NS_WIPNONAME

RichardRahl

Ok, so i am styarting a new map since somone suggested I start with smaller maps since it's my first time mapping, heres the first 30 minutes of fleshing out marine start, these textures are not final they are just a quick paint cause screenshots with the dev textures didn't turn out to well everything kind of blended together.

<a href="http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/683/15118322.jpg/" target="_blank"><img src="http://img683.imageshack.us/img683/5612/15118322.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" /></a>

it's going to be a spread offense

<a href="http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/220/spreado.jpg/" target="_blank"><img src="http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/1011/spreado.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" /></a>

please be gentle it's my first time ever making a map.

fmpone

Looks good, keep it up!

Jonacrab

At this point I would suggest to start smaller, youll find out eventually that hives dont work too well in large rooms, (they can work, but youll have to build structures in your room to make them attach to walls and ceilings). Get a ceiling and a basic lighting situation going as well. I usually start a square room with 4 lights situated to fill the whole room with light, but make them small enough to leave some dark areas in the room (put the four lights in the center of each quadrant of the room so the corners are not lit as much as the walls, it also helps to put them lower to the floor, so the ceiling is not lit as much as the ground is, because typically lighting is not directed at the ceiling). I also find it a good idea to place a marine as a prop when you start building a room, it will give you some perspective as to how large things should be (a cc, rt or a hive helps as well).

I would suggest changing the two current textures you have in your room with some of the grey metal textures, only because I have found that the 2 textures you chose are the hardest to make work well in a room as the primary texture(mostly because they are the only ones that have a significant amount of color to them) I would start with some of the more neutral grey metal ones. You should also make sure youre testing the look of things using textured lit mode, because the unlit mode doesnt show off the bump maps and specularity. Things look significantly different when they are lit. When I started building my map I avoided many of the textures because they looked simple, but youll find that just the bump maps and the specularity of them make a huge difference, so dont knock it, till you try it. This is also why it is important to have a basic lighting when you start a room.

You should avoid building 2 rooms with just a single hallway connecting them; hallways should be dividers between multiple rooms, that also give access to other areas. Layouts should make logical sense, you will have some negative space between large rooms for the sake of gameplay, but try to stay consistent with how a true building works. Just make some of those negative spaces "feel" like they could be a room (ie put a door that cant actually be used, but makes the layout make sense, as if there is supposed to be a room there; however, dont put a door on one side of a wall where if you go into the next room the other side doesnt have a door, one of the current maps in progress has a few of those).

Oh, its also a good idea to start your whole map layout with planes representing rooms and hallways, then just play around with it a bit. And keep things simple, the more complex a map gets, the more it takes away from actual gameplay. Don't bog down players with routes that can confuse them, just focus on a balance between gameplay and aesthetics.

The editor is still somewhat buggy, but still very usable. There are some workarounds for some of the bugs, so always ask questions. The bugs can be very frustrating when you are still learning the program.

RichardRahl

yeah I have run into quite a few bugs, as for the textures liek I said I just htrew random ones on because when zoomed out the dev textures meshed all together and you couldn't really see much, that was just a preliminary screenshot of the room, i've made quite a few changes since :P thanks for all the tips :)