Quake3World

Just finishing my first deathmatch map for OverDose, and I'm a bit stumped on item placement. Obviously most areas were made with certain items in mind, but what tips do you guys have for items, like, where they should be placed, how far apart, what groups work well in a small area etc etc... For example, I tend to find the Railgun and Grenade Launcher usually high up in the air, and small health and shards usually grouped together.

Any help would be hot

-group items like smallhealth and shards in different numbers, for distinct sound-area recognition.
-never place the most powerful weapons on the same level. Force the up-player to either go down or up a level, to allow the downplayer some chance of a comeback.
-place keyitems in places that forces a player to reveal his position (q3: RA, MH)
-railgun position varies greatly from map to map. in hub3 it's placed on the topmost tier, and in ztn its placed on the bottom. position it with the other main items in mind.
-never make a map "item-runnable". making it easy to grab RA-MH-RL/RG in a matter of seconds. Being dominated on a map is never fun.

Yeah, what obsidian said. That is pretty much THE definitive guide for competitive map design. A great reference.

Bloody hell, this is tough... Its quite hard trying to fit it all in but at the same time not making it look like your just sticking things places to make it looks busy. Weapons wise it was easy following the guide, that made sense. Ammo? tough, again... Health and armor? Bugger...

And then I need to think about player spawns, heh...

Thanks for the help guys

IMO a layout should adapt from the itemplacement, not the otherway around.

It has for the most important factors, the gameplay was shaped around it.

But that doesn't mean I know where ammo will spawn.

As a general rule, I like to place thing so that it keeps the player moving and also helps to dictate where the player chooses to move depending on what he needs. As long as you keep the player moving in such a way that it's not predictable (either camping around the same area or has a particular circuit around a few key items) you should be set.

I usually start with the big ticket pickups like armor and megahealth. I place them at moderately open, hard to defend or at risk areas that are accessible from multiple directions. It should be difficult for a player to grab all large items in a short timespan.

Then I start placing weapons while thinking about spawnpoints. Certain weapons will assist the "up" player in keeping his stronger status while other weapons are for the "down" player who has just spawned in and desperately needs something to defend himself with. Usually, the "up" player will need health and armor to replenish his strength and the "down" player will need weapons to challenge the other player. You don't want to give the up player too much health or the down player too big of a gun either, or you will end up with either one player with a huge lead or a map that who wins depends entirely on who grabs the biggest gun.

I then pop in spawnpoints in areas of cover and relative safety. They are usually in lower traffic areas and not too close to the "big items". The number of spawnpoints depends on the number of players and size of map.

Ammo and health are usually put in last, they are just to fill up and balance whatever is out of place from everything placed above. Where you place them should help with increasing "flow" in your map. Like placing ammo right next to weapons usually promotes camping and is kind of a bad idea. But placing ammo for your favourite gun on the other side of the map forces you to move to grab it.

Place ammo and health in places that rewards moving around the map, to make a certain constant flow. Easiest is just to get some mates to play for a few rounds and see what problems usually occures. Constant lack of rocketammo or always low on health etc.

It sounds like you already have a good idea of how to place items. My comments would be that the gap between solid and exceptional item placement is small but between solid and poor is huge. Don't obsess about little things and vague concepts and think of the players rather like bots, items are lures in a very similar manner.

I do items as passes, as you seem to, Mega and armours, then weapons, health, ammo and finally spawns.

Mega and RA tend to be at opposite ends of the level in the prime spots as determined by the map geometry, once these are placed then YAs or GAs (green armours in CPMA) are placed accordingly. With weapons the top tier weapons are placed first, away from mega and RA, the Rail, LG and RL. Usually 2 RLs per level although one can work. Take extreme care with the rail and learn Willits' style of rail placement. He always has a significant time and position cost involved in taking it. Then GL is placed in a useful position to spam (some mappers like to place items at the opposite end of the map from where it would be useful, I think this is a mistake and just damages the pace in 1v1). The PG and SG can be placed in well protected positions near spawns, these are the weapons for the down player to get back into the game.

You are mapping for Quake Live so will be judged on strict competitive standards. Take extreme care with your LG and RG placement for this reason, if either is too accessible the level is quite likely to break.

Place health in either highly exposed in the middle of an area (50H generally) or in a risky nook. Depth in maps comes from a geometry that has an effect, if the majority of items are in somewhat risky positions as a nook (this is just the corner of a room in most cases) then a successful prediction of what an opponent is going to take is rewarded.

Don't put items 'in the way' generally unless it's the focal point of an area or it's a 5 healths or shards set intended to act as a sound signal.

With health err on the side of less, a lot of poor mappers just coat their level in health and do stupid things like placing lots of health near RA or Mega. Make players travel for health to specific spots so the opponent can guess and cut them off.

Ammo placement is not as trivial as many mappers treat it by plopping 1 of every box in the level. Does the weapon need additional ammo? If you add ammo you will emphasize that weapon. Placement is generally quite simple, placing the ammo on the opposite side of the map to the weapon. Are id doing anything with ammo levels in QuakeLive? I'm guessing no sadly, you need to be aware that vanilla Quake 3 ammo levels are ridiculous. Look at what we did with ammo levels in CPMA for comparison and talk to Syncerror about it. Ideally ammo needs to be a concern but not pace-killing.

Spawns come last because everything else must be in place already. As you've said place spawns in fairly safe positions, dying the instant you spawn is just stupid and is very different to being closed down and killed by a smart player. 1v1 maps need a minimum of about 8 spawns. Don't put spawns directly ontop of items, they should be at least 1 jump away from any major item or weapon. Sometimes you must break this rule but stick to it for RA, Mega, RL, RG and LG.

Consider much more detailed use of sound signals such as shallow water.

ix-ir wrote:Ammo placement is not as trivial as many mappers treat it by plopping 1 of every box in the level. Does the weapon need additional ammo? If you add ammo you will emphasize that weapon. Placement is generally quite simple, placing the ammo on the opposite side of the map to the weapon. Are id doing anything with ammo levels in QuakeLive? I'm guessing no sadly, you need to be aware that vanilla Quake 3 ammo levels are ridiculous. Look at what we did with ammo levels in CPMA for comparison and talk to Syncerror about it. Ideally ammo needs to be a concern but not pace-killing.

When I was playing CPMA I found that a lot of the maps had too much ammo. So much so that I callvoted it off, and then the ammo levels (just from picking up weapons) were OK. It's cause you move so fast in CPMA and a lot of the maps are designed in such a way that there are items easily accessable all over the place. I mean a lot of the maps are overly connected so you can get to all the weapons easily. (Edit: Mind you, this was having come from playing CQ3 in OSP extensively, which has lower ammo counts than VQ3. I don't play CQ3 any more but cause of the dynamic MH spawns - it gives too much advantage to the player that gets it.)

Speaking of fixing things like ammo counts in QuakeLive; something I'd like them to fix is how much ammo you get from picking up a weapon. In VQ3, if you pick up a weapon you already have, you only get an increase of 1 ammo count. If you run out of ammo, though, then pick one up, you get the full ammo count you get as if you didn't have the weapon. Also, if you pick up a dropped weapon, you get the full ammo count, regardless of how much ammo the player that dropped actually had for it - this is whether you have the weapon already or not.

It should be consistant - the same ammo should be in the weapon no matter what; it should be constant. So the amount of ammo a player has left is how much he drops with his weapon. And you should be able to get the full ammo count from picking up a weapon you already have; just cause you have it doesn't mean the ammo shouldn't be there for you but there for someone who doesn't have the weapon.

When I was playing CPMA I found that a lot of the maps had too much ammo.

In some cases yes, if a mapper chooses to place plenty of ammo boxes then there is, the point is if they want to build a low ammo level the CPM ammo system will support it, compare it to VQ3 dm6 duels where you see players running around with 50 RG ammo with little in the way of ammo boxes on the level.

ix-ir wrote:In some cases yes, if a mapper chooses to place plenty of ammo boxes then there is, the point is if they want to build a low ammo level the CPM ammo system will support it, compare it to VQ3 dm6 duels where you see players running around with 50 RG ammo with little in the way of ammo boxes on the level.

Well I don't play Q3DM6 (Edit: or pro-q3dm6) duel cause that map was clearly designed around Quad (unless someone wants to play with Quad, then it's another story). So I don't know what the ammo's like on that map in duel. I know that the map wasn't designed with the bridge-to-rail or rail-to-bridge jump, though, so that could be what messes up the rail ammo. Or maybe there's extra ammo elsewhere? Only RG ammo I remember really is the one next to the RG. Is there one on top of one of the pillars in pro-q3dm6? Is that there in q3dm6 aswell?