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  1. #1
    TwistedMrBlack's Avatar Member
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    Good FPS Map Design Resources

    Hey all,

    I found some really great resources to give you ideas about what a good competitive map design should look and feel like. Hopefully these resources help everyone up their game and we get some really quality maps from them.

    Good FPS Map Design - CritPoints
    https://critpoints.net/2018/02/18/good-fps-map-design/

    CritPoints is a blog resource for game designers and it is literally all they talk about over there. Definitely some good info here, though recently seems more focused on fighting games, there is still some good treasure to be found in regards to FPS and design elements concerning the genre.


    FPS Map Design - Pinterest
    https://www.pinterest.com/pin/240450067585400079

    A random Pinterest hole I went down, seemed like some good stuff here.


    Towards a Generic Method of Evaluating Game Levels
    https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/A...File/7374/7585
    This one may be a bit dense, but if your cool with academics and a scientific approach this may have some good info for you.


    Interactive Evolution of Levels for a Competitive FPS
    http://sebastianrisi.com/wp-content/...sted_cec15.pdf
    Another sort of academic paper about map design. You may find some really good info here to tighten up you levels.





    I will continure to add to this post in the future. Add any links you may find relevant to the topic and hopefully we can all elevate our map making skills together!
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  2. #2
    TwistedMrBlack's Avatar Member
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    Here's a few more I happened across:

    World of Level Design
    http://www.worldofleveldesign.com

    A collection of tutorials and articles geared specifically at level design and environment artistry

    Dan Taylor's 10 Principles of Good Level Design - Gamasutra
    http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DanTa...ign_Part_1.php

    A excerpt from Dan Taylor's blog over at Gamasutra; a site focused on making video games

    The Art/Science of Level Design
    https://www.google.ro/url?sa=t&rct=j...QNWczcmHG1E-uA

    A paper written on exactly what the title implies


    Special Thanks to adrixshadow @ reddit for providing these links in his post

    Speaking of...

    Reddit/r/Gamedesign
    https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedesign/

    The reddit subthread about game design in general

    Happy Map Making!
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  3. #3
    TwistedMrBlack's Avatar Member
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    Wanted to highlight one of the tutorials on Worlds of Level Design

    Abandoned House Workflow Series
    http://www.worldofleveldesign.com/ca...low-series.php

    He walks you through the entire process of constructing this environment from the ground up. He's using a more professional editing tool, but I think a lot of the principles he discusses can be easily adapted to the FarCry editor. Check it out!
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  4. #4
    Originally Posted by TwistedMrBlack Go to original post
    Wanted to highlight one of the tutorials on Worlds of Level Design

    Abandoned House Workflow Series
    http://www.worldofleveldesign.com/ca...low-series.php

    He walks you through the entire process of constructing this environment from the ground up. He's using a more professional editing tool, but I think a lot of the principles he discusses can be easily adapted to the FarCry editor. Check it out!
    very nice tutorial! Thnx for providing the links to these tutorials.
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  5. #5
    Farcryisdead's Avatar
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    Good info.
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  6. #6
    TwistedMrBlack's Avatar Member
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    Glad you guys are getting something from this. I've taken the liberty to sift through a lot of the Worlds of Level Design blog back to about 2014; here's some of the things I thought were most relevant.


    How to Plan Level Designs Game Environments Workflow
    http://www.worldofleveldesign.com/ca...s-workflow.php

    This is basically pre-production. We do this in the music and movie business all the time, it's a good idea to apply this to level design as well. In music we write the songs and determine how we want our music to sound before we go into the studio so we have a specific idea as to what equipment we need to achieve our goals. Movies need to be written, staff and cast need to be hired, locations need to be scouted before we can actually start shooting anything. Level design benefits from these same principles. Blueprints or layouts should be designed or thought about before you even open the editor. Visual references should be gathered, themes should be decided upon. I am just beginning to apply this more consistently myself; most of my maps thus far, aside from Ultrazone and Xaviers Institute DM, had zero preproduction planning and I just opened the editor and started going. As it stands those are my two most successful maps in gameplay and design in my opinion, and the ratings reflect this. Everything else seems to slowly slide from 4 to 3 stars eventually, if it even reaches the 4 stars in the first place. I can't blame people for not liking some of my maps when I didn't take the time to really go after it.


    Seeing the World as a Level Designer
    http://www.worldofleveldesign.com/ca...l-designer.php

    Here's an article from Pete Ellis, a level designer who has worked on the Killzone franchise among others. He has some interesting things to say about level design and environmental transference.


    One Section Level Design Gameplay
    http://www.worldofleveldesign.com/ca...n-gameplay.php

    This one has some ideas on the iterative process of designing a level. This tutorial is presented in a way to help you get over the "I'm stuck" hurdle. Lots of similar information from other tutorials I've read from these sites, but maybe this one speaks to you more. I'm a guitar teacher by trade and I will always encourage my students to seek out more information on subjects I may have already covered with them. Maybe they didn't exactly get it from how I described it? Pinch Harmonics are a guitar subject that I had to learn from at least 20 different sources before it finally clicked. Keep reading tutorials, keep designing, time in equals quality output.


    Daily Screenshot
    http://www.worldofleveldesign.com/ca...creenshots.php

    Track your progress, you'll find that you are improving more than you may think you are. This is a good tool to keep you motivated and always nice to look back on.


    How to Draw Top Down Layouts
    http://www.worldofleveldesign.com/ca...wn-layouts.php

    Here's a good one to help you with that pre-procudtion stage. You don't need a background in architecture for this. Several different theories are discussed here, hopefully this is useful.

    Single Player Level Design Pacing Gameplay Beats 3 Part Series
    http://www.worldofleveldesign.com/ca...eats-part1.php
    http://www.worldofleveldesign.com/ca...eats-part2.php
    http://www.worldofleveldesign.com/ca...eats-part3.php

    Another Pete Ellis article, this one geared towards single player level design. I don't do much, if any, single player designing; all my current efforts have been multiplayer. I hope this resource helps you SP Mappers, it's motivating me to potentially try my hand at SP as well.


    Hope this helps!
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  7. #7
    Deep dive inc.

    Cheers!
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  8. #8
    TwistedMrBlack's Avatar Member
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    So I think I found the original home from that "pinterest hole" link I posted. The pinterest link was confusing and only showed one or two of these images; this link contains the entire breadth of the tutorial in one place. I'll post here for your convenience.

    The Visual Guide to Multiplayer Level Design
    http://bobbyross.com/library/mpleveldesign
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  9. #9
    TwistedMrBlack's Avatar Member
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    Noticed this post was at the top of google when I search for FPS Map Design Resources. Kinda cool.

    Anyways, here's a few more resources I found today.

    Mike Stout's "On Game Design"
    https://www.ongamedesign.net/designi...r-maps-part-1/

    Mike Stout did work on Resistance: Fall of Man, as well as a bunch of Ratchet and Clank games. He's got some decent info on map design here.


    Axton's Big List of Level Design Resources
    http://forums.joinsquad.com/topic/22...ign-resources/

    Here's a link to another list like this one. Some of our resources are the same, but I'm sure there's a lot of other sources I haven't found in this list. I'll go through it and highlight anything I think sounds good in this thread later.


    The Importance of Small Scale FPS Level Design
    https://blackshellmedia.com/2017/01/...t-development/

    Some more thoughts on designing maps; if you've been following the different resources I've been posting I'm sure you've seen over and over again the importance of the pre-production/planning stages. Really can't be overstated.

    Happy Map Making!
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  10. #10
    TwistedMrBlack's Avatar Member
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    Here's a few more selections from Axton's List

    Deathmatch Map Design: The architecture of Flow
    http://www.gamasutra.com/view/featur...esign_the_.php

    This was a good article with interview bits from designers at 343 Studios (Halo) and Respawn (interviewing some mappers from COD:MW 1 & 2)


    Level Design: Views and Vistas
    https://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com...tas--cms-25036

    An article on crafting impressive visuals and how to place them in a way that engages the player and creates certain reactions. You don't want to put something visually striking someplace where no one will see it, right? Some good ideas for those things here.


    Composition in Level Design
    http://level-design.org/?page_id=2274

    An article on the artistic composition of level design. A lot of concepts are talked about here that I remember from art classes, but presented in the context of level design. This could definitely help up your game on the visual side of things.


    Landmarks in Level Design
    http://level-design.org/?page_id=2261

    A brief discourse on landmarks and their placement and purpose in levels.
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