[tiburon]

[tiburon]

An underappreciated facet of map design is respawn mechanics, if the game has them.

Here is an example of spawn mechanics adding to metagame.

[meauxdal]

http://www.postdesk.com/creator-of-de_dust-dave-johnson-interview

http://games.parsons.edu/2012/04/de_dust/

http://news.esea.net/index.php?s=news&d=comments&id=10541
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[tiburon]

Example of spawn manipulation in a match:


In Reach, the game tries very hard not to spawn you in "dangerous areas" (determined by where you die). RyaNoob uses this knowledge by committing suicide, spawning himself (and a teammate) behind the pushing enemy force.

0:06 "I'm gonna... kill myself at top blue to get us red spawns"
0:20 (I don't think that's gonna work) "Oh I got it" (Wow, that's the nerdiest shit I've ever seen)
0:37 Flanked+confused enemies get cleaned up, Red Team takes the hill
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[tiburon]

[tiburon]

interesting to know he didn't think too hard about testing from the sound of it... i also didn't know it was known for being a very biased map

everyone always talks about doom level design so i was wondering if yall could give some examples
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[Tulpa]

dead simple is doom level design leveraging the monster mechanics to perfection, and it is indeed dead simple.

I know more about quake level design so I'll prob post about that tomorrow
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[tiburon]

i've been learning some tactical jumps recently. Guardian sniper tower level 1 to various places. The intended route is through S1, up the ramp to S2. You can also go halfway up the ramp and jump to S2, since the back is open (no wall). However, there's a couple of unintended ways to slide up the geometry and bypass the expected route.

S1 to S2, left side: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUftMNZ92us
There's also a right-side method that an XBL friend developed yesterday, no vid though. So with this you can trick a guy who's watching his radar from S2, expecting you to come out the ramp, when you actually jump up behind him for an easy kill.
You can chain it, S1 to S3, and surprise dudes hanging out up top: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IMMtgOzk6Y
You can even jump off an invisible ledge on the tree to go S1 to elbow, get the jump on dudes hanging out there: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSTY61MG7hw

another big one is Gold 1 to Gold 2, bypassing the lift. You can actually jump up off all 4 corners, and people will expect the lift but won't expect any of these. anyway there's a bunch - top blue to top mid, G1/bottom mid to top mid, a roundabout top mid to S2.5 to surprise dudes checking for sniper at S3, etc etc.

to bring it back to map design, balancing for this stuff must be a bitch. I know certain jumps are blocked off in certain gametypes by making invisible walls and the like. at the same time, it's an example of evolving meta that an interesting map can facilitate.
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[tiburon]

Here is the sb podcast about FPS level design that relates to this thread:
http://forums.selectbutton.net/viewtopic.php?t=31866

There's some slander in there about Halo 2 but you can ignore it, only half the levels are crap
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[notbov]

I'm trying to recall that podcast since my voice is in it (I think I was drinking while recording this one), but I think criticisms in it pointed at Halo 2 relate to the single player, which is quite a deal more linear than CE's campaign

I'm willing to forgive that because Bungie gave us heat maps
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[tiburon]

Like I said, only certain levels! Certain key encounters in various levels are designed like crap. (Sidenote: People say the Arbiter levels suck. This can easily be reduced to "Halo kids don't want to play as the alien", but if you actually look at the level design, you'll find that the Arbiter's levels just happen to be the ones with the less-interesting encounter design and arbitrary gatedness. The stupid cagefight in the middle of Oracle with the Flood jumping out of the vents comes to mind, as does the end of Sacred Icon->Quarantine Zone which is just "kill things until the game tells you to stop".)

I could break it down level by level, but for now I'll point out the levels that excel in giving you interesting arena "set pieces" (to use the term in a non-CoD/HL2 sense) - essentially, small sandboxes with a variety of interesting toys in them.

Cairo Station (roughly comparable to the interior bits of AotCR from Halo 1 in terms of its focus on room-by-room combat)
The Arbiter (heavy emphasis on CQC and cover/camo management, especially on legendary)
Delta Halo (best level in the game, fantastic wide-open areas with ample vehicles/cover/strategies. the one with the waterfall canyon area if you remember)
Regret
Gravemind
High Charity

I think the prevailing #sbopinion has tended to remember the mediocre bits and forget the areas it does well. Its lategame is particularly strong in giving you wider spaces and interesting geometries to roam and engage enemies.
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[notbov]

I haven't played H2 in a whiles, but I recall how open the levels are being on a sort of a bell curve

I will defer to you (if I was going to defer to anyone) though, as you probably have these layouts committed to memory
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[CubaLibre]

I think that is a pretty good cast.

I only played Halo 1 so I shut up about 2.

I definitely have never played a competitive FPS to the level required for the map analysis given in the opening posts of this thread, but I think the general distinction between games with and without powerups holds, in the sense that it is both accurate and probably the most important binary distinction affecting competitive map design.
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[tiburon]

Yeah I dig it overall! Provided some input into DOOM design, monster gating etc.

I was actually thinking about the comparison of Counter-Strike to Halo as far as map control. In the latter it's driven by powerups and weapon spawns, and it seems to have been a major dev goal to try and smooth out the inequality of power positions over time. Whereas in CS map control is dictated by the terms of engagement themselves: 1 life, asymmetric objectives, near-instant kill times. You have to be on point with your map control because if you aren't you will get punished hard by someone who's watching the corner you just ran through. Whereas Halo will let you run around and engage on relatively equal terms, but when that snipe/rockets/overshield goes up then you're in a world of hurt.
(In CoD there's effectively no map control, you spawn with your loadout and run around twitch shooting stuff so you can call in OP killstreaks and kill more. Correct me if I'm wrong but the closest thing I can think of is camping with shotgun, and even then you can run around with dual 1887s no matter the map. CS seems to avoid this by making every loadout/buy fairly even on a macro level, while being so punishing that you're forced to care about the map. maybe if CoD was 1-life then you'd see the same, idk)

Maybe someone else can provide some insight into the line you could draw between the set of Quake/Unreal/Halo as far as different visions of the powerup-based arena shooter. I haven't played the first two but I def feel like I missed out on something by being too young when Unreal was big, the meta of a game where every weapon has a secondary fire must be crazy to learn/develop/behold
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[notbov]

since CS: a)is round-based b)is traditionally, in a competitive environment, has teams switching sides and c)has an active economy based upon performance, strict map control as it would relate to an arena shooter isn't in play as some of other mechanics in play have a larger effect on the metagame. with that said, the fact that there's always a defending team and two distinct areas wherein the win state can be achieved promotes both control and, to a greater extent, coverage (which isn't to say a lot of de_ maps don't have hilarious chokepoints, but the maps often played have many ways of getting from spawn to A or B except dust but we don't talk shit about dust, that's a classic)

I say this with a grain of salt, as I really haven't indulged in CS since, like, 1.1 or 1.2
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[CubaLibre]

[tiburon]

[CubaLibre]

Yeah I don't know much about the "real" competitive scene. It seems boring. Because the game offers so many potential loadouts either restrictions or metagame tiers are inevitable. IW and Treyarch are pretty clearly unconcerned about overall balance so it falls to whatever authority runs competitive matches to enforce balance.

I mean, your impression of a bunch of kids running around doing random shit isn't completely wrong. CoD doesn't work so great on a 1-life scheme because it's too easy to die - there are too many variables in an average game to control them all, and you will inevitably die no matter how good you are. Like, an expert TF2 player can stomp a bad team without dying once. In CoD that isn't impossible, but it is somewhat random and far less common. That's why k/d ratio is such a big deal. It's kind of like baseball - you win 50, you lose 50, it's the other 50 that matter.

It's certainly not one of the great competitive FPSes and actually I don't even think it's that fun. It's just not 100% bullshit is all I'm saying.
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