[Zaxtor]

I'll post mine in a bit.

So tell us what and where your ideas for your maps / levels and or mods came from?
Also which movies and or game your maps and or mods parodied on?

[brullov]

I listen to music and it gives me the ideas. That feeling moves me, creates everything in my mind.

[Mark]

A couple of years ago when I joined up with Mblackwell and Chicken to work on the Decay mod we thought it would be a good idea to have a bonus map set in a graveyard. Every now and then Chicken and I would post a pic of some models we made and could use for the map. So I started mapping for it. After a while the ever larger bonus map took on a life of its own and became my Graveyard project which now has 4 maps and tons of new textures and models and con code. I create in silence. Music or TV in the backround is too much of a distraction.

[Zaxtor]

For my mod Trequonia the idea of the making it was based on.

SNES Super Metroid (1994)
1, Surface of Trequonia.
2, Escaping Trequonia while uses FF7 music.
3, Has doors except you don't shoot them to open them.
(blue) no access restrictions
(yellow) minor access restrictions (switches and etc)
(red) strong access restriction (switches, locks and etc)
(grey/white) maximum access restrictions (have to kill boss to open or opens only when you need to escape.)
4, And more

The Transformers episode "Fight or Flee" (1986)
1, Because you're on a bionic / artificial planet you plant a bomb to its core.
2, And more

Super Turrican (1993)
1, For the steelmill and one of the boss.

Super Turrican 2 (1995)
1, underwater base and a few sountracks of the game.
2, A boss has similarity.

SNES Shadowrun (1993)
1, Entering computers.

Doom (1993)
1, 2 bosses (we see in my mod's trailer vid) kinda similar to a boss in doom.

I, Robot (2004)
1, Computer tower which is highly parodied to V.I.K.I.

SNES Super Contra III: The Alien Wars (1992)
1, Some bosses has similarity to some boss in the game.

Stargate SG-1 (1997)
1, We see something similar to the series.

SNES Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. (1994)
1, For a huge laser beam (already mentioned on the forum before).

Sega genesis Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (1994)
1, Level based on ice cap zone 1 where you slide down icy slopes (except you don't use a snowboard). And soundtrack.

SNES Final Fantasy IV (1991)
1, stuff that may share similarity and soundtrack.

A lot more
And some stuff based on RL.

[Mike Norvak]

Images on internet, real locations, other maps, other games, some movies. Music is just a way to give the process a flow, I frequently actually put the music I'm gonna use for my WGR episode as bg to get the mood. Although most of times I map in silence, it isn't distracting at all, is just that I forgot to put the music or I'm too lazy to make a playlist

Being more specific, I'm basing my episode on William G's maps . Doom and Shadow Warrior, while also have some influences from Half Life 2 and Resident Evil 4. Bioshock has actually helped me a lot for balancing the shop stuff.

[High Treason]

A few things, the ones that come to mind are;

• LameDuke, one source of my overly gray color schemes and my love of grimy cities.
• Dark Forces, the inspiration for the elevator mechanic in Stoneledge Prison - moved to Quantum Physics but Stoneledge drew a lot of inspiration from the 6th level of DF. It is also a source of inspiration for puzzles and mechanics (Placing the bomb in Nitroglycerin... And it's music.), tempted to try and remake a level in Duke.
• Hull, the horrible city in which I live... This includes my neighborhood - which they are slowly ruining by demolishing and putting unsightly little plastic houses up. As well as industrial areas - meet the Nitroglycerin building while you can as it's already been demolished as far as I know along with 90% of everything else in that photo to make way for more apartments nobody can afford. Looking at my city you can see how it's flat, empty and shit which explains some of the criticisms I have recieved, noteably the flat one. My city is noted for being unusually flat as well as being mostly below sea level.
• Whatever is in my head.

I listen to all sorts of music when mapping, because the death metal is too distracting. Typically I seem to end up listening to 60's songs but for whatever reason Eminem's old albums always seem to end up in the list too without me noticing until I get to Drug Ballad which kind of snaps me out of my trance. I have to work in silence when detailing though.

The British Extracting building showcases our councils shitty way of operating, as a beautiful Grade II listed building they are not allowed to demolish it or tamper excessively with it's appearance, but they'd rather put this type modernist shit there so they simply leave the building to rot to the point that it becomes dangerous and has to be demolished on the grounds of safety, it fucking disgusts me. This guy has a few photos of things that are now gone. This is assuming the council gives a shit, they were meant to restore the front of our train station but instead it conveniently "broke apart" and we ended up with this - WTF happened to the clock tower? Now it's just another modernist pieceashit mismatched with the older architecture and one of the most dangerous road layouts I've ever seen.


Sorry to go off topic, but people around here are too dumb to give a damn and it pisses me off that my taxes cover this, the council constant run up a debt doing this shit and I have to live in a worsening environment and move home against my will.

[bobaverill]

Whatever new game at the time impressed me. I would then try to replicate its architectural style and some of its effects/gameplay mechanics. SP1 and Frenzy were Halflife inspired. SP2 and DM1 were Quake3 inspired. SP3 was FarCry inspired. SPX was inspired by Doom 3, and SP4 by Bioshock. There was also a halfway decent replica of an Unreal Tournament 99 map, and a replica of ROTT shareware's level 1.

The thinking is, "Well that's very cool, but for such a new game and advanced engine, I don't see much here which cannot more or less be replicated in BUILD." It is such a flexible engine because as John Carmack once said it is "held together by rubberbands". You can exploit the numerous known glitches for use as mapping effects. You can "get away" with nearly anything in BUILD, which is what makes it capable of almost any scenario a mapper can imagine. This is what originally attracted me to it over Quake back in the day.

If I were to do a new map (I won't) it would be based either on Routine, or Bioshock Infinite using the TROR effect extensively for floating buildings/city blocks at various heights, with jetpack resupply stations scattered about like the scuba refill dealies in SP4. That would be a herculean effort, one I am not up to, but I would love to see it attempted by someone skilled.

[Hendricks266]

I don't have creativity. That's why I've never released anything of my own. (H266MOD doesn't count. It was a kid adding random shit thought to be cool at the time.)

[oasiz]

When it comes to external sources, movies / other games / etc.. can give a ton of inspiration.
Just like the slum map clearly has some inspiration from Blade runner / Tekwar (tv series) and Lameduke.
I start off by creating one small area with some of the main components as food for thought.
This usually ends up being a central area what acts as the starting location or something close to it.

This gives me the basis but the rest of the layout and such is about just doing stuff that feels "right"

Not sure how people work but mine is a constant 2-way process where I incrementally add stuff and get new ideas back.
Some times I do mistakes and change the geometry in a way where I get a brief inspiration about how it would actually work out better in the end if I changed some other things to complement that change.
At first, I can even spend days about thinking the world and visualizing the different things about it.
I guess I could say that I work in a very visual way. Music does help with the mood and in some cases I can sort of see it as visual feedback.

Problem with this approach is that things can stay a bit inconsistent due to being constantly evolving but it's always possible to retrofit a lot of the things.
It helps a bit to do a very rough sketch about the key areas or draw it on a paper for quick cycles and scrap some things if something doesn't feel right.

[Steambull]

I am aware of how using real locations as reference would be a huge asset, but I have never used that to my advantage. Quite often I go into "build" mode when I see buildings, industrial areas or interior design. That's when I'm thinking of how they could be reproduced in Duke, but as I said, I never did that.

As for ideas, I usually get my best ones when I'm moving (walking for example) while deep in thought - I think that my brain works better in some ways while I am physically occupied. Conversely a lot of ideas also come to me while I'm trying to fall asleep, that's another situation when my imagination and visual thinking seem to be at their best.

The biggest drive for mapping usually comes from playing other maps or seeing screenshots, it simply reminds of how fun mapping can be. Playing WG's and Alejandro's maps always used to make me feel like launching Build.

As for substances, pregabalin is fantastic for mapping imo.

[MetHy]

Steambull, on 25 September 2014 - 02:34 AM, said:

Conversely a lot of ideas also come to me while I'm trying to fall asleep, that's another situation when my imagination and visual thinking seem to be at their best.

Yeah this happens a lot to me, but for it to happen I need to have been playing games or mapping recently or it won't happen. And it doesn't happen if my mind is preoccupied by work or other things which sadly is too often the case...

And yeah my participation in Duke Hard, or maybe even the whole thing, wouldn't have happened without 'substances', and the same goes for some previous stuff I worked on like Galbadia and probably others too.

[darkcaleb]

I'm still trying to find a way to construct something with all these projects that I had and that are gone.
-Matrix wich was a 3 maps episode that you would need to find the package in the postoffice that you would leads you back to a telephone cell, still thinking of getting this somehow done.
-Resident Evil, this a mod that had whole new gameplay wich you would need to find evidence so you could expose umbrella for it's grazy bio organic weapons.
-Bladerunner would a episode with couple maps where you would explore futuristic new york. Here you would talk to civilians and need to find the replicants that where hiding in the city.
-Project Gotham wich i'm still thinking about it what i should do with it? 2 maps maybe with outbreak of swine flue maybe?
-Inmate would be based on Arkham City where you would need to make an escape somehow by going through missions that you would need to be doing for barman inside the city.
-Caleb a Blood episode inside Gotham City where you would fight a cabal that where rising from underneath Old Gotham, Wondercity.

Man allot of ideas

Still need help with the Project Gotham. Need a simple story with a concept based on a swine flue inside Old Gotham and some connection the GCPD. Anybody got any cool ideas out there?

[Sixty Four]

Well every one of my maps are based off another game I like to combine some of my favorite games with my all time favorite Duke Nukem. I listen to music while building but music with no lyrics. For example when I was building Turok map I played the Turok dinosaur hunter ost. I like to play music that carries the vibe of the map with not to much going on so doesn't cause distractions to my thought's. Most the time I find myself playing rain/thunderstorm sound effects just to block out noise but also not create much noise.

[Forge]

more than 90% of the stuff in my maps are based off places i've been
(some of it wouldn't be recognizable to it's R/L counterparts because it's a combination of stuff & places and one would have to know which parts came from where)

[DNSKILL5]

When I was younger I used to read a lot of Duke Nukem guides and whatnot (Like Prima's Unauthorized Secrets/Construction Kit), and that's what motivated me to create levels of my own, I would do the tutorials then do them again and again, only adding more hings each time, expanding the levels, etc, but when I started to know the basics and whatnot, I would just make levels out of things going on, like if I watched Raw Deal, I had always wanted to make a Duke level in a building like the one at the end of the movie. I never finished the map but anyways, usually movies and other games help inspire me to create maps when it comes to Duke.

Duke level design is much different to me than Doom and Wolf. With Doom, I like to make levels that remind me of what I thought would happen after the shareware (because as a kid only having the shareware, I always day dreamed about the future missions before I actually got to play them, and I remember all the ideas I had about what could happen, and so I try to replicate that). With Wolfenstein 3d, I like to make levels that feel like actual epic Nazi dungeons, prisons, castles, death camps, etc.

When I make maps I always listen to music, no matter what's going on (making the foundations, adding enemies, etc). I look at the areas in 3D view and imagine how it'll play out, then test it to see if what I imagined came close.

[ck3D]

i find inspiration in everything, real life (no matter how long i find myself away from duke and mapster, i always think of how i could recreate real-life locations as a level using the engine), music, movies, books. like a lot of people my creativity is at its peak at night, i often find myself thinking up new ideas before falling asleep, only to then try to re-implement them in maps that will most likely never see the light of the day, sometime in the twenty-days-or-so a year where i get to find some spare time for mapping.

when i was younger i would buy quite a lot of video game magazines that would feature in-depth FPS walkthroughs (notably of various doom installments), for some reason just looking at the 2D map blueprints would inspire me a lot, as though i wanted to make my own layouts, too.

music is also a big source of inspiration, when i was younger i couldn't listen to music for shit while mapping, nowadays i just have to do it. i need some auditive free flow in order to stimulate the spontaneity therefore i always seem to get the best results with free jazz or just going to youtube and firing up random albums (of any genre i like) that i might have heard of before yet never took the time to listen to (so that it is new to me). which allows me to find some music gems in the process

here are a few pictures of real-life buildings i have re-done in my own duke maps before

those two are from happy hangover, two monuments / renowned locations from my hometown




a bridge and a (now long-gone) record store, yet again from my hometown that i re-did in anorak city



that abandoned factory inspired the one in bummed out anarchy city x, the inside is a perfect replica of how it used to be (it was already in the process of being partly bulldozed, partly renovated in that picture), the outside was just some loose inspiration



more buildings i used as an inspiration for anarchy city x


http://img.over-blog...bof-30-lidl-jpg

anarchy city III building and plaza, real-life location is amazing and would definitely need a better remake of that old map of mine to be done justice (i probably started like 5 in the past 10 years that i either lost or didn't finish)
|img]http://www.harari-ar...73544547492.jpg[/img]



dnf bottles to the ground concert hall


and so many more.

i only use real-life locations as loose, mere inspiration nowadays (whenever i even do), but when i was younger it was hard for me to come up with something original and i was fascinated by the idea of recreating my environment in duke for some reason. the oldest of my maps that i made almost 15 years ago consist in recreations of my old highschool, neighborhoods (anarchy city 1 & 2) etc

[MetHy]

I know all of these places (except the concert hall), born in the same town. I was a postman in the neighborhood of Anarchy City 2. We even took a picture with my first band in that abandoned factory (when it was in the same state as in the pic); and we played an outdoor concert where the map Downtown Ride takes place, smoked weed in Anarchy City 3 and the cinema in AC3 was probably the first cinema I ever went to, ate a pizza and drank beer in Happy Hangover, etc. I've already said it before but it was pretty amazing when I went back to DN3D back in 2004 to randomly download and play maps based on my hometown, and always a pleasure to play the new ones. I would probably not have become a mapper without those maps. For anyone who wonders though, it's definitely recognize-able, but it always has a lot of artistic liberty as well. Would I build the same part of the town I wouldn't do it the same at all.

Edit : the funny thing is that I now live in another town, which is the town MRCK lived before the one that inspired all these maps; and which he also made a map based on Tours Rives Du Cher before all those, and I happened to go on a bicycle ride in that neighborhood a few months ago.
I'm sure the centertown of this town and its most famous places would do a marvelous map in the style of Happy Hangover and Anorak City, but it's not the kind of maps I'm into making, though I often think about it.

[neoacix]

Hm... I only can tell what inspired me to the map I'm currently working on (here), since it's my first and probably last map for Duke3D.

So... I allways like the idea of storming a massive millitary base.
My first intentions was to make a coop map and play it with some friends, where they have to try to fight their way through the base, while I'm sitting in a room full of switches to enable traps and control them over cameras and intercepting them on critical locations with hidden teleporters.
But I changed my mind to make the map for singleplayer and prepare it for deathmatch and coop, since Eduke has still a lack of multiplayer...

I liked the idea that things starts out pretty usual and get f**** up very quickly, naming UFOs and stuff like that and the idea that there is more than 1 way...
Also, the more realistic city settings in Duke3D were my favorite, so I kept on building my map in this style.

And then I want stuff to be recognizable and known in common sense.
For example: I hate maps which are kind of generic without any touch of common reality in it, where every building is just a abstract building without "real" function.
In my map, every building has a function and allmost every room has a function as is would have in real life.
So you know you're not just entering "some building" ...no, it's a bank, a store, a warehouse, a facility... things like that and everything inside the buildings is quite what you expect to find in there.
This makes things much more immersive and also surprising if something is totaly different to your expectation.
So the map isn't just a stage you have to conquer, it's something to explore, an adventure, filled up with weired stuff and locations.

Another issue is, that I never liked the limitation that you can't fly over the most buildings in Duke3D.
So I make my buildings with a lot of sprites for roofs and stuff like that, even if it causes glitches, but it makes my map open world and you can use the jetpack to fly over allmost everything, climb buildings and shoot from above...
And yeah, I know TROR and I'm using it for some parts of the map, but TROR has also some limitations...
This is btw also a reason why it's taking so long to finish the map...

And finaly, I like things to be abstract and kind of comic like, even if they where taken from real life, but I want them to be fun and not to be boring.
So there's a lot of Duke style humor in it and they are kind of simple, compared to reality.
For example, I never liked the idea of having the hoover dam in in DNF.
Basicly it an epic building, but you just can make 1 awesome thing with it: Blow it up!
Otherwhise it's kind of boring and it's to huge to fill it up with cool individual things... so it would start out to look genericly after you passed the entrance and saw the engineering room...

And of course a lot of inspiration came from older and newer games and movies.

So yeah, that sums it up pretty well I think and I realy hope you like this map, when it's done. ;-)

[Paul B]

Nice to see I’m not the only one on these forums whose mind trips between real-life and creating a world within Mapster. Very cool Methy for sharing your story. I would hope that since you two live a stones throw away you'd of at least taken the time to meet one another in person. It would be very cool meeting a fellow mapper in person or collaborating on a map. I had a friend back in 1997-1998 that use to map with me but he's moved on and I guess I haven't.

Anyway, I share much of the same opinions and inspirations as just about everyone here. Neoacix - I like your vision for your map and the amount of detail you are putting into it. Very nicely done!

What drives me nuts about mapping is creating a plausible environment like Neoacix while adding game play that makes sense and not just random chaos. I realize there is much more to mapping then just randomly placing items and enemies. A great map will tell a story as it goes or draw you into its atmosphere with distinct objectives. It's a daunting task to make a good level and it is something I've struggled with right from the start. While my design in mapping has improved thanks to TROR I still lack the imagination that Gambini has managed to demonstrate with It Lives. I wish I could be half as creative but unfortunately I'm a visual person and I struggle with creating original effects and ideas no matter how hard I sit and ponder about it. I find myself thinking about how I’m going to create a room more than I do building it. The easy part is making it; I just need to visualize the damn thing first while not forgetting about limitations and purpose.

I also will sometimes listen to music for inspiration but only when I have a good idea of what I am trying to achieve. Otherwise its silence while I bang my head against my screen. I know I’ve been told by many not to map for anyone but myself but I'm quite the opposite. I map for others enjoyment and if one person can enjoy a single scene in one of my maps or a single place then I'm happy with that. I have bitten off more than I can chew in the last 10 months. I started out making 3 new maps this year after the Duke Hard episode.

First map was intended solely for 2 player Co-op using the classic renderer but I am struggling with this at the moment. The Co-op was intended for each player to start in separate areas of the same city where the players can help each other progress but do not share the same player space until they over come a series of challenges / puzzles which would then allow them to unite in battle for one major finale. There are some serious flaws to this though. As a result of a player dying it would perhaps cause the player to not re-spawn where they initially started which poses a big problem. I was also intending to not equip the players with many guns but through a series of puzzles and working together the players could help one another obtain inventory items and guns. This would have forced the game play to rely solely the Co-op element where players could open up different items/areas of the map for forward progression while using tactics like distracting the AI enemy while the other player makes a break for it. Or one Co-op Player operates a crane while the other uses the crane to hoist themselves up to an area they couldn't normally reach on there own. Anyway, this project is now on hold which is sad.

Second map - Was going to be a re-creation of "The Rock" a prison on an island off the bay of San Francisco inspired by the actual 1996 movie "The Rock". Two amazing mappers created this map using the Worldcraft/Hammer editor for Counter-Strike 1.6 and I was hoping to pay tribute by making a Mapster version of it. I tried to put together a team for this map but failed to get it off the ground. Overwhelmed by the sophistication and the size of this project I've had to put this on hold.

Third Map - A real life church in my city which is a monument in our town. My focus is currently here and this map is primarily built. However, it lacks puzzles and purpose since I am aiming to make this a button pressing key card puzzle map. This is the part that frustrates me the most. I know brains like High Treason, Gambini, David B and the likes would thrive off this type of crap but I don’t. This map was intended to have a religious undertone for solving the puzzles for something different and possibly bring a different light to a Duke map. This is my current project to which I hope to finish before Christmas.

[neoacix]

Yeah Paul, there is nothing worse then an empty room you know you got to make, but having no idea what to do with it or how things should work together.

I've paused building this map for basicly a half year to get new ideas and new inspiration and it was a good choice.
Otherwhise I'd have build some pretty ugly crap, just to fill the holes.
Actually, I spend almost the same time on thinking about the map as actually building stuff.

The part you thought about making a good coop map, I could'nt agree more.
That's why I like using DukePlus, it gives you more freedom to create functions without CON-Coding.
Fuses, Dukeplus touchplates and spawners and such stuff is a real good thing to create new puzzles and fill your map with reasonable gameplay.
I just wanted to make sure that you got something usefull from exploring different buildings and not only some keycards or ammonition.
There are upgrades you can collect and much more...
To bad old multiplayer won't work with Dukeplus...

And of course: Gambini is a god! :-)

Edit:

BTW, links to your maps?

[Paul B]

neoacix, on 21 October 2014 - 11:24 AM, said:

BTW, links to your maps?

The kind people over at http://www.scent-88.com/ have published my maps

They can be found here:
http://www.scent-88....entra/entra.php
http://www.scent-88....ade/parkade.php (Joint effort with Micky C)
http://www.scent-88....yn/brooklyn.php
http://www.scent-88....omic/atomic.php
http://www.scent-88....R/rcpd/rcpd.php

They managed to find some of my older shitty maps i did back in high school. Stay away from any map of mine prior to 2010. I don't even know why they publish my old crap its bad.

[LeoD]

Paul B, on 21 October 2014 - 11:59 AM, said:

They can be found here:

An updated version of Atomic Arena is available in your release thread

EDIT: Same goes for Entrapped it seems.

[Gambini]

Quote

I still lack the imagination that Gambini has managed to demonstrate with It Lives. I wish I could be half as creative but unfortunately I'm a visual person and I struggle with creating original effects and ideas no matter how hard I sit and ponder about it. I find myself thinking about how I’m going to create a room more than I do building it. The easy part is making it; I just need to visualize the damn thing first while not forgetting about limitations and purpose.

Don´t assume I don´t have that problem too. Most of my time spent in mapping is thinking what to do. When I have a clear idea, I progress really fast.

[neoacix]

So you're still mapping for duke3d?
New Gambini™ map in the making? ^^

[Gambini]

No new maps for Duke for the moment.

[Forge]

Paul B, on 21 October 2014 - 11:59 AM, said:

They managed to find some of my older shitty maps i did back in high school. Stay away from any map of mine prior to 2010. I don't even know why they publish my old crap its bad.

historical and archive purposes. It gives people the opportunity to look back at your earlier stuff and see how your skills progressed.

[Micky C]

And so we can laugh at you

[StarNukem]

For me, my maps are either remakes of maps from Doom or Blood, but some of them are from my imagination. I like to think of different scenarios that Duke would most likely be in and then picture him in it. I let my mind do the talking. A lot of people base their projects off of real life, but I like to imagine certain things, not from any game or movie or real life event, but from something totally out of the random!

[ck3D]

Paul B, on 20 October 2014 - 10:09 PM, said:

Nice to see I’m not the only one on these forums whose mind trips between real-life and creating a world within Mapster. Very cool Methy for sharing your story. I would hope that since you two live a stones throw away you'd of at least taken the time to meet one another in person. It would be very cool meeting a fellow mapper in person or collaborating on a map. I had a friend back in 1997-1998 that use to map with me but he's moved on and I guess I haven't.

we've met on the bus once and that's about it, we might have talked about playing dukematch at his house or something at some point but that never happened. mind you, that was maybe ten years ago, way before we both respectively moved to different cities, we were quite young and stupid (or at least i was). i did meet up with merlijn in person in amsterdam though, about two years ago. although it started off casual, as more and more beers were getting downed by the both of us, the conversation hopelessly became more and more centered around duke until we basically transformed into our 15-year-old-nerd respective selves again. that was a trip.

[Jblade]

Heh, that's cool Sang's trip over here to see me didn't really focus on Duke that much, although we did spend a really short amount of time working on the TC together (him doing some voices and mapping stuff with me coding) just for the novelty of it, but we spent most of it doing stuff (not enough though as sadly I was changing jobs at the time and so couldn't get the time off which sucked)