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  • Subject: Are you waiting to make maps in Forge 2.0? This will help you wait...
Subject: Are you waiting to make maps in Forge 2.0? This will help you wait...

Thank you.
This lessons are absolutely awesome and I can't wait to actually make a halfway decent map! :)

  • 01.19.2011 4:43 AM PDT

Check out my personal game/level design blog at:
http://www.reachingperfection.com

Want to get better at forging maps? Check out my
Forge Lessons.

Looking for a quality map to play with your friends? Then check out: Affinity and Think Twice.

Posted by: KageZ
Thank you.
This lessons are absolutely awesome and I can't wait to actually make a halfway decent map! :)


Your quite welcome sir. I'm glad these lessons help. Remember that practice makes perfect, and you can't expect to create a masterpiece right away.

  • 01.19.2011 10:20 AM PDT


Posted by: Godly_Perfection
Posted by: KageZ
Thank you.
This lessons are absolutely awesome and I can't wait to actually make a halfway decent map! :)


Your quite welcome sir. I'm glad these lessons help. Remember that practice makes perfect, and you can't expect to create a masterpiece right away.

You can make a masterpiece right away if you put a lot of thought into it. I made a very decent drawing of glaciers the other day in class. My original idea was to make magma crashing into the glaciers like waves but I just made it simpler without the magma. It took five minutes and ten extra minutes to finish the details. Fifteen minutes in total, then.

  • 01.19.2011 12:12 PM PDT
Subject: Forge Lessons ***UPDATED*** Lesson 42 (01/18/11) w/ NEW MAP ;)
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GrownPrism is NOT my gt. Happened when signing into my xbox live account. My real gt is here:

http://www.bungie.net/Stats/Reach/Default.aspx?player=SYNTHES lS&sg=0

Godly, in the game night we had, when we played Helix, I really enjoyed it. The map was looked nice, which is a plus, but the map also played well. The spawns were also well made. With a good balance of vehicle and infantry combat. The weapons balanced out the map and didn't make the vehicles impossible to kill which is a plus.

My only complaint was when we played that capture the flag match on Helix. The Blue base had much more cover for people to hide and come out to take the flag. While the Red base was (where the flag was at least) kind of open and if you took the flag there waa barely any cover to go behind. And you could get easily team shot. Though maybe I'm uspet my team lost. <.<



Good map though.
9.5/10

[Edited on 01.20.2011 2:47 PM PST]

  • 01.20.2011 2:45 PM PDT
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Whoo.

Actually nvm, it would be better to post this after I was done.

[Edited on 01.21.2011 7:42 AM PST]

  • 01.21.2011 7:35 AM PDT

Check out my personal game/level design blog at:
http://www.reachingperfection.com

Want to get better at forging maps? Check out my
Forge Lessons.

Looking for a quality map to play with your friends? Then check out: Affinity and Think Twice.

Posted by: CaptKrunch 96
Godly, in the game night we had, when we played Helix, I really enjoyed it. The map was looked nice, which is a plus, but the map also played well. The spawns were also well made. With a good balance of vehicle and infantry combat. The weapons balanced out the map and didn't make the vehicles impossible to kill which is a plus.

My only complaint was when we played that capture the flag match on Helix. The Blue base had much more cover for people to hide and come out to take the flag. While the Red base was (where the flag was at least) kind of open and if you took the flag there waa barely any cover to go behind. And you could get easily team shot. Though maybe I'm uspet my team lost. <.<



Good map though.
9.5/10


Yeah I have found a couple of issues with Helix in long term testing. Mainly that the bases are a little too easy to defend making it a little hard to pull the flag. I plan on re-designing it in the future.

  • 01.21.2011 2:42 PM PDT

I found the Forge Lessons PDF to not be very helpful. There are several useful tips, but they're buried in 42 pages of stuff, most of which I didn't find helpful (my perspective) for a number of reasons.

- There are 275 questions in the document. I understand the value of getting the reader to think through his map design, but being inundated with an average of 6.5 questions per page seems a bit much.

- It feels as if too much of the document is spent convincing the reader that what you're trying to teach him is worth learning. Maybe that's reasonable given how many of your readers are at ages where people are known for knowing everything. ;-) For me that stuff just gets in the way. I go into a document like this with the assumption you have good reasons for taking the time to explain something, and that you have some experience and credentials. In any case, when you think it's worth explaining why something is important, just explain it. I wouldn't preface an explanation with "Why is X important?" (<-- Note: punctuation goes inside quotation marks.)

- Some of it just doesn't feel helpful at all, such as Chapter 30. Nothing in the chapter is wrong, but nothing in it seemed overly helpful either. The fact that you don't know for sure if something will work well on a map until you try it is hardly a revelation worthy of four paragraphs. This lesson contains the following:

"Sometimes you never know that something is going to work until you try it."
"You never know exactly what is going to happen until you try something yourself."
"Sometimes you never know until you try."

And then there are several examples of things you can't know until you try them. Okay, I think I got the message, but I got it the first time you said it.

Chapter 42 is Polish. If you're going to invest the time and effort (which you obviously have) to produce a document you're going to publish for public consumption, you should have someone edit it for grammar and writing practices. (That's how you polish written works. ;-)

Now, as someone who feels inadequate as a map designer (that's why I read your lessons ;-), but as someone who has looked at a fair number of maps and has a fair bit of life experience (I'm 55), I offer the following food for thought:

You talk about experimenting and trying things that are different, but you also rightly point out that it's important to understand the reasons standard practices are standard. I've looked at a fair number of maps, and a common problem with a lot of them is that they're just weird. In an effort to be distinctive and cool, the designer has gotten "creative" and created a map I can't imagine wanting to use for any type of game.

If being distinctive becomes the main goal, a designer can lose sight of the real goal of creating a great map that's fun to play. For example, Grifball is a fairly popular game, and Grifball maps are about as simple as any map could be. There are no paths, no weapons on the map, and few spawn points. But it's really fun. It's a fun game facilitated by the simplest of all possible maps.

I've always thought that while the rules can be broken to great effect sometimes, that's best left to people who understand them well and are experienced and talented enough to know when they can break them and get away with it. When novices break them, the results are usually disappointing, and usually end up showing why the rules are there. Different is not always better. Sometimes it's just weird or uncomfortable.

My point here, in case it isn't obvious, is that people starting out in map design should start out building a good, solid, fun map or two using fairly standard practices. If you can't get the basics of traffic flow, spawning, path manipulation, immersion and so on working on a fairly simple, normal map, deviating from standard practices is only likely to add to the problems, not solve them. If your map isn't fun, putting it under water isn't going to help.

In my experience it's best to give beginners (and I have to assume you're talking to beginners if you feel the need to present your audience with ten variations of "you never know until you try" ;-) pretty clear guidance and encourage people to experiment more after they've had some successes with the basics. If you teach people to walk, they'll figure out how to run on their own.

It's for this reason I think your lessons would be more useful if they included more specific guidelines people could use to build good, relatively simple, straightforward maps to help them learn the principles. Once they have that conceptual knowledge under their belts they'll be better prepared to go off the beaten path.

An example of something specific would be what kinds of weapons are better for what kinds of maps and game types. You mention the sniper rifle 20 times, but sniper rifles are pretty much useless in FFA Krazy King, Oddball and Headhunter. In fact, it shouldn't even be on maps for those games in my opinion because in my experience the people most likely to use it are jerks who want to camp somewhere boosting their K/D ratio instead of playing the game everyone they're killing is playing.

After weapon suggestions, how densely should they be placed be on a map? Should there be weapons every ten feet so you effectively have infinite ammo, or should they be spaced out far enough that people with preferred weapons run out of ammo and can only use them for a short time? What's a good rule for deciding how many sniper rifles to put on a map? Is there a good rule of thumb for deciding when weapons should be put out in the open where they can't possibly be missed, such as in the middle of a main path, or in a more obscure location? For example, in Reach's Powerhouse map, some weapons are placed right in your path, while others, such as the rocket launcher, and even more so, the grenade launcher, are not in obvious places.

Now, you can correctly say this is all up the map designer and that you don't want to limit his creativity, but guidelines don't limit creativity. Nothing you say can prevent someone from putting a fuel rod gun every ten feet on his map. But based on what I've seen, a lot of "creativity" in forged maps is really just the result of not understanding good design principles and the result is a lot of bad maps where people tried something that wasn't a good idea.

Map design is an art, a form of creativity. In involves skill, but it also requires talent, and like pretty much every art form, most people won't have the necessary talent to create great maps. It's just a sad reality of life that the overwhelming majority of us will never be great composers, authors, sculptors, or game map designers. But with the proper guidance in the basics, a lot of people who can never be great can be good, or at least decent, and create maps that can be played and enjoyed.

Anyway, that's just my $0.02. Or maybe $0.03. I'm not good at building maps or even a very good player, but my observations seem to apply to a lot of other areas in life and I see no reason they wouldn't apply here as well.

  • 01.22.2011 12:33 PM PDT
Subject: Are you waiting to make maps in Forge 2.0? This will help you wait...

Posted by: Davoine
People who use armor lock are like women. Slap them around - they get on their knees.

Thread about a Team fiesta and FFA Fiesta playlist
Four Ways To Fix AL

:D

  • 01.22.2011 12:46 PM PDT
Subject: Forge Lessons ***UPDATED*** Lesson 42 (01/18/11) w/ NEW MAP ;)

I love you.

  • 01.23.2011 4:04 PM PDT

Check out my personal game/level design blog at:
http://www.reachingperfection.com

Want to get better at forging maps? Check out my
Forge Lessons.

Looking for a quality map to play with your friends? Then check out: Affinity and Think Twice.

Posted by: SkyTag Jumpmstr
I found the Forge Lessons PDF to not be very helpful. There are several useful tips, but they're buried in 42 pages of stuff, most of which I didn't find helpful (my perspective) for a number of reasons.

...

Anyway, that's just my $0.02. Or maybe $0.03. I'm not good at building maps or even a very good player, but my observations seem to apply to a lot of other areas in life and I see no reason they wouldn't apply here as well.


First of all let me thank you for the well thought out response Jumpmstr. You bring up some very valid points. I can definitely see where you are coming from.

These lessons were not written only for Halo's forge system they were written with level design in all games in mind, not just halo. The sniper rifle and rocket launcher are used as a reference multiple times because those are very standard weaponry in a majority of games and they hold pretty much the same function in all games. The reason why I never go into specific instances is because these articles are not there for a specific game, they are their to cover the general sense of things.

Also these lessons are written for the true beginner. Each lesson considers that the reader has NO previous knowledge on the subject. These lessons are meant to take a simple tip and break it down into something that you overly think about so you take the time to analyze the why and how rather than the what. If you cover things too specifically a designer will never learn. If I tell people to always do something they will know that they need to do it, but they won't know exactly why in the greater sense of things and won't be able to build off of that knowledge.

My goal with these lessons is not to set you into a standard practice. It is to show you the pieces and teach you how to put them together in your own way and rediscover things for yourself. Learning is much greater when you do something wrong and then learn from it rather than when someone tells you that a certain way is the right way to do it. Basically I want you to start from the bottom and work your way up learning everything as you go for yourself. Why? Because everyone experiences things differently. That is part of that lesson you mentioned. You never know until you try. One thing that works for you may not work for someone else. If I give you specific instructions and tell you that it is the best way to do things, you may accidentally stumble upon a situation where it isn't the best way to do things and you won't know why what I told you didn't work.

What I'm doing is teaching you the concept behind fishing. I'm teaching you the purpose of bait, I'm teaching you the importance of patience, I'm teaching you the importance of picking your location. I'm not going to spoon feed you, I'm going to tell you what you are looking for and allow you to make your own decisions.

These lessons are also to open your mind and make you aware of things that seem like common sense. Sure being patient and dedication seems like common sense, but not many people consider this a part of level design and thus this is an area they could improve in. If I make them aware they can take the time to focus and improve on that area now that they are aware that it is just as important as weapon placement.

You are right, level design is an art form and in art you can beat specific. You have to teach people why and how art is done, not what to make. When teaching people to make music teachers don't only tell you to use exactly these notes together because they sound good. They teach you the concept of synchronizing and feeling. If people only taught specific styles, new styles would rarely be born. My goal is to teach to encourage progress and learning because with that we can take the time to improve the level design field as a whole and learn new things as a group rather than be stuck in one particular set of standards.

I hope you get what I am getting at and understand why I wrote the lessons in the way that I did.

  • 01.23.2011 4:48 PM PDT

Posted by: VolatileToast
Please sir, I want some moa.

Above discussion was a tasty snack ;)

I definitely wouldn't say the lessons are bad, considering they're the primary influences on how far I've come since August 3rd, but, well... 'Reaching Perfection.' I said this a while ago on RP, and I still think it's true to an extent. I agree with Jumpmstr (great name, BTW, jumping was my favorite non-conventional H3 activity) that specific examples could greatly help you out, if done correctly. I know these are general design theories, but even you call them Forge Lessons. You know your main audience. And I think if you do them right, they could still be effective. For example, in the lesson on smooth spawning, something like,

"A lot of people aren't fans of the spawns on Pinnacle. Why? [Note: I do disagree with Jumpmstr on the comments about questions, I think the more the merrier. The more questions Godly asks, the more the reader thinks. If the reader is thinking more, the reader is learniing more, in the same size lesson.] Because a lot of them have no cover around them, and in a lot of cases you can barely spawn without having fire rained down upon you immediately."

You could go on to expand this, and it could be one of your paragraphs. It's clearly a very specific example from Reach (whose players are your target audience) but the way it's presented means that it makes perfect sense out of context.

PS: Thanks to Jumpmstr for starting this discussion, it led to me looking at the earliest lessons for reference, and I saw some of my comments back when I had maybe an hour's worth of design experience. They made me smile.

  • 01.23.2011 6:50 PM PDT

thanks, these lessons helped me a lot, im not very good at forge but these made me a lot better, im about to attempt to make an amazing map








Click this for Magic :)

  • 01.25.2011 8:07 AM PDT

cool

  • 01.29.2011 9:33 PM PDT

The candy man can!
Posted by: FlipTaco
Posted by: FlipTaco
Somebody with extreme moral value is about to post and tell you how bad it is that you're going to miss one day of school. Just wait for it... wait for it...

Posted by: overhem
Education is the most important thing in your life. Don't skip it for a video game.

Tada!

Posted by: EpIc God 41Posted by: Godly_PerfectionHOLY -blam!-!

  • 02.02.2011 7:08 PM PDT

The candy man can!
Posted by: FlipTaco
Posted by: FlipTaco
Somebody with extreme moral value is about to post and tell you how bad it is that you're going to miss one day of school. Just wait for it... wait for it...

Posted by: overhem
Education is the most important thing in your life. Don't skip it for a video game.

Tada!

Posted by: SkyTag JumpmstrGood read, I especially agree with the fact that when novices break the standards of the trade the results are disappointing--very true statement.

  • 02.02.2011 7:11 PM PDT

critique this.

http://www.bungie.net/Stats/Reach/FileDetails.aspx?fid=134827 68&player=TripN%20KniveZ

map i made for big team battle. tell me if thats not big team battle material.

[Edited on 02.03.2011 1:00 PM PST]

  • 02.03.2011 1:00 PM PDT

Well, I've gotten five friends reading these lessons and they can't believe someone put so much time and effort into it. Ah... what do you expect?

  • 02.15.2011 4:03 PM PDT
Subject: Are you waiting to make maps in Forge 2.0? This will help you wait...

Just have fun with it

wingin it!

  • 03.10.2011 2:28 PM PDT
Subject: Forge Lessons ***UPDATED*** Lesson 42 (01/18/11) w/ NEW MAP ;)

Hey Godly, glad to see the thread is still up and running. I'v been away from Halo for a while, but I might have to read-up and get back into it.

EDIT: Oh, and you're ego still block out the sun :)

[Edited on 03.10.2011 6:03 PM PST]

  • 03.10.2011 6:01 PM PDT
Subject: Are you waiting to make maps in Forge 2.0? This will help you wait...

If any one wants some one to build forge maps with, hit me up GT= MotoBreath

send me a message first

  • 03.10.2011 7:24 PM PDT

I love to forge all day all the time but have no one to forge with and show ally awesome inventions tricks and glitches I've learned over the past couple months halo reach has been out... Anyone ever wants to forge just send me a message my gamer tag is duckjr94

  • 03.14.2011 11:44 PM PDT
Subject: Forge Lessons - Lesson 42 (01/18/11)

Really brilliant post OP, keep up the updates

  • 03.23.2011 10:45 PM PDT
Subject: Are you waiting to make maps in Forge 2.0? This will help you wait...
  • gamertag: [none]
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Funky is Fun.

Yay,

  • 03.24.2011 8:20 PM PDT
Subject: Forge Lessons - Lesson 42 (01/18/11)

Check out my personal game/level design blog at:
http://www.reachingperfection.com

Want to get better at forging maps? Check out my
Forge Lessons.

Looking for a quality map to play with your friends? Then check out: Affinity and Think Twice.

Posted by: sparten 025
Really brilliant post OP, keep up the updates


Sorry I've felt a bit lazy about updating this thread for a while. I have to do a lot of code conversions and what not, but I will get around to it. If you haven't been keeping up folks, I am up to lesson 45 on RP.

  • 03.24.2011 10:24 PM PDT

Come on over to Moving Up for your primary help and Q&A source.

"A wizard is never late, nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to."

Love the post, and I love your maps! They're very original.

  • 03.25.2011 1:27 PM PDT