New Mapper Question About Design

Mortis

Would you suggest I make the entire map layout first, or finalize each room/corridor, then move on to the next section? I don't mean layout as in what the overall struture is like, I already sketch that out on paper beforehand. It's fairly easy to make a floor layout, but adding in all the niceties like pipes, grates, effects and sounds are what really makes a map come to life and give it ambience. Making maps seems to be easy. Making GOOD looking maps seems to be another ballgame.

Recoup

Anything you plan on making, sketch it on paper first, since its easier to change what you want to change on paper and go back and fix what you want to look good.

Anpheus

And, unless you're extremely good at sketching, keep your sketch to your layout. And be generous, you can always make it smaller or add thickness to walls in the map. Usually this gives you more room for detail!

Crispy

Well I'd suggest against the way I've gone about things:

- Plan lots (I don't suggest against this)
- Start making every room in a rough style without advanced brushwork, lighting or particle systems.

The problem with this is that you need to go back and finish off everything once you've made the basic brushwork.

A different way might be making a rough layout in VHE with cuboids showing the rough sizes of rooms (don't bother with corridors because they can change length and orientation). This way you can play around with the layout a lot before starting on your first room (whichever one you get inspired to work on first). Make some sketches of your first room, start with a top-down view then maybe draw some rough sketches/make notes of interesting shapes and structures you could include.

A really good idea is to search through your (or a friend's, or the local video rental store's) collection of sci-fi films or series for anything that catches your eye and would look good in any part of your level.

Play - pause - sketch/note - play
Repeat process.

Once you have a concept and plan for a room start on the brushwork and texturing. Remember textures tend to hint at what shape the brush should be but that's not always the case. If you like a particular part of a texture there's nothing stopping you from making a brush that shape and forgetting about the rest of the texture. I think that fitting textures to brushes and not the other way round is what helps make a visually appealing map.

After you're more or less satisfied with the lighting (if you're not but you can't see what else needs doing just leave it and) move onto the lighting. It is generally accepted that Texture Lighting with appropriate use of light entities to support the light this gives off is the most appealing technique to use for NS Mapping. Ask BobTheJanitor about this as I've only dabbled in texture lighting for 45 minutes or so and I still don't fully understand the basic process.

When you've fiddled around and found a nice lighting effect post a screenshot up in the "Post Your Screenshots" thread and you'll get back comments on how to improve it etc.

Good luck and happy mapping!