Delta Lead's Guide To Quick Map Making.

Questions and answers about the how and why of making maps.
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Delta Lead
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Delta Lead's Guide To Quick Map Making.

Post by Delta Lead »

Delta Lead's Quick Map Creation Process

This Guide is designed to:
-Give You a Head Start On Map Making
-Make Your Life Easier
-Help You earn more player's when you first release Your Map.
-Give You an idea on how to come up with a good idea.
-Help You and other Players have more fun!

Step 1:

What Do YOU Think is Fun?

Come Up with a unique idea that will be fun to play on and has a good base that you can build on. This step will most likely deter main a large portion of the maps outcome. Remember, to make sure nobody has already made a map like this. Do some research and ask around. Also find out what people like. Ex. Maps Like Missile Wars 2 are popular for strategy and the thrill of battle as well as a well thought out game. This Map was made with only hand coding and bzedit. Planet mofo is a FFA That is also popular because it never stops and is fast passed. Make sure you're game will keep the players attention for at least an hour.

Step 2:

Start The Process.
Start Building. Weather with hand coding or a Map Editor They all work great. You will however need to know hand coding.
http://my.bzflag.org/w/Category:Map_Mak ... ng_by_Hand
Build your map. Use Textures, Meshes and anything you can think of to make you map more interesting. You have to give it a point and reason to play. Never Make it impossible and never make it too easy. Ex. Place Genocide Flags in a hard to reach Place Via. Zone Codes. Please Refer To "Spazzy McGee"'s Map Guide for more in Depth On this Topic.
Make it challenging though. Few People like to spend a lot of time killing people for hours and hours with no challenge. Make it challenging and make them work for their goals. This Attracts players and keeps them longer.

Step 3:

Test Your Map

To Make A Quality map, It's first release must have as minimal bugs and glitches as possible. Take the time to test ALL Aspects of your map. This may take a while but it is worth it in the end. Do not release your map until you've tested it multiple times and have made sure they're are as little known bugs as possible. Don't Just release your map once it's created because you will never ever create a map without any bugs!!! Once people play it and it's bad it is unlikely they will return anytime soon. First Impressions always count greatly in becoming a map creator. Good first impressions will attract players to any other maps you may build in the future.

Step 4:

Expand and Mod Your Server "mostly For People Hosting Them By themsleves"
When creating a map you don't want some cheater or vulgar language to drive your players away. Choose People you trust to moderate your server,and/or people who are well known admins on other servers. You can be sure that if a player is an admin on multiple servers he is a reasonable person. More than 90% of Bzflag players will agree thats cheaters and continuous language makes the game less fun and most people will leave if it become constant. Keep the games sense able and especially kid friendly! If host host a server you can choose you mods, only a handful of hosts will let you choose you mods.

Step 5:

Release Your Map!! Have Fun and you will want to make more maps!
You will learn to create more complex maps and have a great time doing so.


Please Feel Free To Ask Any Questions!!
Last edited by Delta Lead on Mon Sep 08, 2008 10:25 pm, edited 10 times in total.
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blast
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Post by blast »

Just so it's clear, a server isn't the same as a map. A server is a program (in the case of bzfs) that provides some service to clients. A map is just a file with the BZW data, which is plain text.
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Post by Quantum Tank »

Pretty nice, and good for beginning map makers, but I noticed quite a few mistakes:

1) Frankly, your spelling is pretty bad. Could you look it all over and spell-check it before posting?

2) Step 4 paragraph isn't very well organized. You go from adding extra features to choosing good admins when choosing admins is not really relevant at all. Besides, the mapmaker doesn't usually get to pick the admins, the server owner does.

3) Step 5 (and the title of step 4) should be " Release you(r) map," not server. It's very important not to mix up server and map, as they are two very different things.

4) The guide doesn't really give any information on making a map itself, just the process of thinking of one and getting it out there.

5) The whole thing is kind of brief, and most of the information could be found elsewhere. But again, it could be nice for new mapmakers to have all this information summarized and in one place.

Still, good job.
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Post by Delta Lead »

-It is about the process because you can't reallly find a guide on the porccess of making the idea itself. I wanted to help people who can't think of anything.

-Spelling is mostly fixed

-Organized step 4

-I also wanted to help people so when they do put out a map that they do it in a way to attract people, and to help them gain confidence in releasing a map.
"This Is The Way The World Ends"

Im busy with life be back after 2008 ends.....
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