Are you a breadth-first or depth-first mapper?
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Join Date: 2002-12-20 Member: 11220Members, Reinforced - Shadow
Join Date: 2002-12-20 Member: 11220Members, Reinforced - Shadow
in Mapping
These are two extremes, breadth-first or depth-first. People lean toward either, but I don't believe anyone strictly does one or the other.
Depth-first is when you focus on detail and minutia before the broad picture. You find yourself designing highly detailed, polished, essentially finished rooms one at a time before proceeding to the next. When you're finished you try and glue everything toghether into a representable state.
Breadth-first is when you sketch the entire level out with ugly default-textured geometry with approximately the same level of detail as NS1; no textures, no lighting no props. Layer by layer you improve the entire map a little smidge by adding crude lighting, more detailed geometry, the most essential props, textures, better lighting, custom textures, more detailed props, custom models, ambient sounds; lifting the quality of the entire map a little bit at a time until it is in a representable state.
I'm leaning towards breadth-first quite heavily, more so now than I used to. Fixing errors early in the level design process is cheap; if you catch problems before they even make it from an idea to a crude sketch on a piece of paper it is seconds that you've lost, if you catch them on a crude paper sketch it is minutes that you've lost and so on. In principle you could also test the gameplay and flow of the map after only 1-5% completion(after the first pass) by placing the crucial entities required for the map to conform.
So which one is you?
Depth-first is when you focus on detail and minutia before the broad picture. You find yourself designing highly detailed, polished, essentially finished rooms one at a time before proceeding to the next. When you're finished you try and glue everything toghether into a representable state.
Breadth-first is when you sketch the entire level out with ugly default-textured geometry with approximately the same level of detail as NS1; no textures, no lighting no props. Layer by layer you improve the entire map a little smidge by adding crude lighting, more detailed geometry, the most essential props, textures, better lighting, custom textures, more detailed props, custom models, ambient sounds; lifting the quality of the entire map a little bit at a time until it is in a representable state.
I'm leaning towards breadth-first quite heavily, more so now than I used to. Fixing errors early in the level design process is cheap; if you catch problems before they even make it from an idea to a crude sketch on a piece of paper it is seconds that you've lost, if you catch them on a crude paper sketch it is minutes that you've lost and so on. In principle you could also test the gameplay and flow of the map after only 1-5% completion(after the first pass) by placing the crucial entities required for the map to conform.
So which one is you?
Comments
But yeah breath-first seems like the more logical step, since I've had many times in my Depth-First which I've had to scrap some parts because of some problems.
I like to time out how long it takes for each team to reach a certain part of my level before i am certain on the exact path. It's easier for me to plan a strategy that works best for both sides with each team having a fair shot at a stronghold within the level.
Now that the teams are shaping up with fair travel time i can see this approach works well for me as the vents i add are not necessarily faster but safer for skulks,gorge,lurk.
Then i adjust lights wash,rinse, and polish as i go from room to room. Sometimes i find it better to landmark with lighting rather than props or textures.
after i do a general sweep from one end of the level to the other i go back and change or in some cases rework the entire area.
But with the NS2 with so many changes you have to plan much more so I guess you have to organize before the locations of each place.
I guess now I'm more "Breadth-first."
Less number of lights, less objects, highly tactical fast FPS map : ns2_thedron :)
If map goes funny then it can be easily upgraded by objects and more details. ^^
I start out going breath-first, then I do some detailing and try to finish as much as the room as I can, then start another room until I can think of a way to finish the last room.
I'm trying to just go breadth-first so it'd be easier to update when people can playtest it.
By going breadth-first and getting most of the layout down you pretty much give yourself an organized canvas of sorts to work with. This is how I started my map and it has proven to keep things very balanced at least from a layout/distances standpoint. It also gave me time to conceptualize where I was going with each room before I started adding lots of props too.
This being said, once the layout was in place and I had inspiration for a room I would often go ahead and start detailing (some times a lot) while some other rooms had nothing but grid textures. Eventually I got to a point where it was just much easier to design at random. Sometimes you hit mental block and it helps to work on a different room and come back later with a changed approach or maybe an idea will pop in your head and you will jump halfway across the map to add it in while it's still fresh in your mind.
So breadth-first is pretty much the best way to start your map and once the layout is in place it often helps to start going more for detail. A real good map is a combination of layout + detail and many may argue layout is much more important simply for the sake of game play.
“A great building must begin with the unmeasurable, must go through measurable means when it is being designed and in the end must be unmeasurable.â€
The materiality of a map is just an intermediary stage. You start with a layout, a broad idea of flow and movement. Once its finished people don't pay as much attention as you would want them to. But if your ideas were solid and the map flows people will appreciate the map for the experience it gives. I work on different scales at a time. The map's scale, the area's scale, the room's scale and the alcove's scale, trying to integrate the idea of the whole at every level.
To answer the op, I'm a deep-breadth mapper. Balance is key :D
Simple layout idea on paper (or photoshop file) and then creating fully detailed rooms which you can shift around in said layout, by also connecting them with hallways and such. This would be easier if the texture tool wasn't such an Ahole!
I do tend to work on a room basis, if only because it's easy to move rooms around and make levels out of them, the rooms (or 'arenas' as I tend to call them because outdoor areas tend to have a similar structure, an arena is defined as any encapsulated area in which conflict occurs) are your building blocks, and you can move them around and connect them in different ways to make a level. Each room on its own however is pretty independent, as long as you retain the key entry points you can put it anywhere in the map and it still works. People come in from the two (or more) important entrances and spread out, with the goal being to push the enemy out of their entrance and secure the arena.
I prefer singleplayer mapping and really you just need a set of experiences, I have several ideas for challenges, and I just need a way to link them together, say I want the player to fight through a zombie level with poor visibility, then I want them to do a standard corridor shooter for a while, then I want them to do an elevator sequence, then I want them to do some physics puzzles, then I want them to have a big standoff fight, those are all discrete ideas, but you can link them together by having the player go through a forest to reach a vent which puts them into an underground bunker where they have to reach the elevator to go to the core and unlock the door at which point the enemies launch a final attack to stop them.
MP is sort of the same, I generally see a level as a set of different experiences, different arenas which change the combat in different ways, so every room should have something that makes it unique, some might have environmental hazards, some might be big enough to have bases at either end, some might be very open from a lot of directions, some might be entirely linear, some might be outdoors to allow flying units dominance, some might be covered from another room.
Basically I tend to design each room as an experience, then find some way to stick them together, it generally works although I do tend to have difficulty with putting lots of stuff into a map and running out of players.
Its fun to make a few detailed rooms but treat them as "concept art" until you have a full layout worked out.
This is because of the texture tool is being a tool...
I now have finalized a MS (Cargo Bay) and an extension to that one (fittingly named Cargo Access), but from here on out I'll probably flesh out the rest of the layout with props and gray dev textures (or simple "fit" texturing). I will probably use simple lighting so I can actually see!
So for this map I started out as Depth-first and am now switching to Breadth-first, Spark maps easier like that. Until the texture tool is up to par compared to Valve Hammer's texture tool that is :P
Tho nowadays when detail is so much more important i've switched to breadth-first so that corridors fit with the rooms, then i build depth from that.
Fixed.
All is well that ends well