Cooperative Modular Map Project (The CMMP for short)

[Cdsand]

I have suggested an idea to easily make a very large and still detailed map by having members of the mapping community compete.
So far this is still speculation and planning. The following is a rough suggestion of how this should work:

To start a competitor would download the template piece for whatever part of the map they wish to try. These different pieces may include but not be limited to spawn rooms, flag rooms, hallways, exterior battlegrounds, and interior battlegrounds. A layout of the modular chunks will be provided. The template will be a guideline showing how much room the mapper can use and where they may place exits and entrances. The mappers will not have to provide any essential entities such as light environments or other rule setting objects, in fact these entites will be included in the template. The mapper must only use the essential entities to help them plan out the look of their piece and must delete them after finishing.

After finishing the chunk, the mapper will submit it for review by the project supervisors.

If that chunk survives elimination, which it may not have to judging by the size of the forum, then the chunk will be placed ever so carefully into the final editable map file. After the final is assembled modularly, the main editor dude will spruce everything up and make sure there are no problems with the pieces' matching up. If all goes well, a decently sized and nice looking (Frankenstein style) map will arise. Maps that are included will have credit given to their authors within a custom texture listing them off.

And that is the jist of it. Suggestions are recommended as I just threw this together on the spot.

 

[Armadillo of Doom]

Having just talked about this in chat, I heartily endorse the idea. Hopefully the 50 or so lurkers we have in the group will become more active after the sdk update, or even after our first event.

 

[Dox]

make this event # 2 and start it up a couple weeks after the SDK is released?

That way 1) you have plenty of time to prepare the "master map" and 2) people can get used to the new editor's entities and such.

Oh, and make sure there is a good way to block the vis in-between these "very detailed" rooms, otherwise the lag on this map would choke people out.

 

[Jao]

Oh, and make sure there is a good way to block the vis in-between these "very detailed" rooms, otherwise the lag on this map would choke people out.

One person (or two) should be in charge of the entire layout, someone that know how optimization works (hint brushes, areaportals, occluders etc.) to not have surprises of bad fps drop and unplayable "rooms". When the idea is on papers, that person could post it here, on a dedicated thread so every mappers of the project can take a look at it and share their suggestions to each other. Finaly, when the layout is completly fixed and ready to be used, each "rooms" of the map are split so we can build each part individually.

 

[MrTwitch]

This sounds like it could be a lot of fun, I want to make a room with like a furnace that turns on at random intervals. Do I smell a TF2/Portal crossover?

 

[Intraman]

This is a pretty nifty idea. It could really help those who are just learning too.

 

[A Boojum Snark]

Hate to be the wet towel... but these things seem to usually go down in flames.

 

[Dox]

It will be perfect and everyone will love it! (such a dry towel)

 

[ryodoan]

One of hte major problems I see with this is how would you dictate how the edges of the map segments meet up?

A possible idea / solution would possibly have the entire map designed arround the idea of a City Block / City area, so each mapper is working on 2 - 3 houses of the block and would easily be joined together by running streets down the middle.

Well it looks like I answered my own question... heh

 

[TheBladeRoden]

We did something like this for HL2World. Well, we were doing it, until it failed. My segment was going to be an Italian restaurant, except it was owned by Chef Boyardee.