Longtime player.. I suck at remembering map layout. I get lost all the time.
zeep
Join Date: 2002-11-01 Member: 3367Members
Join Date: 2002-11-01 Member: 3367Members
I can use some help here please.
Yeah even though i've been playing on/off since the NS2 start, i find it hard to remember map layouts. Especially since i've began to play alien only. The commander will tell us to move somewhere, i have to find my bearings.. The Skulk is fast, so i get lost fast.
So i pull up the map a lot. Most times i really have to concentrate to find myself on the map first (why can't i be a BIG WHITE triangle?), then i have to somehow manage to go a route with that map up not seeing where i'm going. Even with the map up i find it hard to find a route.. Can i make the map rotate with my view btw?
Anyone else has this loss of bearings?
How can i remember map layouts better?
Btw, i have this in no other games! Most times i remember a map layout pretty fast. NS2 is just that hard!
Yeah even though i've been playing on/off since the NS2 start, i find it hard to remember map layouts. Especially since i've began to play alien only. The commander will tell us to move somewhere, i have to find my bearings.. The Skulk is fast, so i get lost fast.
So i pull up the map a lot. Most times i really have to concentrate to find myself on the map first (why can't i be a BIG WHITE triangle?), then i have to somehow manage to go a route with that map up not seeing where i'm going. Even with the map up i find it hard to find a route.. Can i make the map rotate with my view btw?
Anyone else has this loss of bearings?
How can i remember map layouts better?
Btw, i have this in no other games! Most times i remember a map layout pretty fast. NS2 is just that hard!
Comments
You're a big yellow triangle that is enlarged every time you press the map key for the first second.
Your current location /room name is always displayed at the top left of your screen.
Be sure to zoom way out on your minimap as a marine. (its in the options)
Best way i have found to learn new room names has always been to command...
it sort of becomes your meat and potatoes for coordination with your team. After a while the layout is burned into your brain, but still isn't that familiar on the ground, but that's okay because you have the location on the top left of your screen.
Also there are mods out there you can use on most servers:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=156395252
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=106432270
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=108732851
Just a quick note if you do decide to use minimap mods, be sure when map updates come out in the future, to also be sure that the mod is also updated. It wasn't until i saw i was apparently 100 ft to the left of cafeteria that i realized the minimap mod i was using hadn't been updated since January (the second mod listed), true story.
Looking at the map is too important to give up for the purpose of memorizing the level. Just look at the map and deal.
But by using the map too much it's easy to not "see" the actual level in front of you because you are constantly looking at the map for navigation.
1) Keep tabs on where I am and where I'm going.
2) See what's happening on the rest of the map.
Because of this, I find I'm usually one of the first one to notice when something is getting attacked, even when that's on the other side of the map, which I dutifully call out to the team.
Which is why NS2 is an RTS game. ^^
This is one of the more important things in NS2, the map shows so much info.
But yes, keeping the map up for keeping tabs on enemy activity is wise in any case.
The NS2 maps aren't particularly hard to learn, I find. Not sure why you seem to have trouble with that!
It's way harder learning some NS2 maps than others; and it was easier to learn most NS1 maps(with the possible exception of eclipse) because maps in NS2 are excessively cluttered and areas are not sufficiently distinct. Maps for NS1 were bold, stylistic and made up of relatively few and distinct shapes, and many rooms were distinguished by some simple landmark feature, simply because the engine would not allow you to do anything else.
NS2 has an over-reliance on plainish blue-gray metalic and rust-brown textures. This too doesn't help.
Isn't it kind of UWE to blur your vision, so you can focus on what's important (the map)?
NS2 has by far the more easily memorable room features compared to NS1, and this was actually a design goal [citation needed]. Even if it's really not a stock example, take Descent, for instance. Unique colours, props and textures in almost every room. Tram might have samey color scheme and no memorable props, but the room geometries are unique enough and the central tram tunnel landmark gives coherence and is a quick way to orientate yourself. Refinery has perhaps the blandest rooms with half of them being just bloated corridors, but it's practically just a doughnut with the memorable lava falls in the middle. Even, or perhaps especially Summit has made a good job of making every room different, and the map's layout isn't exactly rocket science.
Contrast this with a map like Nothing. Most rooms were either huge brown cubes or small brown cubes and half of the map was made of snaky corridors and elevator shafts. Lost had pretty much the same characteristics, certainly as dark and bland in textures. Origin easily got you lost in the huge vent system along with corridors that looked like vents and vents that looked like corridors. Lucid? Oh dear god.
Sum this up with the fact that most NS1 maps were bigger and didn't have to conform to random spawns, and you'll quickly see that the NS2 maps are the simpler choice.
It's true, i find it harder to memorize NS2 maps as opposed to other games with 'hard' maps. Glad that i'm not the only one!
Like others here i have the map bound to an easy thumbbutton on the mouse so i have it up a lot so i don't miss anything important happening. The problem starts when i want to move towards that trouble spot and find that i'm going the wrong way! Guess i simply have to run around more in them for now.
Seriously. Tram was the hardest map for me to learn, and it was ENTIRELY because south tunnel and north tunnel look like the SAME FREAKING CURVY TUNNEL that you can't see more than ten meters down the length of, and hub looks like hub looks like hub no matter which way you approach it.
I consider that a feature. Call it a challenge, among what is otherwise a very-well executed aesthetic in NS2 to have different spaces look and feel different.
Also, tram repair is a freaking mess. I mean challenge. And I never know where the hell I am when I'm in summit data core, even with the map open. It's like riding on a carousel. Mineshaft has some clever traps in the geometry around central / crusher / repair that stupid people like myself keep getting lost or stuck in. More challenge.
In most cases, though, I have no problems navigating even the most obscure maps I've never played on before, like when I manage to play on a server running community-developed maps like Jambi and whatnot. Because all that a Marine needs to know is to follow the Marine in front of him and shoot anything else that moves. Oorah.
I keep reading this all over the place in these forums but sorry, it's not a fact (at least in what matters the most).
The NS1 and NS2 maps are quite similar in size if you are comparing the travel time involved. Now if you mean in total area units or number of rooms or any other way I have no idea.
But to track the time it takes to walk a circle from marine spawn all the way around the circumference of the map and back to marine spawn in various NS1 and NS2 maps will yield quite similar results overall. What won't happen is it taking much longer on NS1 maps. A couple or three will stand out as being noticeably longer concerning travel times like nothing and tanith, but IIRC those were mainly because of the out of the way winding hallways.
Then they failed miserably, just like a long list of other design goals for NS2.
Summit is ok. Veil is cheating, because remember it well. Decent and tram are particularly bad; a cluttered mess where exits and entries of some rooms blend into their cluttered surroundings. You should never have to pop up the minimap to find the exits of the room you're in, that's god-awful design.
The only NS maps that rival NS2 maps in terms of difficulty to learn was eclipse due to the large number of samey corridors and hera due to level over level and ladders.
And yet, it is the most confusing map in the game. With some of the tech rooms I still often find myself going in circles looking for the correct exit, having to pop the minimap.
Nearly every corridor had a different texture scheme and different geometry. All the exits were easily distinguishable. The only thing that could possibly be difficult about nothing was a couple of the vents and powersilo which was close to rotationally symmetric. Still a piece of piss to learn compared to tram or decent.
When you spend hours playing a map, and then someone chooses to rotate, lets say say deposit in mineshafts, I kept entering the room and exiting through the same entrance
After some time I got used to it, but is disorientating.
And now we have Generator in Docking, its departures rotation/change all over again
All for the sake of balance, I cant deny that it has worked so far in those rooms.