• What makes a good Xonotic map, gameplay-wise? A lot of different accesses, the ability to jump, a lot of teleporters? The maps I really liked, form my point of view, are those who are completely fucked-up, with a lot of highly recognizable but different areas.
  
• Any advice about a good way to proceed in NetRadiant? For instance, I've been mapping under Hammer (Source), and there are precise dimensions for stairs, doors, etc. They also recommend to use blocks with a power of two size, for texturing.
  
• How to scale a Xonotic map? What's different here is that you have to take the three dimensions into account, while in most of other games, only x and y are interesting. Plus, you move quite fast, so I guess the corridors must be kinda large?
  
• Any other things, like things to avoid absolutely while mapping? Or something that greatly helps you to troubleshoot/modify/optimize afterwards?
  

• Everyone spawns with a weapon called Blaster, which people can use to jump really high. This essentially means that anyone can reach pretty much anywhere with the sacrifice of some HP. If you don't want it to be easy to reach to places, things needs to be VERY tall. Alternatively, you can design some areas in a way that demands the use of blaster.
  
• Xonotic is not just a shooter & runner, but also a territorial / resource control based game. So when designing a layout, don't think of only what makes it interesting for shooting/movement, but also what makes it interesting for gathering resources and territorial control.
  
• Players spawn with weak weapons and need to gather weapons, armor and health to survive fights. Players can also deny their opponent from getting any of them or at the very least make it hard for them. 
  
• Spawn killing is a thing, every map will eventually succumb to it, get used to it. You can also in some occasion predict or make very good guesses as to where your opponent spawns, depending on the spawn system the current server has. Some people fire rockets or other projectiles to spawn locations preemptively. There's no workaround to this other than covering up the spawn points with ridiculous decorations or just making hard effort with the layout, but what you can however do ingame is to delay your spawn so at least the spam won't kill you.
  
• You don't want it to be too easy to get everything. If everything is too conveniently placed and close to one another, that'll induce camping and uninteresting gameplay and it might even make some parts of your map redundant. 
  
• What I personally like to do is place major items like 100 armor and 100 health into risky places. Fuse is a very good example, where every important item is in an inconvenient spot. When I place a major item somewhere, I want it to reflect risk by the amount of value that the item has. For items that has less value, obviously should not be too risky to get - otherwise nobody would ever go for it.
  
• Players can use sound cues to determining where your opponent is: Pickup sounds, jump pad sounds, teleporter sounds, foot steps and so on. If you have too much of everything, you'll make sound cue value more arbitrary. So try to imagine how you would hunt and find your opponent in your map and how to make it interesting, how to give players opportunity to be sneaky or how to force them to make a sound in order to get through some area.
  
• Last but not least, Xonotic has a handful of advanced trickjump techniques. Which can make the ideal distances and sizes vary for different skill levels. You shouldn't worry about making things spacious, the scale of the corridors should be reasonable. Because if they're too wide, then you make it too easy to speed up with blaster. For trickjumping etc, here's a video for inspiration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMgfXNWG73Y
  

1. "why do you keep voting for gasoline / space elevator"? (previously popular map among ffa pubs in NA)
   
2. "why do you guys keep playing Aerowalk?" (at this point, a proving grounds for duelists)
   
3. "which ctf maps are good" (there isn't a big normal ctf scene so this wasn't any particular demographic)
   
4. "which cts maps do you recommend I add to the server" (defraggers)
   
   And I've gotten a lot of feedback over the months.
   
   

1. "The music (moar ghosts 'n stuff by deadmau5 in gasoline, or Meltdown in space elevator) is good, and I like the colors."
   
   So if you put in some kooky, catchy music in your map and have a bright neon-ish theme with your map, chances are with enough exposure it'll be a hit or at least flavor of the month(s) among ffa/dm players.
   
   
2. "it's (Aerowalk) a well designed map and I like spawnfragging"
   - paraphrase of sawa
   
   If in your map it is difficult to avoid confrontation and hide (e.g it's easier to hide if the map is large and has multiple rooms i.e Aerowalk is one center, multistory atrium surrounded by hallways), and you can game the spawn system, chances are it'll be a hit amongst duelists. If it has connecting tunnels so players can intercept each other and spam rockets and grenades, they'll love that too.
   
   
3. (1) "moonstone_nex, accident, shinning-forces, cpmctf2, hal-palindrome, distortion, etc / you already have all of the non-garbage maps / Xonotic has no good ctf maps "
   (2) dissocia
   (3) astralcity, apace
   
   This one was a pretty tough to get answers for because the CTF mode is dominated by instagib+hook (which my server doesn't run) which favors big open space maps and Vortex/Vaporizer. And it happens to be a varied topic, but the gist of it is there's demand for more regular CTF matches since it's a recognizable mode in which the objective isn't just killing people. A majority of the maps are (perceived to be) unsatisfactory for non-insta play.
   
   Player(s) #1 favors "corridor style" maps, which fits well with the regular game. One of which badly wants to play CTF and asked people to play Reflex Arena for CTF matches.
   
   Player #2 is a stray instagib player that will either request that I add instagib+hook to the server and/or complain that the server isn't instagib [generally will not stay for long].
   
   Player #3 kind of had a background in instagib.
   
   
4. This one is going to be a pretty big list, but it seems generally the server has attracted strafers. If the map is easy to complete (doesn't incur many start-overs), 15-30 seconds in length by an experienced player, but is not too overly simple, it'll be an enjoyable experience, e.g pornstar maps are typically popular. If there's shortcuts available by reaching some speed milestones, it's a bonus, but if a speed milestone is mandatory to get to the finish line, not so much.
   If you have a ramp jump that acts as a shortcut to finish the map, it may be better to have it as a ramp instead of a "pipe".
   

(06-26-2017, 11:35 AM)hox3d Wrote: [*]What makes a good Xonotic map, gameplay-wise? A lot of different accesses, the ability to jump, a lot of teleporters? The maps I really liked, form my point of view, are those who are completely fucked-up, with a lot of highly recognizable but different areas.

(06-26-2017, 11:35 AM)hox3d Wrote: [*]Any advice about a good way to proceed in NetRadiant? For instance, I've been mapping under Hammer (Source), and there are precise dimensions for stairs, doors, etc. They also recommend to use blocks with a power of two size, for texturing.

(06-26-2017, 11:35 AM)hox3d Wrote: [*]How to scale a Xonotic map? What's different here is that you have to take the three dimensions into account, while in most of other games, only x and y are interesting. Plus, you move quite fast, so I guess the corridors must be kinda large?

(06-26-2017, 11:35 AM)hox3d Wrote: [*]Any other things, like things to avoid absolutely while mapping? Or something that greatly helps you to troubleshoot/modify/optimize afterwards?

(06-27-2017, 02:40 AM)hox3d Wrote: So, i just wanted to make a map that fits a majority of players/gameplays.
If I had to sum up the whole thing, I got the feeling that a map needs to have a little bit of everything.

EDIT: just realized something too: should I run away from symmetry? I mean, does this make the map predictable and boring?

• the server hosting the map might need a larger player count so one person/team rushing to and controlling Vortex isn't outrageously effective [Space Elevator]
  
  It's ok for instagib because you die and spawn with all the equipment you ever need, but dying in regular Xonotic, means you have to run around and pick up armor, weapons, and overheals, then compete with a powerful long range weapon with shorter range weapons that the sniper can dodge projectiles of.
  
  
• the movement is very limiting without a grappling hook (limited to two forced jump pads to go between bases) [Space Elevator]
  
  This worsens the issue of above, and the risk of traversing between base sometimes causes turtling then gets boring.
  
  
• the big open spaces and long distances start to favor hitscan weapons over projectiles [Implosion]
  
  Also means less potential for ricocheting weapons (which aren't in instagib).
  
  
• there generally isn't interesting geometry to take advantage of compared to the deathmatch maps.
  

Quote:Xonotic has big roomy CTF maps, Implosion, Geoplanetary or something very instagib+hook favored (Space Elevator).

(06-27-2017, 03:05 PM)hox3d Wrote: My best guess was to start with simple geometry, like, nothing fancy at the moment, just to get it working.
No rounded corners, etc.
Is that a good practice?

(06-27-2017, 03:05 PM)hox3d Wrote: My best guess was to start with simple geometry, like, nothing fancy at the moment, just to get it working.
No rounded corners, etc.
Is that a good practice?

(09-01-2017, 08:21 AM)Freddy Wrote: Imo the main reason why many of the really good unofficial maps are not included is that most mappers never suggest their maps and/or the license is unclear/incompatible.

(09-01-2017, 11:16 AM)Cortez666 Wrote: if you submit it will take quiet a lot of time (not that big issue) and when there is a response you get a reject with a comment like this "branch please"

(09-01-2017, 01:42 PM)Freddy Wrote: Creating your own branch for your map shows that you are willing to further work on and improve the map. Creating a branch is not that hard.
If on the other hand you submit your maps via issues on Gitlab and don't even include a download link to your maps, then some teammembers won't take the time to search for it.

Again: Show that you want to maintain your map in the future and will invest time in it if needed