Ok I'm wanting to make a complete community guide to forging a map. If you post in respones to this pls Add something. My plan is to take the best feedback and include it in the guide. Here are the section which may change if you can think of more to add or remove 1. Pre - map Design 2. Layout 3. Decor 4. Objcetives 5. Spawning 6. Tips and tricks My hope is that by time im done i can have created a very good very detailed guide. Any way here is my contribution. (will add more later) Pre – Map design This is the first part to making any map. You need to have a good idea. Maybe sketch something out on paper. Maps that have had a lot of thought put into their design tend to turn out better than maps that are just thrown together at a whim. Layout This is the most important part of your map. It determines the success of the map, how well the map plays, and if the player is going to have a good time or a bad time. You will want to consider what the purpose of this map is and design a layout the best achieves your directives. · Map Flow – where and how often. Where are the players going, how often do they go there. Consider the players to be like cattle you need to herd them around you map. The layout of the map should promote moving around the map. The people playing your map should not be rushing to one spot as soon as they spawn. If this is the case your layout will need to be reworked to prevent this. · Routes There are many different types of routes for crossing a map. As a general rule of thumb the more routes the better. The more ways a player has to move around the map the better. From what I have found is that having at least 3 ways to every location on the map works best. But you have to consider the type of path. Is it a man cannon or a teleporter if these are you only routes to a location then you may want to consider adding a walk way or ramp to the location to open it up. Teleports are usually campable so a good Ideas is to place a one way shield thought the teleporter this prevent the player from being able to stand on the teleporter and not let the other players thought which keeps the route open. · Ease of transitioning I think this is pretty self explanatory. How easy is it to move from point A to Point B. it is not always a good idea to make it real easy to get to a location? Areas of high traffic will typically need to be harder to get to. By making so they have to move through the other areas of the map to get to their desired location we also meet map flow requirements. While areas that won’t see to much action should be easy to get through seeing as the player doesn’t even want to be there. In terms of hard and easy I mean by easily can I get there I’m not saying make a elaborate series of plat forming jumps that only professional jumper could perform. Also your routes should always be nice and smooth no one likes a rocky road. Just be sure that the player can get around the map easily while still having to move thought the map to get to prime location. · High low This is always a big issue especially in reach I don’t know how many maps I have seen that suffers this problem. But People then to make the difference in levels to High. If your not into Z fighting then you will want to keep the difference between you levels to a minimum even though it is higher it is not to high. While areas that over a good height advantage should be present in most maps these areas should typically be small and offer a limited view. You don’t want people camping the top of the map. The person on the top almost always has the advantage and can do a step back and forward tact that lets the ledge eat a lot of the shots for him. Higher areas should have a more focused line of sight. Meaning that the higher it is the greater the advantage by limiting line of sight they can only have and advantage on a small section of the map. · Splash Damage This is to always be considered. Shooting a wall will have splash damage. I’m also going to include a bit about size in this topic. See splash damage and size go hand in hand. In halo grenades are very common so little room need to be more of a punishment for better location. Say you have a rocket and you shoot into the main base if the base is small and all the players are cramped together your going to get and exterm. The same affect can be achieved with nades. A little room in the wrong place can break you map. While you don’t want to make rooms to huge either the negatives of to big are definitely better than the to small (kinda like in real life loll) Splash damage I always better when you higher up but if your low and fire a rocket up the player up high can step back to avoid it. Alls this means is that weapons with splash damage should not spawn on higher levels of the map. · Ranges There are typically 3 ranges close, mid, long. A good map should have a balance of all 3. Just because your map is a close quarters maps doesn’t mean their shouldn’t be a little mid and long range combat. Similarly A long range maps should have some close quarters section. Balancing the 3 to create the type you want is the best. But these should be the exception and not the rule. A well balanced map will have all 3 types but none of them will have too much weight on how the game plays. Décor · Uniqueness Your Décor should be unique. People aren’t going to be impressed by something they have already seen before. This is the part of you map that makes it stand out. No matter how good the fundamentals are a map that doesn’t have an eye grabbing feature will sadly be overlooked. · Game play – Your décor should not interfere with game play placing a statue in a highly traveled route that catches people up will quickly become annoying. · Positioning. Go around you map and consider the places you most likely to look. While having a pretty roof would be cool it would be better to have a décor somewhere people are going to be looking most of the time. Mainly if I’m here where am I most likely to look? These areas should be your main concern. After the main areas are done you should consider the walls and ceiling. Good décor makes a good map. But décor won’t make map good. Tips N Tricks Offsetting the item limit. The first thing you want to do when you layout your map is to place about 5 – 10 weapons, 100 – 150 spawns, 16 initial spawns, 15 – 20 respawn zones, 40 – 50 objective markers, and 5 – 10 soft kill zones. Then later on when you if you hit your item limit you won’t be chopping up you geometry to support a bare minimum spawn system and objectives. By doing this when you hit you item limit you able to make cuts that have the least impact on your overall map design. So instead of cutting blocks out of the map in order to place a Kill zone you could cut a couple of Respawn zones and typically you want to layout more than you plan to use this give you a head up that your getting near the item limit and allows you to respond appropriately. As you can see there are still a few sections missing So pls take the time to add your very best advice. (i will be updating this guide regularly and it will include your name and any contribution you added)
Decide whether or not it's going to be Symmetrical, if it is, build one half of the map before going into detail on both
layout: don't use white text because I can't read it for my background thanks also, if you are intrested in forging guides Godly Perfection has a good one at Reaching Perfection
Forging is an art. You can't just write a thread that has everything you can possibly do in forge. You will fail. That's why people post map previews so people with experience can help them since it's impossible to just make a great book of forge. Start with some smaller individual articles on specific topics. Also note that we have quite a few forge guides already so try not to infringe on anyone's turf. Please.
No i was hopping that buy putting a little out there i could mabye spark some issues or just get some one to add to it. The complete comminty guide was not to be a guide by any one person but a guide compiled of imput from memeber of the community an easy to find refernce from the people who makes maps for people who make maps. while one dude could easily write a great guide its when a large amount of people work together you get something truly great. I get what your saying about art. but throwing a bunch of block around randomly and calling it art isnt going to make the map great, there are still consideration's that have to be made inorder to make the map work. (Good advice it dosent look like anybody else i going to add anything anyway(watching dreams die, sadly looks down and walks away) [br][/br]Edited by merge: All that can be found at bungie. anything i wrote woud just be a restatment of what they got so it would basiclly be plagerism.