Hello to all. I'm 1sg_heartless, a mapper for l4d and l4d2. My mapping experience ranges from many maps, video tutorials ive made, map conversions, scripting, and custom campaigns. I'm interested in building levels for the community, but want to know what you guys want in a map/campaign. All feedback is appreciated, and with your help we can have something really unique.

Edited once, 18/7/10 - 6:24am.

Huge warehouse on one part of 1 map that has 2 possible routes with different consequences and choke points. Also to have 1 or 2 Hittables in it, and places for infected to rocket off shelves, and high elevation points to spawn from including ground level spawn areas.

Has to be done!

Thanks for the responce. I will definately do my best to accomadate you. Just need some more ideas for the flow of a campaign and i can get started.

Allow me to make clear that i intend on talking this over with the other mappers in the community, to get more mappers involved, and to pool all of our experience to give you guys the best possible product

Heartless is a huge name in the mapping community. This is a big step in making this league strong. Please give him your feedback guys, the maps made will be played in the following seasons of play.

Just some general things you probably already know: don't have too many wide open areas, have plenty of infected ladders or ways to get up to higher places(kind of annoying when you have to go all the way around to use the only infected ladder to a very large roof). Night time maps are preferable.

Just things I am putting out at the top of my mind right now will come here later with some more stuff and maybe some map ideas.

Nice, thanks for the input, look forward to some more. Was thinking maybe next weekend have an open chat on steam to talk ideas and such. Thanks again.

That would probably be the most productive.

Another big thing in my opinion is that if you have an outdoor area, to have nice roofs and / or cliffs / whatever for nice tank rock throwing spots, and maybe it's just me but having some dumpsters that tanks can hit in addition to cars.

Greetings All, as many of you may not have meet me online...I will give you alittle background.

Mapped for 8 years now.
Started with Quake
Currently Mapped and Released under.
HL2DM, CS:S , CS , FarCry, L4d...as for L4D2 ..I am Currently Working on a Custom Camp.[Run to The Hills] . all in the snow designed with both CoOP, and Vs in mind. Good to see heartless in here. and i hope the Valar will join as well. If you need any help i will see what i can do. Heartless has seen my work. And know that i am a picky mapper, with style and detail in mind. I can also lend a hand with custom textures.

someone called me?

Edited once, 20/7/10 - 7:05am.

Ive been working on a campaign with lord nitro and also did a campaign with valar, having these guys will almost insure some great competitive maps, i get back from vacation tomorrow and will set up a live chat on steam this weekend to discuss everything so we can get started.

sound fine with me Heartless.

o dam this is going places /\_____________/\

Well, if anyone wants my humble opinion, beyond deciding the survivors path, I like to look at building the map from the SI perspective, since in general they need the map to work for them and be given as many opportunities as possible. I have personal goals I try to stick to for designing areas...not rules persay, just things to keep in mind.
FLOW:
I try to maintain a flow of -dangerous, dangerous, calm, dangerous, dangerous, calm, etc...- for survivors. The calm areas are generally just made so that infected can spawn in after the previous attack, find out what classes they are, and prepare for the next two areas. The 'dangerous' areas try to cater to 3-4/6 SI classes. This basically just means for say a hunter, there's the capacity to pull off a 25 pounce, for a smoker there's an area for a no-return drop or something, for a boomer, ledges overlooking, etc... Open areas with less than 1 object to spawn behind every 10 metres or so should only be used for calm areas, and even then, with hittables around since they're bad for tanks. The whole double danger in a row thing is my take on just giving SI options, depending on what SI they have. Either attack in the first spot, attack on the second spot, or attack on the first, and hope your attack is going to delay them long enough to get another attack before they get to the next calm area.
LENGTH:
Personal preference: Longer is better. Teams might get tired of doing long maps, but if you're gonna score the map based on length, make teams work for their points, and give the SI a lot of time to wear players out through attrition. I'm not a fan of an entire map revolving around one or 2 death attacks, though generally for shorter maps this becomes the case.
TANKS:
Every area should have 2+ entries accessible from the ground, just so tanks have options for entry. In the case where there's water around I'd generally be more lax, just because it negates fire. However areas with an over-abundance of death cliffs I'd also give the tank a harder time.
Open areas suck for tanks, give hittables.
CHARGER:
Personally I'm all for giving the charger many incap charges. I mean they're not that hard to dodge unless you give the charger a ridiculously OP spawning spot. Death charges I'd make a bit more rare.
JOCKEY/SMOKER:
Since they're not the greatest at being able to impede survivors, I like to artificially inflate their danger by adding pulls/jockeys/drops that add an excess of 15 seconds running recovery time (for default spawn times at least). Just means that beyond the one-way-drops, these classes can pose some serious slowdown. I personally find that to help these classes, it's better to make ledges that *don't* hang the survivor, and instead cause a 20 damage drop + requiring to run/climb back.
SPITTER:
Basically just avoid giving survivors too many things to jump on in the case of a "spitter-friendly" spot. Or put the raised ground on the back wall compared to where spit would typically come in from, so that the spit is more likely to land on the elevated spot and spread downward.
BOOMER/HUNTER:
I think we're all pretty sure how to give a boomer and hunter an advantage since we've played since L4D1 probably. One of the things I've been experimenting with is on outdoor maps, use trees but put a LOS blocker inside of them, so boomers can spawn behind trees and puke through them, even if the survivors are looking.
HORDE:
Should be pretty obvious since L4D1, but give horde more than 1 entry, preferably from above, since climbing < running < falling in terms of difficulty to shoot down.

GENERAL MAPPING:
Since 'dangerous' areas are defined, you can focus on those, look at every key 'stress' moment, analyze what angles the SI can attack from, and adjust the area to allow as many different attack combinations as possible without giving survivors a cheesy spot. But yeah, I dunno, those are just my humble suggestions from a simple mapper. Map with aiding the SI in mind first and foremost.

This look really interesting IMO!
I hope I'm not wrong on that or I will look like an idiot!
When you say:
"that add an excess of 15 seconds running recovery time (for default spawn times at least)"
In confogl the cool down between each SI spawn is always the same value : 20sec
In vanilla (valve's config) the time before you get a new SI is give by the AI director

When you say:
"it's better to make ledges that *don't* hang the survivor, and instead cause a 20 damage drop + requiring to run/climb back."
IMO I like this but this should be like the hunter DP: Harder it is More damage it cause to the survivor.

One of the things I've been experimenting with is on outdoor maps, use trees but put a LOS blocker inside of them, so boomers can spawn behind trees and puke through them, even if the survivors are looking.
This is nice ! (As long as survivor can shoot trough it )

When you say:
"Should be pretty obvious since L4D1, but give horde more than 1 entry,"
This can make the difference between a good map and an amazing one IMO

You seem to have great idea to make a competitive map !
If you need any kind of help Ping me here my steam:
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197960871200
Keep up the good work

Edited once, 22/7/10 - 7:19pm.