Level Design Flaws

[chavo_one]

It might be a good idea to postpone any “final” versions of maps you have been working hard on. Especially if you would like to submit it on that contest wich would give the map a chance to be come official (if you’d be interested in that).

Interesting. I hadn’t considered saving venice for the competition because I had no idea when it would end (or begin for that matter ) It would be really nice to know how long we will have to wait though. If it’s 4-6 months off, I’ll have to pass.

[S.S.Heirpie]

Problem is it’s hard for new maps to become established - it’s quite clear that early maps, no matter how shit, make an impact, and Marko has made his name this way. I’d say Drakir did too, but at least some of his maps are enjoyable I’m fortunate enough to have a couple of clan servers I can run maps on, and a few friendly server admins who like my maps enough to include them or run dedicated servers, but very few people have this chance.
In all, it’s only the ‘big names’, however they made their names, who have maps run on enough servers to get the map established, and I think it’s fair to say that maps become popular more often than not, not because they are any good, but because they are widespread enough

I rather enjoy most if not all custom maps, the players love um, we switch over rotations once to twice a week cause theres so many!!, heck I took out helms deep and youd think my name was mud!! Ive been wathcin your forums for maybe a new release before stickin in the old version of helms deep!..:).

There are alot of great maps to play out there all have there good points!, the others I might have to take out because of balance issues nothing worse then having a turkey shoot for the other side!, then I just email the mapper and explain the problem.

PIE
=Shit-Storm= Servers

[Ifurita]

When we talk about level design flaws, are talking gameplay flaws or architecture flaws. For example, Byzantine (another invisible map) is flat, byanztine, and large. However, I’m finding that once people learn their way around the map (on 24+ person servers), the games are getting to be pretty good and along the lines of what I was striving for. The FPS remains solid, there are roof and buildings to climb into/onto, and there is a little something for everyone. Most satisfyingly, even on very full servers, there is very little spam or spawn camping.

There are tons of other maps though, and the feedback tends to be similar:

1. Poor FPS. My goal for Byzantine was to maintain a steady 76 FPS (a maxFPS rate that a lot of people lock their configs onto). So, in order to attain 76 FPS in-game, I should be doing 100+ when I’m running around the map by myself in test mode. If the map is getting 40-50 FPS in test mode, it’s going to suck like a shop vac when there are 24 people running (pretty typical size for a pub server) around with arty going off. Ammo Depot, Cherbourg, Atlantic Wall suffer from this

2. Poor spawn point design/placement.
   a. Don’t put spawn points directly on the line of attack. This just invites one team to camp the other
   b. Don’t put spawn point exits where they can be directly mortared from the other side’s spawn. People will figure this out in less than 15 seconds and it just makes the game suck (River war suffers from this)
   c. Make the spawn point easy for large numbers of people to get out of quickly. Alley is the worst example I can think of, where the Axis spawned in a basement with one god damn ladder for everyone to use. Once they got up the ladder and thru a narrow hatch, they found themselves in a small room with one god damned door.

3. Maps not designed with spam in mind. It is simply easier to spam in ET than it was in RTCW. They typical pub server seems like it’s 24+ slots running a 6+ map campaign. If you design your maps with one fricken avenue of attack that can get choked off by levelled up field ops, mg42s, or panzers, you are setting yourself up for failure. A lot of Marko maps, though I have fun playing them, seem to suffer from this problem.

4. Maps overwhelmingly favor the defense. Stargate and a lot of Marko maps are an example of this. It’s easy enough to plant at the main gate on Stargate 1945, but it’s ridiculously easy to defend and rebuild the gate since you can mine the concrete. Temple has the joy of having to escort the tank over a long assed bridge under constant fire. Then, once you get over the bridge, you get the pleasure of escorting the tank right across the front of the axis line who has both cover and elevation. Axis incompetance should not be the only chance for Allied victory.

ok, enought of my rant

[SiliconSlick]

Not level design flaws but packaging flaws… see:

http://www.splashdamage.com/index.php?name=pnPHPbb2&file=viewtopic&p=61540#61540

http://www.nd80usa.net/slicks/map_conflict_report.txt

SiliconSlick

[Ifurita]

\o/

----- PK3 - bulge_beta1.pk3 -----

bulge_beta1.pk3 - **** MAJOR WARNING: UNABLE TO LOCATE sound/menzel/allied/they_have_repaired_the_tank.wav in sound/scripts/bulge_beta1.sounds ****
bulge_beta1.pk3 - **** MAJOR WARNING: SOUND sound/scripts/bulge_beta1.sounds REFERENCES NON-EXISTENT FILES (see above) ****

----- PK3 - byzantine.pk3 -----

----- PK3 - caen.pk3 -----

caen.pk3 - **** MAJOR WARNING: UNABLE TO LOCATE textures/skies_sd/nero_bluelight.tga IN scripts/caen.shader ****
caen.pk3 - **** MAJOR WARNING: SHADER scripts/caen.shader REFERENCES NON-EXISTENT IMAGES (see above) ****

----- PK3 - citadel.pk3 -----

[G0-Gerbil]

Fair play Ifurita

I rather enjoy most if not all custom maps, the players love um, we switch over rotations once to twice a week cause theres so many!!, heck I took out helms deep and youd think my name was mud!! Ive been wathcin your forums for maybe a new release before stickin in the old version of helms deep!..

On the contrary, having it running there I got some decent feedback (although couldn’t connect most of the time cos I never had the maps and my connection is too slow to download tons of maps). At least now I know who to annoy to get my map on shitstorm, which is rather nice given it’s large player limit (and is often near that limit!).

Ifurita makes some good points (before he showed off about his PK3’ing skills ;)) - framerate is one of my major peeves - eg I’m still working to raise helmsdeep cos it gets to 60 fps on my setup. Too many people design for their own systems and don’t cater for others. This, however, is something both I and Ifurita will be commenting on for ever - some people just don’t seem to either learn or care

Spawn point exits is a good point, but not one I’d considered because I haven’t really played a custom where this has been toooooo much of a problem.

Love the description of spawning in Alley - have to look into that map

Maps do tend to favour the defence, but this is something I’m striving against in my maps - I still want the map to play for a while, but I’d rather the offencive team can win a reasonable amount of time - this is particularly important for servers that run in SW mode - not much point in having constant 2 round full holds.
Part of the issue is setting an appropriate time limit. Maps should have a long time limit because the map unfolds slowly (a la goldrush), NOT because it’s so bloody hard to win that you have to give them half an hour of chances - if that’s what you have to do, then you’ve balanced your map wrong. Temple is indeed a case in point.

[Ifurita]

:bump: