Mapping Guide for Gores Maps (by durrtypurrp)

This post will only contain info about Gores mapping. For info about the editor, basic

mapping and other stuff you should visit the DDNet Tutorial Forum.

Before uploading your map to the KoG Testing Channel you should test the map by

yourself and make sure that all the following rules are fullfilled. To do that you can create a

LAN- or a Trashmap-Server.

KoG Mapping Rules

Your map has to

1. be longer than 90 seconds

2. have interesting gameplay

3. be well balanced

4. be not too blocky

5. have a playable design

6. be free of bugs

RULE 1:

Due to the abusability of farming season points by finishing short maps, the rule was set to

only release maps that are longer than 90 seconds. If you want to see if your map is long

enough enable super and rush through your map.

RULE 2:

There are already a lot of Gores maps released. To make your map differ from all those it

has to contain interesting gameplay. It doesnt always have to be something new. You can

also map things that already exist but you shoud never copy parts of other maps. The

most important thing is that it has to be FUN to play.

Examples for boring gameplay are long tunnels:

There are already enough of those on released maps. You are just going in one direction

for a long time, which is boring, no matter how much freeze you're putting in the way.

Instead of this you should be more creative map „real“ parts, a quick example:

In this part you are doing many different moves in a short period of time, which makes it

more interesting to play.

Another mistake that is made is repeating a move. Having to do the same move over and

over in the same map gets boring really fast. Try to build a variety of different moves into

your map.

All in all it is always better to have a concept in mind before you start mapping. One

example is the map bazawa which consists out of only two-tilers. You can also work with

things like unfreeze or unhook parts or keep it simple with only hook and freeze. But

always think about what you want to do and which move comes next. Placing the

hookables and freeze randomly will mostly end up in a bad map especially when you are

not that experienced. So think about every tile and every block you place and make sure

that it has a purpose.

RULE 3:

Having a balanced map very important. You don't want to play a map that contains parts of

different difficulty. A hard part in a main map will cause main players to fail, while a main

part in a hard map will be seen as boring by hard players.

If your map is balanced can be evaluated by 4 different Rating Categories: Map Difficulty,

Save Spots, Punishment and the Ability To Go Back.

Map Difficulty:

The Map Difficulty is the most important thing when it comes to balancing. The difficulty of

the moves on your map should not differ too much. It is hard to judge alone from the move

if it is fitting the difficulty you would like to have, but you there are some simple rules for

the Map Categories:

EASY: no hard moves like one-tilers

MAIN: maybe one or a few hard moves to get started

HARD/INSANE: a lot of hard moves

The difference between hard and insane maps is often made with the other Rating

Categories.

Save Spots:

Saving others is a key element to gores gameplay. Therefore your map needs spots where

you can save your frozen teammates. Here an example how you should NOT do it:

As you can see it is very hard to get saved if you fail this. Instead of keeping it like this

there has to be a spot where you can save your teammates. It could look like this:

The size and the density of Save Spots are depending on the average Map Difficulty. A

move/spot thats easier than the average can be harder to save while a harder move/spot

should be easier saveable. The harder the map category is the smaller the Save Spots

get. The density of Save Spots gets lower the harder the Map Category is.

Punishment:

Sometimes there are punishing spots in a map. A vertical spot is punishing by nature

because if you fail it, you fall down where either someone has to get back down to save

you or has to complete the part to save you, depending on the direction.

Punishment is handled like Save Spots, depending on the average Map Difficulty. A

move/spot thats easier than the average can be more punishing while a harder move/spot

should be less punishing. Punishment can exist on all Map Categories but don't be too evil

with it on easier ones.

Ability To Go Back:

First of all it should ALWAYS be possible to go back on every spot in a Gores map. In

addition going back should not be significantally harder than the hardest spots on your

map. Some moves are naturally harder when going back. The best example for this is a

vertical one-tiler. Everyone can fall downwards but going up takes a lot of skill.

Instead of this you can make it way easier to go back while still keeping the basic part, like

this for example:

As you can see the long one-tiler is now split into two easier one-tilers. While it just makes

the going down part a bit easier going up is now significantally easier.

RULE 4:

Avoiding getting blocked happens often in Gores maps. To not leave it to the players you

should help to make your map as less blocky as possible.

That begins already in the start room. Make sure that there is enough space to spawn for

multiple tees. Also take care of the spawns, they have to be placed one tile above the

ground, not directly on the ground because you would spawn into others and not in the air

so you can start immediatly with your race. They should be grouped together and be not

too far away from the startline or from a point where you can take speed to start your race.

Additionally you can add an afk-area so that afk-tees don't block the startroom.

Also should the start part be fitting for multiple tees. Imagine 30 tees wanting to go into a

one-tiler at the same time, that would not be a nice experience. So begin your map with a

wide start and progress with getting to the difficulty you want after some time.

At first an example of how you should NOT do it:

And here is an example of how a good startroom could look like:

Other things that can be blocky are parts which have a lack of hookable tiles or vertical

parts combined with hard moves. While that might be no problem on maps from harder

Map Categories, especially INSANE, you should in general always think about the parts

you make, where the players have to hook and where they could fall on each other.

Here are two simple examples of blocky parts:

To make them less blocky you have to just add hookables. For the first one so that you

don't have to hook the walls where other tees might be and for the second one so that you

don't fall too far down and might block others when you fail:

RULE 5:

Although many players, especially pros play with entities, it is required to have a playable

design. The most important thing is that every gameplay relevant game-tile has to have its

corresponding design-tile. Moreover should the design you choose not be eyehurting and

everything should be clearly visible. Therefore you will need the right amount of contrast in

your map design. Too many contrast and too bright and flashy colors can result in an

eyehurting design while too low contrast and too dark colors can be not visible enough to

play properly.

Everything not gameplay relevant like clouds or doodads has to be marked as HD in the

editor since it can be either distracting or can cost fps on low-end PCs.

RULE 6:

Before posting your map look over it multiple times and make sure that your map doesnt

contain any type of bugs. Common examples are:

missing edges:

naked corners:

missing game- (or design-) tiles:

missing freeze behind walls:

The last two can be spotted easily if you go through your map with „cl_overlay_entities 50“.

Another thing that you have to pay attention to is the editor management. Big filesizes

strain the server, therefore you have to remove unused images (marked as blue) and keep

an eye on wrongly embedded or external images (marked as red). Keep the layers as

small as possible and delete unused layers, groups and envelopes.

Conclusion:

Make sure to follow all of these rules while mapping. The less has to be corrected, the less

testing will be needed and accordingly your map will be released faster. Be creative with

new parts and try out special styles to give your map your personal touch. We are excited

to see your map on our servers.

The KoG Tester Team