61 replies to this topic

[Tom Sawyer]

All saluations and accolades to those developers who have created the current maps.

But looking at the community as a whole we have some passionate players and likely some skilled ones in game design. Just look at minecraft and the worlds people dream up.

If PGI could and would be able to release a map design kit so that the community could create maps that then could be uploaded for review do you think it could work? Maybe a map of the month where the best fun most balanced map designed gives the creator some MC's as a reward?

Yes the ability to actually chose the map to drop to would be a major plus but just having more maps could bring some great variance.

Curious to know what you all think

[AlexEss]

Sure in the long run as it would bring forth good mapmakers that then could be hired should the need arise.

Short term it would be a disaster as it would take a insane amount of work to set up a kit and a system for people to deliver the maps without giving away to much of the internal structure of things. Not to mention the QA process of making sure all the maps work and are fair in their design.

On top of that they need to make sure they are optimized.

But yes i am sure that once all that would be in place some really great things (and a few metric tons of Scrap) would come out of it. I just don´t see it as a feature i like them to spend money on any time in the next 2-3 years.

Edited by AlexEss, 30 August 2013 - 10:30 AM.

[verybad]

That "kit" is already made, (CryEngine 3) just attach this games content library and differences The main differences in MWO and Crysis seem to be in multiplay, not mapping (I, as always, reserve the right to be wrong if I am in fact wrong).

Actually being able to use them in games would require their download to all players, so they'd need to be judged by PGI employees.

I'm sure you could get a handle on any potential mapmaker release for the future by downloading the Crysis Engine 3 stuff (Free for non commercial use IIRC)

[Straften]

Absolutely.

[Roland]

I believe dustmuffins has already recreated at least one of the classic mechwarrior 4 maps in the cry engine. I think it was lunacy, if I recall.

[Oppresor]

I like the idea of community involvement. I also have level 1 - 2 VBA skills so have some idea of the amount of work and time that the creation of a map would take. So why not scale the project down to detail improvements? For example, the cargo ship in Forest Colony has slowly gained detail over the past year; I noticed the crustaceans on it a few nights back as by Atlas got cored and fell beside it. Would it be possible to produce a kit that would allow fine detail work on a small area? It would need to be user friendly enough for people with limited coding skills but that don't mind spending time on.

[Gremlich Johns]

Russ discussed this in a podcast - they do not think they can support the integration of player made maps. And then there's getting the content out to everybody. Too much work was what I got out of it. And since it is F2P, IMHO, how would they monetize a player made map.

I think the last bit is the real issue.

Edited by Gremlich Johns, 01 September 2013 - 02:35 PM.

[xhrit]

Gremlich Johns, on 01 September 2013 - 02:35 PM, said:

And since it is F2P, IMHO, how would they monetize a player made map.

I think the last bit is the real issue.

Neverwinter is F2P and has support for player made maps.

[Belorion]

Probably not.

[Drakken]

Unfortunately, this will likely not happen. The "powers that be" have already stated their desire to maintain tight control over the game, and thus the only community involvement will not be by talented artists, map creators, or mod makers, but only from feedback on particular features. While I will be the first to admit this (in my opinion) is extremely short sighted, it is the way things will likely be....

Edited by Drakken, 02 September 2013 - 08:24 AM.

[Superslicks]

it sure would, there are some very talented map guys out there that would love to get there hands on a decent map editor. Plus it would beat some of the {Scrap} we got at the moment

Edited by Superslicks, 02 September 2013 - 09:01 AM.

[Belorion]

Superslicks, on 02 September 2013 - 09:00 AM, said:

it sure would, there are some very talented map guys out there that would love to get there hands on a decent map editor. Plus it would beat some of the {Scrap} we got at the moment

For every talented person that produces a half way decent map there will be hundreds of very non talented people producing terrible maps. Then they would have to manage all that. The bad along with the good.

More of a headache for them I would suppose than a benefit.

[Steel Talon]

Belorion, on 02 September 2013 - 10:14 AM, said:

For every talented person that produces a half way decent map there will be hundreds of very non talented people producing terrible maps. Then they would have to manage all that. The bad along with the good.

More of a headache for them I would suppose than a benefit.

Community based testing, like neverwinter does.
Tools for CE3 can be adapted easily, no need of much investment.

There is no way devs "loose controll" of the game, only take the few successful maps from community test & decide to make them official or not.

[Livewyr]

it could.

But they're still developing the textures and such with each map.

[Training Instructor]

They could put up the maps for testing on the test server once or twice a week for a couple of hours. I think a lot of players would happily test out maps for free.

We pay a lot of money into the game. PGI can't cry poor right now.

[DaZur]

Once MW:O reaches a point of saturation (most if not all geometry + graphic assets in game) I would be surprised if PGI did not eventually have some sort of community contest to bring a user-made map into the game...

That said... It'll be a while before we get to that point I'm guessing.

[Adridos]

The "Map creation kit" as you call it already exist. CryEngine 3 SDK at your own leisure.

You can even check that article on how PGI creates maps. Whatever they can do, you can recreate 100% if you mirror in-game assets in your own map.

That's kinda the reason we're not seeing it from their side. The people from the community don't even know they have the tools at their disposal fro longer than even MW:O has existed, let alone have the abbility to create maps. The percentage is all too small for the effort required to set up a framework to makesure they could use them (legal and QA stuff).

[culverin]

I think if they want us to Battle all over the Inner Sphere in CW, we are going to need to have more maps than we can shake a stick at.

I say source this out to the community.
Encourage it.

[Corvus Antaka]

yup. given community created content on the web we could have 100's of maps really. so you would think anyhow.

Getting a clear & logical answer as to why this isn't happening would be nice too.

[Tom Sawyer]

I understand the testing issue and all that. But we did get access to the test servers when they rolled out 12v12. Be nice to see on the testing server player created maps. I also understand that the final product would have to be tested by PGI and get a quality stamp of approval. But with enough players just stomping all over the test maps looking for holes n bugs then having players rate the map PGI could then just look at the final top 3 or such. Each account gets one vote so it should prevent weighting. PGI ends up with alot more intersesting maps, might even boost new players to join just to check them out.