mapping mistakes?

what are your thoughts on some mapping habits/gameplay elements people should stay away from?

upon orpheus' pointing out the fact that criticizing people's work in less than constructive ways
tends to make them less than happy, i thought it best to remove my
original post and change the subject to mapping mistakes/bad gameplay
elements. but still, fy_iceworld_css is very poorly made. no ifs, ands,
or buts about it. when people still fall through the floor, work needs
to be done on the map before its release.

also, collapsing walkways =
bad cs gameplay imo.

i for one do not think discussing the worse maps are a good idea. the authors tend to not see it exactly the same way.

/ 2 cents.

good point, didnt think of that... sorry

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting Baron von Snickers</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>good point, didnt think of that... sorry </DIV></DIV>

don't apologize, i agree with you totally.. problem is, we all know who makes, them or which ones they are. no one actually agrees which are worse, but each of us knows them for what ever reason they qualify for. (although i may have a specific person in mind, this comment includes all maps and authors)

this ground has been covered numerous times though. it cannot even be qualified as a "delicate subject" because invariably tempers rise.

its been quiet for a long time, i'd rather not see that go.

fixed it so its a little more constructive.

Overlapping world brushes and levels encased in skyboxes are two big no-no's.

any useless thing that gets in your way.

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting Pericolos0</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>any useless thing that gets in your way.
</DIV></DIV>
RPG rounds? yeah, gotta hate those useless items

any useless thing that gets in your way.

such as? i would just like to know what you would consider useless. i cant think of anything that would logically be put in a map that would
be useless. as for things getting in the way, i am currently working on
a level that has lots of long arches, so i have to constantly add/edit
visgroups in order to keep things tidy.

another: building a source engine map like a hl1 engine map... :rolleyes:

yet another: making a ladder out of brushes then grouping them and making them a func_ladder.

i have never overlapped a two world brushes to my knowledge, what does it do?

/edit

making a map without a theme/plan

Over/underscaled maps. Played a TFC map last night that was absolutely
enormous, I swear it must have used half of the hammer grid just for
the "main hall" area. So ridiculously large that even organised and
frequent attacking was unable to capture a single flag (for both sides).

No fun when it takes 30seconds to a minute to get to the enemy base, at all :sad:

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting Baron von Snickers</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>/edit
making a map without a theme/plan
</DIV></DIV>
then you must hate mine as most have no theme. they have a plan of sorts, but i usually avoid themes as a map with a poorly adhered to theme will fare worse than a map with no theme at all.

imo its fine not to have a theme, but no plan is not a good idea

/me thinks of first attempt at map: cs_office2... there's the worst map ever :smile:

/edit

i like no_patience! i decided im going to dl a bunch of maps made by
members of the snarkpit a while back, i just havent gotten around to it.

Baron von Snickers said:
i have never overlapped a two world brushes to my knowledge, what does it do?

If two rendered faces occupy the same plane, you get z-fighting errors. Otherwise, it does nothing. :smile:

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting Baron von Snickers</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>/edit
i like no_patience! i decided im going to dl a bunch of maps made by members of the snarkpit a while back, i just havent gotten around to it.
</DIV></DIV>

i wish, people would remember to come back and comment on maps they have dloaded. it is almost my worse pet peeve around here. (after unoptimized images of course :biggrin: )

i hate seeing 300 dloads and zero comments
another small complaint, which can be funny is, when someone slobbers all over the map about how wonderful it is, but they fail to score it.. sometimes i roll when i see that

the snarks are the shizzle-dizzle. i laughed out loud when i saw that.

btw, why did snoop have an umbrella?

for drizzle.

Baron von Snickers said:
i have never overlapped a two world brushes to my knowledge, what does it do?

If two rendered faces occupy the same plane, you get z-fighting errors. Otherwise, it does nothing. :smile:

I started a "tutorial" of sorts on the effects of overlapping, but
never got around to publishing it here. I did a study by building the
same object in various different ways and copied this object many times
in order to lengthen compile times. I then compiled each of these
identical scenes (built in different ways) to see what sort of effect
on compile times it had. The object was fairly trivial, just a simple
box that had another box passing through it, and the three different
cases were that both were world brushes, the smaller object being a
func_wall, and the larger object being "cut up" into 4 brushes to
surround the small brush. The func_wall case was far and away the
quickest in all situations, but that was obvious due to that cutting
out a large amount of calculations in both VIS (entity brushes not
blocking VIS) and RAD (entity brushes not casting shadows). The
overlapping world brushes case was quicker in both CSG and BSP than the
surrounding method due to using less brushes, but in VIS is was
significantly slower. RAD times were negligable between the two.

So in short, overlapping world brushes can cause z-buffer flickering as
andrew said, but that isn't its ONLY effect, as it can also increase
VIS times it would seem.

i did multiple experiments with overlapping world brushes.. all had a noticeable increase in r_speeds.

course, one would question, what is noticeable.. IMO any increase that can be avoided, is noticeable. course i am a prick, so that theory may not be widely acknowledged as "educated"

I didn't have any increase in r_speeds, as the only increase there
would be is that caused by face splitting, and that occurs even if the
objects are just touching.

<DIV class=quote>
<DIV class=quotetitle>? quoting ReNo</DIV>
<DIV class=quotetext>I didn't have any increase in r_speeds, as the only increase there would be is that caused by face splitting, and that occurs even if the objects are just touching.
</DIV></DIV>

which in many cases, can be avoided :biggrin:

When I experimented on the face-splitting effect on r_speeds, the
result is usually trivial (meaning, when I run the map, there is no
discernable difference in lag). This is true even for a large
amount of face-splitting (whatever lag is present didn't seem worse
with face-splitting). And I don't even have a fast computer.

And as for the big skybox surrounding the map, there are a few
exceptions to that rule. There are cases when a big skybox is the
only way to build certain types of maps. But I agree, those are
the exceptions rather than the rules.

Yeah, if you yelled at me for using big skyboxes in my map Wormhole, I'd have to slap you. :smile:

This thread should've been called "mistaken mappers" instead.

KFS, you seem to be threatening violence quite a bit recently. Must I remind you that your vast kung-fu powers are not to be used for intimidation?

alloc bock full proplems! For someone who makes gargantuan ass huge maps, classic for instance, one of these problems can be very tiresome to fix :\

And I've had about 6 already, so I'm burnt out :biggrin: