Tips for CoD4 mappers by Sparks



I’ll just give some suggestions on what I see 98% of community maps fail at because of too much focus on aesthetic elements: COVER


Here you can see the history and importance of cover:
http://www.dipity.com/timeline/The_History_of_Cover

This will also help for the not so bright mappers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvmU2IUH-bk



Cover is a game mechanic in a lot of games, it’s a key tenet in life [and generally speaking] which is people don’t like to get shot and like to keep living. Cover provides a very important thing: Challenges


Challenges (A Formula For Fun):

It’s a lot more fun to have an enemy take cover rather than to see them out in the open. It wouldn’t be rewarding to see a guy walk across an open field and snipe him compared to seeing him moving from cover to cover and presenting a challenge to the player. It also provides an “obstacle” challenge for players to maneuver around the map, and also adds variety to a scene. Being able to see the enemies move from cover to cover presents a fun challenge compared to if it was just a bare level design like community maps with buildings + minimum/no cover and enemies walking around in the open (especially on over sized maps, but that’s for another tip thread .

Gears of War does a really beautiful job of this, both in SP and MP. Infact, it’s core game mechanic, it’s what makes 99% of the game what it is, all the other mechanics are little ones along the way compared to how integrated their cover system is for gameplay.

Granted, CoD games do not have an explicit cover system like Gears, but they do rely heavily on ambiguous cover in the grand scheme of things with even the health system relying on cover like Halo’s game mechanic (you get shot, run to cover to regenerate health; I don’t know of many people who stay out in the open to regenerate health but there’s always the smart alec to say “me” ); this being for applicable for both SP and MP. One level that has amazing cover in any CoD game is El Daba; it’s very organic and worked well into the level design. Doesn't have crates stacked perfectly, or all of the cover at perfect angles; covered is detailed too, there’s stray cover here and there, looks lived in, versus just a bunch of stuff sitting around for no apparent reason.

If you look at the Doom video in the timeline above on Dipity.com, a lot of the user made maps for CoD4 look the same such as when the player goes into the room and tries to shoot the enemy in the blue-ish half opened pillar. It’s just standing there with no cover, it doesn’t look dynamic or smart. Nor does it present much of a challenge and isn’t fun.

Virtua Cop is probably one of the earliest games with good cover. You see the enemies actually moving around behind cover, they’re acting as if they don’t want to be shot. It provides a challenge for the player by not having enemies out in the open for an easy kill all the time. Just imagine how un-fun Virtua Cop would have been had there been no cover with enemies just waiting around for the camera view to come into place and the player to shoot.

To wrap it up, modders should focus on adding organic cover to their maps more often and spend time testing it with strangers or people who haven’t already played your map. A good modder will make the map, add little/no cover or add in randomized cover and not thoroughly test it or test it with a few friends/clanmates who’ll automatically give it praise because they’re friends. A great modder will make the map, think about the battles in the map, lay down some cover, test it with fresh eyes of people they don’t know and/or who haven’t seen the map, see where the cover works/doesn’t work, and how well it works/doesn’t work with certain weapons, then make tweaks.


Ah this is too long. I’m no professor, but hopefully this knocked some sense into a mapper who read this, would be great to see a map of great quality next time.