Mapmaking on brink?

(dwe_flame) #1

Well, i must say i am really looking forward to the launch of Brink. but i started to wonder, will ther be mapping possibility’s ?
im not sure if this has been asked/suggested already, i couldn’t find any posts on this yet, so thats why i wanted to ask/suggest it here :slight_smile:

as you know and can see, there are a lot of mapmakers around the ET and ETQW and i guess i can count myself too as a fanatic mapmaker.
i, and i think the other mapper/modders too, enjoy the map-/mod-making maybe even as much as the playing of the game itself.

maybe some other suggestion involving this, is that you can maybe connect a created map to you character, so the props (or comments) will go to the one that also deserves this ? ( a bit like is suggested here: http://www.splashdamage.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20483 )

even a other thing could maybe be ingame voting on maps in the way of giving reputation to a map so there can be a overall system that shows the popular and non popular maps at a central website or some like that ?

so im very curious what the plans on this part are for the community (for the mappers/modders) :cool:

(.Chris.) #2

Yes, there will be tools released but when exactly we don’t know yet, I remember Paul mentioning something about it not been such a simple task of just deciding they want to release the tools and doing it, first they must go through both bethesda and id software or something.

On side note, dont expect Brink mapping to be anything like ET or ETQW, looking at the screenshots you can tell there is massive amount of work gone into the detail side of things compared with their last two titles, will be tough to produce maps that look similar.

(dwe_flame) #3

sounds promising, so i guess there ain’t more than to wait ant see what pops out =)

well, in the end it is all about gameplay i beleve. just look at Wolf:ET it is still a very popular game, thats not because of the graphics, for that you have way better games.
but when you have like 10 stock maps and have servers running, players will get bored just because of playing the same map over and over.
I believe that if you look at games that or online multiplayer and popular for a longer period of time (just not only for the new good looking graphics) this is for a great part because of those games have a community making (free) gamecontent to enhance the game even more.
After all, Wolf:ET would never been as popular as it was (and still is now) without the content made by the community.

(.Chris.) #4

I would tend to agree with you put if you don’t try make the effort on the looks department you aren’t going to attract the average player in modern games, first impressions count and all that, personally I always try and strike a balance between the effort put into making a map playable and making map look good with a strong bias to the playability in the early stages before making the map public and then focusing on the looks and remaining gameplay issues there after once the map has reach public testing.

I foresee this to be increasingly difficult with Brink for myself considering the amount of detail included in what has been showcased thus far but hopefully I can use my recent training at work to my advantage and produce some nice detailed environments and map objects using tools I use there that can export to formats that can also be read by common 3D modeling suites and made suitable for game usage, sadly doesn’t help much on the texturing front of 3D assets.

(tokamak) #5

I’d say it would be best not to focus on the looks at all in the start. Grey blocks are fine for testing.

(.Chris.) #6

Yeah, agree, I tend to use that all way up till the public releases, once you got the gameplay sorted out in private testing as far you can with limited players, you can relax a little and add in the details that mappers like to add. I’m not sure how custom maps will be viewed in Brink but generally speaking if either the gameplay or the look of a map wasn’t up to scratch in ET or ET:QW upon public release your map was doomed, although ET:QW was more forgiving due to the lack of custom content in general.

(tokamak) #7

In a way having as little detail as possible could be perceived as more respectful to your testers as well. This may sound counter intuitive as you’re going through extra lengths to make their testing experience more enjoyable, but adding detail might fixate spots in your map, leaving it out hands testers a cleaner canvas to give feedback on. In turn testers might also be hesitant about commenting on things that clearly look great, have had a lot of attention put in to and will be a pain to change, even if it all doesn’t work gameplay wise.

In the Shattered Horizon test they had one map with a beautifully rendered space ship amidst a bunch of unfinished debris. Naturally you’re more inclined to tell the authors what can be done with the unfinished parts of the game than to tell them their space ship is a pain in the ass to navigate around to (it’s not that bad actually, but it would be awkward to tell them if it was).

(stealth6) #8

I actually think making maps won’t be too hard, not sure how it compares to ETQW, but I’m guessing most of it is just parallax mapping and models, which i guess will be supplied in the mapping pack, or whatever, so the real challenge would be if you wanted to release 100% original stuff. (self made textures / models)

(.Chris.) #9

Yes exactly, how many maps do you want to play using exact same assets as container city or the main arc area, you are just going to end up with loads of soulless identikit maps with that attitude.

(tokamak) #10

If you look at TF2 you’ll see tons of different maps build with the same stuff. The gameplay concept should prevail no matter how far you polish it.

(light_sh4v0r) #11

I’ll probably have a look, try some stuff and then give up, like I did in ETQW :slight_smile:

(stealth6) #12

well that depends on how broad the default pallette is (default resources).
Also +1 tokamak

Also there will be alot of assest I guess, so the combinations will be endless.

Also the question was how hard will mapping be… making models textures is not necessary to map, so I was just refering to the mapping aspect

(kilL_888) #13

i think one of the biggest challenges for brink mappers will be the smart movement. you must consider that some guys jump higher than others. you can climb on almost every surfarce. not to forget the wall jumps…

other than that is brinks level design highly detailed. the basics remain the same, but creating a brinkish map will be very difficult.

(tokamak) #14

Indeed, you’re actually making three maps (heavy, medium, small paths) integrated into one.