Map Layout Tips and Strategy

Map Layout Guide
Tips and Strategies to making a map play well​

This is my guide to making a well made map. This guide applies to brand new forgers to multi-featured forgers, no matter how good your map looks without any game play flow people won't play your map more than once. Game play affects people from Bungie's Halo level designers to a kid who just picked up Halo 3 over the holidays and saw his friend made a map in forge and wants to do the same. I hope this guide will help you make maps that are brilliant.

Overview​

First of all I will explain the functions of why layout of a map is so important as to that I had to write a tutorial for it, and why you should learn every tip and trick about great game play.

Layout of a map is first really basic seeming, "I'm doing a symmetrical map so let's make my map a square/rectangle.", "I'm doing an asymmetrical map so lets make my map a 'T' shape". Sure these both seem like great ideas that fit very well with what they're meant to do, but are they original? No. Will they play well? Probably not.

So in my tutorial I will give you step by step guides, tricks, tips and everything I know about making a good map.

Step-By-Steps​

First I will separate my step by step guides into multiple parts, 1 step by step guide will not and should not suffice to every type of map that can be made.

Symmetrical​

Symmetrical map are (in my opinion) easier to develop better layouts and design for because it's only half a map that needs to be designed, and balance is already in place.

1. Usually how I would start off at trying to come up with map designs is either sleep on it or search around for good ideas. By searching around I don't mean steal another forgers map and change a few things, I mean play other games, Bungie's maps, or even houses/buildings, anything could give you an idea for a map so don't complain that there's so many maps nowadays that you can't make one that isn't stealing someone else's idea because the possibilities are endless.

Once I get an idea for a map I usually open up old trust MS Paint, you may use any other graphic program you wish but for its simplicity I use Paint. So once my paint program is open and I'm all comfy I draw. Usually for a symmetrical map I will start off with a square/rectangle.

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So there is a box, wouldn't be too fun now would it? So lets add some paths and shape to it.

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So here its starting to look more like a basic map. It has red and blue base and 2 snipe towers. The buildings that you add in these steps should be the main buildings in which you want the game play to flow around. Having game play flow around certain areas is more important in symmetrical maps then asymmetrical. In asymmetrical you want your whole map to be used and every area to have their pros and cons. In symmetrical you want these main areas to be used for setting up and defending and conquering the other team. So for our maps looks very plain and would make most players yawn. Our sniper towers have no paths to them either. There is very little cover between main areas and spawn killing would most likely be horrendous no matter how good you are with spawns. So lets add smaller details to the map to help along with the whole picture. Remember this paint image does not need to be the most detailed thing in the world and is very hard to judge what you map will look like 3 dimensionally but can make your map much better and overall easier to make.

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So there we go we have a more advanced map and it contains many elements that were not in part of the basic map. But once you've reached this step you now have to start worrying about game play and how the overall map will flow. So looking at the map so I'll list all the points that will affect game play on this map:

Cover: Cover is a huge issue as far as map game play goes. On our map so far we have a lot of cover on the bottom of the map and not as much on the top of the map. This is good, because of the fact that it is easier to rain fire down on people than it is up on people, the higher up you are the harder it should be to stay alive. However too much cover can be a bad thing and slow down game play. The cover on bottom is larger to give people that haven't made it on top a chance to survive. People on top though also deserve a chance to survive, so they should deserve a hiding spot to, maybe a cross in the center of the map?

Spawning: Spawning can change a map and how it plays, place many spawns facing towards the same area and that area will become more populated than if the spawns were all facing towards a different area. So far we can only go so far on spawning on this map as to know where the safe and unsafe areas will be to spawn. Currently our map does not have many safe areas to spawn at, so lets add some more. Just remember that by safe areas I do not mean a room with 1 door in it, a wall or a box can be fair enough for protecting people who freshly spawned. I will mark spawns with small light blue circles.

Power Weapons: Power Weapons can change the flow of a map very easily. Off the draw of the map players will rush their power weapons, when they re-spawn these area will become busier. So far on our map we have 2 snipers. These snipers are semi-balanced, the main problem being it's easy for 1 team to control both snipers at the same time. So lets add a team specific power weapon that can easily take out or distract the snipers. So we'll add rockets to each base, now its best to make these rockets low ammo so that they'll only push the enemy team either from home base to mid, or mid to enemy base, rather then from home base to enemy base.

Routes: Routes in a map help make game play flow and change. An 'I' shaped map (2 rooms and 1 hallway connecting) will be very repetitive game play and will lead to camping and sour faces. To help this adding multiple routes to a base can allow for faster paced and more exciting game play.Our map so far is good for paths because it is very open and more MLG style-ish. However we do need somethings to help. Our base currently only has 2 paths to it and no direct way to get there from bottom, so lets add paths. So now our map has a total of 4 methods to get up to top, 2 for each side. The problem is they're all on 1 side of our map, more ramps here we go!

So all of the changes to our map has made it look like this:

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This is the time you should start booting up forge and start placing items down. I first start placing the main items to make sure everything is to scale right and no major changes will be needed then I start interlocking/geo-merging or whatever semi-permanent things the map needs.

Asymmetrical
Work In Progress​

Tips​

So here are some helpful tips for making great maps that flow well:

• NEVER make a room with only 1 exit.
• Make multiple paths to areas so that camping can be prevented and to make the map a new experience everytime.
• Try using very out of this world ideas all you want, sick of square maps? Make a map that is a trapazoid.
• Try to do thing that keep your players from walking the same route everytime.
• Keep every area balanced when making asymmetrical maps. No use in adding extra hallways if they aren't going to get used.

This is my tutorial so far, I will be adding more and more. Thanks for reading!

 

Good point, I edited a little to reflect this but nothing big will change. My asymmetric step by step will be more focused around flow of the map rather than cover. I feel as though cover is more important in symmetrical maps then it is in asymmetric maps because of how layouts usually are, but because it is decided about layout my stereotype doesn't always apply