Right so, along time ago I made the map called ns_dreamviews...it was my first Natural Selection map and it wasn't very good. It was a seige map...

But now I'm wanting to make a normal ns_ map. But I can't think of how I want my map to be layed out. I've already got my sky textured made and thats about it...

If someone would be so kind as to making an overview of a map that I could work with then that would be great! I would like to see a outside sort of area. The only thing I can think of for it right now is a plant/forest area. This is a quick picture of what I came up with for that one area...it's nothing great.
http://img182.imageshack.us/my.php?image=plantforestgb2.png

Will someone make me a layout for a map?

If someone does make me a layout, your name will be credited in the map, and please put little dots on the map telling what it is (resource tower, weld point, etc). Please help me!

One thing that I think makes it easier creating a layout is having an overall theme of the map. Where does it take place? What's the story behind it? Then you will have plenty of areas that naturally could be part of it. Like if your map is a spaceship, it would naturally have an engine room, a bridge, maybe a repair bay, a cargo room etc. (though I would try being more creative than that). Now you would have plenty of areas and you would only have to connect them in a balanced way. It's much more inspiring to design a room that has a purpose, and the results get much better.

Also, check these out for information about layouts:
http://perso.enst.fr/~cguerin/NSmap/index.html
http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns/static/Map...nes.html#Layout

Make the key areas, then link them together. Pay attention to the key principles of designing Hives and Marine Start (e.g no doors, no ladders in the Hive, 2 Onos-friendly exits, etc.)

So I should just start off making the hive areas, marine start, and res node rooms then add hallways and stuff like that?

I do have a picture of what I want but it seems kinda small...it would probably be a better co_ map then it would a ns_ map.

But I'll load up my unfinished layout sometime later.

I know how I want to make one hive area and the marine start. But the other 2 hives and pretty much everything else I'm unsure of...

Heh, all that Barathrum and Crispy have said are the main starting points for any map.

1. Get a theme going (where what why ergo backstory), Barathrum said it first
2. Keep the rules of design in check that Crispy talked about
3. Keep an eye on potential or unintential siege areas
4. Think about what kind of ventilation system you want

And much more, but these are kind of the basic.

I personally mapped like this for hl1:

Get a theme going with a good backstory and then design map areas from that idea. These could be hive/marine starting areas, central traffic areas or just general a cool looking room which will fit the story and texture+light them to near final. This can however bite you in the @ss, as you can run out of engine resources if you don't understand the engine and what it can or can not do (mainly a problem for larger maps though)

Once you have the rooms all setup, you can start putting them together with vents and corridors. This way of working is totally personal and some mappers swear by just mapping out a simple layout and then texture+light them. But for me, working like this, it gives me something to look at and get inspired by for other areas. It also helps me to get a constant lighting and theme going. Mind you that for my maps the area locations where predetermined due to the ship layout (logical ship design). However this does not stop you from playing around with corridors and "in between" areas.

Hope my ranting helps

I want my map to take place on a space lab thing. The lab connects into a giant rock. I want my map to be visually attractive. So it needs to have good lighting and pretty effects. The architecture also needs to be good. But this is something I lack.

Kouji_San:
Haha, aye, gotta be quick, the forum is overflowing with life nowadays Nice additions, those are things that all mappers (especially for HL1) should keep in the back of their head at all times. As for your workflow, I use about the same myself.

slayer20:
That sounds cool. If I were you, I would start brainstorming what areas could naturally be part of such a place. What kind of research are they doing in the lab? I would also think about what kind of lighting I would want, and what texture look. Remember that consistency is often a key, and try to get a balance of colors. Layout-wise, it's very good to make a drawing of roughly how you want the map-structure to look. Think about making it balanced for all three hive-positions both versus eachother and versus the marine spawn. Give them roughly equal distance to res nodes etc.

Here's a screenshot of the readyroom. It's not finished yet.


Also, this texture is bright when it's not supposed to be. How do I change this? It's render mode is set to texture.

I think the far wall on the left looks pretty cool. I like the curved upper part of the texture, that's some good use right there! I also like the... are they tables?

Stuff I notice that could improve is:

Lighting:
It's pretty bright. Instead of having the whole room in the same lighting strength and color, I think you should try to bring the brightness down and place some lights with smaller strength at some places. Maybe play around and make one light in a different color? Though it's important to not mix up too many colors. Usually, I find placing 2 non-white lights and 1 white light in an area as the most. Mixing up more colors than that often make it look like a funpark.

Texturing:
Try make the textures tile better. Especially around the curved left part. Maybe alter the architecture a bit in the corners to blend the two walls together better. On the lower right floor of the screen, try fiting the texture better to the wall. Also, try blending the textures around the windows better.

Architecture:
As I said, the far left wall looks really good in my opinion. Where I can really see an improvement, is in the roof. It's pretty flat, you should try to make it more detailed. Support-beams maybe? Also, maybe make the windows in a more interesting shape?

About the texture in the lower screen, did you try making it texture mode solid with texture amount 255?

The lighting is something I should be able to fix easily.

Texturing is something I have problems with. I have issues makeing my textures "flow" with everything else. I might a trim on the wall near the floor so the floor and wall look better together.

Here's my plan for the architechture:


And those are benches. Mainly used for sitting and starting outside at the planet. I might re-do alot of the ready room so it looks more like a relaxtion place.

And it would be really nice if you could help me along the way with this map. Does anyone know where some tree and plant models are at? I'm going to make an outside area inside the ship where one of the hive locations are at.

My other idea for a hive area is a reasearch lab where the Kharaa specimens will be located. This will have to be a fairly big area and right now I don't have any idea on how it's going to look.

The marine start is going to be at the head of the ship. I do have an idea on how this is going to work. I just need to draw it out first.

Edit: Also, my sig shows off the sky texture that I'm using.

Edit2: Barathrum, do you think I could add you to friends? I mean that is if you will help me out with most of this.

Edit3: And does anyone know where I can get a terrain generator? I had one along time ago but I don't have it anymore. I need one to make the outside area for the hive.

Edit4: UPDATE!!!

How's that so far?

And this wall needs worked on it seems...any ideas on how to improve it?

Venture. In the local War Museum, I saw an awesome lighting technique on some of the walls that I now have lodged in my head, which are ready to be used in my next map (and I can't wait). I was also in a mall one time where I saw odd ceiling architecture, which ended up being the inspiration for perhaps the best single room I have ever built (Engineering in Nexus, it has crazy walkways for aliens).

But basically, mapping is no short-term experience. You will ALWAYS be learning as a mapper, and you have to accept it and also accept that this is a new part of you. Once you become a mapper, you will see the real world from a different perspective. Always appreciate this new perspective, even love it, and you will excel.

'A wise man sees not the same tree that a fool sees' -im too lazy to look up the source

Keep your eyes open and you will find fantastic inspiration. Even driving past random buildings I have noticed great uses of lighting, created by some random architect, that can be instantly be used in level design.

Perhaps the best place to find inspiration as a mapper is other maps. NS has I believe 17 classic maps (its a surprising number once you count em). And NS maps are BIG. Run around them by yourself, check out how the mappers made their doors, made their cover, used Line of Sight (LoS), placed RTs, created vents (including marine accessibility, linkage, inter-linkage, detail, etc), use of SKY (it can add a lot to the map if used well), etc.

Think about things that regular players would not. Ramps? Regular players don't look at ramps, they look for the skulks possibly running up the ramps. But if a ramp is built too steep, the player will feel awkward. If the ramp has a discontinuous texture, the player will think it looks weird (i.e. unrealistic). Personally, I found that the perfect angle for ramps is 2:1 height:length. But thats all personal taste, which I have developed over the past three years, and could still change.

What I'm saying is that you can't teach a painter how to paint his own style. Everyone has their own style, and they have to develop it themselves. I can point you in the right direction, as I have tried to do in the previous paragraphs. But you have to have the mapper's experience to be able to create something beautiful out of the Void that is a New Map.

Enjoy.

-stix

Very well put Stix.

And I love to learn new things in hammer.

Anyway, here's a screenshot on my progression...the readyroom is too small I think. It has 31 info_player_starts which are only spaced at about 50 units each. The mapping guidelines say they should be spaced 128 units apart.

My first impression from these early shots is that it's too small.

One thing you could do without having to redesign the existing bit is to cut out those 'crate' patterns underneath the lights and turn them into corridors that link to another area (like the readyroom in ns_ayumi). It doesn't really matter how far you start from the Alien/Marine doors, since you can always press F1 or F2 for an instant join.

What I would say, is that the Aliens/Marines/Spectate/Random doors should all lead off from the same room. You shouldn't have to go hunting to find the door you want, and Random should always be as easy an option to take as Marines or Aliens, to promote players to use it as the quickest option to join the game if they spawn next to it.

I agree,

Consider making a second room to the left, so its kindof like a T, with the current screenshot being the top bar of the T. It would give you a lot more room with plenty of separate sides to add in bigger entrances to each piece of a proper RR [marine alien spec random].

Looking much better now! Look what a bit of changed lighting can do About the plants and trees, well, there are the official ones made for ns_origin that you maybe can try using. Unfortunately, I don't really know of a place where you can find custom models importable to HL1. I usually create my own models instead.

Yeah, you can add me to friends. Though, as StixNStonz so nicely put it, the creation and learning of level design is mostly up to oneself. I can gladly give you comments on stuff here, but I have also my own map and my own flaws to work on so I don't have much time left

About that terrain-generator: I would try creating it from scratch inside Hammer instead. It isn't that difficult really. The most usual (and best performance/look-wise in my opinion) is to make curvy ground from triangles using vertex manipulation. Cut out equally-sized triangles in the floor and use the vertex manipulation tool to make their corners of different height. Maybe start out with triangles that are 64 units big or so.

About the improvable wall: maybe make those corridor other-than square-shaped? Maybe make them some permanently opened dooropenings?

A key thing I have learned and try to keep to when level designing is to not start out by making the square walls of an area. That severely limits the creativity since you have already made the limits of the room and can't create as interesting variations. I start with making the floor, then the details, and then the roof or the walls. Your creativity should limit the walls, the walls shouldn't limit your creativity.

Here's some screenshots of my progression...





The onos fits through everything...the only thing that it needs to crouch in is at the stairs going down to the holo fade...thats no big deal though.

Looking better. What I think you could improve is:

Texturing: Try to find a more precise texturing theme to settle with, and don't mix up too much. Though this could be adjustable by changing the lighting also.

Lighting: The first two screenshots have pretty grey lighting. I would try making the contrasts bigger. Though as I said before, be careful with not mixing up too much. Having green, blue and red lighting in the same room easily makes it look like a disco. It's pretty close on the lowest picture to that feeling, in my opinion, since you have the green team join sign, the blue lighting in the roof and the red lighting on the walls. Though it looks much better than the first 2 screenshots. I usually try having two different colors, that are eachothers' opposites. You can use this picture to help http://www.uni-mannheim.de/fakul/psycho/ir...lsys/Hering.jpg . For example, the middle red and the middle green would work together.

Architecture: The lowest screenshot looks better now. I think that lava spot looks a bit weird though - what is it? Molten electronics beneath the floor? It looks a bit misplaced.

I think you should make the roof above the holo fade higher, to ease up gameplay. That whole area in the middle looks a bit small, but it's hard to judge just from screens.

Also, the roof in the upper screenshot looks a bit flat. Maybe add a detail or two there too.

Thanks for the reply!

Two seconds after you spawn in the Ready Room a voice goes off saying "*Beep* Warning, hazardeous chemical detected, evacuate area immediantly *Beep*" and retriggers after 25 seconds.

The lava stuff doesn't actually do anything...it's just there for show, but it does look misplaced without the warning signal going off.

I'll change the lighting in the ready room so it doesn't look so dull.

I'm trying to make the area seem sorta like a lounge.

Edit: Also, once I declare the readyroom done, do you think I could send you a beta map of the readyroom so you can see it for yourself?

I see, sounds better having a signal. Maybe also add some more visuals to the concept of a leaking chemical, I mean, a visible source from where the leaking comes from (if you don't have it already, hard to judge on the screenshot). Sounds cool

Another thing is that maybe you shouldn't put too much work into the ready room. I mean, if this is your first real NS map, maybe it's better to work on it a bit and then move on to another area. Having too high expectations can make you stuck and it could take forever finishing the map (like in my case ). And then just end up remaking it all since you improved so much in skill from the first wall to the last This, though, looks very good for you having only done one map before. I have like 20 trash maps that are half-started and most of them don't look even half as good as this But you should feel for yourself how you want to proceed with it.

Yeah, I can have a look at it for you. Can you upload it somewhere? Or shall I send you my e-mail in a private message?

I'll be honest and say I haven't read everything, but I have a little input for you if you're of a mind for it.
I think of all the shots you've posted thus far this one (image) has the most potential. I say potential because, as is probably the reason you decided to go a different route, it's not the best looking of what you've posted, but I think it could be. All you really need to do is clean things up a little bit.

I like the green, no problem with that, goes with the chemical theme. I think the reason you're dropping it is because the lighting is flat. Those lights up top are blue, but producing either white or no light. Make them give off blue light, and give the white lights on the side a very low intensity. You don't want to wash things out. The fluorescent lights on the sides aren't producing any light, but imo they should. it would break up the green. Make sure they're producing a slightly yellowish light as befitting their appearance.

I also don't think it's really a bad thing you're getting the RR right. The RR should be an insight into the design style of your map, so the closer you get this to how you want it the better.

Yeah, one should have a solid overall design outlined. What I ment was that maybe you should save the more fine-tuning details that take time, to a later stage, if you're not totally clear on how you want them to look that is. Generally, if you find yourself being stuck with little imagination, I think it's better to temporarily move on to another area where you have a clear imagination of the design. I think that makes it more effective, so you can also think about the other area meanwhile and maybe even get inspiration for it from the new area. I've been working on the new version of my map for about 10 months now and, while I've done like 60-65% of the map, it's not until now that I have started to create a ready room that I'm satisfied with (though the map still follows the overall design that I came up with in the beginning). So I guess it depends on what kind of workflow one has.

@Barathrum
Yeah I need to change the source of the chemical stuff...right now it's just a small pipe. I'm probably going to make barrels and move them out of that area of the ready room.

@Belgarion
I didn't like the way that lighting looked so thats why I changed it. I'll probably use that kind of green in another place. Wait, that gives me an idea for my last hive room! A nuclear reaction generator! I mean, I could add some pipes with green acid inside them and stuff and make the area look infected and other stuff that I don't feel like writing down right now.

I'm going to make a few changes to the ready room and then I'll upload the file to rapidshare or something and just PM it to you.

Start out with a basic design and use this forum for a feedback-edit loop to make a balanced and polished ns map.

(Although this assumes: you have decent skill as a mapper and you will LISTEN to critical feedback. Sometimes listening to the not-so-pleasant weaknesses helps you improve your design overall)

Can't wait to see what you come up with!

Sincerely,

x5

There's really only one thing that's going to be very hard for me...and thats connecting all the hive areas and marine start to other rooms with hallways.

I made a list of stuff I'm going to try and make

Hive Areas:
Research Observatory
Outside forest area
Nuclear Reactor

Marine Start:
Head of the ship

Other Areas:
Lounge
Holo room
Docking bay (Where ships would enter the space station)
Sleeping area


What other areas might you see in a big space station? Some areas might be taken out if I can't think of how I want them to look. Right now I only know what I want the hive's to look like.

Sounds cool. You can always look at the overview maps of the official maps, to get inspiration of what other areas the ship could include. As for architectural inspiration and design, I would recommend looking at different art and design web communities or the webpages of specific artists. Also, try Googling for pictures.

Hmm forest area you say? Keep in mind though that goldSRC does not like large "detailed" outdoor areas from which you can see into other detailed areas (maximum w-polies and all). Also doors do not block the visibility of things (VIS part of compiling) as they are entities.

Might want to play around with gl_wireframe 2 in the console a bit to keep an eye on what is and isn't rendered. And go ahead and google for vis blocking/vis blockers/reducing r_speeds (or something). If you are going to do the detailed forest thing. Better prevent these problems from arising then having to fix them lateron


[edit]
Now where's that cool looking, yet unfinished map, that had a large outdoor area where you could enter a cave or mine... Ring anybells for anyone? Orangy look of the outdoor area, which looked like a large cliff with some buildings in there and a nice and spooky dark mining hole/cave...

If that screenshot gets found it might inspire you for your outdoor area. Oh and lets not forget Ns Outdoor Mapping Guidelines/rules

Ns_Surface?

Yeah, it had large outdoor areas, but they were empty as anything. Wouldn't be good inspiration for a forest.

Nah don't think it was ns_surface (as I think the map I'm talking about was unreleased)

[edit]Ah here we go! Kawak and the power of awesomesauce co_akaba

Might not be an inspiration for the forest area, but it could be an inspiration for another outdoor. Heck am I confusing ns_eva with another map, I could've sworn you talked about a cave like area! Hence I though of akaba as inspiration... How'd this happen o.O"

Haha I never mentioned a cave area. And my forest area is probably going to be pretty small.

*UPDATE*

Tell me what you think of it now!

I redid the textures so now it looks much better. I also changed the support things for the ceiling and added a small light under them. The entrance to the room will seem dark but once you get inside it will look much better.




I also have one problem...these walls textures don't match up...is there something I could put right in the corner or something that makes them flow together?



Also, ignore the pink trigger stuff...I put that there because when a skulk tries to run up that wall they get stuck and thats supposed to make them go up smoothly...it's supposed to be invisible.

Lighting is better and not as bland as before, atleast on the ceiling/floor. The walls still look a bit bland. In the second picture, the roof is a bit flat, maybe add some detail? The contrast between the walls with detailed tech textures, and the roof with a one-coloured flat surface, is a bit too big. About the corner, try sizing the textures with somewhat the same width and height. Also, when building rooms, it's easier to size the textures if the worldbrushes (the non-entity walls, e.g. ordinary brushes) are sized in 64ths, like 64,128,192,256 etc. And instead of using the "aaa_trigger" texture, make the brush a worldbrush covered with the "clip" texture. Other than that, it's looking better.

VIRUS!

It seems my computer has gotten a virus...well many viruses actually. I can't connect to the internet on my computer so I have to use my sisters to type stuff on forums. I can still get on msn though. I can't play any steam games what-so-ever. I can still work on my map and that is what I will be doing until this problem is solved. I'm going to constantly save my work to a disk or something because I don't want to risk it getting deleted.

I am going to declare the ready room 98% completed! All I have to do now is add the spawn points inside of it. And maybe add a couple of lights...I also need mess around with a wall.

I am going to be working on the Marine Start next. I already have a basic layout for it. There is so much I need to do with it...it's going to be very hard.

I also have a question...what do you think gameplay would be like if I made the marine start, and 3 hives into a Y formation? With one hive being in the middle and the other 2 branching off from it and the end of the Y being the marine start. I plan on making a few doors closed (but can be welded open) and accessible by skulks and jetpackers and the like near the center hive (it's where I want the forest area to be).

Edit: It seems that my computer works now...thank god!

Well, about that forest thing: i think it would be better if you make a herbarium/florarium or i dunno how to say in english. So it can be a huge room, but cover it with big glass surfaces. If theres snow outside it can be pretty nice i think, and this way, its attranctive, and you dont ahve to care with the sky.(its annoying, if your a lerk and you cant get higher... its just one of my former ideas. And onother thing: you are unable to put enogh generators in your map. There are no two generators which look the same. And they maybe have moving parts too, and pretty lighting. oh, and you can name them lots of way like, (the msot common) Generator, Axuiliary Power or Power core, just use your mind. I hope i could help you with these ideas.

Advice: Burn your map onto a CD/DVD now!

If your PC has viruses, there's no telling how long it will be before it just packs up and refuses to work. You could lose everything. Put all your work into a new folder, virus-check that folder and then put it onto a new disc.

ok well now the compile log is coming up with a texture problem. After I moved the ready room that error came up. But once I get rid of the brush thats causing the problem another error comes up but on a different brush...

Any ideas why?

Here's the error
BuildFacelights:
Error:
for Face 2428 (texture {blue) at
(-3303.000 -3552.000 3274.000) (-3303.000 -3552.000 3218.000) (-3302.000 -3552.000 3218.000) (-3302.000 -3552.000 3274.000)
Error: Bad surface extents (14387 x 4)
Check the file ZHLTProblems.html for a detailed explanation of this problem

----- END hlrad -----

Check this site, it's very helpful: http://www.slackiller.com/tommy14/errors.htm#badsurface

So all I really have to do is find all my really small brushes and fix them? That doesn't seem to hard to do...

Well, the error says "Bad Surface Extents" and according to the guide, that means that you have a texture that is stretched too much. Does ctrl+p show any errors? Else just check the coordinates and you should be able to approximate where the stretched texture is.

yeah it's all fixed now...I'm working on the marine spawn now.

Update on the marine spawn!

I like the floor part of the room. There are some other things you can improve:

Architecture:
The floor part of the room looks pretty good, as I said. The walls are a bit too square, and so is the roof. Try adding some detail, and make the room not so square and I think it will look much better.

Lighting:
The lighting is pretty monotonic and looks all-yellow. Try adding other coloured lights that are eachothers' opposites. Look at the link I provided in an earlier post to see what those opposites are.

A few things I'd do:
- Push the consoles right up against the sides of the room and widen the ramps up from the lower level. An Onos needs to be able to get down to the CC without jumping and HA Marines need to be able to get to and from the CC with ease. Make sure people can pass eachother on both ramps.

- The ceiling is too high. Fades and Lerks will love this room because of the high ceiling. At the moment it resembles the MS in co_kestral, which is Fade heaven. While you are lowering the ceiling, you could add some height variation and detailing to it to make it a bit less square.

- The CC placement is not that great. The IPs can only be placed within a certain radius of the Command Chair. Good Commanders will place their PG close to their IPs so spawning Marines can reinforce quickly. In your MS, there is very limited space for IPs around the Command chair, it looks like they can only be put at the bottom of the ramps. Since there is no space for the PG on the lower level, Marines are forced to walk a long distance to any PG the Comm puts down. In short: it looks nice, but it will play badly.

I would suggest extending the ground level out a bit towards the window so you have more floorspace on the ground level around -and especially in front of- the CC. This will make the MS even bigger, but you could make the top level (the grey part) into a separate, walled corridor (with non-breakable glass windows) to divide up the space a bit.

Lighting can wait until you have more ideas for the ceiling brushwork.

Thanks for the replies guys!

I wanted the CC to look like it was the head of the ship and everything...but now that I do look at it, it doesn't look very good. I'll fix that area and try to lower the ceiling. I do have a new idea for it and will probably start to work on it tomorrow.

But I'm having issues deciding on what textures I should use. I mean, I'm not sure how to make them "flow". Like I don't know what textures I should use for stairs.

Would it be bad if I took pictures from other maps areas and try to re-create some of the areas for my own map?

There's nothing wrong with mimicking other maps as long as you credit it openly in the credits (e.g. "Inspiration taken from ns_bast", etc.).

Thanks!

I also seem to be getting this error when compiling my map...MAX_MAP_MIPTEXT or something...it says that I'm using to many textures or something. Would I have to take all the textures I want to use and put them into one file? I don't like that I'm limited to what I can use...

This error only showed up after I made a hallway. I think I only used 3 new textures in that hallway. When I compiled my map with hammer I didn't get the error, but when I compiled it with a batch compiler (for the nshulls.txt) it came up with that error. I even tried removing the hallway then recompiling it with the batch compiler and it gave the same error. I don't know how to fix this problem. It doesn't show up in the ZHLT errors either.

Please help!

The official map texture memory limit is 4 mb. You can specify a higher limit, as high as the memory is on the videocards people have. So if you expect most people to have atleast 64 mb video cards, you can write 64000 instead of 4096. People won't be able to play the map in software mode (though I doubt many people do this) with a number above 4096.

Generally though, it's better to keep the amount of textures pretty low. More textures makes the map less uniform and more chaotic. Most maps feel more solid if you keep to a specific theme, else it looks like you can't decide on what textures to use. And don't forget that you can use one texture to many different things, by using different parts or angles of it.

You have a texture limit of 4,00MB. You should use textures of one style, like veil/hera/eclipse ("lab" textures), so only one or maybe two sets of textures to keep this low.
OR You can put an info_comnpile_parameters or sth like that, and there you can set the "texture memory" or sth like that, and you can set it to the amount you want. as well as i remember its in kilobytes.

OR Download Batch Compiler (Nem's tools) and you can set the texture memory in the program, but it takes time to set up Batch Compiler, so info_compile_parameters is the best choice i think.

I hope i could help you and you can solve the problem.

I was able to fix it now. I just have to fix some height things going on with the marine start. I'm going to finish the marine start and then I'm going to go and start taking pictures of other areas and start working on the other 3 hives and main rooms.