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Flying Start (Aug 8, 2005)

There's nothing more satisfying or enjoyable as a level designer as stumbling across a photo like this:

And then, a few hours later, find you're staring at this:

What I'm doing here is principally establishing a theme - what you see here is pretty much all that has been done. The aim is to experiment with particular aspects of the idea, working out how the map should be built, how it should look, what sort of additional assets it will need, and importantly, exploring ways to use particular features of the theme as gameplay aspects of the map.

In this case, I'm quite excited about the prospect of a stream that runs alongside an elevated pebbled road, which combined with bridges and semi-darkness, brings out some intriguing opportunities. However, I'm particularly fond of the very long visible range (sniper heaven) when combined with the small nooks, crannies and cover that the envirnoment provides.

At the moment, there are no new assets in this at all. 100% of the materials and models are from CS:S or HL2, but that's half the aim of this stage: to determine if existing assets are enough (unlikely), and also work out what new assets are needed and how they should be used. Already, I've started exporting DXFs to get size and scale of particular elements right, which will then be used to create new props, and then some more to replace the placeholders.

The next stage is to start creating more assets and simultaneously plan the map layout, taking advantage of what has been learnt here.

So, that's how I start a map. Please bear in mind this might be the last you ever see it... (at least, looking like this!)

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user comments

Tom at 14:43 on Aug 8, 2005

Gorgeous - makes the photo look rubbish. A CS:S map, I presume?

dave at 14:48 on Aug 8, 2005

Tom: Thanks! Probably CS:S, depends how things turn out.

Rusty Le Cyborg at 15:58 on Aug 8, 2005

Now that looks really nice. A good use of elevation as you have mentioned before.

How about a double release? One for Source and one for the CZ die-hards?

hoon at 17:51 on Aug 8, 2005

woah. It's nice to have a look at what you're up to. that looks great! personally I would rotate that stonefloor road texture 90 degrees! ;p
cheers

Mike at 19:38 on Aug 8, 2005

Now thats just gorgeus, u should really continue on that one... I smell a great AWP map hiding under those bridges, hehehe...

Andrew at 21:45 on Aug 8, 2005

Looking very nice, but I noticed that the way you have the road texture rotated, so they travel the length of the road rather than the breadth, matches the road in the picture. very nice little detail. again looking very nice.

Peter at 04:22 on Aug 9, 2005

That took only a few hours!
Dam, If i could do that in a few hours, thats brilliant!
There is some serious gameplay thought gone into this map and I would love to see a finished product.
Great work!

Chris Huppert at 09:02 on Aug 9, 2005

Wow, it looks great so far - i cant wait until the finished product.

dave at 09:59 on Aug 9, 2005

You're all too kind!

Nav at 07:34 on Aug 10, 2005

Yeah, looks great, looks like you're juicing the potential out of the picture! I hope someday you finish and release the map to the public

Skinner at 15:41 on Aug 11, 2005

Woah dave - that level you programmed looks mashing. I like the fact that there are some dark crannies (for kiddie fiddling and such LOL OMG LOL), one thing, i like the levels best that have loads of crates on them - really good for hiding and storing things.

Keep up the good work - let me know when it's finished and i'll test it out for you.

Skinner


PS - i like your name. Ha ha HA HA. LOL

fragg3r at 01:37 on Aug 12, 2005

this architecture and lighting looks awesome
dark road like russia, but the balcony with the rest of the building like spain or so
really interesting

imho to complex for CSS with the balcony, the ditch and so on...
maybe Team Fortress 2??

esky at 16:55 on Aug 12, 2005

THat looks excellent, please make the roofs accessible... italy was much more fun when you could climb the roofs.

Paper-Cut at 21:27 on Aug 13, 2005

Hey Dave...I have a few questions. My machine apparently doesnt not like Dust maps anymore. Whenever I run de_dust, de_dust2, or de_dust_pcg, my game gets 0 FPS then it stops responding. Do you have an email or a screenname that I can contact you on? Here's my info:

Xfire: ilikesniperrifles
MSN: extremelylazy@hotmail.com
AIM: zerogreenegg
Email: papercut1@gmail.com

Please get back to me on this as I want to play these wonderful maps again. (Oh, by the way, its Counter-Strike SOURCE just so you know, and good job on cobble :] )

Tonedef at 07:57 on Aug 16, 2005

It is stuff like this that made me stop mapping....I could never do that good :P.

But no fear, I turned to modeling instead, and things are MUCH better :D

Awesome job, absolutely awesome!

pyropowered at 03:35 on Aug 22, 2005

The brick rail facing the stread looks a little too perfect. I know this is a Wip but a little imperfection never hurts. Same with the buildings, a little variation in the window placement would go a long way.