OSM Level Design

[SuperApe]

That question would be most appropriate in the content creation sub-forum under Unreal Tournament 2003/2004. Link

But iirc both UT99 and UT200x have import/export functions in the texture browser.

(Crap, new page. OSM Adventure mappers, read my previous post!)

[SuperApe]

This is easily one of the better list of "Game Design Don'ts" I've seen:
The No Twinkie Database!

There's plenty in there for us SP/CoOp story-driven, objective-based designers, including (converted from negative Don'ts to positive Dos):

- Clear short-term goals
- Make cutscenes interruptable. (introcutscenes at least)
- Use subtitles
- Manage progressive (linear) objectives well, don't let player get into a faulty game state just because they figured out how to skip an objective.
- Smarter Monsters
- etc., etc.

I recommend this to anyone designing for OSM Adventure.

[SuperApe]

From Gamasutra
This is a great feature article on Pacing and Intensity in single-player games.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/featur...revisited_.php

[SuperApe]

From Gamasutra:
A continuation of the discussion on Pacing and Gameplay design.
(great discussion overall)
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/featur...revisited_.php

[JohnnySix]

Awesome reading - gonna check out more at the weekend.

I found this hilarious (strong language warning )


http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/39.html

That I'm still awake and reading rather than getting a good nights sleep has got me to thinking it'd be interesting to see how many of these gaming cliché's you could cram into one map.

[SuperApe]

Originally Posted by JohnnySix

... That I'm still awake and reading rather than getting a good nights sleep has got me to thinking it'd be interesting to see how many of these gaming cliché's you could cram into one map.

On that note, I should point you to the TropesWiki. (be prepared to get lost in this for about four hours at least) Check out the game tropes.

[SuperApe]

Another fine article found at Gamasutra:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/featur...peline_in_.php

This one is really an interview with the lead co-op designer for Insomniac's Resistance 2, Jake Biegel. In it he discusses a bold design philosophy with regard to co-op design, treating it as an entirely different game (type). There are some very interesting ideas here which should be able to give food for thought to anyone forging into co-op OSM Adventure.

Excerpt:

How was the push towards developing modular content? The 'bosses' in particular are what I would call "design heavy." They are very aimed towards the protagonists taking them on and fighting them in sort of a set piece. That's difficult to make work, I would say.

JB: It was difficult to make work. The challenge was more in getting people to play together, and the challenge was to go back to the modular content. We have this concept of these special zones that we flip in for the end. If you get one that's the end, we swept out a new objective so it feels more epic.

We felt like we were pioneering, in terms of creating content that's dynamic and ... getting eight 'bosses' to work with eight players. Any entity that you point eight guns at all at once is going to need some special love for co-op.

The AI ramifications of what happens when you have eight targets vs. one are huge. That's why our co-op team worked around the clock to add on functions or modules that would make it work in co-op.

That's a good point. It's not so much just pumping up the hit points and hoping for the best; the behavior pattern of a boss is going to have to be drastically different.

JB: We struggled with that. As we had eight targets around these enemies, we had to make additions and modifications to make sure that the enemies could handle not being overwhelmed and still offer a challenge for players, because when you have eight guns pointed at anything, it falls pretty quickly.

So, we had to make them dynamically scaled in relation to the strength of the group.

[Luctor]

Nice posts those.

Half Life 2: Episode Two,HL2: Lost Coast, POrtal and Team Fortress 2 have a special unlockable mode with developer comments. I found them very interesting, many of them talk about how to balance and make interesting single-player games.

I haven't been able to find them on the web, unfortunately.

[SuperApe]

Wow, cool. Another reason for me to get to finishing those games. Medal Of Honor: Airborne did the same thing, but I think you might be able find those online.

[SuperApe]

Originally Posted by SuperApe

For those interested, I came across a really nice effect for loading adventures. I found this for a project at work, but OSM Adventures can also take advantage of this.

Break out:

The effect is not just using your own custom loading screen (Vignette) for you adventure, but to break the normal Unreal way loading appears.

...

Here are some ideas:

* Have this loading image be a dead screenshot of your intro cutscene's start position. Maybe de-focus the image a bit and fade it out on map load. (Half-Life2 anyone?)

This is from an earlier post in this thread. I'm just updating this idea to say that I've done this Half-Life2 trick on my working map for the custom Golem character and it's wicked cool! The loading screen is a blurry image of the player's starting position, the intro movie immediately displays the same image with no noticeable change (except for the loading hint/"Press Fire To Start" text) and then I fade that image out over five seconds, with makes it look like we're bringing the level into focus, all smooth and slick! It doesn't look anything like the normal Unreal map loading. (yay!) I should post that map on the Golem thread soon, as it looks way cooler than it sounds.

I am just itching to put these ideas together with a more elaborate opening in an adventure, highlighting the story, the character you play, etc. It really starts to make OSM Adventure maps look like Total Conversion mods with little effort.

[r0tzl0effel]

Originally Posted by SuperApe

Here's AngelMapper's Matinee Tutorial for reference.

This link is broken. The working link is now: http://www.angelmapper.com/gamedev/t...ls/matinee.htm

I'm glad that at least AngelMapper has the 2k4 stuff still online. Most resources are gone.

[SuperApe]

Link fixed on original post. Most other links in this thread are still valid, but if you find more to update, I'll be happy to do so. Thanks for the heads UP.

[SuperApe]

Great article on combat zone design, defines terms and poses good guidelines.

http://www.unrealplayground.com/foru...424#post587424

[RastaBlastaX]

Hey there, i hope that fits in 'ere,
i used osmt in the onslaught map i made lately (ONS-Warcraft), and it's a pretty fun tool.

There's just one thing i couldn't get to work: Spawning "custom" ScriptedCharacters with a CreatureFactory.
The goal was to use respawning playermodels as cheap custom monsters, but i was only able to have respawning jakobs since i couldn't tell the creature factory what kind of "scripted character" i want to have. Any idea? :J

[SuperApe]

Originally Posted by RastaBlastaX

Hey there, i hope that fits in 'ere,
i used osmt in the onslaught map i made lately (ONS-Warcraft), and it's a pretty fun tool.

There's just one thing i couldn't get to work: Spawning "custom" ScriptedCharacters with a CreatureFactory.
The goal was to use respawning playermodels as cheap custom monsters, but i was only able to have respawning jakobs since i couldn't tell the creature factory what kind of "scripted character" i want to have. Any idea? :J

Cool. Glad it could help out on your project.

Yes, I had to do that in a similar situation and the solution was to make a custom class specically for that custom ScripedCharacter, so that the PlacedCharacterName and starting weapon inventory, etc. is set up in the class. That way, the CreatureFactory can see it as a unique class and spawn it.

Hope that helps.