Prologue:
I've been playing Far Cry multiplayer on consoles ever since Far Cry: Instincts made its appearance on the original Xbox. One of the things that has certainly promoted the longevity of this game is its map editor. But user-created maps are a blessing and a curse: I've played many wonderful maps and, unfortunately, many more abysmal maps. This guide is the result of playing over a hundred user-created maps and then sitting back and considering what made those maps good or bad.
One of the things I see most often is a map that has beautiful or unique visuals, but terrible (or, even worse, boring) game play. I don't want to discourage anyone from making fantasy or visually striking maps -- but I do want to encourage you to make maps that people will want to keep playing on after they've appreciated your artwork.
This guide is broken up into the various game modes of Far Cry 2, since each game mode has its own unique set of factors that can make game play good or bad. In each section, you will find RULES and TIPS. RULES are things that are true almost 100% of the time for making a map playable. TIPS are things that aren't required, but will make your map more enjoyable to play.
Note that while this guide is targeted towards the game modes of Far Cry 2, much of what is here can be applied to making better maps for any FPS game that supports a map editor or mods.
All Map Types:
- RULE -- Test your map aggressively before publishing it
This is one thing that I am constantly running across -- maps that have severe problems that the map maker could have fixed if he had just tested the map. The Far Cry 2 editor allows you to jump into your map at any time. You need to test your map for all of the following:- Are the pathways clear? Can you enter buildings without having to jump? Can you get up and down a mountain path without having to jump?
- Do your ladders and jump paths work without a lot of hassle? Can I get onto a roof using crates without having to find the sweet spot on the crates? Is the ladder leading to the ammo dump climbable?
- Are your roads drivable without causing vehicles to be damaged? Are your turns too tight for a normal driver? Are your sand dunes too bouncy? Is the terrain smooth enough to drive? Are there too many immovable objects too close to the roadsides?
- Are your waterways friendly to swimmers? Can a swimmer easily exit the water without doing jumping jacks? Are you forcing swimmers to swim long distances to find an exit point?
- Are your waterways navigable by boat traffic? Can a boat get through your tight canals? Are your waterways too shallow?
- Do you have floating objects? Are the sandbags for your emplaced weapons sitting snugly to the ground on all sides? Do you have floating trees? Are your train pieces snapped to the tracks or hovering above them?
- TIP -- Keep your map natural-looking.
Yes, it's not really a playability issue, but mentally, it sets the player up for a good or bad experience. If your map looks like something straight out of real life or the single-player game, your players' first impression will be that this is going to be a good map to play on. The same is true if you are able to create a look the designers didn't intend, but are able to still make it look real. You create reality by:- rotating objects as you place them (creating randomness.)
- using the terrain bump, smooth and noise tools effectively (again, randomness)
- using lots of different decoration objects (variety is good)
- maintaining a theme with your plants and buildings. (A mansion shouldn't be in a shanty town; a jungle tree should not be in the middle of a desert.)
- placing objects in likely positions (chairs under dining tables, pots on shelves)
- combining pieces in unique ways, but being careful to marry seams and edges.
- eliminating collection objects (like grass and bushes) from buildings that have constructed foundations or floors. It looks really bad to see grass growing through a concrete floor in a building.
- making sure all your pieces snap together properly. Again, marry your seems and edges as cleanly as possible.
- burying your fences to keep them even. Jagged fence lines, especially with security fence pieces look terrible. Either bury the fences or flatten your terrain -- or pick a different piece to create your barrier.
If your map has gross unnatural flaws, like floating trees, crates, bridges, etc., most players will have an immediate prejudice against your map and will start looking for reasons to cancel the match before they even play on it. - RULE -- Keep your entrances and pathways smooth.
Any doorway, pathway, road or jump path that you intend your players to use should be easy to traverse. If possible, all dooways that are at land level should be accessible without jumping. Having to jump to enter a building is unnatural and annoying. You may need to sink your building a bit or play with the terrain tools to make it work.
If you have jump paths (stacks of objects like crates and barrels that can be used to get on rooves), make sure they are easy to navigate. There shouldn't be a "sweet spot" that the player has to discover. Use smaller objects like the Miliatary Box S and beer boxes as steps to make the jump path easier to traverse in the heat of battle.
If you have to spend any time at all figuring out the right way to get over/through an obstacle in your map, then you can be sure that your users won't bother -- in the heat of battle, there's no time to figure out where the trick jumps or sweet spots are.
As mapmakers, we often get caught up in how “cool” it is to traverse a particularly devilish path while screwing around in the map editor. You users won’t think it’s so cool when it’s time to battle it out. Take a cue from the game publishers – you never see that kind of platforming stuff on factory FPS maps. - RULE - Keep your vehicle and walking paths smooth and relatively clear.
A bumpy or obstructed pathway is a sure way to see that your larger vehicles get used only once. Also, use your road and texture painting tools to clearly indicate your vehicle paths, making them distinct from the surrounding terrain. This not only makes for better playability, it also makes your maps look better.
If you have designed a pathway to be difficult to use unless a player finds the right path, at least hint at the correct (clear) pathway using your texture painting tool. You can either paint the entire path in a different texture (sand, for example) or have the path be spotty – but always give clues to the optimal path.
For sheer aesthetics, you can use your collection (sparingly) to add grass back into your pathways, making them look unused. This is a good technique to use on alternate pathways into bases for Capture the Diamond.
The exceptions to this rule are dune buggy paths and sand dunes. Both are meant to be bumpy. But in this case, remember to keep the paths wide so there is room to play around and cope with wild bounces. Testing your map with a vehicle is crucial -- maps that cause the buggies to explode on the first bounce only discourage the use of vehicles. - RULE -- Keep your waterways swimmer friendly.
This basically means that if someone can get in the water, there better be a nearby place where they can easily get out. I can't count the number of maps I've played where someone has fallen in the water and started cursing the map designer because there was no convenient place to get back out.
In general, all of the riverbanks in your map should be smooth enough for a swimmer to easily exit the water. This is where the "Set to Height" tool is your friend. Set the tool to a height that is 1 meter below your map's water level, and set the hardness to a very low number, like 0.15. The hardness controls the radius of the yellow circle on the tool -- the portion of the circle that will definitely be set to the desired height. Also set the tool's strength to a low number, again around 0.15. Strength determines how fast the area between the yellow circle and the white circle will be set to the height value, based on how long you hold the tool in one place. Now carve a river with your tool and as long as you don't move the tool too slowly, you will have made a river that is swimable and that has banks that are easy to exit.
If you need to exit deep water and can't make your banks smooth for some reason, there is another tool in your chest: just about any flat surface placed just above the water level can be used to exit the water using an on-screen prompt. Some pieces that are known to work well for this are:- Utilities -> Quays -> <all>
- Utilities -> Structures -> Concrete Block 01/02/03/04
- Utilities -> Structures -> Platform 01/02/03
- RULE - Keep your boat pathways clear and away from the map’s edge.This is one of the most neglected tips – and one I’ve fallen prey to myself all too often. If your map allows boating against the invisible walls of the map, ensure that there is plenty of clearance between the map’s edge and any land masses or buildings. The simple rule here is: “If it looks like I can drive around it, then I can drive around it.” Don’t force a boater into banging against the invisible wall to find out he can’t get around a cliff face. Instead, carve a boat path behind the map, but leave the walls sheer so that they can’t be climbed.
Also, keep your boat pathways DEEP (at least one meter below the map's water level.) All of the watercraft in the game drive differently when there are two players in the boat. An area that you were able to skim across during testing may become a beaching point when there is a gunman riding atop the boat as well. Best bet: Use your “Set Height” terrain tool to make boat paths a uniform 2 meters bellow the water line or lower—although 1 meter is sufficient for all of the swamp boats.
Fishing boats are big. If you are using them, they need at least 2 meters of clearance under water in a channel that is at least 4 meters wide. The presents a problem if you also plan on allowing people to swim in the water and get out easily, since the depth of the water leads to steep banks. I've found that setting your "Set to Height" terrain tool to a height 2 meters below the water line with a hardness of 0.20 (Edit Brush menu), a radius of 20 meters and a strength of 0.15 will create a waterway that is navigable by a fishing boat, looks size appropriate for a fishing boat and will have swimmer-friendly banks, as long as you don't linger the cursor in any one spot. - RULE - Double-check your boat placements.
Make sure all watercraft are placed well into the water. Boats that are partially grounded may get off well with one person when you are in the map editor, but experience has shown that two people getting into that same boat during a match will beach it. - RULE – Place plenty of cover for health recovery near likely battle areas.
Battle areas are medium to large spaces where combatants are likely to meet each other. The ability to cure yourself adds a new, risky (and often disgusting!) dynamic to Far Cry game play. You need to give your players the opportunity to take advantage of healing themselves after, or even during, a firefight. You can provide cover using almost any object: buildings, rocks, trees, furniture, landscape. Just make sure it is there.
Of special concern is open areas designed for snipers. If a sniper gets off a body shot instead of a head shot, then the victim should have the opportunity to find a place to heal. Placing rocks and disabled vehicles on an otherwise open landscape is a great way to provide healing cover and punish an errant sniper. - RULE – Make the areas of your map easily describable.Each area of the map should be distinct enough to be easily described. Remember that “Left” and “Right” are very subjective terms and that there is no compass displayed during multi-player play. (Although, the sun position on daytime maps can imply compass points.) Give each area something unique to describe it. You can use objects (buildings, etc.), posters, faction graffiti, disabled vehicles and terrain cues to do this. Walk around the map and think about how you would tell a team member where you are.
You want people to naturally say “I’m near the UFLL tower” or “I’m on the beach with the round hut” – not, “He’s left of that hill with the ammo dump” or, worse, “I have no idea where I’m at.”
There are plenty of ways to make places on your map distinguishable and describable: Hear are some examples:- Place faction graffiti on or near your guard towers so that each is uniquely identifiable. Or place your towers inside specific bases.
- For symmetrical maps, use the faction-colored red and yellow signs and introduce as much variation as you can to distinguish one side of the map from the other. Even better, make your maps play symmetrical, but look asymmetrical.
- Color your cliffs with different textures and collections. Using a sand texture on one set of cliffs and a rock texture on another will make them distinct.
- Have only one beach, or make each beach have a unique building on it.
Use terrain to cast shadows such that there is a dark side of the map and a light side.
- RULE -- Use the Playable Zone tool wisely.
The Playable Zone tool is a great addition to the Far Cry 2 map editor. It allows you to define play boundaries for a map without having to place down walls and other obstructions that might break the aesthetic flow of your map.
Unfortunately, I've already seen a few user maps that do really bad things with the Playable Zone tool. The most egregious are maps that let a user fall off a building or piece of terrain into the forbidden zone in such a way that the player has no path to return to the play area within the 10 second limit. This is a really bad design flaw that will frustrate your players and cause your map to never be played again.
Ideally, you want to set the Playable Zone boundary in places that are either impossible to get to, or places that are easy to get out of. And nowhere else! - RULE -- Always orient your spawns toward the battle or objective
This is probably the most common mistake I see in people's maps. I find spawns that are looking at walls, facing away from the battle, facing dangerous cliff edges, facing paths to nowhere...
Remember, when a person spawns, they are disoriented, they don't know where they are or which way to go. Do your best to help them by pointing them in the direction of the battle, toward a path into battle, or toward an objective marker. - RULE -- Always place your spawns in some form of cover
Okay, so you can't totally prevent spawn camping -- there's always the jerk who will spawn, walk 2 feet away and then camp. But aside from that, you want to avoid having spawns occur out in the open where snipers can pick off spawns while they are trying to get oriented. Spawning in buildings with multiple exits, behind rocks and other forms of cover is always a wise plan.
In a similar vein, avoid placing spawns near explodables. It's really frustrating to spawn into the middle of an exploding ammo pile, only to go immediately back to the Death Room. - TIP -- Take time to properly place spectator cameras - and place a LOT of them!
The very first view most people are going to get of your map is through the spectator cameras while they are waiting for the match to start. This is your chance to make a good impression. So place your cameras wisely, where they will show off your map.
Ideally, most of your cameras should be placed fairly high (7-10 meters) and angled downward toward either an interesting feature of your map or a battle area. There are exceptions, but avoid placing cameras at the default height and angle, which is on the ground and facing straight forward.
The easiest way to place cameras is to place one on the ground, then use the 3D object editor to raise and angle the camera. From there, use the clone tool in the 3D editor (right trigger, then click the left stick) and move the cloned camera into a new position. I've found that I can place 10-15 cameras in less that three minutes, all in ideal locations using this method.
Don't forget the battle areas! In rooms where re-spawns are turned off, the only way dead players can see what's going on is through your cameras. Be sure to place cameras over battle areas, diamond stations, faction bases and capture points. Think of how you would place cameras if you were directing a movie on your map.
Other articles in this series:
- Part 2: Deathmatch
- Part 3: Team Deathmatch
- Part 4: Capture the Diamond
- Part 5: Uprising
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Nice guide, you have some great tips in there!
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