, ONE of them was going to be used for tourney play. cpm3 looking pretty much like ass didn't stop tournaments from using it before cpm3a came along.

Besides, everyone plays in picmip 5. 

In competetive cpm gameplay comes before visuals, no doubt. Of course, there's always a mixture. People won't play a map that has great gameplay but crappy visuals, and the other way around. Once you get both parameters over a certain threshhold gameplay takes precedence.

and yes, we all play in picmip >3 so we never see the gorgeous textures... 

I think the gameplay-only maps are simply the extreme opposite of visuals-only maps. We've all seen numerous beautiful maps that have such high r_speeds you wonder how they ever managed to get those screenshots in the first place. These maps tend to be better recieved because the average person is more of a window shopper (oooh, perdy screenies! this is teh best map evah!) than an actual download-and-play person.

There's a place for gameplay-only maps, but the audience will be narrower, and the people who have taken great pride in creating masterpiece maps will be quick to scoff at them - as will most other people. After all, they're ugly as sin. You'd have to already be interested in the mod to be willing to accept the maps.

This whole thing is a fad, one that will pass like pennies through the digestive tract - it might be uncomfortable for a while, but it'll be over eventually. :) 

most of the mappers here believe you need to hit a certain threshold for both gameplay and visuals. We drool over purdy screenshots, but when we find out the map is unplayable, we do consider that a point against it. 

most of the mappers here believe you need to hit a certain threshold for both gameplay and visuals. We drool over purdy screenshots, but when we find out the map is unplayable, we do consider that a point against it. 

That one wasn't my fault -- i changed my WINDOWS settings for how FOLDERS are displayed, and IE (a WEB browser) decides it needs to reload the page in order for my new settings to take effect. 

It's OK metl, it's understandable, I'd blame the monkey that coded this site for your double post :p 

it was actually a team of monkeys. 

an infinite number of monkeys? with an infinite number of keyboards? 

it was the BLURST of times!? 

Those cpma maps on LVL actually look quite good.
You cant say they are gameplay-only boxes.
There is nothing outstanding and detail level is low, but overal they are fine and coherent (cant say the same for ID's scrap) 

DaFuq 

*plans a trip to Verona 

Look At all Arena FPS coming out They Look Loke The Same Boring Cpma Piss Mode Shit !! 

I wouldn't totally agree with my points anymore, especially as gaming has progressed and my own journey through game design and understanding of competitive play has changed my views.

My arguments at the time had far too much of a sense of mapper superiority, that players should play the maps they are given along with whatever annoyances and weaknesses that came along with them. It was a very poor viewpoint, as it argued for level design serving the mapper's aesthetic and gameplay desires first, over the game and player's needs. My understanding of level design as a craft was clearly not really that good.

These days my thinking on what good level design is is that it is level design which serves the needs of the game's design first and foremost, and showcase interesting and unique ramifications of the mechanics of that design in way the player will enjoy. FPS DM games of yore, at their core, are simple beasts and player movement through the environment, target acquirement, and resource management are the major mechanics to consider.

My thoughts at the time were at odds with many of these. Spaces that are tight to navigate, have multiple detail bits which can catch the player, etc are examples of things which have gameplay value in a sense, but unless used with very careful and deliberate effect simply make a level unenjoyable to navigate. A dead end containing a powerful item for example can work, but requires some real consideration and care to make it fun. Poorly lit or overly detailed environments can also distract from target acquirement, and again without careful consideration simply make the game less fun overall when you can't even tell where your opponents are.

A thought which I picked up over the years was the question "Do you allow players to not have fun?". It has an obvious answer of 'no', but so often as designers we let our own wants get in the way of that. We let pretty environments get in the way of having a fun time, or decide for instance that an instant death trap would really separate the hardcore from the rest. Stuff like this does not need to be incompatible with good level design, but often the question of how to make them enjoyable to as many of your players goes unasked because it's easier not to do the hard work to address it. This is short sighted, as players are spoiled for choice where to get their entertainment, they are not subject to your whims as designer god.

In this light, the CPMA maps I was ranting about were overcompensating in the other direction. Their answer to the question of making sure the player had fun was to go fully clinical, mostly abandoning environment art and any other small deficiency. I do still agree here that this was too far, but honestly I went far too overboard in my criticisms back then.

Clearly games did not go in the direction of CPMA and my doomsaying that this was a terrible direction for the future was unfounded. Good visuals sell games (huge if true), and good gameplay keeps players around. All the best multiplayer FPS games of today generally work this balance in their levels quite well. Even the most competitive shooters have good graphics and fun levels with their own little quirks and particulars. 

..everybody in competetive q3 disables all fancy graphics to see better. With my q3 config, I wouldn't even have noticed minlight only, I presume.