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haruko haruhara

Im losing my interest in maping

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I have been trying to map for invasion for a long time and I always get baord at it what should I do first before going in such work I have one invasion wad that are mappers are doing it I really wish I can create a map a single player and invasion maps but I need to start knowing how to map first before going in to invasion mapping what should I do first I really want to map here but I just don't know how I just want to make a simple map and with good detail any help

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I'd start by learning punctuation. It's not relevant to mapping, but we'll then have some idea as to what you're asking.

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 Start from here. Mapping needs patience and time investment. Don't expect create masterpieces when you start mapping, everything comes later. I also agree with Phobus - punctuation does the difference and now your op sounds like garbled fast mess. 

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3 hours ago, haruko haruhara said:

I need to start knowing how to map first, before going in to invasion mapping.

What should I do first? I really want to map here, but I just don't know how.

I just want to make a simple map and with good detail, any help?

I've taken the creative liberty to add some punctuation so that people who read this know what the hell is going on. Punctuation is important, it shows the readers where a thought begins, and where it ends. If you want to make yourself understood, working on this really goes a long way. I'm not saying this to put you down, but I am saying that getting good answers for somewhat complicated questions is going to be difficult, if people have a hard time understanding your "unorganized" paragraphs. Now let's move on to mapping...

I've been asked several times by now if I had any interest in making invasion maps myself, and just to answer a question that hasn't been asked: I have no immediate plans to do that. But I've learned a few things about invasion maps regardless:

 

-Vanilla mapping and invasion maps are two vastly different things with very few "synergy skills" between the two disciplines. So, unless you're not able to build a map that doesn't glitch out horribly, or gives a fuckton of error messages and crashes zandronum/skulltag/whatever, there is very little reason for you to stick to vanilla mapping, assuming the end-goal is to build invasion maps anyway.

 

-If you want to build an invasion style map, your best shot at getting inspiration is looking at modern slaughtermaps, decent ones I mean, slaughtermaps that deliver sustained pressure is what you want to take as a baseline. There are some good maps in flotsam, there are some in slaughtermax, there are some in newgothic movement 2, then there are the slaughterfests to go through. Look for fights that you think would be cool in an invasion map, and try to "emulate" them.

 

-Decent slaughtermaps can teach you how to develop layouts that behave a certain way.

  • Look at how the map geometry affects how things move
  • Look at how the player is being pushed around by incoming waves of monsters
  • Look at how mappers deny areas with things like for example archviles
  • Learn when and where to use/avoid bottlenecks in your layouts,
  • And most importantly: Avoid monsters that can get stuck, because it'll turn your map into a game of hide and seek, and people who play invasion maps aren't looking for that.

 

If you want fluent, dynamic and interesting gameplay, map-layout and room-layout is king, assuming you already understand which monster does what, and how to take advantage of its unique abilities. Everybody can spam a ton of shit in a corridor and hand out a BFG, and sometimes that might be fun for a moment, but if you want something people will want to get back into, you need the power of decent layouts which contribute to what sort of fights you want to see happen in a map.

 

Once you've got your layout, with your spawners placed, and everything seems to be working fine, you're gonna wanna think about how the map is supposed to look overall, so you can start adding details. This is, in my opinion anyway, the boring part of the whole mapping process. You don't need to cram your map full of micro-detailing which nobody is going to care much about during gameplay in the first place. What you need is a theme, like for example a temple in a jungle with a few surrounding mountains to keep everything "contained", in my mind the main aspects of that theme would be:

 

  • (dark) blue sky
     
  • Green and brown hills to act as mountains, with a couple trees here and there. Don't spam trees, just make sure people know "ah, vegetation".
     
  • several plateaus in the playable area of the map to control how things can move (Layout!), most or all of which can be accessed by players and monsters
     
  • several temple structures made from dark brown to slightly orange-ish bricks (if you have bricks with vines, great, use those at the ground levels of the temples for example). Make temples accessible for both players and monsters (layout again)
     
  • add some torches to make sure players can always see what's where, use lighting gradients accordingly to make it "pop"
     
  • perhaps a shallow river for people to run through (no deep canyon that divides the entire map!), or maybe just a pond. In both cases you could have a waterfall, too!
     
  • maybe add few brown liquid flats, to give it a bit of a swamp-ish vibe in places. Again, nothing intrusive, just a sense of place.
     
  • perhaps an inactive volcano (or maybe even an active one, or if you wanna go nuts, make a volcano that goes active during the last few waves for massive swag points!), with a few black rock structures to serve as a point of orientation
     
  • perhaps even a few caves here and there, good for placing spawners, or hiding higher grade ammo
     
  • maybe a few pillars that players can use to outmaneuver the monsters, make sure it's not too difficult to get the platforming right, you're playing online with latency, after all.

 

Got stuck during the whole process? Share a WIP screenshot, and ask for opinions on what you could be doing, if there's anything people have around here it's opinions. :P

Edited by Nine Inch Heels

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I'm at the moment trying to do a invasion wad with tons of monsters an good weapons but the mapping is not the best but thanks for the information

I'm planning to have 26 maps with tons of monsters an the bosses I really know about that plus I'm having issues with the spawns they keep respawning

I put the acs script in the levels I make sure to put the monsters in the right wave an they still respawning but with detail I'm not very good at an I have been playing other invasion wads an an they have different themes like you said but I don't know any textures to do that at the moment I have dark forses textures in one map but it is still a hard job to mapping I will try my best to make this happen and for detail

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1 hour ago, haruko haruhara said:

I'm at the moment trying to do a invasion wad with tons of monsters an good weapons but the mapping is not the best but thanks for the information

I'm planning to have 26 maps with tons of monsters an the bosses I really know about that plus I'm having issues with the spawns they keep respawning

I put the acs script in the levels I make sure to put the monsters in the right wave an they still respawning but with detail I'm not very good at an I have been playing other invasion wads an an they have different themes like you said but I don't know any textures to do that at the moment I have dark forses textures in one map but it is still a hard job to mapping I will try my best to make this happen and for detail


Open those maps and study them. Look how they added scripts and how they created places. Ask yourself - what makes you hooked in them?Sense of the places? Good visuals? Strong gameplay? No one will bat eye if you take some working scripts and adopt them for your needs. Same with mapping/detailing inspiration - taking some mapping ideas from other authors can help you mould your own style, because even if you take some ideas they will be twisted by your own feelings and mind. And yeah, share maps and screenshots, healthy criticism and bug spotting can help you improve faster. 

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