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What makes a HL2RP map "good"?
- Thread starter Jamais Vu
- Start date
Khrushchev
Active member
- Joined
- Oct 3, 2023
- Messages
- 69
imo I always identify one of two problems with maps I feel like either:
1. The map itself (and particularly the roads) are too big. Take C24_v1 and v2 for example. The road takes up like half of the city's space. You have to walk too much between POIs, and the streets are usually barren because you can't do much with them.
or
2. The map is too complicated and it makes it hard to find RP. Take the slums in C24_v3 or v4. I like the slums and I think they look beautiful. They have verticality which is wonderful and rare. However, it's just so fucking hard to find people in them that it kills RP. Maybe there's a store or two, but everything else is impossible to find and just kills it for me because I don't want to navigate the maze to find people. Lots of high quality maps suffer from this problem though.
That's why C8 and Terminal 7 are the goats of map layouts.
Besides that, it's important that the RP and atmosphere fit the map. If you're in C8, and it feels no different from I17 or C24, what's the point? You need to change everything up on different maps.
1. The map itself (and particularly the roads) are too big. Take C24_v1 and v2 for example. The road takes up like half of the city's space. You have to walk too much between POIs, and the streets are usually barren because you can't do much with them.
or
2. The map is too complicated and it makes it hard to find RP. Take the slums in C24_v3 or v4. I like the slums and I think they look beautiful. They have verticality which is wonderful and rare. However, it's just so fucking hard to find people in them that it kills RP. Maybe there's a store or two, but everything else is impossible to find and just kills it for me because I don't want to navigate the maze to find people. Lots of high quality maps suffer from this problem though.
That's why C8 and Terminal 7 are the goats of map layouts.
Besides that, it's important that the RP and atmosphere fit the map. If you're in C8, and it feels no different from I17 or C24, what's the point? You need to change everything up on different maps.
- Joined
- Nov 17, 2018
- Messages
- 1,443
Connection and verticality. Flat maps tend to set a repetitive tone. The maps that tend to succeed for years onward is due to networks of connections that allow for flexibility. Industrial 17 reached its maximum potential with that level of amplification.
Maps that followed a more linear stretch of gameplay loops were City Eighteen and City Forty Five. Both were flat, but they both contained their elements of vertical gameplay and connections between different parts of their maps. All of them made it easy for the player to navigate and find a level of engagement with their antique setpieces for exploration.
City Eight is incredibly vertical. Most places will invite you to take an ascension to the next level which matches with its claustrophobic streets. It plays tall and not wide and does so pretty well. Unfortunately City 8 suffers from the claustrophobia problem with the playerbase rather quickly in this regard who aren't used to tall cities.
City Fourteen was rather decent, specifically the Utopia version, but maps like City Sixteen were phenomenally beautiful despite their size and unfortunate instability.
You can get wide maps that are inherently vertical like City Two but they weren't aesthetically pleasing. But they did get the job done at the very least.
All of the maps above are ones I remember playing so many different versions of back in the day. Makes me feel old.
But at least there's an archive so-to-speak. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1195357126
Maps that followed a more linear stretch of gameplay loops were City Eighteen and City Forty Five. Both were flat, but they both contained their elements of vertical gameplay and connections between different parts of their maps. All of them made it easy for the player to navigate and find a level of engagement with their antique setpieces for exploration.
City Eight is incredibly vertical. Most places will invite you to take an ascension to the next level which matches with its claustrophobic streets. It plays tall and not wide and does so pretty well. Unfortunately City 8 suffers from the claustrophobia problem with the playerbase rather quickly in this regard who aren't used to tall cities.
City Fourteen was rather decent, specifically the Utopia version, but maps like City Sixteen were phenomenally beautiful despite their size and unfortunate instability.
You can get wide maps that are inherently vertical like City Two but they weren't aesthetically pleasing. But they did get the job done at the very least.
All of the maps above are ones I remember playing so many different versions of back in the day. Makes me feel old.
But at least there's an archive so-to-speak. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1195357126
Kappatalist
Workshift Shooter
- Joined
- Sep 21, 2020
- Messages
- 715
D47 V2 is my favourite map and I think this is mostly why, the trainyard in D47 is imo the best singular area in any HL2RP map ever.
It's a complete middle ground between all the factions in the server. Citizens have access to the balconies overlooking it, and can sneak through into the yard - A CWU warehouse is on the far side of the tracks to them, and the canal block and Nexus sit on opposite ends of the trainyard.
There's a half dozen if not more ways to move through the train yard from one area of the map to another, some of which are hidden and it gives a way for Citizens to sneak into the canal zone, and for rebels to sneak into the city.
It also provides a very long sightline, so that a Citizen or CP on the city side might spot a rebel on the far side, and vice versa, but without any risk to either of them. It's not a substantial interaction, but given that a lot of HL2RP is about wondering what the other side is up to and character motives, it can make the server feel more alive.
Trains and the warehouses are also an obvious target for rebels which puts the action right where everybody can get in on it. And again with the verticality and long sightlines it's very good for positioning players in interesting ways where they can support each other and has the various connections to quickly leave and go into hiding.
By comparison I think C24 is a fairly weak map for layout as the slums were very clearly sectioned off away from everything else with very few ways to get in or out. The only real areas in the city were stores and given the city was structured around literally 2 streets everything that ever happened could be witnessed by 2 CPs on either one. Both entrances to the slums in both versions that Willard used led out onto the exact same street which meant you could effectively close down the slums by just sitting on that road.
