Distraction fueled filler Concept Art

I haven't updated this blog mainly since I have had some distractions in my life.  The more responsible reason would be school.  I'm going to be having finals soon and likewise my classes are starting to spam work out more rapidly, leaving me with less mapping time.  In the more irresponsible light, I got indie game Beat Hazard and it sucked up a huge chunk of free time from me because of how fun it is.  I highly recommend picking it up.  The Passing was also released (which I loved in both a player's standpoint and studying it's level design).  I'll probably put up a post about The Passing later on.

As for the campaign/map itself, even though I haven't been able to work on it fully, I still drew concepts for it to help brainstorm some ideas.  Here's some of those sketches:

Click for Huge-O version:

Size References and Dev Textures

The worst possible thing to happen to any mapper is to map out a large part of your map only to realize that it's over expansive or too small. This is where size references come to great use.

For starters, I highly recommend staying on Hammer's grid. You can use the "[" and "]" to change your grid size. Staying on the grid pretty much reduces the amount of errors you may receive and the Hammer Editor compiler will love you too. Along with reducing errors, it makes your mapping much more neat and precise.

"That's not on Grid!"

"Oh! Okay!"

As for size references, I created a reference vmf where I'll be storing various references for my map. Be it styles, size references, dev textures etc.

I placed some prop_static of various Left 4 Dead characters. This gives me a good idea of size reference of a area. Likewise, you can use the spawn point entities for the same purpose.

"Size Reference Group Photo"

Here's another good size reference. Cars. We all have some sort of grasp how cars measure in real life, that way we can use this method to make better judgments of measurements in our map compared to reality. Likewise, in this method, survivors can be placed to make even finer measurements within the cars. Nick represents every car mark, and Ellis represents every halfway/inbetween car mark.

"This fits with that "On the Grid" thing mentioned earlier"

Dev textures are a good size reference aswell. If you've randomly joined a custom map server in any source game, you have no doubt come across a dev texture map. The good thing about the Left 4 Dead 2 Authoring Tools is that they have changed the dev textures to something more eye pleasing.

"Old Method: OH WHAT THE- MY EYES"

"Ah, much better"

As you can see, they're different shades of grey, rather than blinding orange.  The shades of grey represent different reflectivity in regards to radiosity. Remember that the source engine is capable of radiosity. Radiosity is allowing the color and light of a texture to bounce off due to lighting. If you have a green wall, when light hits it, it'll reflect green back to it's surrounding environment. You can use these dev textures to represent various shades of textures you might use later on to take advantage of radiosity. For example, if you want a bright plaster wall, you may want to use a dev texture with higher reflectivity while for a darker gravel road you might want to use a darker reflectivity amount.

The wall dev textures, when using the default scaling (0.25 by 0.25) represent a good height of one story.

"2 Story Building, looks about right"

Keep in mind that this is just a general measurement, you have to take in account actual architecture for your measurements. For example, Southern architecture have higher ceilings because of the heat. You can see this represented well in Left 4 Dead 2. In cases like this, you may want to create "half-sized" dev Textured walls to help create additional halfway marks or whatever measurement you want to add. Think of the default 0.25x0.25 dev texture wall as one unit. Just multiply or divide 0.25 by what measurement you want.

Here you can see my half-sized dev texture walls combined with the normal default sized dev textured walls. The half-sized dev textures are scaled by 0.125x0.125, or when simplified 0.13x0.13. (0.125 was made by dividing 0.25 into half.).

Hope this was useful to any mappers out there. If you have any other useful advice/tips you'd like to share feel free to email them to me and I'll include them in a post with your credit.

My next blog post will cover blocking out the first map. Til then.

La Villita Stage One: Design

The first stage of mapping for me starts off in the design phase. This is the phase where I sketch out a bunch of layouts and design concepts in order to allow my head to brain storm. I usually go through enough sheets of paper to run a mini rain forest until I have a layout that I think will work.

"Paper cuts, imminent"

I didn't always do this, I would just randomly go into Hammer and throw stuff together and allow that to be my brainstorming, but that would often lead to frustration and alot of unused maps. When I worked on my Senior Project map (which was a source engine based replica of my school) I found that frustration and confusion decreased dramatically when I had a already planned out layout that I could add to and alter.

Considering how heavy level design is actually needed in Left 4 Dead maps, I decided to scrap the technique of randomly playing with stuff in hammer and actually work on sketching out layouts. It turned out to be alot more productive and fun and is probably going to make the mapping far more enjoyable.

Anyways, after I'm done irritating Captain Planet from the amount of notebook paper I used, I transfer the designs and layouts I did on the sheets of paper to this goliath thing:

"A notepad for a king, or a earth giant"

You see, the problem with notebook paper is that it's relatively small. It's made to carry notes, homework, and stupid letters to friends. Blueprints get kind of gimped when put on notebook paper due to the size that most blueprints usually demand. Usually you'll have to rely on multiple sheets of paper and just kind of put them together like a Dungeons and Dragons game board map or something in order to plan map layouts and blueprints on them. Rather than having to do all of that, I decided just to use this huge sized notepad to allow me to transfer all of my layouts from notebook paper to a scale that the layout can actually fit in.

Because of the epic size of this notepad, it should also have a higher quality blueprint. So I try (emphasis on try)to use my ruler to create straighter lines. But sometimes I just suck at straight lines.

"As you can see from the rest of the lines, I'm pro at straight lines. Seriously."

While at a workdesk designing your map's layout, it's usually a good idea to have a Personal Media Player with you to play music and/or podcasts, because you aren't just gonna listen to silence while you layout some plans.

"Beware the Giant Zune Riverboat of Death!"

It's important to note that, just because you "finalized" your map layout on the notebook sheet paper doesn't mean you can't make changes. As you might soon realize, you might get sudden epiphanies and sparks of brilliance, either thanks to you or Coheed and Cambria, so you should make changes accordingly.

"4 Cans of Dr.Pepper optional."

As you may have noticed in the photos, I planned my layout from a top view perspective. While this is good enough, the best method is Isometric designs. But you see, I suck at Isometric designs. Why are isometric layouts better? Well, they are able to capture height variation much more accurately and makes it less confusing. There is a way though to overcome this if you're creating a layout from a top view perspective. Just have platforms or whatever that are at a higher elevation to have thicker lines and lower elevation plaforms have thinner lines. It seems to work just as good.

Once you got your layout down it's time to go to the blocking stage. More on that later. Likewise, I'll probably make a post about the decisions that went into the design of the layout. Stay tuned.