Hi!
it's me again...

do you know if there's any manual on mapping for cod? my problem is that even if here i can find almost everything all information is atomic and i think i need a guide to terms you use, to the parts of a map, to his structure and so on. i feel quite lost now...

in case the answer is no i candidate to write the first if i ever manage to have a global overview to all the problems of mapping!

by the way you're great! thanks for the help you gave me so far!

There is one video tutorial on how to make a basic map by Wyatt Earp in the CoD video section.

For the rest, it's all up to your own imagination. Just think of the brushes as lego and build away.
The posibilities are so vast there is no real "how to map" tutorial possible. Just use your own imagination and use this site.. most of the questions you can have are answered here, and if not, I'm sure someone here knows the answer if you ask.

I actually learned mapping by just trying things myself. If you have something in your mind, then look if you can build it. Always go 1 step further, and then you will learn mapping very fast.
Good luck

All of mapping comes down to experimentation. Learn to just experiment and try new things--expand your horizons by spending mor time looking at other people's maps in-game, watching Wyatt's videos zillions of times, and, of course, screwing arond in the editor. Patches, bevels, endcaps, etc. offer you a pretty much limitless field in terms of what you can do, so get out there and get mapping!

Don't be afraid to "ruin" a map with something that looks a little weird or whatever--you can always fine tune it, and who knows, it may be a cool part of a map in the future.

Wyatt's ultrabasic mapping videos (the basics, i think its called) can get you started and put area planning into your head way ahead of time, helping you plan out how your map's ends are going to be tied while you're laying down foundations. It's a great way to start, but the best way to do things is to just mess around until you find your style.

Good luck, and remember, it takes patience!


addition - This is a stretch, but nobody told me about this when i first started out. So, throw down a brush--size doesnt really matter, just make it nice and big and fairly square. Go into the Patch drop down menu and select bevel. See what that does? Now make another brush and and try endcap. These are a very, very basic, highly modifiable arch and a curve that can be applied ot pretty much anything. These, along with patches, and the clipping tool (hit x with a brush selected. try clicking around in the 2d view, you can "clip" up a brush to your liking) make anything possible in mapping. Just keep in mind that the CoD Quake engine doesn't handle fractional angles well, so try and keep your patch vertcies (hint: click v to check up on your vertices) and your clipping angles lined up with the grid in the background of the 2d view.

See you on the battlefield!

edited on Mar. 22, 2006 09:03 am by GlumBum2

If you want to look at other player's maps, download the PK3s and run a local non-dedicated server. Then you can use the following commands to see how they did their meshes, inspect textures on surfaces, or take a look at portals.

Key map debug commands

/devmap [mapname]
- Allows you to load a map in debug mode.

/cg_drawFPS 2
- Shows you additional information, such as the number of tris / vertices / primatives / entities visible at the moment.

/cg_drawshader 1
- Shows you the texture names under your crosshairs.

/r_showportals 1
- Draws the portal boundaries, allowing you to see how the map was sectioned out.

/r_showtris 2
- Draws the outlines of surfaces. Useful for seeing how finely an area was divided.

/r_showsurfcounts 1
- Shows the number of textures in use by a particular model.

/r_showtricounts 1
- Shows the number of triangles in use by a particular model. This is a good measure of model complexity.

...

Other random comments.

- Plan on spending 300-500 hours on a very large map like Foy, Barbarossa, Smolensk, or Broadsword. So you'll likely want to start smaller.

- Layers are your best friend. Learn how to use them. Unfortunately, the mp_foy sample map does not use layers properly (too much stuff is lumped into a single layer). There's a lot of power in being able to turn off all trees or all bushes or all "terrain decorations" such as walls and rocks.

- Study the sizes of existing maps. Use the /viewpos command in the console to get a feel for how large things are.