Big List of Mapping Crimes Created 17 years ago2006-08-17 08:53:08 UTC by KingDaniel

Big List of Mapping Crimes

A list of those things you hate but keep popping up in maps and mods. I thought it would make a good reference for mappers of what NOT to do. This is mainly focused on single-player and HL2 mapping. Post what you hate in maps. Here?s mine:

Too many baddies
This ruined Coastline to Atmosphere for me, as well as a ton of Russian-developed HL1 and Return to Castle Wolf mods. In games like Serious Sam and Painkiller it works fine, but HL?s baddies aren?t meant to be used that way, and for those who play on Hard it can lead to the premature death of mice/monitors and loud swearing.
Four baddies, well placed can be much more fun to fight than 20 spawning outside a door and pouring in for five minutes. Unless you?ve got the super gravity gun and access to those Combine energy balls?.

The Damn HL2 Helicopter
The HL2 helicopter is great?.it just takes about a million hits to kill with an RPG. So why don?t people do the simple thing and use the Entity I/O to set it to die/retreat after taking a few hits? If not replace it with a gunship or two. Anything that takes more than six RPG rockets to take down becomes boring, fast. Especially if the guy who put it there doesn't even give it a path and it just hovers there....

A total lack of scripted sequences
I miss those incidental moments that made HL and HL2 feel so alive ? npc?s doing and saying things, seeing stuff going on beyond a window. In most HL2 mods, it?s just baddies standing around waiting to be shot, and if you?re lucky they charge in though a door.

Squeaky-Clean War Zones
I was playing an HL2 mod the other day, and there was a street war going on. A pretty unconvincing one. Some buildings were damaged, there were some fires but it was all wrong. A building with it?s front destroyed would leave a huge load of rubble. There was nothing. It was like the cleaners had come in ? no burn decals, no nothing. The fires were messed up too ? they were just flames on the (concrete) floor. Concrete doesn?t burn.

S-S-S-Slowdow-w-w-w-n-n-n
Too many HL2 maps I?ve played have slowed to a crawl on my (admittedly ancient) PC (from 2002). What ever happed to r-speeds (or whatever the HL2 equivalent is)? HL2 has areaportals, occulenders, hint brushes and people need to use them!

That?s all I can think of right now. Anything Else?

First off, I've got to say that this thread is actually not a bad idea (I don't know if it's been done in the past, so please dont castrate me for saying that.), and it would be a great reference thread.

I agree with just about all of them, save for the Helicopter. The HL2 Helicopter was designed for the airboat battle. The airboat's gun shoots bullets that inflict somthing like 10 dammage (not sure?), and then multiply that by 100 bullets. I understand where you're comming from, but you really can't critique somthing for what it was designed to do. I think you may, however, be able to look in the HL2 directory, copy the helicopter's model files, alter them, and re-save them as a new monster.

On the note of things to hate... I can't stand levels that don't pace themselves. You can't make one giant blood-bath level after level after level; take a break and give, perhaps, and exploration part that the player must go through. Perhaps provide a puzzle to occupy the player, and once it's solved, flood him with enemies. Pacing is of extreme importance when producing maps.

Happy Mapping.

How about fullbright maps? Bleaurrghh! (As barney would say.)

a very basic thing but make sure that your wall brushes are aligned one another, floor and ceiling. theres one map called cs_hausgemetzle or something that is just terrible but people like to play it (!?). in one part theres a gap under one of the T spawn walls making it look terrible. the ct spawn is also done pretty badly, looks like it was plastered there in 2 minutes.

so...

make your maps clean!!
details in form of lights, decals and sparks would also be nice
(the map only had 2 sorts of brushes)

Lack of ambiance is a peave of mine. The HL1 engine can handle it really well as far as adding sounds and reverberance to the room to make it feel big and echoey. Its all too easy to control these aspects, especially since there is a trigger_sound that lets to contol the sound filters with a brush trigger. Adding an ambient_generic is also easy, and layering your sounds in levels is also a nice touch to any map.

Ambiance is a detail often overlooked. It as important to the map as the walls themselves.

Im so sick of SP maps that are just spawn and fight the combine....

You could spice up the combat a bit by maybe only letting the player use a unique weapon and prevent combine from dropping weapons, cool traps to kill combine, stuff like that.

Proper texture choice and creation adds a unique feel to a map, and makes you feel like your in a different map, then a generic HL2 map.

Worst ever for me, is maps that use original HL1 Textures, and stretch them or keep their scale at 1.00. Drives me insane. And yes Lighting, is another.

A few of mine.

The water shader is overused. Sometimes I think people put water in their maps because it makes it look "cool." Sometimes there isn't even a reason for the water to be there.

Another is when someone uses the same model over and over. Like for example, I saw one time that someone made a forest, by spamming the oak tree all over the place. He didn't even bother to rotate it.

Another annoyance is when people fail to place models on the ground, so they are left floating in midair. Or those that have hundreds of physics props that all drop to the ground at the same time when the map starts, causing every player to freeze for a few seconds.

Worst ever for me, is maps that use original HL1 Textures, and stretch them or keep their scale at 1.00.

What's wrong with keeping a texture scaled at 1.00?

In source mapping it's considered ugly, seeing as how the standard is to scale them down to .25. Not that I see how it significantly improves image quality, but y'know.

Sometimes it's nice to have bigger textures...Stops rooms feel like they repeat a lot.

Scaling a material is not a taboo thing to do in source. Maybe in HL1, but source maps (Valve and otherwise) have all sorts of materials scaled up/down throughout maps. Theres one mountain material source uses where you have to scale it to fit otherwise it looks horrible (because it has a grassy top, and is not meant to tile in a pattern)

The increased resolution and quality of images in source allow for scaling to occur. Materials with reflections and normal maps applied are even better because the extra effects take the eye off of the monotonous effects of stretching a material.

Its time to cast away this silly belief. Its just Hl1 mapping gripes transitioning to source

A few more mapping crimes i thought of??

File Not Found Error!
People not putting all the required files in a mod/map. I was guilty of this myself in the first release of my Life?s End mod (for HL1, fixed version in the Vault if you didn?t know) I missed out some textures. In HL2 if you do this you just get a nice pink checkerboard pattern (type ?map intro? at the HL2 console to see an alternate intro with this).

Stupid Dead Barney/NPC
If you have a bit where you lead an NPC somewhere to open a door, and they die please put a player_loadsaved entity in! Or in HL2 you can make them invincible.

(HL1 specific) Elevator Bug
If you can?t avoid the elevator bug, put an auto-save in just before you hop on. There was a map in the Project Quantum Leap pack where a scientist got stuck, I?d saved thinking he was just behind me?.I know this one belongs in the HL1 section but it really annoyed me!

Unavoidable Pain/death
I?ve come across this in several HL1 maps, not seen it in HL2 yet, but:
Usually this is a big fall or something where the player can?t avoid being hurt. Problem is, if you only have about 3% health left, you?re gonna die. A simple health pack/terminal before the fall would ensure you had enough health to survive.

Every type of baddie/texture on screen at once!
I?ve only seen this once on an HL2 mod, there was a Strider, soldiers (and super soldiers), turrets, antlions, headcrabs and an APC on screen at the same time and my game degenerated into a slideshow before I saw anything else.

Thanks for all your posts on this so far

Corners!

I hate seeing all these walls with perfectly straight edges at the corners.
Theyre so perfect that if i ran into one in real life id probably cut myself in half.

Smooth edges off!

When people don't include custom textures in their maps. So it is just checkered purple and black boxes.

Nice idea for a thread..
Here's my list of crimes (mostly CS)

I agree with Rimrook. Not adding sound in MP maps to please bitchy csgeeks, that whine about any sound, besides the sound of their footsteps and gunfire, is one thing, but leaving an open area in SP, without any wind/open area ambience should be considered as a crime!

Blinking lights in a pitch-dark area. I mean, when you have like 5 point lights in a long corridor, that has no illumination, besides those damn lights - the flickering just burns your eyes..

Dustgeneral remakes. cs_as_de_dutsathon981237784.13k29_lolz_1337z0rz, anyone? No, thankyou.. There are much more ways of wasting your time, than remakes. Bashing your head against the keyboard, while trying to type '/rank' should work.. :

Killboxes. Counter-Strike was created to be a team-based tactic multiplayer game, not a fragging noobshit rank-raising tool. Play Serious Sam, if you want frags and stop making assfucked crap, in the level of aim_map. (I don't mean quality aim_ maps, like aim_verdun)
Hollowed cubes with a pointlight and two spawns don't work either!

Using 7+ wads in your map. Mappers, that use every single wad, available in Counter-Strike and HL should be burned. If you use lots of textures, from multiple wads (official/non-official) - wadinclude them!

Including 2mb+ sized wads into the maps' zip, when only 1 texture is used in the map. Again - WADINCLUDE!

I feel much better now..

actually, I seen the link of the front page, and never knew this thread was in the source forum.

:

That said:

Sometimes it's nice to have bigger textures...Stops rooms feel like they repeat a lot.

For HL2, I completely agree. Seeing that the word 'Sometimes' plays a big role in that sentence.

Even More Mapping crimes?..

Prop Overload (or Prop Prop Prop Prop?to the tune of the popcorn song)
Mappers trying to disguise a plain box room by covering every surface with props. Then filling it with a hundred or so crates.
Props are great and are essential to a great map, but have decent mapping underneath it, please!

Line It Up!
A lot of people build maps in segments, then put them together. That?s fine. Unless you?re left with ?steps? at the end of every other corridor where the mapper hasn?t lined it up perfectly. This is not as easy to avoid in HL2/Source as you might think ? when dragging large selections that include props things tend to offset by a fraction of a unit. The only fix for this I know of is to select all the brushes, realign them perfectly then re-align the props afterwards. Is there an easier way? Ctrl+B doesn?t quite do the trick when brushes and props are selected.

Leaks
People have said about fullbright maps before, but people that release maps that have leaks happened quite a bit in HL1, and with the ?Load Pointfile? command there?s no excuse.

Subtitles
If you record an important bit of dialogue for your game at home on an ultra cheap microphone please put subtitles in. I?ve played mods (for HL1)where I?ve been told to ?huff huff-ufff uff mmmu-ufff-mmm-mmm, Gordon!? Even after re-loading and cranking up the volume I don?t know exactly what was said. Hard-of-hearing people will also thank you for adding subs even if your recording quality is perfect.

Including the Soundcahe Files in your zip/rar/exe
Totally unnecessary! These files are HUGE (around 20mb per map!) and thus increase download size enormously, for files that are created by HL2/Source anyway when you load a map for the first time (hence the longer load time for a map first time round)

Stealing Other People?s Stuff Without Permission
I?ve played a few HL1 maps that have borrowed textures/props from other mods/games seemingly without permission or credit. Not cool.
I played a pretty bad HL2 mod a while ago and when looking though the files I found many skyboxes with highly suspicious names?.like ?e3_lab? and ?air_exchange?. Me thinks these are from the nicked beta HL2 (they aren?t included in any Source games I?ve seen!).

Using Prop Textures
Some prop textures are fine to use during mapping (just look at Valve?s maps), but many will give you that ?flicker? ? the wall/floor/etc being the same brightness as the bit the player is standing in. This leads to walls turning black when the player goes into the shadows. People still make this mistake?.surely it?s obvious somethings wrong when playtesting?

Impossible Stairs
When people make stairs by mass-copy-pasting a rectangle, so that (from the side view) the top right corner just touches the bottom left of the next one. How do these stairs hold themselves up? If the mapper gives them braces down the sides, or has them overlap a bit that?s fine. Or Vertex-Manipulate the bottom face into a slant so it all fits nicely together.

My Suit Was Where?..?
I played a few HL1 maps where it was easy to miss the essential room containing your power suit and weapons. Then not realize until several maps later. Why wasn?t I blocked from progressing until I had them? In HL2 you can spawn with whatever you need, so this need never happen again! I hope.

Invisible Walls
I have yet to see this in HL2 mods. I?m not talking about acceptable ?sensible? clipping (if you stack tons and tons of stuff to try jumping over the mesh fences just before you get in the buggy in HL2) but the kind where you have 2 or 3 routes, but a mysterious force blocks one or more of them. Probably obsolete with HL2?s Combine Forcefields?.which will probably replace invisible walls as an over-used annoyance pretty soon.

I think that?s about it?..

Well... i noticed this a while back.

Noob maps have bad proportions, but anyone with a sense of procedure can use this.

for HL1, if you scale textures to 0.75, they look and feel correctly proportionate. In fact, 12 units = 1 foot. Gordon is exaclty 6 feet tall (72 units or so), and view height is at 5 feet 6 inches (64 units i think). even if you don't like mapping in this manner, still use this as a reference to scale objects to the correct proportion to the player. Valve and Sierra made HL1 in perfect proportions to real-life. Even better than that, the generic units used in hammer (as well as 3ds Max, Maya, and many other 3d proggies) are equal to 1 inch per 1 generic unit.

Personally, I build my walls to the basic powers of 16 because hammer supports that grid more readily. But as for prop models and the like, this has become a very important issue.

...oh and another peave of mine is when you download a prop model and its origin is off so you have to position it weird so it lines up with the ground evenly. LEARN TO BONE YOUR MESHES PEOPLE! 3ds Max will throw a bone/origin at what it thinks is the dead-center of the model. This is bad for trees and object that have a definite base. I have a troubling time working with the trees when i did Pristine Beach. Many of the models I downloaded, I fixed.

Could those models possible have been mine!? lol
If so, I have fixed the truck and the definite base is where
it should be.

When people use 10 different wads, take only a couple texts out of 8 of them and then -wadinclude 'em all.

I can't stand GMod maps devoid of all architectural detail.

GMod maps are a great way to get started if you're new to mapping (not to say that they are too easy for experts ), but making a giant fullbright map with 6 walls and perfectly flat ground just doesnt cut it. Gm_construct is a good example of a good map... gm_constructarena is a good example of a bad map. See the difference?

Adding sound is also a plus to GMod maps.

Give the same effort to a GMod map as you would for a regular DM map.

Uh, gm_construct is a big box. It just happens to have stuff in it. Gmod maps are simple by definition, otherwise it is too much of a hassel to build much. Though I do agree, sound is nice.

Compare gm_constructarena to gm_construct. I even think that the maker of arena purposely put mat_fullbright to one..... GMod maps are supposed to be big boxes, but they dont have to be ugly.

I'd rather build in gm_construct than in constructarena...

HL1 grunt skins! say 5 grunts shooting at you: gas mask, gas mask, beret, gas mask, gas mask...out of mass production woo!

I hate Gmod, it is SOO BORING! Like every month I go "Hey maybe this time ill like this game this time!" I play it for 5 minutes, get bored, and then map.

^^Ditto.

I only play GMod when I'm tired of mapping, and on some occasions, when I need ideas for architecture and/or gadgets in levels I make.

I rarely play it to really "play" it.