Death Warrant Forums

this was kinda in response to a post in a different thread. What follows are some general tips with the odd reference to the other map filtered in

a few general tips:

• for pickups, there's a 'super adrenalin' pickup with variability in the power in several of the maps on the server.
  
  I would suggest this:
  1) get ut2004mi cache extractor. infinitely better than UT Cache Cleaner.
  2) uncache all the maps and then open up DM-[dw]-Aswan_b. use the Find Actor box and look for "Super" and you'll see the adren pickup. then look for Teleporter. select both the super adren AND EVERYTHING RELATED TO THE TELEPORTER (select them one at a time) then Edit menu > copy them. Start a new map, then paste them, then save it. You now have some kinda template map with that crap in it. whenever you need em just copy/paste into the map you're workin on
• your sky area at the spawns. it works, yes. for better lighting, extend from the sky plane up about 256 units and line it with sky. put your strong light source near the top of that box, then (if you want, not really neccesary here) put a blocker volume raised from the player area by about 64 units. this will let players walk up to the top of the ramp but not get up any higher.
• work on grid. for area blockouts i tend to use 128 grid sometimes bigger. for smaller details i stick to 8 at the very smallest. My perfectionist streak will sometimes force me to 2 or 1, but that's just cuz i'm anal about such things. you can very easily get by with 8 no problem
  
  what it does is a couple things:
  1) these game engines like power-of-2 math.
  2) in the editor in 3d view go to the spawn area. go down the tube to the first landing. look from one landing to the other. now go to front view and zoom in to the hall between landings
  
  you can see brush lines that don't match up. this didn't cause you any problems, but if that was a lip from one floor to another, you get "micro polygons." when the engine trys to make sense of an area with 5 vertices but it's only .48923 units wide, that means it has to cram 3 polygons into a super tiny space. And UED isn't the most stable thing on the planet to begin with, so you wind up with bsp holes.
  3) it's just cleaner and easier to make sense of things.
• use the group manager. it DEFINITELY helps organize things nicely.
• uncache and look at the existing maps. look at how things are put together, etc. you'll learn a lot by taking a screwdriver to existing work.

the universally liked maps are ones with multiple and distinctly separate areas. Last Glacier Base has 3. CrazyTransJumpers has 3. Aswan 3. grendelkeep 3-4. Nein-final 2. If you were to make a survey, the ones that have the most polarizing effect (people either love em or hate em) are the ones that DON'T have multiple distinctly separate areas... Dome of doom, chakakhans dome, train station, and several others. the ones that ppl universally find 'meh' have too many areas... Refined1, Hold The Camp, duststorm, blackhawk, AChina, etc.

my suggestion would be that your map have 3 things:
1) 3+ teleporters to get around. people hate having to walk back to base.
2) 2-4 multiple and disctincly separated areas. any more than that fragments the monsters.
3) a well stocked hidey hole is newbie friendly but not completely necessary. hidey hole also doesn't have to be completely protected either, just so long as it's obvious to the players that "shit can actually get in here" . . . don't surprise ppl with teleporting queens.

aside from that i suggest:
1) not always giving every weapon. variety is the spice of life.
2) no secrets. once the map gets 2 plays it's no longer a secret and it's just nonsense that pisses off newbies.
3) try to be visually stimulating without being annoying. you can do this with static meshes. (the stained glass window texture you used borders on annoying in the places you used it.)
4) give cover. put something in to hidebehind. even the stupidest pillar can save a life.
5) keep it simple.