Death Warrant Forums

The very best book, (Toxic Waste had told me about this, thanks Toxic!) and "bible" of mapping for ut2004 is called

Mastering Unreal technology, The Art of Level Design" It basically is the written form of the DVD edition videos that explain how to map, but goes even further. I bought mine from Amazon.com. They still have it, and you may be able to buy it used.

If anyone wants to work together putting out a new map. I'm all there. I'm in the process of creating a large outdoor map, and I'm trying to put in static meshes I created from scratch throughout the map. However I probably will re-use some of the plants (trees etc.) from the standard maps. Just a beginner with Maya, but am now able to create things like buildings, and other objects without too much trouble. As with anything, there is a long learning curve if you want to create content and create maps, but like everything, its all worth it because you can do so much if you set your mind to it. THe only trouble is the amount of time needed to create something truly wonderful. Be prepared to spend ALOT of time devoted to map editing if you want an origional, made from scratch map.
For instance, (correct me if I'm wrong.) Dreamus2 took 3 weeks to create, and about 4 months to troubleshoot. (Pay now, or pay later) A good map takes about 2-3 months to do, but can vary if you just re-use content, or create a small simple map. Thats my 2 cents on the subject.

Glad you guys like the look of the level so far. Unfortunately it's not really close to a playable state yet -- In fact I haven't really decided what the heck I want to do with it beyond the base structures. A lot of it is still way up in the air so I'm totally open to suggestions.

So far I'm torn between just plopping down the base structures into a desert-y terrain and making a few ruined structures around the nodes or trying to make the structures the main focus of the map, connecting the bases into one even-larger structure. The first option is more typical ONS style, and would probably provide for better vehicle play, but I'm not sure how I want balance to be between foot battles and vehicle combat yet. We'll see.

I do have some general ideas of things I want to do, although not everything here may be incorporated into this map:

- Modified Scorpions -- Probably will have two modified Scorpion vehicles in the map. The plan is to, hopefully, create Scorpions with better speed and maneuverability. At the very least what I will probably do is change the Scorpion to have a primary fire like that of the link gun and have the energy bola on the secondary fire.

-Hoverboards? Possibly. Might go this route if I decide to make the map mostly on-foot focused.

- Energy Bola handheld weapon? Possibly. If I do this I may not include the Avril at all.

- A raisable/lowerable drawbridge. Had this idea recently, although given the map is in an Egyptian theme it may not work -- Most of the architecture is huge stone blocks, and throwing in a wooden drawbridge would probably look out of place. Considering it, and would like to do it if it works out thematically.

- [Some] breakable walls. I'm a big fan of interactive environments and the ability to break down some walls and permanently alter the map's layout would be cool. Will be looking into this, but obviously not every wall will be destructible and doing so isn't going to, say, allow you to shoot into the enemy's power core from behind or something.

- Nonstatic node defenses. Considering a variety of options here to make it more difficult to just stand 1000ft away and snipe at nodes until they are destroyed. While it will probably be possible to do solo suicide runs attacking a node, I am going to try to make it so that you will be much more effective with teamwork.

So tell me, how much time and hair pulling does it take to learn through your first map? I have done flash based animation but that's the closest I get to this

Took me a few hours to get through the 3D Buzz tutorials and pick up most everything I have learned. The biggest adjustment for me was dealing with UnrealEd's counterintuitive viewport controls ... I was used to Maya at the time, and UnrealEd seems very clunky in comparison. The tutorials are rather painless, no hair pulling from me.

Most of my mapping has been in UT, not UT2kX, though, and one of the things that I don't like about UT2kX is the huge obstacle of trying to familiarize yourself with all of the static meshes in all of Epic's poorly-labelled packages. Once I was finished with the 3D Buzz tutorials I saved the map and started elaborating on it based on my own ideas of how to improve their tutorial level. What I ended up doing is placing in the level all of the static meshes I thought might fit the theme (generic industrial facility). There were so many meshes it was impossible to deal with, yet at the same time all of them felt kind of hopelessly generic. I'm not too big on the static-meshes-as-level-geometry that a lot of the stock maps seem to use either -- I tend to see SMs as decorative elements to place on top of the level, not as the level's foundation. That probably influenced my decision to go for an Egyptian theme here, since that style leans towards simple BSP work.

And (sorry I'm rambling) Wraith is right, definitely takes a few months or more to produce a real quality map, though if you didn't care you could probably make up a basic terrain and plop down some buildings and build ONS-Generic in a few days. HoH isn't #1 on my priority list though so I'm sure it's going to take me longer than usual.

well done.
kep up the good work dude.

peace

Map looks great! Huray! :cyclopsani: