Mapping Frag Yards

Ok I have been ruined of the fun of a good ol'frag yard. they are boxes mainly. Some have crates galore or breaking glass floors. I cant seem to stand these maps. They are more often than not badly textured, have no imagination to them. but every CS Server I play on seems to have one or two of these maps, and they are over played.

I have seen some maps that have awesome settings, but the players dont see the hard work in them.. instead they are too busy killing or moving though the map.. so is all our hard work making a perfect map for naught? Does the average player notice the perfect aligned textures, the attention to detail? if they do do they really care?

I will admit there are times a good ol frag yard is needed to blow off steam.. ( no pun intended )..

Yeah I'd have to say that's true. Players have no idea how much hard
work it is to align and make everything perfect. They also don't
knotice when HDR is used. They couldn't care less if you map looked
like s**t or not. But if it looks really well, chances are the BSP is a
large file, and they dont feel like downloading it and waiting.

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Nickelplate is my dad

I don't map with such people in mind. I map for those that like to have a fun time as well as being immersed into a map. This may be a minority of the players. Keep in mind CS/CSS is the no. 1 online game in the world so that's the bunch of players, but there's also a load of mappers (rather than level-designers) creating stuff for it. Perhaps our kind is better for the niche 'markets' and the singleplayer stuff. See Minerva - an awesome mappack, widely appraised for it's quality.

As for small nitty-gritty details and texture alignments, I've given up to care for these too much. Even those that care about immersion and good looks don't always notice these small things, so I feel that time is better spent on something more important, like the core gameplay elements and the feeling and logic behind a map. Notice how HL contains a lot of such misalignments, but it did became a killer game... I wouldn't care if someone would recreate it without all these little tiny flaws - I know the game already and will probably not notice their hard work, and if I will, it's probably not significant compared to the larger scope of the game.

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

Yeah, I recently just wrote a tutorial that might influence some people
to put some more effort into their map. Should I put it on the Snarkpit?

http://www.fpsbanana.com/?section=viewitem.tuts.tuts.main.1340

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Captain P said:
I don't map with such people in mind. I map for those that like to have a fun time as well as being immersed into a map. This may be a minority of the players. Keep in mind CS/CSS is the no. 1 online game in the world so that's the bunch of players, but there's also a load of mappers (rather than level-designers) creating stuff for it. Perhaps our kind is better for the niche 'markets' and the singleplayer stuff.

I agree with this. The only time I tried to make a map for a friend (aim_remnants) he kept telling me to make a huge sniper tower.

What the hell is it with non-mappers wanting sniper towers? I feel like that's something that every non-mapper wants to see in a map, and every mapper couldn't care less about.

I kept bitching about how it would mess up my 3D skybox (since you'd start seeing all the gaps between buildings and terrain) and he couldn't have cared less

I think, when you pass a certain degree average players will notice the spectacular work, but they're comparison is the maps released by valve.

Also, the "kill/fragbox" croud really seems to reside in the Counter-Strike realm. I've noticed that most who play something like DoD, have a much higher standard of playable maps. But, that's just an observation and probably a biased one at that.

But, when you see a map like the ones Alex Royce has produced, I'm fairly certain that anyone who normally plays would be taken back with the impressivness of it all.

Some of his work

But, this and this are particularly impressive. His maps tend to run a little slower though, but nothing too bad.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Yeah -- he's got some real talent and he just got hired (at the tender age of 18 no less) by a German game company.

Although -- to be fair those screenshots you linked to aren't from playable maps, but from screenshot competitions type stuff. That should just be noted since we are talking about gameplay too to some extent.

That's pretty irnoic, I used to be buds with Alex Royce. Ive worked on
maps with him. It was mostly the "lol bot" that he used in phys_phun".
I used to talk to him frequently, but have stopped seeing as he stopped
CSS mapping and only did DoD. I should have a chat with im.

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wow i had never heard of him till now

and i must say that's some impressive work

wow

Oh em gee! there was a topless lady in there!!!

I want that to be my multiplayer model. lol

but, yeah. VERY impressive. It's like something I would make, only better.

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I tried sniffing coke, but the ice cubes kept getting stuck in my nose.
http://www.dimebowl.com

I once read a depressing review of counter-strike, and it was a guy moaning on about how on the Xbox Cstrike they are taking all the 's**t' maps such as de_inferno (And other maps which are high quality) and saying how maps like fy_iceworld (Which he says is proberly the best and most skilled map ever made), awp_map and aim_bloodstrike arent coming with it. I would love to meet the guy who wrote that article. I would take much pleasure in removing his spleen through his nasal regions with a rusty skrew.

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I hear ya T-King. There is this one server I play on, all they want to do is play this map, that looks like a big castle and its a box, with crates all over. i cant stand the map.. or the one that looks like a playground and not the groovy one i saw on here with the grass and all that.

I have to admit i do like the occassional scoutandknife game.

these sorta maps have made me play more SWAT4.. that feels like a real world police simulation than CS. Well that is when I have time. lol

Don't judge Counter-Strike the game by the bad quality maps some people make.

If you need some concrete evidence that there are some really good CS maps out there, just play cs_xmas (for CS:Source). I know you'll be impressed.

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"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." -- Toulouse-Lautre, Moulin Rouge

Link it Satchmo.. I happen to like CS Source. I just happen to hate frag Boxes. a more appropriate name I might add.

The are hundreds of excellent cstrike maps out there (Besides the defult ones), but for each good map, there a thousand rubbish maps. I do love cstrike still - just the people who make crap maps. If they make a aim map or a ky or whatever, at least they could make it good.

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MoneyShot said:
IThere is this one server I play on, all they want to do is play this map, that looks like a big castle and its a box, with crates all over. i cant stand the map..

Why do you play on this server?

The only "frag yard" type maps I have made would be test maps... however, you could argue de_ths is one of these maps I suppose. Anyway, what I like about CS (and most FPS games) is the hiding, the waiting, the tension, the rushing... which are rarely seen on these maps. Dust and Aztec are where its at. I rarely play online anymore, but if I did I'd only play on default map servers.

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"If you talk at all during this lesson, you have detention. Do you understand?"

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You can download cs_xmas yourself and check it out. It's one of the best maps I've ever played for CS:Source, including the official maps.

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"The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." -- Toulouse-Lautre, Moulin Rouge

See Minerva - an awesome mappack, widely appraised for it's quality.

Speaking of which, the second map was just released.

http://www.hylobatidae.org/minerva/phosphenes.shtml#metastasis_2

I would have put this in the "Minerva" thread, but it's locked :\

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.