I just wondered what are the qualities of a good map

Playability.

Once the level is fun, achieves it's objectives and complies to the gameplay/style of the game it is built in then you have a good level.

Bonuses are detail and post-processing to make the map look good too.

Download zeroy's Argentan, its in the downloads section, that give you a good idea, also! read the reviews on some of the maps released by mappers on this site, some of them have had rave reviews from fellow mappers, this will also give you a good idea of what makes a good map,

One of the things i try to do, is! i look at all the good maps, then see which individual things make them good and i take them and add them to my map, your halfway there then

Ian.

arachnofang writes...

Well thank you although credit would go to Valve as the layout is from a map of Day Of Defeat

To the OP, you can check out this nice Article which gives a good few ideas on map building!

Something with a decent strategy. Not just a "run and gun" map.

some folk say make your map with 3 or more routes from spawn to objectives, others say make the unplayable area look real ,ie continue to make areas that are visible but unplayable pretty,,
spreading spawns out or even trying to consele them will help with gameplay fun its no fun spawning in to a firing squad,
pay attention to detailit can become time consuming, so most important save an save and save again, when you reach a bench mark or nice ness save the whole map as mapv1 or mapv2,
saving bits of your map will go along way to adding stuff to your map quickly and easily,
but also making maps that will work on the verious servers is going to be key rather than a map that works on your own run gun or tactical,eg
our clan has a 12 slot server but my map is huge for 12 but i made it for 60 slot servers too, and hoping 10-78 clan will try it out too for s+d aswell cos i like to play there also.

What I do right now is building a part of my hometown (sounds crazy I know), It's pretty interensting cause I allways look how Treyarch's maps looks like and I allways think I do too much...

What ever, what I think what is really good is making a map that looks like WW2 and there should also be many destroyed stuff (Buildings, cars, craters,...). Thats just to have a "WW2 map" feeling. Its pretty boring to play in a Map that is not destroyed in anyway imo.

A big point is balance, thats why you should have beta tests (especially for S&D mode). While beta testing the map check everything out search yourself the best positions as sniper and also as assault. If you think something is too easy to protect, you should change it. Make sure that the denfenders are allways the first on both bombsites or make it hard for the attackers to get to a bombsite when they are faster than the defending team.

Dont make it too easy to camp in your map, nobody likes it (crash attacker spawn camp forever...).

And another thing is: do not make any mistakes while mapping, just played a costum zombie map and saw some textures which are not there, walls which looked boring as hell, some wrong textures at the wrong point of the map, and a overheat made in MS paint.

It takes long to make such a map but at the end you will love your own map.