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Inferno
August 30th, 2007, 06:58 PM
this is a "lecture" i wrote a while back. i posted it cause i want to know what you guys think of it. plz comment and also if you want write some and ill add to this.


The Art of Mapmakeing

This is a explanation of how map makeing should be aproached and executed. If you wish too make a map that people actually enjoy then read through this if not then go ahead and keep on makeing the same old box maps with ripped tags in them that so many people put out these days.. ok here we go.

Step One: Planning
When you are thinking of makeing a map you have too come up with a kind "floor plan" for the whole map. I find it best too draw out the basic design of the map on paper so that i have a reference too model off of when i start modeling. Once you figured out your map design you got too ask yourself. "is this original, will it work well, is it layed out well, does the map flow well when you are in battle?" when asking yourself these questions fix things that you may see aparently wrong with your design. When you think you have it were you want it start up 3ds max and get ready too model.

Step Two: Modeling Modeling is supposed to the be longest part of makeing a map. When you make a bsp, whether it be indoor or outdoor you MUST spend time on it and YOU MUST PAY ATTENTION TO DESIGN AND DETAIL. I can not emphasize that enough. Not even with 150 megaphones. :wink: when makeing a indoor map make sure you plan where you are goning too put lights or skybox. and when doing indoor modeling you need to make the indoors seem complex. its always good to have pillars and slopes and domed roofs and what not in the indoors or itll look like your standing in a box. a boring texture starved box. When you are doing outdoor modeling. DONT think "oooh i gotta make a map thats really big like coldsnap or hugeass!" When modeling think this Less is more as in the smaller the map the more action your gonna get too see when playing people online. Makeing the map too big will make it boreing and dull trying too find a enemey. Also when you are makeing hills and what not. start by tesselating once or twice and get the basic shape of the floor layed out. then as you get it starting to shape like what you want tesselate it again and smooth it out. and do that until you think the ground looks smooth enough too drive on with out haveing the suspension bottom out on the warthog everytime you hit a new polygon :wink: And also textures are important im not going to really cover them cause i really dont have time. i may cover it later when i update this... well this isnt a tutorial its more like a lecture lol. anyways step 3.

Step Three: Gameplay and Custom Content Management.
Ok i want too lay something down here about halo ce. Just because its called halo Custom Edition dosent mean you HAVE to have custom content in your map. Ive made queit a few maps now and i only use custom content to make things look better usually. A few places were you add new animations and scenery is fine but when you start makeing stoopid poorly designed weapons thats were theres a problem. When you make a custom weapon your pretty much throwing the game play WAY off balanced. Bungie spent years tweaking the gameplay off halo to the ponit were it becaame the bestseller it is today. and you throwing in a lazer beam rocket chainsaw gun. your just fuking up everything. So dont use custom content weapons and vehicels UNLESS you know that you can balance them and make them not throw your maps balance and gameplay out the winddow. Now about sapien. I want too lay down another thing CE. Balance. Balance is what makes or breaks a halo map. I always spend at least a day or too playing my maps before i realease them. Its funny because i map for a couple of different games like halo pc, nox, empire earth and in all those games. if the map isnt balanced then its not gonna be fun, fair or worth playing at all. So when you are placeing weawpons and vehiceles in Sapein. Think about what your doing. Make sure the flag runs and weapon distances for both bases is the same. make sure the heavy weapons (rockets flamers) are hard too get or in a place where its gonnna be a battle too get them. and once youve finsished placeing weapons find a freind give him the map and beta test it. You will find problems witht the map and you can go fix them when your done playing. like for example, when i was beta testing circle pit before its realease we found that grenades were to powerfull on ctf so i removed them as starting weapons and put 4 in the center of map. that small change made teh gameplay for the map flow twice as well and made the map even funner than it was before. (when my freinds come over thats the first map they want too play lan. lol)

so i hope u have learned something about map makeing from this. And i hope too see better maps in the future of CE.

Rob Oplawar
August 30th, 2007, 07:04 PM
... There is no 'e' in 'making.'

reading the rest now...

Edit: finished. Erm, all I'm gonna say is grammar, punctuation, and proper spelling will go a long way towards getting a good reaction out of things like this.

Gamerkd16
August 30th, 2007, 07:36 PM
Yea I must say that my OCD of needing perfect spelling and grammar while reading this is driving me nuts right now. It seems good, content wise, but please, run it through a spell check. Then re-read it and make sure your not using "too" for "to" or "their" for "there". They make a big difference.

I've also noticed a lot of e's as well in places they shouldn't be. Like making and having.

Yay, it's English 101 in a Halo forums.

Inferno
August 30th, 2007, 07:38 PM
ive never been good at gramar. im more of a "math" person. i guess ill do a little proofreading later though.

Gamerkd16
August 30th, 2007, 07:40 PM
ive never been good at gramar. im more of a "math" person. i guess ill do a little proofreading later though.
Yea, dude. Even your posts. May I suggest you get the Firefox browser? It has a built in spell checker that is really easy to use.

Go Firefox! Take out that evil Internet Explorer. :D

Skyline
August 30th, 2007, 07:48 PM
Firefox takes forever to load on Windows Vista. I could open 10 Internet explorers in the time one firefox loads.

I agree with gamerkd, you really need to learn how to type better. If this is supposed to help someone they need to be able to read it first.

Stormwing
August 30th, 2007, 07:54 PM
grammar, english 101, proofreading, firefox, organization, wall of text, blah blah blah etc.

But ANYWAY, since no one's saying anything about the actual content...it's pretty good. If you want it to be an actual presentation of some sort and want people to truly understand however, there should be more detailed examples for people to visualize the gameplay and think about what would be the most fun, not just the most unique.

Not bad, I'd say. :)

Inferno
August 30th, 2007, 08:01 PM
i have Firefox... i never use spell checker i guess i will try it ....

fuck

lol it actually fixes that word :XD:


and ya i think ill try what stormwing suggested.

Sever
August 30th, 2007, 09:16 PM
...suppost...
LOL

Gamerkd16
August 30th, 2007, 09:18 PM
Skyline, looks like you need the built in spell checker as well.

Zeph
August 30th, 2007, 09:19 PM
Firefox takes forever to load on Windows Vista. I could open 10 Internet explorers in the time one firefox loads.

I agree with gamerkd, you really need to learn how to type better. If this is suppost to help someone they need to be able to read it first.

You're doing it wrong.
Firefox opens in less than a second for me. It's been like that even on my old Shuttle when it was running early Vista betas.

SnaFuBAR
August 31st, 2007, 01:25 PM
Seemed like it was all common sense to me.

Stormwing
August 31st, 2007, 01:55 PM
Seemed like it was all common sense to me.
Well of course it is - to those of us who have any design sense. It's definitely not common sense to the majority of mapmakers however...which is pretty obvious.

It's quite clearly a lecture for the newbs, but there's nothing wrong with that.

Skyline
August 31st, 2007, 02:20 PM
LOL
No.

Skyline, looks like you need the built in spell checker as well.
English isn't my first language but ok. I type better then him; one word wrong wow!...

You're doing it wrong.

Yes I press the lil Icon that says "Internet explorer" instead of firefox.

Inferno
August 31st, 2007, 03:36 PM
Well of course it is - to those of us who have any design sense. It's definitely not common sense to the majority of mapmakers however...which is pretty obvious.

It's quite clearly a lecture for the newbs, but there's nothing wrong with that.

ya i am probably gonna post it at Halomods.com later. it will help a lot more there than it will here. but for now i am just working on it.

btw were talking about Firefox and internet exwhorer...
a little off-topic maybe?

Kornman00
August 31st, 2007, 03:42 PM
Fixed the thread title, but your on your own for the actual post


Firefox takes forever to load on Windows Vista. I could open 10 Internet explorers in the time one firefox loads.
:confused: what are you PC specs? I'm on a MacBook Pro and thing loads in like 2 secs (usually running 2 VS05 instances, itunes, trillian, editplus2, multiple windows explorers, etc)
Also, I use the default theme and I'm using version 2.0.06

Inferno
August 31st, 2007, 03:46 PM
ok... any coments besides "F- in Honors English" ?

Gamerkd16
August 31st, 2007, 04:07 PM
No.

English isn't my first language but ok. I type better then him; one word wrong wow!...

Yes I press the lil Icon that says "Internet explorer" instead of firefox.

Jeeze, you take things too seriously. Lighten up. :cool:

Bastinka
August 31st, 2007, 04:09 PM
It's ok. Not the best but allright, could use a more expansive vocabulary to make it sound more interesting... But whatever floats your boat :\

EDIT: Skyline either hates FF or something, or hes a fanatic of IE, who knows.. Why care?

Skyline
August 31st, 2007, 05:47 PM
I don't care as long as it works. I was using firefox on XP but something happened on my computer it seems :P.

Specs:
AMD dual core @ 2.5Ghz
2046 MB of memory
Nvidia 8600 GTS
Windows Vista Premium 32-bit

I don't see why it would run slower but it does.

Mass
August 31st, 2007, 11:43 PM
My firefox broke and I was too lazy too upgrade IE so I went a month without tabs. :( and I still have no spell checker.

I dunno how it broke too, it just freezes constantly. :(

Gamerkd16
August 31st, 2007, 11:47 PM
Mine does the same thing. I will freeze almost once a day for no reason at all. Honestly, I just put up with it. If it freezes, I just close out, restore my session, then continue on. It's annoying, but bearable. But wow, I wish Firefox would fix there damn program.

Tweek
September 2nd, 2007, 04:52 AM
just use IE :awesome:

Jay2645
September 2nd, 2007, 05:13 AM
IE=:fail:
Firefox (Provided it's bug-free like mine)=:awesome:, which leads to :beer:, which leads to :hump:, which leads to :suicide:because you found out the girl you were :hump: was your grandma.

Gamerkd16
September 2nd, 2007, 03:12 PM
IE=:fail:
Firefox (Provided it's bug-free like mine)=:awesome:, which leads to :beer:, which leads to :hump:, which leads to :suicide:because you found out the girl you were :hump: was your grandma.
Wow, I feel like I'm back in Kindergarten. Reading those picture books. :P

Jay2645
September 3rd, 2007, 03:56 AM
Kindergarden was awesome, I feel that my post simulates that environment.
I mean, we had an entire period devoted to SLEEPING! I would kill to get that in High School.

Dust Storm
September 3rd, 2007, 10:40 AM
OK, BACK ON TOPIC
I think it is something that needs to be addressed once in a while. Well done. And about the spelling, yea it needs attention, but guys seriously, this isn't a forum at spelling.com. Give the guy a break, two or three posts about spelling is enough. Anyway, I thought it was well written for the context.

Apoc4lypse
September 3rd, 2007, 11:36 PM
lol, what was this thread about again... :lol:


ok, my opinion, the first thing I did before even attempting to read all of what you posted as the Art of Map Making was go to your profile and check for how many maps you released...

I'm not sure I know u from anywhere else unless you changed your name or something from gbx and have actually posted a map before over there, but as far as I can see from viewing your thread posts, you haven't released anything yet, let alone a map.

Why are you trying to make something like this with no history of map making :confused:

not to be taken the wrong way, but your not very experienced to be making something like this.

EDIT:
... There is no 'e' in 'making.'

reading the rest now...

Edit: finished. Erm, all I'm gonna say is grammar, punctuation, and proper spelling will go a long way towards getting a good reaction out of things like this.

oh come on you grammar nazi... ;)

yea the grammar could use some work...

Inferno
September 4th, 2007, 05:31 PM
i am new to this forum but i have quite a bit of experience.

-released 3 maps.

-currently in progress, 7 maps. (2 of them are abandoned for now because they weren't working out). The other five are going into a map pack thats going to have A LOT of nice things including but not limited to...
---New (balanced) Weapons
---Time of Day and other Menu Non-sense
---Cool new power ups and equipment (trip mines, power drainers, spike grenades, etc....)
--- AND MUCH MUCH MORE

coming soon to a forum near YOU!!!


:lol:

Jay2645
September 5th, 2007, 09:24 PM
Halomaps does not accept map packs, so if you plan to be hosting the Map Pack on there, think again.
Dennis is awesome for making Halomaps and keeping it running, but his rules suck.

Mass
September 5th, 2007, 10:59 PM
not really, they all pretty much make sense. And he enforces them with complete "blindness."

Inferno
September 6th, 2007, 03:50 PM
on halo maps ill probally just realease them all seperately. but here and at halomods ill have them in a rar probally.