Map Planning/Old

This page is the older version of Map Planning.

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

Map planning is sketching your ideas on to graph paper or writing a quick description about the map in a few paragraphs, showing the relation of the aspects of the map before opening UnrealEd.

It should create the DNA of the map, the basic structure. When this is done, you can add your organs, your skin and your face – the mis en scene of your map.

Of course you don't have to do your plans on a "physical" media like graph paper; you can even do them in paint if you want to.

Analogy

You are an architect-cum-builder in charge of planning and construction of a house. You've been keen on implementing a "concept" design you've seen at a trade show. What do you do: immediatly start construction, or create a plan? Here are the two scenarios:

Immediately start building the house

You forget to level the ground.
When you build the framework, you notice some boards are crooked and have the wrong dimensions. You also forget to get enough nails, and are forced by your budget to use duct tape.
Putting up the walls, you use too much plaster, and it looks like the ocean's surface during a rough storm.
Placing the plumbing, you decide to reuse a bunch of crumbly clog-prone pipes from your last job.
As you spent too much money on last-minute construction whims, you don't have sufficent funds to put in furnishings, heating, lights, etc.

End result:

$50,000
5 years

Drafting a blueprint

You level the ground.
When you build the framework, you ensure the boards are coplanar and have the correct dimensions. Also, you remembered to buy enough nails, and didn't end up having to use duct tape.
Putting up the walls, you use just enough plaster, and it looks like the Oklahoma Salt Flats.
Placing the plumbing, you use PVC non-clog-prone pipes.
You had very few last-minute construction decisions, and were within your budget, so you can now hire an interior designer to put in furnishings, heating, lights, etc.

End result:

$20,000
2 years

From Plan To Map

A really good way to go from your plan to your map is to draw the 2D map in Paintshop Pro or Photoshop using mostly vector tools. Show the location of building foundations, rivers, roads, bridges, Onslaught nodes, CTF flags, major vehicles (such as tanks and Levis), major pickups (e.g. double damage), and superweapons (like Redeemers and Target Painters). Use layers for each of these different entities, or groups of them. This makes it much easier to edit, and can be helpful for showing the Z-axis (multi-story) aspects of the map. In other words, the top layers might compose the elements of a 2nd story room, while the bottom layers compose the 1st story rooms.

Use "File/Save A Copy As" to save a bitmap version of this 2D map. Import it as a texture into your map (save it to the virtual "MyLevel" package). If the map is an outdoor map, subtract out a big cube using mathematical formulae. You might for instance specify the room as being 256*256 across and 256*256 wide. Stick to powers of two, and try to use increments of 256 or 512. Place the 2D map texture you just imported on the floor of this room, and scale it up to fit it fully. Then add a player start and some other size reference (if it is an Onslaught map, add a tank vehicle. They are good for sizing things). Test the map and see if the size of elements on the texture is what you want. If not, delete the giant room brush, and subtract out a new room again by changing a factor. (If you had chosen 256*256 and it was too small by a factor of about 2, try 256*512 x 256*512, and scale up the 2D map texture by 2.)

If you are making a fully indoor map and plan to carve out room by room, then you can use this same trick, but you should place a solid cube into the subtracted space to fill it back up, then carve out your rooms from it. The subtracted space will just be useful for showing the 2D map texture. When you are done building the map you will remove both the subtracted space and the fill in space, and therefore all your other subtraction brushes will apply direction to the raw world.

This is an awesome way to get a map rolling, and holds you to some sort of plan instead of allowing you to just randomly float about and radically change your original idea all the time until your forget what it was you were going for! [see Pros and Cons, below] It makes me far less anxious when I am mapping. Plus, you and your playtesters can constantly review what the map will become even before all the buildings and pickups are even in place. You can see their location drawn out on the floor! This really helps to understand your map better as you develop it.

Before you even start to build in Unrealed, you can even post pics of the 2D map online for feedback on its layout and item placement. If you are making an Onslaught map, this 2D map will become your radar image later on. Screenshot-genereted radar maps look awful and are confusing, so using a 2D made map is far better. This is just like in real life: we prefer to use our 2D drawn Thomas Guides as opposed to sattellite images when we are navigating around in our cars.

Pros and Cons

Planning what you do is worthwhile in every aspect of modding: concept art is used to create detailed 3d models, some lines on graph paper can become an element of the next uber-map, and careful thought and planning of the organisation of the code benefits the speed of its execution and readabilty to others who may have to develop it further in future. Of course, if you have plenty of time on your hands, you can begin modeling in 3d, but it is still a good idea to have some kind of idea in your head before you sit down at your computer.

The flip side is to do it spontaneously - why stifle creativity with rules and regulations? Creativity is but an expression of self; the more you organise your thoughts before you unleash them upon the world, will only do it favours.

Pros

You can remove things from your design that you do not like before you waste time creating it.
It is seen as a recommended technique by some of the most skilled mappers in the mod community, especially for rookie-level mappers.

Cons

It is fun every once in a while to just "go for it", and see what happens - you might come up with an idea for an aspect of a map that you can then plan a new map around.

In Addition

In addition to what has been said above, I would like to add that when it comes to actually designing a map, for some, this may prove tough going. I suggest a few things if you're happy to admit you can't decide on a layout or a theme/format:

Look at existing maps to get an idea of what style you like, wether that be a particular style of lighting perhaps or a style of architecture.
Take ideas from films, the set/s, the buildings, the dark gothic tower in Batman or those seen in the Lord of The Rings trilogy for example.
If after you have then written down a few ideas or even sketched them, then it's time to think of how you're actually going to manifest your ideas/sketches to the Unreal Editor itself.
Think carefully about what it is you're trying to achieve, what you want the end result to be, not just what it looks like, but also how it sounds, how it flows and how it runs *relative to an average,(what IS average? ), pc. You want to have an atmosphere? What type of atmosphere do you want to treat *or scare, your fellow UT'ers with? What do you want the game to have as far as tricks/clever moves, or jumps, or falls, or visual anomolies, ( NOT including HOM effect ), are concerned?
It is very useful to look at the wiki pages Static Mesh Package and Texture Package when deciding what static meshes and which textures to use in your map.

Also, lastly, think about what it is you're sure you're capable of, there's no shame in asking another more experienced mapper to help if they are willing and have the time; you could learn from them, pick up a few useful hints along the way. Just a friendly word if you DO get help from someone else in the mapping process; always grant them some of the credit in the Readme file you're probably going to have to include with the map itself, it shows you're grateful for them helping you learn something useful. *Is learning something in UnrealEd 'useful'? You owe them credit where it's due. Period.

Discussion

SuperApe: This page might be more useful to concentrate on how to plan for map design, not why planning is important.

Ragdoll: I agree. We should keep the part above for an explanation but this page should really be about the actual process of planning. My (very good) maps were never planned out, I just thought about the layout during french at school.....

Zxanphorian: You two, look at the Map Design link in the Related Topics section.

SuperApe: Zxan, I wrote 95% of the current Map Design page and linked to it in the Related Topics section here myself. But, this Map Planning page is an old one from before that. It seems it should be geared to successful techniques of planning like sketching floor plan designs, making cutouts of rooms and hallways to move around on your tabletop before commiting to a design, or starting with existing layouts (maps) and making a frankenmap that will be refined later. Useful, unique information like that, which is different than the concepts and elements of Map Design I've outlined there. Sadly, instead this page is just another pointless rambling; this time, about why good mappers plan first. And, as I elude to above, my response to that is, "Well, duh". So, anyone else have an idea about what this page should be?

Zxanphorian: I wrote this page initially to inform people about the importance for planning out the layout etc before going into the editor.

SuperApe: I meant no disrespect. I see how this page gives a scheme to plan for mapping. What do you think of Map Planning?

SuperApe: Okay, I'll go for it. Right now, this page redundantly talks about how great the idea of planning your map is. Let's focus on the end-user and think about ways this page can help them do that. Like so:

Overview on Map Planning (Refactor this entire page to one brief paragraph)
Inspirational Sources (A section devoted to ways of finding inspiration)
Planning (Ideas to organize)
- Goals (The unique purpose of the map)
- Theme (The theme)
- Scope (The size of the gameplay; how many players, game objectives, etc.)
- Special Features (Any unique elements)
Visualizing (Methods of solidifying the plan)
- Pencil and Paper
- Cutouts / Models
- Segmenting Layouts ("Frankenmapping")
Early Testing (Checking balance, basic flow, appearance, viability of special features, etc.)

Sweavo: I'd say even that is too broad. I think there's scope for a page that doesn't give creative advice, just practical advice. As in, you know what you wanna do with your map, we'll show you how not to get tangled up trying to do it. So really I'm saying why not just the Visualizing part of the above. There's a page somewhere here about 'architecture' which talks about flow of a map, consistency in textures etc, so it covers theme and possible scope... Hurry back, search page, then it will be easier to do a 'literature review' before editing / rescoping pages!

SuperApe: I'm not so sure those elements other than Visualizing are covered well in the pages you're mentioning. After taking a good look at them, they appear to be rant pages (i.e., Category Rant); a very common form of "contribution" here on the wiki. Most of the time, those end up containing a lot of opinions and very few useful or universal guidelines. Perhaps I should just write this up and you can compare it to existing pages then.

SuperApe: Moved this to /Old, moved /Working to Map Planning. Comment there please.

Delete Me – This page has been revised. See Map Planning.