Ready for some play testing. Shout out to A 3 Legged Goat for some suggestions for the map. *New -Weapon/Power Up placement -Added and subtracted some routes -Added Cover -Slight geometric change
Just posted my Quake 3 CTF 4 Map I have been working on. Portals work, still need to sort 2 jumps (Actually cannot remember where they go!) The only thing I cannot figure out is to have the moving platform move far enough. Must be some scripting thingy to make it work well. http://www.forgehub.com/maps/q3-ctf-space.1144/
damn, this is the best aesthetics i've seen so far. hopefully it doesn't detract from gameplay though.
Wow so that's the mall map. On a side note. I hate when files glitch Having to reforge your map because of glitches sucks. Hopefully will have some pics soon
I've only had a couple 1v1 or FFA with 3 people on it. I'm hoping to a get a 2 v 2 going here soon. So I'm crossing my fingers too. Still have to adjust the spawns a lot though.
I wouldn't say the theme is going to hold the map back, although some of the aesthetics might. The layout and some geometry may need some adjusting, but wont know which parts at that stage without getting some games on it. I think redistributing some hard and soft routes and relocating weapons and spawns is all it needs though.
The industry? Are you a professional designer? Not being sarcastic, legitimatly would like to know what industry your in. I like most forgers bring others in during the design phase. This is an extremely important part of a design process IMO. Why I said what I said was because I interpreted your post as you having such a strong personal vision for what you wanted the map to be you didn't need to play test. You knew exactly what was wrong, you were ready to scrap 90% of what you accomplished. WITHOUT a playtest. It perplexed me why someone who has such a vast understanding of thier own maps shortcomings would need another person to help them along. What's cool about forge is that were not working for anyone other than ourselves so what you do and how you design your map is entirely up to you. I just found some of your posts off putting. Maybe that's me taking it the wrong way. Regardless I hope you making me eat my words and prove to me and the community that yourl are a good designer and a good forger not just an amazing artist who is trying to be a good designer but isn't. Best of luck with genisis I hope it gets to a playtest able state in the next month.
This is what I'm currently finishing up, and will be posting soon after one or two more tests. http://xboxclips.com/The+S0UL+FLAME/77f55d5e-bd64-4e4f-8fca-e990d3fb6e5b And this is what I'm currently working on; a diner in space. Because why not? http://xboxclips.com/The+S0UL+FLAME/69e0e944-c04f-442b-a0f5-5eb55f1e6b5c
I didn't mean to insinuate that I was too good of a designer to playtest my map. I see how it may have been confusing though. I do indeed have a very strong vision for the way I want my maps to look, feel and play. When that vision is not reflected in the design, I open it up to others to throw ideas around to help mold it. I didn't think it was necessary to make every prototype of this map playable because the early versions weren't capturing the vision I had for the map. The current version captures it, but the geometry still needed some changes to make it playable. This is what the team sides of the map looked like last week. This was missing something and I didn't quite know what it was at the time. I looked at what I wanted this side of the map to accomplish and asked myself what I could do with it. It need to house an objective, it needed 3 spawn zones, and it need to be a fun place to fight in. Through some pushing and pulling, I ended up with this: This was a significant change. A whole new path was created, another one was contextualized in the map, and brand new geometry was introduced, with old geometry being thrown out in the process. At this point, the map felt like it would be ready for a playtest. But there was still something sticking out - something preventing me from seeing the map - and I didn't want to devote time to building the other half of the map until I figured out what it was. Fortunately, @Sethiroth hadn't given up on me and hopped back in to spitball some more ideas. So we ended up solving most of the issues I had with it. Now the lift landing curves closer to the center of the map. The other wall on the right angles closer as well and has an additional ledge to platform on, which was the missing link in making the room feel complete. And you can't see the back spawns from that last image at all. Now the map is smaller, the lines of sight are tighter and the playspace makes more sense. It is at this point that I would continue to create concept art to contextualize the structures I have created in order to understand the geometry of the map. Then it goes back through Forge and gets cleaned up, scaled, budgeted and tested. I rarely reach this stage either because I run out of budget in the game, or because I'm unable to solve the problems I have with my design before i can close it off. Ill be the first to say most of my designs up until now have been terrible, but the core pathing this time around was very solid. I just needed to make sure the geometry around it fit together. If we test it and it still needs work, we'll solve those problems. But I can confidently say that I can see the map now. Also, I'm heading into the creative industry, mostly in character animation and storyboarding. I'd love to go into level design, but it's more of a personal hobby than something I'd make a career out of. I would miss all my deadlines.
Thanks for clearing that up goat. Tho I'll still stick by what I said, even a sloppy playtest may reveal more than your willing to beleive. Although if you know what you want pre playtest stage than more power to you. Glad to see you came up with a solution to your base predicament. Once it does reach play testing stage I'd be honored to be a part of the tests. Again thanks for your self truthfulness and goodluck with the project!
I don't disagree. Terrain is tough though. All of that geometry takes time to design and then more time to replicate. I don't think the next maps I make will be any easier to design, but they'll be much easier to build for the simple fact that I can build the other half of the map in tandem. I'm not sure what I want with most of those yet though, so I'll be playing them a lot sooner to discover it. Genesis should be playable sometime next week. Now that the design is there, i'm going to take my time constructing it
Excellent job on the changes @Yekkou. Like the way your contextualized them. Hope to start testing some of these maps soon.
Haha boooooo. It kind of sucks that maps that aren't forge specific don't have any lightmaping outside the actual level. There are huge spaces outside the kill barriers but the lighting is all wonky. And thanks A3LG. Can't wait to start testing these maps either!
5 perspectives from a single match on Starlight the other night: Design changes since the initial playtest round: Removed two routes (asteroid crossing, street entrance to splinter grenades) from the satellite tower Improved geometry at carbine tower to increase readability and vertical combat potential Shifty discovers the movement options that I designed for the "sprint-thrust-crouch" button combo (see 3:20), Unfolded goes on a killing frenzy, Neckzilla blows people up with power cores, Duck and Res form a sword-bearing wolf pack and cause all sorts of chaos around the map, and I get in nerdy fights with people in/around the spaceships. Those nerdy spaceship fights are just as fun as they look This gameplay capture is much more representative of how the map will play with even teams.
I was bored that night and spectated the whole match.... You had about 13 suicides on both teams... each... Just thought you'd like know that.
Lol that's amazing. The initial sword rush where 3/4 red team members missed the platform was the best. Most players in the lobby were still relatively new to the map, so the suicide count will decrease over time as players gain map knowledge. Map design is all about finding creative ways to send players to their death anyway, right? Only the badass heroes survive the journey
Looks fun to me. Off topic: I don't see how y'all get that fast fall boost thing to work so easy. I must be doing something wrong because I can never nail the timing. I have probably been successful 4 out of 50 tries lol.
You just get a feel for it after a while. Every time someone asks me to see a map I run around trying to slide boost everywhere. I recently started to play MM consistently again, and I find myself doing it all the time.