What makes a great map?

[RaccoonKing]

I put this in Serious Discussion so as to keep the tone critical and intelligent.

I've googled it a little, and am seeing the basics like keeping the player in motion toward a goal, and setting the level up so that more than the current moment is being accomplished, but that seems... basic.

I can make a good map, but what I'm wondering: What, in your mind, makes a great map? I'm talking here about gameplay. Period.



PS: I've already read (and enjoyed) this so please don't bother mentioning it again. Thanks.

[Castor]

I think, gameplay wise, it's best to have the player explore a part of the map first. After that you can attack him on that part.

But having multiple ways to achieve a goal is good too. Using all dimensions is good as well: width, length AND height

[Caste]

Much like a good novel or movie, it's all about having a simple layout that's enjoyable and doesn't hinder the gameplay.

[BaRRaKID]

In my opinion vertical action is one of the most important factors. Any player will look foward for their enemies, but not many usually look up, so a map with lot's of vertical action is always good and fun.
Despite that it has to be simple, easy to navigate, and show what the goal is in the most easy, straight foward way(when a player starts the map it should take him 1 second to realise what to do imo).
The rest is just smoke and mirrors..

[zombie@computer]

Real life(tm) sucks, if i would remake real life(tm) in source most rooms would consist of six brushes and three props max. Real life (tm) in half-life wouldnt look good at all, it would look empty and boring, no matter how accurate you remake it. Rooms in real-life arent supposed to catch your attention and go "ahhhhhhh", they are just there to shelter you from other rooms/outside. In games however, the single and only purpose of rooms is to catch your attention and go "AHHHHHHH". In fact, the ENTIRE GAME depends on this function of the rooms.
The key to mapping is, to remake real life (tm) as good as possible, but adding/changing stuff so it doesnt look as empty as real life (tm) would be. I hope you agree with me on that. When i realised this, it changed the entire perspective on mapping for me.
This is why the warehouse looks like "build a room and fill it with props". This is how real life(tm) is done, but not how you should work in half-life. Half-life is about adding subtle details to make a room interesting, but keeping enough realism to keep it believable. You dont want the gamer to loose interest because you filled a futuristic room with wooden crates or something.
How you should improve? hard to say, nobody said mapping is easy. All i can say is try to avoid monotonousness. Some lights may be broken, some crates/boxes may have fallen on the ground. A barrel in the corner could have been leaking. Besides that, theres always the standard shit: use powerlines, beams, trims, pipes, doors (even if they lead to nowhere; make em unopeable or unreachable, perhaps on another floor or behind some junk), junk, puddles or other decals to break up boring areas. (i am not implying here that this is not done in the warehouse, i AM saying it is not done enough. You may think this may lead to randomness in a room, but youll have to cleaverly think over everything you add. Is it logical to have a powerline in a shower? is it logical to have a toilet in a office? etc. This may sound hard, but its one of the many things that makes mapping fun. You dont just build a bunch of rooms, you are creating a world. A world full of creatures, humans and other characters, different areas and views, and also a future and a history. It may help you to think of the fourth dimension when adding details to your rooms: time

When a player enters a room he is thinking: where am i? your room should answer that question immediately (I am a combine prison, I am a warehouse, I am a strange high tech room with technology that goes beyond your imagination)

He will also think:
What does this room do? (eg house explosives) What does it normally do? (eg make rockets launch up into the air). What will it do when i leave? (eg stay deserted forever). But the most important question your room should answer is:

WHAT HAPPENED BEFORE THE PLAYER GOT HERE?
How you can answer that is pretty simple, but requires some imagination. For instance, when there has been a big battle, you should add corpses, blood, bulletholes etc. But dont forget the story! Perhaps one of the parties used some crates to hide behind? Perhaps the enemies had to blow up a door to get into the room? if that is the case, SHOW IT! Lay some broken crates in a row, partly broken, perhaps full of bulletholes of the enemies who shot at the people hiding behind. Add bits of the blown door, full of scorch marks on these bits, but also on the doorframe. Perhaps the remains of a device used to force the door to open?
Or maybe the player is the first person to visit the room in years? If it is, make it clear. Add things like cobwebs (if you can), broken lights (they cant fix themselves you know), lots of dusty things, maybe watermarks, cracks in the walls, holes in the floor? It isnt very logical a room deserted for years is still fully lit with fluorescent tubes that all still work. Its more than likely the entire room doesnt have power, or that the player has to activate this power himself. Wooden stuff may have gone rotting or simply decaying. Show it.
Perhaps junkies have found your deserted room and filled it up with graffity and litter. They probably stole everything valuable, broken doors that shouldnt have been opened, smashed windows. Show it
Use your room to tell a story, dont simply use it for placing enemies inside and make the player walk through it. He wont enjoy that one bit. The key to a good room is to make the player interested. What happened? What will happen? WHATS NEXT?

i posted that on the news thingy of the blackmesa update. I like to quote myself, it adds spice to a discussion

anyway, as for gameplay (as has already been said):

make it as non-linear as possible, dont repeat architecture too much, but also dont make each hallway a new theme, work in four dimensions (xyz and time, both positive as negative) and be original

[Flufd]

It's very good, and makes sense.

[Woe Kitten]

Zombie, I'm less experienced than you at mapping but I still think your missing the mark by saying that mappers shouldn't recreate real life. If I look around the room I'm sitting in now I might automatically think its got four walls a ceiling and a floor and thats 6 brushes. But rooms aren't that simple. I think the job of a mapper is to look past the general 'quick' mental image of a 3 dimensional space and see the real detail of that space. For example, the room I'm in has scirting around the floor. That is at least another 12 brushes to recreate properly. It also has a divider running about 4/5ths up the wall that's another 8 brushes. The wall is blue below and white above the divider so that splits all my walls in half. Then there is that plaster detail where the walls meet the roof. There's another 12 brushes. The door to my room is at least 6 brushes + a model (or one pretty model). There's a TV, a computer, a chest, a cupboard, two armchairs, a double (unmade) bed. Some plates and cups lying about and a few empty beers. The window has 8 pains of glass NOT ONE! and they are divided up with even more brushes. There are pictures and posters on my walls. A book shelf. Jesus the details are endless. If everyone really went for recreating real life in full detail they would realise that its FAR more complex than creating the walls and jamming in a load of props.

Saying that. We create unreal environments a lot of the time (or at least unusual ones) so we need to take those unreal environments and apply all the thinking to them that you talked about. Think about that thing in use not as it was when it was built. Things don't stay in mint condition for long.

Now we've got a discussion

[zombie@computer]

Zombie, I'm less experienced than you at mapping but I still think your missing the mark by saying that mappers shouldn't recreate real life. If I look around the room I'm sitting in now I might automatically think its got four walls a ceiling and a floor and thats 6 brushes. But rooms aren't that simple. I think the job of a mapper is to look past the general 'quick' mental image of a 3 dimensional space and see the real detail of that space. For example, the room I'm in has scirting around the floor. That is at least another 12 brushes to recreate properly. It also has a divider running about 4/5ths up the wall that's another 8 brushes. The wall is blue below and white above the divider so that splits all my walls in half. Then there is that plaster detail where the walls meet the roof. There's another 12 brushes. The door to my room is at least 6 brushes + a model (or one pretty model). There's a TV, a computer, a chest, a cupboard, two armchairs, a double (unmade) bed. Some plates and cups lying about and a few empty beers. The window has 8 pains of glass NOT ONE! and they are divided up with even more brushes. There are pictures and posters on my walls. A book shelf. Jesus the details are endless. If everyone really went for recreating real life in full detail they would realise that its FAR more complex than creating the walls and jamming in a load of props.

Saying that. We create unreal environments a lot of the time (or at least unusual ones) so we need to take those unreal environments and apply all the thinking to them that you talked about. Think about that thing in use not as it was when it was built. Things don't stay in mint condition for long.

Now we've got a discussion

few things though. you are talking about (your) bedroom. the sole purpose of a room in a house is to put stuff in it. If you wouldnt overdo the depth of the fixed things(the things on the walls), your walls would still look as empty as they were when you just make the wall one texture with the details in it bumpmapped. And, though it looks like real-life, it still looks ingame like a box with props. try it!

2nd: offcourse real life has a lot of detail, but 99% of the detail it has (and what makes it so good) is impossible to recreate in source (for instance a tiled floor has thousands of different tiles, that is impossible to make)

[Woe Kitten]

This is true, but I actually did make the map of my house to learn the source engine. And believe me it looks nice (although the gameplay sucks, so you have me there). The point about things being impossible to recreate is well taken. But there aren't many things you can't recreate pretty convincingly with custom models. And those tiles you speak of don't need to be made seperate to look convincing unless they are badly damaged. Obviously as source mappers we can't deal with units less than an inch, but good textures can recreate surface detail up to a centimetre I'd say and models fill the gap between those two things. With good optimization in a house you can have rediculous levels of detail in each room.

In general though, I do want to acknowledge your point. The great thing about being a mapper is our freedom to bend reality to our will. But rather than saying 'we shouldn't recreate reality' I'd put it more like 'we should choose interesting bits of reality to recreate'.

I've got to say this though. If you ask an architect what a room is for, they will most certainly not reply "its for putting things in". A room is a space designed for a purpose. That purpose is rarely as simple as "storage".

[Spartan]

A good map is like a good painting. It's a peice of art which needs the right balance of several different factors. Ambience, design, and layout.

Ambience is your lighting, sound, and anything else that influences the design of the map.

Design is basically your architecture and how it's used throughout the map. You don't want to use architecture and textures that are completely different in a map. However you also want to use variation throughout your map. It's simply about balance and the use of detail. Design should affect the layout, and the layout should affect the design. Also you want your map to make sense to the player. You don't want to have crates lieing around in an area that is clearly a restuarant.

Layout can be difficult for multiplayer maps. It's also a balance and care should be taken when creating a balanced layout. Design should also be kept in mind when creating a layout.

If you can master these 3 things you can create great multiplayer maps. However they still apply to SP maps but with SP maps you also have a few other factors which affect the gameplay of a map.

Just remember to keep fun in mind for any map. It must be fun above all things.

[Rocket_Robinhood]

i think one of the most commonly forgetted things is Z AXIS

keep the player looking up and down, use all 3 dimensions to your afvantage

[Woe Kitten]

Yeah it is good to have a 3d map... but tbh d2 is the most popular cs map by miles and its pretty 2d. That map is pure layout. Not pretty, not 3d, no gimmiks or special effects. Just pure layout. If you want to know what makes a good cs map, study it. The z axis is used, but in proportion. The main thing it has is excellent layered chokepoints.

When designing a multiplayer map you must have chokepoints in the front of your mind all of the time.

[Rocket_Robinhood]

Yeah it is good to have a 3d map... but tbh d2 is the most popular cs map by miles and its pretty 2d. That map is pure layout. Not pretty, not 3d, no gimmiks or special effects. Just pure layout. If you want to know what makes a good cs map, study it. The z axis is used, but in proportion. The main thing it has is excellent layered chokepoints.

When designing a multiplayer map you must have chokepoints in the front of your mind all of the time.

true im not saying you should amke a skyscraper, but cetainly z axis is somethign to keep in mind, and not everywhere but certainly once in a while you want people to focus on more than side to side

[NsOmNiA91130]

Dunno if this has been said, but I LOVED the cliff parts of HL1. I also liked that feeling that someone is watching me, my every move.

[Rocket_Robinhood]

Dunno if this has been said, but I LOVED the cliff parts of HL1. I also liked that feeling that someone is watching me, my every move.

that was by far my favourite part too, you are in these sewers and all of the sudden BAM a vast sky and infinite drop before you, thats what i am talking about.