HL2:DM dm_BCarena (My first)

[MichiganSniper]

OK, I am going to begin by putting out there that this is my first true map ever. I just strung together some tutorials I looked up to make a simple deathmatch arena. When I was making it I was thinking 1v1, or perhaps a 4 person deathmatch. I would like to think its more along the lines of a simple multiplayer arena map from a much earlier time.

I really want to get this out there so people can tell me if its any good or at least give me advice on how to do stuff the correct way within Hammer. I'm hoping this is more of a learning experience than a truly fun map to play, but if you guys do enjoy it that would be a surprising icing on the cake. I really don't expect anyone to, but you never know.

At any rate, here are some pics and the level and editor files. Please educate me and give me feedback, it would be very appreciated.













Level: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=YUKZP466

.vmf: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=IA33SUPJ

[Unstoppable Florence]

Well, it's a square arena with lots of odd geometry. It's not bad in the 'you tried and failed' way. It's bad in the 'why did you post this, it's just a box with crates and fog' way. This would take me or anyone else here about an hour to make, if not even less. This isn't me trying to be harsh, this is me trying to teach you about how a novice mapper should structure their first steps:

1. Make tons of experiments with different architectural styles and mapping techniques. This is one such experiment, make a hell of a lot more and don't post them unless they kick ass. If you need help with something, post away, but people will not care for what you have just given us.

2. Once you have become skilled and experienced enough with hammer to confidently create whatever your imagination gives you, make some awesome stuff and post it for us to love/critique.

3. Become godlike and get the ladies with your mapping prowess.

Welcome to interlopers from a fellow newbie, I hope you enjoy your time here. : )

[MichiganSniper]

Thats exactly the sort of thing I was hoping for. Thank you for at least being understanding, I've been to plenty of other forums unrelated to mapping where the environment was much more hostile.

[Unstoppable Florence]

I'm glad you understand. I just went through your vmf, and from this I can point you in the direction of some tutorials suited to you because you obviously understand the basics well enough.

http://www.interlopers.net/tutorials/17779 - your lighting is unbelievably crude, never ever use the default settings on the light, its even more boring than an olympic snoring event. This tutorial should give you ideas.

http://rvanhoorn.ruhosting.nl/optimization.php?chapter=intro - a map like this should not have over 150 visleaves, unless you read this you will never be able to make anything more complex without it setting on fire and dieing.

And finally instructions from me: grab a digital camera, go outside and take photos of buildings. Make them in hammer. Learn what makes something interesting.

Don't get despondent if you don't instantly become a pro, I have been mapping for over a year now and I'm just borderline goodish. Good luck!

[Chopium]

I'd do some walking around in some preexisting maps to try and get and idea of how the various game elements are incorporated drawn out of the layout. HL2:DM, for instance, has maps with lots of corners, and short eyesights to up the tension of finding someone running about, increase efficiency through rendering less at once, and make players feel like they have to chase people around.

This video shows some insight on layout and how it can affect gameplay.

This video shows how you can improve over common traits of maps to create a new experience.

[Megadude]

Unstoppable Florence - no matter what you say, that was harsh. You sound like you don't want to see anything here unless it is the best of the best. If that's the case, you must be a very disappointed person. A very small percentage of people can create stuff like that. The rest of the people post what they can make to get suggestions on how to make their maps better, but your comments will most likely drive away people and put them off posting anything.

It's bad in the 'why did you post this, it's just a box with crates and fog' way.

people will not care for what you have just given us

If you had also bothered to check, this is the Under Construction section, where maps are not going to look 100% finished and are expected to look a bit rough around the edges.

I would suggest thinking carefully before commenting on stuff like this again because quite frankly your comments just make you sound like an asshole.


MichiganSniper - first, welcome to the forums

Second, I can tell you've been mapping a bit like you said, as you've gone beyond the plain 6 sided blocks and one big room approach. You seem to have started considering layout and visually interesting brushwork from your pics. There are some things that need to be sorted out however:

• Your fog is the first thing that stands out as being not so good. It seems to just suddenly start and then get very heavy very quickly. Play around with your fog's settings so that it fades more gradually from no fog to full fog. I would also suggest a change of colour if you are sticking with the concrete theme you seem to have going. A light grey/blue colour may work better.
• You seem to have the same texture in different places for the ceiling, floor and walls. This is a big no-no. Vary your textures. There are different textures that have been specially made for ceilings, floors and walls. Have a look at them and choose differing yet complimentary textures to rexture your map.
• You've started placing props but your map is quite plain in terms of brushwork. Hold off on placing any more props until you have added more brushes. Try adding brush-made support beams or pipes to break up plain boring walls or ceilings. Add railings along the edges of the upper floors.
• It looks like you are using the light entity to add light to your map. While this is ok when first making your map, there is a differnt way of lighting that will give a much better look and make your map be of a higher quality. Check out this tutorial to see how to do that other method of lighting.

Looks a like a quite solid start to a map. Keep going and keep us posted on your progress

[polycruncher]

Focus on the fundamentals of architecture, how beams support ceilings and trusses support walkways. Think about the environment you are trying to build. It could be a military bunker, a storage facility or a factory. Different buildings have differing methods of construction and material types that are defined by the structure's purpose. For most people to like your work, it will have to be realistic, or at least have its feet grounded in reality. It pays dividends to be observant and develop an eye for detail. Look through Valve's maps and see how there are few large, flat surfaces: they are normally broken up with supports, retaining walls, pipes, stepped concrete - try to add depth and detail to your constructions.

[mookie]

I don't play HL2DM, and I'm just going off the screenshots right now.

(1) The colour of the fog doesn't really go well with the white-lit concrete (it also doesn't go that well with the plain grey concrete even without the clean light). If want to keep fog here, in this case I'd stay start the fog off at zero distance from the player, so that everything you see is colored by it to varying degrees.

(2) The fog doesn't fit with the open bit of skybox at the top. IMO, if the fog gets to full-strength within your eyeline, the skybox should just be a flat colour matching the fog, unless you can work out the angles of having part of the sky clear directly above and still having the fog blend into the skybox. Neither of those is really applicable here, since all you see of the skybox is a little hole in the roof. In other words, if I can see a brush that's fully faded out in the fog, I should not be able to see its edges against the skybox.

(3) The light coming down from the skybox seems very unrealistic. The sky is not nearly bright enough to support it, since no sun is visible above. Also, with this amount of fog, the light probably would not penetrate that far and stay such a clean, bright white.

(4) What Megadude posted about lighting is right on to me and that tutorial looks good. I didn't actually read through it, so forgive me if I duplicate something here. For that cagelight, or any kind of bare bulb, what I've found can help sometimes is to add some linear to the quadratic. In case you try and think it's not working right, try 1 quadratic, 50 or 100 linear. This will reduce the over-bright spot of light on the wall.

(5) The brushwork is still pretty simplistic. Try building your free-standing floor sections as a floor/ceiling brush, with a thin (maybe 4 or 8 ) edging brush all around it that extends a little above (maybe 2 or 4) and below (maybe a bit more, maybe not). Then differentiate the floor, ceiling, and edging with different but complementary textures.

(6) I can't tell what exactly your stairs look like from these screenshots. Typical mistakes are to make them too large and too steep. I like 8 or 10 units per step and no steeper than 2:3 myself. As you run up the stairs, if your screen visibly lurches from each step, they're probably too large. And if it seems like you push into the stairs, then rise up a bit too much once you stop, they're probably too steep. What's normal will vary from game to game some, so compare them to other stairs in HL2DM for consistency.

(7) Unless there's more I can't see, the layout looks too simplistic. It seems like, to find out where the enemy is, all you need to do is stand still and look around, since the whole level is pretty open. Dividing the level between above and below this bridgelike thing might work, but for that to happen they need to be a little more definitely separated (possibly by reducing the walkable below area to the same footprint as the above area, or a little smaller), and each one needs more hard cover to make each somewhat playable individually. Otherwise, there needs to be a lot more hard cover to the two sides of the bridge, making the walls each into a playable area.

(8) The coloring overall is very bleh. Monochrome brushwork can be good with nice textures and good, varied lighting. But these textures are not nice, and the lighting is neither good nor varied. And anyway the concrete here is several different greys, so it doesn't really work as monochromatic anyway.

(9) Visually, the crates and barrels don't really blend in.

[MichiganSniper]

Ok, here is a little update before I start my studying for the night.










I cant seem to be able to get sun to shine through the hole though, not sure why.

Thank you all for the suggestions. I have to spruce up the walls and decorate a bit more, but I think the textures are better choices at least. In this map, I am going less for realism and more for quick shooting action, but for future projects I will take all suggestions into account. I mean, I added the combine cameras to give it some kind of "story". Battle arena for convicts, death tournaments, or whatever a player in the level wants to make up. Every map needs to have some sort of story behind it, albeit simple in this case.

Yet again, thank you all for suggestions. I really am learning quite a bit (more than I do in my damn classes).

[polycruncher]

I added the combine cameras to give it some kind of "story". Battle arena for convicts

Good theme, you could run with this and make something really cool, like a much better version of the prison DM map.

[Unstoppable Florence]

Unstoppable Florence - no matter what you say, that was harsh. You sound like you don't want to see anything here unless it is the best of the best. If that's the case, you must be a very disappointed person. A very small percentage of people can create stuff like that. The rest of the people post what they can make to get suggestions on how to make their maps better, but your comments will most likely drive away people and put them off posting anything.

It's bad in the 'why did you post this, it's just a box with crates and fog' way.

people will not care for what you have just given us

If you had also bothered to check, this is the Under Construction section, where maps are not going to look 100% finished and are expected to look a bit rough around the edges.

I would suggest thinking carefully before commenting on stuff like this again because quite frankly your comments just make you sound like an asshole.

Riiight.

I told the guy that his mapping was not at a level where he should bother posting it unless he needs technical help. There's a reason for that; its because there's nothing I can tell him to do that he won't get from tutorials and more time spent playing around with the editor. I told him to do this, going so far as to link useful tutorials and offering encouragement and wishing good luck, all of which was sincere. What the hell about that makes me an asshole?

And what the hell makes you think I only want to see amazing work? He made a square room. I can't critique that, because like I just stated, it's just a square room with a platform in the middle. This isn't 'rough around the edges' since it only has about 20 edges to speak of. =)

You just took an ubelievable leap of logic with that assertion, in fact did you even read my post properly? It looks to me like you missed all of my efforts at helping the guy and focused entirely on the negatives I had to say. Maybe you need to think twice before biting people's head off for being honest with others.

[MichiganSniper]

Lets not get angry here.

[Unstoppable Florence]

I'm no longer angry. : )

Also, vast improvement MichiganSniper, well done. But you really need to use more interesting geometry than what you have.

[Major Banter]

Megadude, you totally failed to read Sniper's response.

Thats exactly the sort of thing I was hoping for. Thank you for at least being understanding, I've been to plenty of other forums unrelated to mapping where the environment was much more hostile.

You fucking idiot. Florence's response was sharp and accurate. Naturally if you want to take this point further, PM me, but I consider your opinion invalid when you've shot down people utterly unnecessarily in the past.



Sniper, I fully recommend ditching the map entirely. All you'll be doing is tweaks to a map that's finished. Start over, and this time reduce your grid size, plan, and have a theme. I look forward to a totally fresh map, that'll be a vast improvement. This I'm sure of.

[Zombie Dawgs]

A loving and kind environment in this website. Lets see the average "first map release" on facepunch shall we?

http://www.facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=796246