Who is interested in another community mapping project?
BeigeAlert
Texas Join Date: 2013-08-08 Member: 186657Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow, Subnautica Playtester, Pistachionauts
Texas Join Date: 2013-08-08 Member: 186657Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow, Subnautica Playtester, Pistachionauts
I sure am! Hotdogs (my map) is still a long way off, and sometimes I wish I had a second project to jump over to when I get burned out on hotdogs... but not enough to want to start and entirely new map from scratch, so here's my idea: let's get a group of mappers together, and do a little brainstorming, decide on a layout, greybox it, divide up the detail work, and end up with one hell of a map!
EDIT: TO BE CLEAR, the following is JUST an idea. It's not the idea we've settled on! As of writing, we still have yet to decide on a theme and layout.
I'll kick things off with an idea I've had for a few weeks now. Rather than making yet another spaceship, spacestation, moon base, or w/e you want to call it that ends up being essentially the same thing anyways... how about something a little bit different... like a lunar amusement park! Yes... like my alias, I DID get that from Futurama (Season 1, episode 2, they make a delivery to the moon which has an amusement park on it). Then I remembered this picture:
Alright "Simeon-9"... so you think you're sooo safe do ya? Then one day, the Kharaa arrive! The entire planet (and the moon(s ?)) are evacuated... left abandoned... yadda yadda yadda, etc etc... now we can have our little marine vs alien battles on it.
Thinking ahead just a bit... we could have each tech point be a different ride (and I INSIST on having at least one rollercoaster!
)
To do this would require a lot of custom assets, which I would happily take charge of, potentially even alone, and leaving the mapping to others if that's what it takes.
But I can't do this alone (well I guess I COULD, but I doubt this game will even be around in 10 years
).
Again, the whole amusement park idea is just something I'm throwing out there, we don't have to use it, but I WOULD like to see just ONE more really excellent (and FINISHED) custom map for ns2 out there, and I want to be a part of it.
Who's with me?
EDIT: I'll keep track of who has come forward so far in this first post, and which tasks they have chosen.
Crew
BeigeAlert - Mapping, custom assets
Ironsoul - Mapping, custom assets
joohoo_n3d - custom assets
Loki - Feedback, testing.
Vert^ - Mapping, custom assets
Uncle Crunch - Mapping, testing
EDIT: TO BE CLEAR, the following is JUST an idea. It's not the idea we've settled on! As of writing, we still have yet to decide on a theme and layout.
I'll kick things off with an idea I've had for a few weeks now. Rather than making yet another spaceship, spacestation, moon base, or w/e you want to call it that ends up being essentially the same thing anyways... how about something a little bit different... like a lunar amusement park! Yes... like my alias, I DID get that from Futurama (Season 1, episode 2, they make a delivery to the moon which has an amusement park on it). Then I remembered this picture:
Alright "Simeon-9"... so you think you're sooo safe do ya? Then one day, the Kharaa arrive! The entire planet (and the moon(s ?)) are evacuated... left abandoned... yadda yadda yadda, etc etc... now we can have our little marine vs alien battles on it.
Thinking ahead just a bit... we could have each tech point be a different ride (and I INSIST on having at least one rollercoaster!
)To do this would require a lot of custom assets, which I would happily take charge of, potentially even alone, and leaving the mapping to others if that's what it takes.
But I can't do this alone (well I guess I COULD, but I doubt this game will even be around in 10 years
).Again, the whole amusement park idea is just something I'm throwing out there, we don't have to use it, but I WOULD like to see just ONE more really excellent (and FINISHED) custom map for ns2 out there, and I want to be a part of it.
Who's with me?
EDIT: I'll keep track of who has come forward so far in this first post, and which tasks they have chosen.
Crew
BeigeAlert - Mapping, custom assets
Ironsoul - Mapping, custom assets
joohoo_n3d - custom assets
Loki - Feedback, testing.
Vert^ - Mapping, custom assets
Uncle Crunch - Mapping, testing
Comments
Do it.
Exactly! I mean... I can count on ONE HAND how many finished custom maps there are out there. Unless I'm mistaken... It's pretty much just Jambi, and they're STILL working on that one. Kodiak is coming along real nicely, but then that's only 2 maps out there.
@Scatter are you volunteering?
While I'm sure you would prefer other (more skilled) people to help out, I'm here and I'm keen. I'll also be able to help out with 3D models. My 3D modelling skills are significantly better than my mapping skills, they're not exactly usable for creating custom assets yet, but they sure as hell will be.
How will we coordinate?
Glad to hear it Ironsoul! I'll put you down as mapping and art assets for now. As for learning the spark editor, I recommend you just play around with it for a while, make a really small map with just a couple of tech points and a few other rooms to hone your skills. It's taken me months to get to this level, and I'm still nowhere near as good as some of the others on the forums (who I'm really hoping to hear from in this thread!
As far as communication, we'll just use this thread for the time being. We still need to agree on a theme, layout, and then greybox this thing before we even think of detailing it. Add me on Steam too!
Ah poo, well happy skulk-hunting to you then!
That would be hella tight!
Caged gogo.
Oi! :P
That's certainly a possibility. Did you have any maps in mind?
If I was to pick up an old map, I'd want it to be one that already plays well. I'm not too keen on pouring a ton of time into fixing somebody else's design mistakes, especially if their map didn't play well in the first place and it might all end up for nothing anyways. Also, if it's a pain in the ass to edit (see hotdogs
Caged didn't stay grey-boxed for so long because flat is lazy but because he needed time t refine the ideas and develop understanding of layout. NS2 maps should not be thought of as just random rooms and corridors but rather a interconnected matrix of spaces and connections; where changing one area will have a knock on effect with how the entire map flows and plays.
Jambi is a great map but the method under which it was built caused XTCmen a lot of grief and probably increased his workload than if he had just grey boxed to final balance-quality before handing out rooms. Without him putting 100's (If not 1000's) of hours into fixing and editing the map it would not be anywhere near as fun as it is today. Can you even call it a community map with how much work the man has had to put into it? I would love to hear more about his experience and opinions on the production methods.
There's also the issues with style consistency and developing shared overall vision. People not completing work, differences in opinions.... you really have to know and trust the people you are working with.
Currently myself, flat, oblivious and loki are working on a map but our roles are completely separate and defined. It'll probably still take just as long to make as other maps to develop as you cannot make something unique, fun and balanced without experimenting with design through the proper procedures of lovely grey boxes.
Don't get me wrong I'm not trying to discourage community efforts just make people realise its not going to suddenly produce amazing maps any quicker than they are already being developed. Just have fun building and testing your grey box maps and when something good comes up maybe the author would be happy to accept help in dressing it.
If you have a art director who knows what he's doing and they are all experienced mappers I am sure multiple hands can apply consistent art to one level post grey boxing.
I would guess the work flow is Cory does the concept art, Env artists 'extract' models and textures from there and mappers apply them in the editor.
Its getting to the post grey-boxing stage that's the hard part and art doesn't make something any more fun when its all said and done.
My tips in this regard: sketch out a layout, and analyze those layout plans first with the help of everybody else to finetune it. One person builds the greybox (remember to test for walk times, etc), then you playtest to find obvious flaws. Once that phase is complete, assign areas to people, and have one person make sure that everything looks consistent. Giving everybody a room without any oversight while they work on it will result in mixing styles, a lighting colour palette that's all over the place, and too large a pool of art assets being used.
The idea was to have a central techpoint with double res. After playing competitive ns2 for a while I realized that a map is easily balanced if it has an rt-tp-rt-tp chain.
So I decided to change the greybox with keeping the already textured rooms at the time (Repair, waste, supply, docking). And made changes to everything else. Braw really did a good job dealing with gravity.
About 100 builds later we managed to change it to this: http://imgur.com/a/Bh2mr#5
After that build, the only mappers that worked on the project were braw and I. We had to change the northwest part of the map because.... it was a giant cluster F. (See Exhibit
The only rooms that I did were Organ, Security and Bay wing.
Braw did repair, pipeline, offload, skylights, gravity.
Schkorpio did Waste, oxy, coolant, trash.
In a nut shell, I was lucky enough to be on the project before it was too late. As you can tell I did not create too much, but I was able to just make it work when I started. My biggest contribution was having a sense of balance, and optimizing. There were a few areas were line of sight issues caused massive fps lag.
It was a pain in the ass at times but completely worth it as the map is played and loved (Hated?) by many. After 2 seasons of bug fixing most of the stuck spots are gone too
Another remake? This way everyone would have a basic idea of layout, then changes for ns2 gameplay could be decided upon as a group, greyboxed, then divvied out as flaterectomy mentioned. The reason I vote remake is cuz the nostalgia factor is awesome, could possibly be produced quicker if at least some base layout exsists, and I really really really wanna play nothing again! So yes, my vote is remake ns_nothing!
Anyways, whatever you guys decide, I hope the best for you brave and generous souls!
Hmm... well unfortunately I can't draw to save my life, so that's out unless somebody else that CAN comes along.
I'm thinking the way this will have to work is I -- or somebody else if I hear somebody volunteering -- get the greybox layout done first, not much theme required for that portion, and it can certainly be reworked later if needed. Then, we test it out, get the layout "finalized" (in quotes b/c yea right... "final" hahaha). Then, we decide the theme by picking one room -- probably a central location -- and completely finishing and detailing it. Then all the other rooms use this as a sort of style template, though with some leeway as we don't want every room looking EXACTLY the same, but similar.
I'm not entirely against using an ns1 layout... but as usual it will need to be re-tooled to work with ns2. I unfortunately never got into ns1 back in the day; I just never knew about it! So the nostalgia thing doesn't really make a difference to me, though I feel a lot of that will be lost since one of the main mappers on this project never played the original. From what you describe, it sounds like that particular map will require a LOT of modification to get it to work with ns2 properly, and I'm wondering if it would just be best to start from scratch at that point anyways.
@xtcmen @Howser thanks for weighing in guys! I'm still working on hotdogs, so it'll be a while before I get a layout done for this project. In the mean time, I'm just hoping more people will chime in and want to get involved.
Our process tends to change over time as requirements change, but I'll try to sketch something out that will hopefully be helpful to you. Pretty much every map has had more than one designer working on it at some point, often two or more at once. It's the nature of game development, especially for a small team, that things will get passed around for several people to contribute to.
Usually a level will have a single person in charge, responsible for overseeing the level's gameplay and coordinating development. In the case of Eclipse this was Jake (Jonacrab), for Biodome it was Michael (Olmy). Things weren't quite as organised before that, however it was still generally the case that there was one LD in charge of one level. On both Biodome and Eclipse we had all of our level designers working on detailing the level at the same time.
To start with, the lead mapper is responsible for the greybox layout and getting it through playtesting. At this point they're typically the only person on the level file, working with the map testers to get it playing well. In the meantime the concept art and from that environment art is being created. On Eclipse both the concept art and environment art was provided by Fox3D, with Cory overseeing the whole process as Art Director. On top of this Jake and I provided a lot of feedback on individual art assets from an LD perspective, advising on how to break up the concept art in ways that would work best for our level designers, making sure that all the assets worked well together and were properly modular, and so on.
Once the greybox is ready and playing well, we move on to actually detailing the level, with each level designer being assigned an area of the map, typically corresponding to the area covered by a single location entity. On Eclipse the greybox and detail stages overlapped a bit, because we'd promised to release it by the end of the year and we were tight for time. To work around this we just avoided assigning the areas that needed more work and testing until later on, when we were more sure that their layouts would undergo no further major changes. Generally this detailing process involves us sharing screenshots in internal chat and giving feedback on them, with Cory and the lead mapper having the most responsibility for making sure each designer is properly matching the look and feel of the level.
When an area is ready we send it over to the lead mapper who is responsible for integrating it into the "master" copy of the level. Sometimes he will do another quick pass on the area to implement further feedback or make sure that transitions between sections are smooth and consistent. Then the now-free designer is assigned another area of the level (or goes back to whatever else they were working on). And so the level is built up in this way, with detailed rooms being added one by one or a couple at a time, until the whole level is detailed. Ideally, playtesting is going on throughout this whole process.
As for any advice I can give you guys on collaborating on a level, I'm not completely sure what to say. As with anything else, much of any success on a project will come from having experience. What I DO think is good advice is to make sure there is plenty of communication, and to share your work with each other early and often. The real value of working in a team like this is the opportunity to influence and learn from each other, and the end product will be more consistent the more you talk and share. It's also a really really good idea to have a project lead who is responsible for the overall gameplay and look of the level. In fact I would suggest that that person avoid doing much of the detailing work and focus on coordinating everyone else and integrating their work into the main file, but I understand that this isn't the most fun task in the world, so your mileage may vary.
...well, that was a pretty long post! Hopefully there's something helpful in there that some of you can take away. If you have any more questions I'll do my best to answer them.
The time I spent on the Jambi project went like this:
Remedy, who started the project, had a very clear design idea of it, but we didn't have a layout. So three guys pitched in different (very rough) layouts, and one was chosen by majority vote to be used. I then boxed out a greybox and put that file up. We divided the map into rooms and corridors and everyone was free to choose one or more to work on.
The idea was, that everyone was free to change his rooms the way he liked, and only needed to keep connections to other areas intact. When someone finished something, or wanted feedback, he just uploaded the file with a new filename and accompanying changelog. Everyone else would copy their changes to the new file and load that up as a new version.
Here's the latest layout that I built the initial greybox from:
https://imgur.com/ZCzF5lo
The problems with the project started afterwards. While some mappers worked quite fast and had quite good skills, others did not, so every area of the map looked very different. Schkorpio and Braw where the ones who really worked fast, put out great ideas and reiterated on their areas. Others contributed good quality single rooms, and others (like me) just didn't manage to make their areas work. Eventually, I gave up on it, and my part (mainly Waste) was completely redesigned.
Other than that, mappers came and went, and I was really happy that it worked out in the end.
Edit: We used https://basecamp.com/ for communication. I think it worked quite well.
This is exactly what I'm afraid of, though I'm still waiting to hear from more people. At the moment it's just Ironsoul and I signed up to work on this.
Bah! $20/month... I'll have to think about this. Got so many other subscriptions bleeding me dry right now... (dropbox... Adobe... etc.) RIght now, we plan on using Github and dropbox, and steam groups for communication. Haven't actually started much of anything yet, so not too late to switch if needed.
Awesome, I'll put you down. Add me on steam, and I'll put you into the group.
You need to start coming up with this layout then beige and find some concept artist
But I must warn you about asking for suggestions, as your probably know, discussions on these forums can start a war.
Yea yea... I'll do the layout TOMORROW!
But yea, we really need a concept art guy... I can't draw to save my life! If we don't find one... I guess I could just finish a room we know isn't going to change, and everybody just sort of uses that as a style guide.
I WILL RIP YOUR FACE OFF FOR SUGGESTING THAT! Sorry, sorry... it's the forums... they kinda mess with your head.
All of our level design team are offsite, mostly scattered around the UK. We use Campfire, Google Talk, e-mail and sometimes Teamspeak to coordinate and keep in touch. We've been doing this together for a few years now, so we've settled into a pattern that works pretty well most of the time.
Ah that's good to know... I'll have to take a look at Campfire. Thanks Insane!
Just trying to help out here. I'm not a mapper but I always look forward to new maps. Getting pretty tired of the official maps. I just want to spice up my NS2 game-play.
I love the mapping community...I mean...you guys make new maps. So tight.
NS2_Icarus, NS2_Lost, NS2_Spines, NS2_Cradle, NS2_Kleos, NS2_Drydosity, NS2_Bast, NS2_Cadmus, NS2_Metal, NS2_Arena, NS2_Outpost, NS2_Nancy, NS2_Rigging, NS2_Aleser.
(I found all of these maps by searching deep into the mapping forums and I haven't updated my searches recently so I don't know if some of these are active now?)
EDIT: Yea Icarus is the best looking one here, layout and polish-wise, but that's part of the problem. It's just not very satisfying spending hundreds of hours finishing someone else's map. I'd like something we can call our own.
EDIT2: And we still need more people to sign up for this! :o3