I thought that I would compile this little guide here to help new members with map making. This thread is more about theory than techniques, but I hope that my information will help new and older members alike. So without further ado here is Jelly's What to Think about Before, During, and After You Make a Map! 1. What is your idea? Write down your idea on a piece of paper or type it up and print it out. Share it with some friends unless you are keeping it a super secret. Look around and see if anyone has done anything close to it before. Copying is a big NO-NO and people will yell and scream at you if they think you copied. This part closely ties into the next part. 2. What kind of map are you making?Doesn't have to exactly what you intend on making. You just want to think about if you are making a minigame map, competitive, casual, aesthetic, or some kind of combination. In case you don't know what these mean here is a synopsis.Competitive Maps - Maps set up for what you would think of as matchmaking playlists. Typically gametypes such as team slayer, oddball, capture the flag, assault, etc. Very important for these to have flow... I will cover that more later. An example would be GD27BlueDevil and BlazeIsGod's High Voltage Casual Maps - Maps set up for custom gametypes that don't quite qualify as a minigame. Indicators of a casual map include non-default starting weapons and player traits or custom gametypes in most cases. An example would be Insane54's Cave Freaks Mini Games Maps - Maps that would use "fun gametypes". These almost always require an attached custom gametype. Examples of this are puzzle maps and jump courses. Aesthetic Maps - Maps that are built typically for "looks". Typically the gameplay is less important that how they were built. Most have at least one prominent feature. A great example is the giant spider over Blackout on Felipe dos's Eight Emerald Legs map. Race Maps - Very straight forward. Maps built where you drive from one location to another. Often built on a racetrack and almost always used with the racetracks VIP gametype with the exception of maps such as Brute Burnout and Rocket Race. MLG Maps - A kind of competitive map. Read about the requirements in this thread. Thanks Shock. 3. Is your gametype idea feasible?First you want to consider your gametype. If you are planning a competitive map, then it will likely be fine to set up because it will use default gametypes such as Capture the Flag and King of the Hill. However if you are planning a casual or minigame map, you will want to look at the options for your gametypes. One of the gametypes that offers the most customization is the VIP gametype. It is used for many famous gametypes such as Racetracks, Rocket Race, and Insane54's Cave Freaks. If you want to have a certain objective to protect or capture, then King of the Hill, Oddball, Assault, and CTF are great choices. Or you could use VIP again to protect your team's VIP. 4. Is your map feasible?At this point, you likely do not have any specific geometry or features in your mind, but you want to be thinking about the flow of your map and the techniques you can use. These days, interlocking and geomerging are used very commonly in maps. For a tutorial on these you can find plenty in the Forge Discussion forum and official tutorials in the Forging 101 subforum. If you need extra help there are always plenty of eager members around here that would love to help you with forging, including me! Some designs you are thinking of might be difficult to make by yourself, so you might want to think of getting a partner for your first maps. You can both work together in the forge lobby. One can hold an object while another is setting it up to merge for example. 5. Need anything else?Before you start making your map, think about this. Do you need a canvas with nothing on it? Do you need an unlimited budget glitch map? How about one with the back part of foundry blocked off? When you do this, remember to write down the creator's name and the canvas's name, too. Anything else? One popular thing to do is to use the Foundry Designer linked to at the top of the page to start designing your map. If you decide to make a blueprint there, you should probably print out your diagram for reference if your Xbox lies in a different room like mine. 6. Make yourself comfortable.Remember it's just a game. While Forging as we all know is srs business, there is no need to freak out if you can't quite get something to work. Get a drink, maybe a nice semi to not at all healthy snack like some pretzels or a few dozen hot pockets, if they make you feel good that is. Take breaks, too. Intense forging can lead to bad results, so when you play, listen to music, or talk to a friend in your chat while you are forging. You might actually make something nicer when you are slightly distracted. If you put on music, it probably should be some nice soft rock or something. I wouldn't recommend Disturbed or whatever band you listen to to make people think you are hardcore. (AmericanPsycho has since disproved this.) 7. Get started for God's Sake!Start out with something basic. You get a better sense of sense if you focus on the big picture before your "super cool thingy". For small maps, the geometry should be fairly close together, but in larger maps, space it out, but not so much that the area looks bare. Remember, you WILL make a version two of your map. No question. On that note, don't forget if you used the unlimited budget glitch. Why? Because if you delete things, you cannot use them at all anymore. To do that, you would have to go through the complicated job of reglitching the map. FLOW- One of the most important parts of map making. FLOW stands for "Feel Like One World". What I mean by this is that you feel powerful being able to move around. It's a stretch. What it really is would be the ability to easily move around the map. For example, you might want to use walls to constrain movements of a player into a certain amount of directions. For example if you have 2 walls on either side of you, you will move either backwards or forwards naturally. Also, while skillful jumping is important, hard jumps all over the map can hurt gameplay. 8. Get Help! All of the good Forgers have people look at their map while it is being built. Call up some of you Xbox Live friends and some people from here, too. That way you can have testers and forgers looking at it from their separate views. Obviously it is best to invite experienced members, but while testing any person can help. If you have the problem of a lack of friends playing custom games the best thing to do is to use this site as a resource. I suggest one of these two methods. Go to the Testers Guild subforum. Create a post where you specify what time you want to test your map, your gamertag, and your timezone. Then wait for responses. Become friends with people here on Forgehub. On members' profiles there is a link to their gamertags on the right side of the screen. Follow the link to Xbox.com and add them as your friend. When you play customs, many people here have other people in their parties. 9. Posting Once you finally have completed and tested your map, it's time to post on our site, but like in the beginning, you have to pool together your resources. First write a good bit on your map. Include the name, number of people it is intended for, a weapon list, compatible gametypes, background information, RESOURCES USED fun facts, and whatever else you find is necessary. By this time, your map should be uploaded to your file share and you should have screenshots also. For screenshots you should take some stills without people and some action shots from a tester game. I won't explain how to upload pictures, but you can find out how to do that here. Thanks xX5w33ny70ddXx! If you want to have a video, you can save files that you want to be captured and upload them to your file share. Then go to gamevee.com and use the grab feature and download the files after they are processed. You can use standard movie editing programs like iMovie or Windows Movie Maker to put the files together and upload the video to youtube. Then copy the URL of the video, paste it in your post, and check the box below your post that says "Use Goldbrick Media Options". You will now have an embedded video in your post. Finally, some forums have "Tags" which are colorful words that go before your map post name which describe it. For example "nonfoundry" is one tag that is used frequently. Once you feel like you have everything you need, take the plunge and press the button that says "Submit New Thread". 10. After You PostIt is no surprise that your map will be criticized. But the members on this site will be fair and provide an accurate and helpful review of your map. Remember that what they say is meant to help you, so you should think about what they say to improve. There are a few ways to advertise your map. First is adding a link of your map to your signature, so when you post it is displayed. To do that, copy the URL of your map. Go to User CP and click on Edit Signature. Type in your map's name and highlight it. Press the insert link button and paste your URL. Then save your signature. Congrats! You have it! Another way would be to make friends around the site and send them visitor messages with the URL of your map when you release it. Because you are friends with them, there is naturally a higher chance they will download your map. You can also ask members to comment and rate on Bungie.net because a fair amount of downloads come from the mothership, too. I hope you enjoyed reading my guide which took like an hour and a half to write. I plan on adding more as it is needed. Tell me what you think of it.
I haven't read the entire post because I am not a new member, but it seems like it would be very informative to newer members whom are having difficulties while posting their maps. It's good to see a guide for this. Great Guide.
Nice guide, but I'm afraid I listen to Disturbed and Metallica while forging. It depends what kind of music you like I guess, and Indestructible and Master of Puppets just does it for me. Well written my friend.
Fair enough, I just don't want your head to asspload when you are trying to merge a corner wall horizontally into the pipes by the bases on foundry lol
Hmm this is great. An excellent source of information for newer members. I think this will clean up the maps section by eliminating some of the first n00b attempts. Just one thing though, you can delete things on a budget glitched map, just as long as you dont have 1 left or the maximum number placed. But good job, this is very well put together.
Wait what? Nubs read long posts? Than why don't any of them know what spam is? It says quite clearly in the rules which they don't read even after they are infracted.
I'm in the process of reading it at the moment. I like it so far. Although I'm not a fan of your colour choice. Imo, you should make it look a little neater with some simple changes. I made a few alterations to the formatting that I feel work very well. Take it or leave it. Spoiler I thought that I would compile this little guide here to help new members with map making. This thread is more about theory than techniques, but I hope that my information will help new and older members alike. So without further ado here is Jelly's What to Think about Before, During, and After You Make a Map! 1. What is your idea? Write down your idea on a piece of paper or type it up and print it out. Share it with some friends unless you are keeping it a super secret. Look around and see if anyone has done anything close to it before. Copying is a big NO-NO and people will yell and scream at you if they think you copied. This part closely ties into the next part. 2. What kind of map are you making? Doesn't have to exactly what you intend on making. You just want to think about if you are making a minigame map, competitive, casual, aesthetic, or some kind of combination. In case you don't know what these mean here is a synopsis. Competitive Maps - Maps set up for what you would think of as matchmaking playlists. Typically gametypes such as team slayer, oddball, capture the flag, assault, etc. Very important for these to have flow... I will cover that more later. An example would be GD27BlueDevil and BlazeIsGod's High Voltage Casual Maps - Maps set up for custom gametypes that don't quite qualify as a minigame. Indicators of a casual map include non-default starting weapons and player traits or custom gametypes in most cases. An example would be Insane54's Cave Freaks Mini Games Maps - Maps that would use "fun gametypes". These almost always require an attached custom gametype. Examples of this are puzzle maps and jump courses. Aesthetic Maps - Maps that are built typically for "looks". Typically the gameplay is less important that how they were built. Most have at least one prominent feature. A great example is the giant spider over Blackout on Felipe dos's Eight Emerald Legs map. Race Maps - Very straight forward. Maps built where you drive from one location to another. Often built on a racetrack and almost always used with the racetracks VIP gametype with the exception of maps such as Brute Burnout and Rocket Race. MLG Maps - A kind of competitive map. Read about the requirements in this thread. Thanks Shock. 3. Is your gametype idea feasible? First you want to consider your gametype. If you are planning a competitive map, then it will likely be fine to set up because it will use default gametypes such as Capture the Flag and King of the Hill. However if you are planning a casual or minigame map, you will want to look at the options for your gametypes. One of the gametypes that offers the most customization is the VIP gametype. It is used for many famous gametypes such as Racetracks, Rocket Race, and Insane54's Cave Freaks. If you want to have a certain objective to protect or capture, then King of the Hill, Oddball, Assault, and CTF are great choices. Or you could use VIP again to protect your team's VIP. 4. Is your map feasible? At this point, you likely do not have any specific geometry or features in your mind, but you want to be thinking about the flow of your map and the techniques you can use. These days, interlocking and geomerging are used very commonly in maps. For a tutorial on these you can find plenty in the Forge Discussion forum and official tutorials in the Forging 101 subforum. If you need extra help there are always plenty of eager members around here that would love to help you with forging, including me! Some designs you are thinking of might be difficult to make by yourself, so you might want to think of getting a partner for your first maps. You can both work together in the forge lobby. One can hold an object while another is setting it up to merge for example. 5. Need anything else? Before you start making your map, think about this. Do you need a canvas with nothing on it? Do you need an unlimited budget glitch map? How about one with the back part of foundry blocked off? When you do this, remember to write down the creator's name and the canvas's name, too. Anything else? One popular thing to do is to use the Foundry Designer linked to at the top of the page to start designing your map. If you decide to make a blueprint there, you should probably print out your diagram for reference if your Xbox lies in a different room like mine. 6. Make yourself comfortable. Remember it's just a game. While Forging as we all know is srs business, there is no need to freak out if you can't quite get something to work. Get a drink, maybe a nice semi to not at all healthy snack like some pretzels or a few dozen hot pockets, if they make you feel good that is. Take breaks, too. Intense forging can lead to bad results, so when you play, listen to music, or talk to a friend in your chat while you are forging. You might actually make something nicer when you are slightly distracted. If you put on music, it probably should be some nice soft rock or something. I wouldn't recommend Disturbed or whatever band you listen to to make people think you are hardcore. 7. Get started for God's Sake! Start out with something basic. You get a better sense of sense if you focus on the big picture before your "super cool thingy". For small maps, the geometry should be fairly close together, but in larger maps, space it out, but not so much that the area looks bare. Remember, you WILL make a version two of your map. No question. On that note, don't forget if you used the unlimited budget glitch. Why? Because if you delete things, you cannot use them at all anymore. To do that, you would have to go through the complicated job of reglitching the map. FLOW- One of the most important parts of map making. FLOW stands for "Feel Like One World". What I mean by this is that you feel powerful being able to move around. It's a stretch. What it really is would be the ability to easily move around the map. For example, you might want to use walls to constrain movements of a player into a certain amount of directions. For example if you have 2 walls on either side of you, you will move either backwards or forwards naturally. Also, while skillful jumping is important, hard jumps all over the map can hurt gameplay. 8. Get Help! All of the good Forgers have people look at their map while it is being built. Call up some of you Xbox Live friends and some people from here, too. That way you can have testers and forgers looking at it from their separate views. Obviously it is best to invite experienced members, but while testing any person can help. If you have the problem of a lack of friends playing custom games the best thing to do is to use this site as a resource. I suggest one of these two methods. Go to the Testers Guild subforum. Create a post where you specify what time you want to test your map, your gamertag, and your timezone. Then wait for responses. Become friends with people here on Forgehub. On members' profiles there is a link to their gamertags on the right side of the screen. Follow the link to Xbox.com and add them as your friend. When you play customs, many people here have other people in their parties. 9. Posting Once you finally have completed and tested your map, it's time to post on our site, but like in the beginning, you have to pool together your resources. First write a good bit on your map. Include the name, number of people it is intended for, a weapon list, compatible gametypes, background information, RESOURCES USED fun facts, and whatever else you find is necessary. By this time, your map should be uploaded to your file share and you should have screenshots also. For screenshots you should take some stills without people and some action shots from a tester game. I won't explain how to upload pictures, but you can find out how to do that here. Thanks xX5w33ny70ddXx! If you want to have a video, you can save files that you want to be captured and upload them to your file share. Then go to gamevee.com and use the grab feature and download the files after they are processed. You can use standard movie editing programs like iMovie or Windows Movie Maker to put the files together and upload the video to youtube. Then copy the URL of the video, paste it in your post, and check the box below your post that says "Use Goldbrick Media Options". You will now have an embedded video in your post. Finally, some forums have "Tags" which are colorful words that go before your map post name which describe it. For example "nonfoundry" is one tag that is used frequently. Once you feel like you have everything you need, take the plunge and press the button that says "Submit New Thread". 10. After You Post It is no surprise that your map will be criticized. But the members on this site will be fair and provide an accurate and helpful review of your map. Remember that what they say is meant to help you, so you should think about what they say to improve. There are a few ways to advertise your map. First is adding a link of your map to your signature, so when you post it is displayed. To do that, copy the URL of your map. Go to User CP and click on Edit Signature. Type in your map's name and highlight it. Press the insert link button and paste your URL. Then save your signature. Congrats! You have it! Another way would be to make friends around the site and send them visitor messages with the URL of your map when you release it. Because you are friends with them, there is naturally a higher chance they will download your map. You can also ask members to comment and rate on Bungie.net because a fair amount of downloads come from the mothership, too. I hope you enjoyed reading my guide which took like an hour and a half to write. I plan on adding more as it is needed. Tell me what you think of it.
thanks a lot linu i appreciate it a lot not many ppl would take the time to get rid of all my colors and replace them with a more attractive scheme will update
Wow this is a very good guide, and I believe personally that it should be stickied or something. The only thing that would make this a better guide would be by embedding the picture tutorial inside this thread, but you have a link to it so i gues you really dont need to. Nice job on this
Yeah I think it is best to just link to it b/c sweenytodd did most of it btw it was stickied if you look
This is very nice and it will indeed help new members. Thanks for using my map as an example lol I specially like the posting part because I remember that being harder than building the acually map when I first joined FH!
If you go into an Xbox Live party, and one kid is being super annoying, I find you would screw up more listening to him, so mute them. Seems kinda like a no-brainer, but not many people do it because they do not know they can mute a guy in a party.
ok not a bad idea... I might do an update on my thread soon also matty, 3 of those happen to be my favorite bands lol
Any techno bands particularly? I don't really know any lol. Also unless you actually have CDs it is best to stream from your computer to your xbox if you have media center or use a sound system because you cannot rip data cds on an xbox.
It does depend on what you listen to. I listen to Death Metal, Metalcore, and stuff like that. Excellent guide. I'm using it as a reference as I build my first map.