1.0 Preparation, Symbols and Colours
   1.1 Ladders
   1.2 Stairs or Inclines
   1.3 Start locations
   1.4 Sniper LOS
   1.5 Level/Height colours
   1.6 Showing Cover
2.0 Map Creation
   2.1 Relative Size
   2.2 Insets
3.0 The Layout
   3.1 Information box
   3.2 Legend

2.0 Map Creation

2.1 Relative Size:

Now that you have a mental image, sketch, overview prints of your map, your screen shots and you know your symbology you can begin on your mapping project. Note: many of the previous steps such as symbols don’t change between projects so you don’t have to worry about repetition in the mapping process.

When mapping out a game level, try to use a solid polygon to define all your halls and rooms. Edit the vertexs if you have to. The hardest part is to try to picture the entire map fitting on your page. Remember you have to keep rooms and halls properly aligned and proportioned. This is mainly a trial and error process. You may find that you have to go back and change the shape and proportion of some of your rooms and halls. Do not fret. That’s just part of the perfectionist mapping process. I encourage you to be reasonably picky especially if you’re going to put it on the Internet. Don’t over kill it; remember it’s also just a representative map of a game world. Also don’t forget, it should be able to handle all the cover crates and furniture in each room without over crowding. Another more subtle issue is that your halls and rooms should allow for enough space for the user to plot his team’s tactics as lines through the halls of the map.

I won’t kid around, this is a royal pain in the ass to deal with. Yet another big problem with this process is making a room too big or too small in proportion to the furniture (cover) within it. If this happens it can cause the cover to look small and insignificant when a room might actually be crowded with obstacles or vice versa. Don’t even ask the number of revisions I did to AS_Oilrig or the rooms in the warehouse on DE_Nuke.

2.2 The use of Insets:

When you can’t show it all because it overlaps or it’s underground, just use what’s called an inset. Basically all you do here is show multilevel structures as separate floors. For example this building on CS_Siege:

3.0 Move on to Making Your Layout