Is it just me or is mapping really this slow a process?
I want to create a summit sized map that's less complex in design, the trouble is so far im finding that creating even basic geometry is very slow, it's taking hours to do simple stuff like making faces and sticking them together, even with as much copying and pasting as i do, now i understand it takes time to do the full map but i think i must going about it wrong or something, it shouldn't take so long to do the basic stuff surely??
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<a href="http://youtu.be/Lhu5bxshGpQ" target="_blank">This video illustrates what i'm trying to say.</a>
I must say though it is now that I am really enjoying it, now that I have a map to work with. These past 2 months I've been feeling as if I have become a full time mapper and I am neglecting a lot of other things I have to do :( Please turtle, find your place so I can get some rest ;p
A way to decrease the time it takes to do a map would be that several people work on it. What would be needed for that ?
Right now you can copy paste from a file to another, so you could give a room to do to each person and weld everything together at the end.
Take hammer for example, a full time mapper can make a good map in about 2-3 months, this then is with all the details, several layout changes,... anything you can think of. (and with good maps i mean GOOD maps, not Counterstrike (Source), squares with 1 texture maps)
However, full time mappers, working in a dev. team usually have a pretty good understanding of what they want to do (concept art, layouts, talking about their ideas and problems with the other devs,..)
So you can imagine as someone who does it in his spare time it will take you even longer that "just" 2-3 months.
Sure, maybe not untill you have a blockout and such, but before your map is even close to an official map you will go well past 2-3 months.
It doesn't seem right how long it's taking me to do simple stuff, im working on a kind of room within a room at the moment and making it have proper walls and openings is taking longer than i feel it should, i mostly work by copying and moving faces about, i wonder if i should be using the extruder more or the line and shape tools, the trouble i find is it doesn't work right sometimes the way i expect.
It would be nice if the editor had more user friendly features to help speed things up and make it more creative, another annoying thing i found was textures don't stick to a face when you move it, so you spend a while aligning them nicely only to find that when you copy and paste it in another spot you have to do it all over again.
One thing i do find helps in passing the time at least, is listening to podcasts, it makes the whole thing more enjoyable.
If you want textures to stick to a face when you move it around, click the padlock icon on the bottom bar to turn texture lock on.
It rarely is in games editors because you actually need it off more than you need it on. You'll do a lot of minute scaling and adjustment as well as things like extruding and so on. If you leave texture lock on, you either end up with massively stretched or shrunken textures that you have to replace, or a lot of scale and alignment values that are huge floating point numbers, which become difficult to work with the more it happens.
There's your basic layout, does this work correctly, is it balanced? Will you need to come back after testing and change many areas? If so will this take long and improve the map at all?
There's your first detail pass on all of the map. Is any of it causing problems for the players, are they getting stuck on random objects or falling through the map?
There's the lighting, how do you want the atmosphere to be conveyed? You don't want an industrial complex to be bright and friendly looking. It needs to strike a balance between mood and visibility for the players.
There's the path finding for the AI. Is it working properly, is it getting stuck in certain areas? If so how can I fix this?
There's the optimisation on props, disabling shadows and pathing options.
There's the occlusion pass on the map which is essentially grey boxing the map again for better performance. Is it functioning correctly? What can I do to improve it in certain areas.
There's the option of re-working multiple areas that just aren't working. Rooms that have had many, many of hours of labour only to be deleted and re envisioned.
There's the atmospherics and particles, where should I use these for the best effect in the map without going overboard and making a mess?
There's the possibility of crashes and lost progress or failed backups as well.
What did you expect? Rome wasn't built in a day.
Coding is also like that. Since the first alpha release there has been 1305 documented changes to the game in the changelogs from the first alpha to date; mostly bug fixes and tweaks to existing features and art assets. There has surely been many more changes that haven't been documented and still more changes that have been tried and discarded.
Off the top of my head I struggle to think of even 20 changes without looking and they've mostly been feature changes, map updates or fixes to some of the more annoying bugs. The bulk of this sisyphysean task has been rewarded only with the vague perception that the game has become smoother, more polished and more playable. All these hundreds upon hundreds of little niggles add up only to a difficult to articulate and explain feeling of badness/unpolishedness without being able to really point out the problem easily. A little bit of input lag here; a little bit of jitter when you walk over cracks in the floor; a little bit of macs moving awkwardly; a little bit of sounds being awkwardly cut off or failing to play correctly; none of them are individually important or particularly annoying; but when you have 1000 of them it just feels like friction.
This is part of the magic of playing a Blizzard game. It's hard to put your finger on why Blizzard games feel so good when they are so often not very original; they polish the hell out of them.
That and they haven't found a tools programmer yet, so the editting tools are mostly what Max has worked on in his spare time. They are functional, but not exactly easy or quick to use.
mapping is fast and easy.
So true :p It a bit like the philosophical arrow that never hit its target. But crossing that border when you have completed one layer and you now realize you need a new layer is truly magical like you say.
Quick Guide to NS2 Mapping in Seven Days:
First the mapper created the face. And he saw it was good and was very pleased. He divided the face to separate the map from the skybox. Then the mapper said, "let there be greybox!," and there was greybox. He playtested and saw the scale was good and was very pleased about the running times from techpoint to techpoint. The spirit of the mapper was hovering over the faces of the map and so ended the first day.
On the second the mapper said, "let there be color in the midst of the faces, and let it divide the faces from the faces." Thus the mapper applied textures to all his geometry, and he saw it was good.
On the third day the mapper said "let there be lighting, with ambiance and spotlight," and the mapper divided the playable from the unplayable. And so it was morning already, and the mapper had worked all night, thus ended the third day.
On the forth day the mapper looked onto the map and saw it was very boxy and lacked detail. "let the map bring forth props, the prop that yields setting according to its kind, and the game entities that yields gameplay according to its kind," and it was so. And the mapper saw that it was good and morning already.
On the fifth day the mapper released the alphamap to the playtesters, and the playtesters saw that it was good, but some corridors lacked detail, some corners too dark and overall very confusing. The mapper had had too much fun and had placed many props and many faces, but it was good as the mapper had learned how to place props and faces in the most difficult situations. There was also a lot of bugs with the game entities and the playtesters could not play. There was many criticism, but the mapper is just a man and he can see only through his own eyes. Now there was playtesters and many eyes, and the map was to be the work of many men, giving insight from many views on the experience.
On the sixth day the mapper had the vision and saw the map as it should be for the game. And so he cleaned his geometry, removed redundant corridors, added needed corridors, reorganized some setting props, checked his game entities, moved some resource towers, fixed his lighting with the radiance mod, added vents and doors and many more. And thus it was so and it was morning already and the playtesters had planned a game, so at the end of the sixth day the mapper released the version which was closest to the vision, but not yet on spot, to the playtesters. The mapper decided to make this day a day longer which was already several days and watched the playtesters play some rounds. The rounds were very long as the playtesters fought for victory and developed many strategies. The mapper was very pleased and started to finally see the day where his map would be able to live without him polishing more and more and more, for in each day the mapper had to rework everything he had done in the days before, but it was good and the mapper was very pleased because each thing leads onto the next, and each step essential to climbing the stairs.
On the seventh day the mapper will release the version which is the vision, and the vision the version. Criticism will become opinion and some will like and some not, but it is good because people have something new to like or not, enriching the voice of each. And so the mapper was very pleased and finally had some spare time, and so that mapper started to think about a new map he could make.
Spark is probably a bit slower, as it doesn't have a lot of the features it should yet, so it's much slower than say, 3dsmax, but you do need to make a lot of stuff, and that takes time.
It gets faster the more you do it because you get very good at knowing what you want and how to get it, but it still comes down to putting stuff in takes time.
I suppose my answer would be, mapping takes time, but if you like doing it it doesn't feel like work for most of the time.
Of course when you're just stripping things out and recompiling to get it to run right up to the engine limits, then it gets a bit tedious, but spark hopefully will avert that problem.
Oh hell yeah. I've a collection of empty coffee jars sat in my kitchen as a testament to how many hours i've put into my map, each one respresents a minimum of 10 man hours.