Experienced mappers: How did you learn?
- Thread starter Star Bright
- Start date
I totally agree with what @YM said, though I'll add a bit:
Videos are pretty good resources, if made well, but as he said, don't take information from them 1 to 1. The way I see it is that they are foundations, the most basic, common knowledge you should have. It's then your job to think critically about that, apply problem solving, and go from there. Game design, level design, game art, programming: They're all just elaborate applications of problem solving. If you rely on other people for all your, or can't probably solve yourself, you're not making the thing you want, you're making whatever else tells you to make. Don't do that. Lots of people get angry at some of the experienced mappers for 'ignoring feedback' - no, we don't. We take all the feedback, we analyze it and we apply it to fit our vision/needs.
Look at other games or maps, see how people more experienced than you solve problems. Learn to look for problems, and learn how to solve them (see a theme here?).
The biggest, most important skill you can learn is problem solving. Like, seriously, learn the scientific method. Learn it hard, and engrain it into your head. Additionally, learn how to critically think about problems and situations, learn how to apply these skills in a level/game design environment.
tl;dr: Everyone's ignoring Problem Solving skills, and thats a problem.
Videos are pretty good resources, if made well, but as he said, don't take information from them 1 to 1. The way I see it is that they are foundations, the most basic, common knowledge you should have. It's then your job to think critically about that, apply problem solving, and go from there. Game design, level design, game art, programming: They're all just elaborate applications of problem solving. If you rely on other people for all your, or can't probably solve yourself, you're not making the thing you want, you're making whatever else tells you to make. Don't do that. Lots of people get angry at some of the experienced mappers for 'ignoring feedback' - no, we don't. We take all the feedback, we analyze it and we apply it to fit our vision/needs.
Look at other games or maps, see how people more experienced than you solve problems. Learn to look for problems, and learn how to solve them (see a theme here?).
The biggest, most important skill you can learn is problem solving. Like, seriously, learn the scientific method. Learn it hard, and engrain it into your head. Additionally, learn how to critically think about problems and situations, learn how to apply these skills in a level/game design environment.
tl;dr: Everyone's ignoring Problem Solving skills, and thats a problem.
It's fair for people still learning to add their comments about how they're improving. I do find it amusing that people don't add to their comments an evaluation of their current skill level. Perhaps we should have a discussion about people's perceived skill levels relative to other members. Could be interesting to see what people think about their ability vs what other people think about their abilities. Maybe as an anonymous peer review kind of situation...
time is pretty much irrelevant and doesn't make you improve, it just gives you more time to think about where you may have fallen short. thing is, you can map for 10 years and still be bad at it if you don't have the right mindset going in. (I'm not familiar enough with your work to make a call, I'm just saying)
Small projects. When you don't have the experience to be making most of the design decisions yourself, you need to be getting outside feedback often. Once you're confident enough to make your own decisions most of the time, you can spend more time developing and less time testing.
That said, don't wait until you're "experienced enough" to detail maps. We tend to separate layout and detail into two completely different concepts, but they really aren't.
First of all, to understand my level of experience: I've been mapping in Hammer since 1998 and released my first few "successful" maps in 2001, although what "successful" means changed a lot over that time. Back then, i was quite happy with about 10000-15000 downloads and a release on a CD in a gaming magazine with 1/3 of a page within an article back when download speeds where so slow that custom content in gaming magazines was still a regular kind of thing.
I also wrote map reviews for planethalflife's Biohazard when map review sites still existed, so i saw lots and lots of custom content back then.
I got out of the loop shortly after CS:S was released and only got back in late 2014. There are still a few things i learned back then that i can apply now, but a lot of new things were added. I know how to use func_detail from using func_wall back then, even though the reason for adding them is quite different. Back then it mostly was because a brush touching another cut one of them down into more polies, and there was a pretty hard low poly limit for software rendering. Also, the overall maximum level of detail became way more relaxed with Source, but the stylized level of detail for TF2 fits the old HLDM style quite well, so i can still apply knowledge there.
Currently, when i'm creating a map, i try to learn as much as somehow possible from it. That's the reason why i put a lot of work into koth/arena_temper although i knew the map failed on a fundamental level for quite a few reasons (the layout of the map didn't really even line up well with 2003 standards.) I also have to line up my mapping hobby with a demanding full-time job (although it allows me to do some mapping during downtimes.) Because of these reasons, i'm more of a "few large projects" kind of guy - But that doesn't mean i haven't or won't scrap a project if i think there is not much left to learn from it if i think my new knowledge is best applied to a new project because of fundamental flaws.
Considering feedback - The public testing that happens on TF2M wasn't really a thing back when i started mapping. Gamedays, which happen consistently every week here were a big thing that happened maybe bimonthly. Because of that, there were way less versions released and maps changed quite a lot more between versions, sometimes so much that it was impossible to fall back to the old version should something not work out the way you intended it too, so the level of failure was much bigger than it is now, with much more time put into the map before you realized that it did not work.
The feedback you get from imp and gamedays is a huge privilege that you should use as much as possible. I know that it sometimes can be hard listening to the flaws of your map over and over, i had my own share of problems with that. People will have different opinions about what works on your map and what doesn't, and it's important that you have your own vision for the map, because if you try to listen to everyone, you will create a map that makes everyone equally unhappy. Learning how to interpret feedback and results from the tests and implement changes according to them is as much as a learning experience and as important as learning basic layout, detailing etc - And it's also the field that is the newest for me and easily my weakest spot in mapping.
But as i learned from the release of Hierarch, even a map that received "mixed" (in steam terms) feedback from the testing group can be kinda successful upon release. Although i know that the Steam Workshop is a fickle beast and getting top 3 is basically just a self-fulfilling prophecy once you get there, i consider 1500+ subscribers, 98% positive rating over 500 ratings and 10 days within the top 3 most popular maps a success for my first full-fledged release, and that with the testing feedback being quite negative over the last 5-6 tests. So, take that however you want - i know i will.
I also wrote map reviews for planethalflife's Biohazard when map review sites still existed, so i saw lots and lots of custom content back then.
I got out of the loop shortly after CS:S was released and only got back in late 2014. There are still a few things i learned back then that i can apply now, but a lot of new things were added. I know how to use func_detail from using func_wall back then, even though the reason for adding them is quite different. Back then it mostly was because a brush touching another cut one of them down into more polies, and there was a pretty hard low poly limit for software rendering. Also, the overall maximum level of detail became way more relaxed with Source, but the stylized level of detail for TF2 fits the old HLDM style quite well, so i can still apply knowledge there.
Currently, when i'm creating a map, i try to learn as much as somehow possible from it. That's the reason why i put a lot of work into koth/arena_temper although i knew the map failed on a fundamental level for quite a few reasons (the layout of the map didn't really even line up well with 2003 standards.) I also have to line up my mapping hobby with a demanding full-time job (although it allows me to do some mapping during downtimes.) Because of these reasons, i'm more of a "few large projects" kind of guy - But that doesn't mean i haven't or won't scrap a project if i think there is not much left to learn from it if i think my new knowledge is best applied to a new project because of fundamental flaws.
Considering feedback - The public testing that happens on TF2M wasn't really a thing back when i started mapping. Gamedays, which happen consistently every week here were a big thing that happened maybe bimonthly. Because of that, there were way less versions released and maps changed quite a lot more between versions, sometimes so much that it was impossible to fall back to the old version should something not work out the way you intended it too, so the level of failure was much bigger than it is now, with much more time put into the map before you realized that it did not work.
The feedback you get from imp and gamedays is a huge privilege that you should use as much as possible. I know that it sometimes can be hard listening to the flaws of your map over and over, i had my own share of problems with that. People will have different opinions about what works on your map and what doesn't, and it's important that you have your own vision for the map, because if you try to listen to everyone, you will create a map that makes everyone equally unhappy. Learning how to interpret feedback and results from the tests and implement changes according to them is as much as a learning experience and as important as learning basic layout, detailing etc - And it's also the field that is the newest for me and easily my weakest spot in mapping.
But as i learned from the release of Hierarch, even a map that received "mixed" (in steam terms) feedback from the testing group can be kinda successful upon release. Although i know that the Steam Workshop is a fickle beast and getting top 3 is basically just a self-fulfilling prophecy once you get there, i consider 1500+ subscribers, 98% positive rating over 500 ratings and 10 days within the top 3 most popular maps a success for my first full-fledged release, and that with the testing feedback being quite negative over the last 5-6 tests. So, take that however you want - i know i will.
Something to consider, which might have been touched on already (I haven't read all of this) is that the definition of 'experienced' varies person to person.
This community has its newcomers, it has it's 'experienced' hobbyists, it has its 'experienced' game designers. It has everyone in between. For someone like me or YM, we may think experienced as someone who has successfully done level design "seriously", either as serious hobby/side job, or as full time job as an indie/in the industry. Someone else may see 'experienced as someone who's just done it more than them for longer. However, as fubar pointed out, time doing something does not equal experience in some cases.
This community has its newcomers, it has it's 'experienced' hobbyists, it has its 'experienced' game designers. It has everyone in between. For someone like me or YM, we may think experienced as someone who has successfully done level design "seriously", either as serious hobby/side job, or as full time job as an indie/in the industry. Someone else may see 'experienced as someone who's just done it more than them for longer. However, as fubar pointed out, time doing something does not equal experience in some cases.
technically, there are no dumb questions, just either dumb answers or dumb people to ask questions... besides the point, browse the discussions page and the wiki for all the answers, if you still cant find it, google it, if not then... just make a post and wait for replies. To be honest, everyone here is willing to help everyone.