NOLF2 Cartography
So the other day, my friends were chatting about the grand old classic game of Duke Nukem 3D when the subject of level design arose. I had once started on a Duke3D level of our high school, and it was quite detailed and well-done, except for the fact that I only finished about five rooms. This weekend I spent some time looking for my old Duke stuff and was totally unable to find it—not even a single scrap of it. I am now faced with never seeing that spiffy level again.
So, almout out of retaliation (or some kind of vengeance), I have decided to take up 3D game level design again. By “again”, I am referring to the fact that I have tried this several times in the past with absolutely no luck at all, having gotten discouraged again and again by complex building procedures and other seemingly non-intuitive crap foisted upon me by the tools I had to use. I’ve tried mapping for Half-Life, Quake 3, and RTcW without any significant results. I was able to recreate some pretty spiffy tutorials with Half-Life’s Worldcraft, but when it came time to make a level of my own design, I was completely unable to accomplish anything.
Since I haven’t completed a successful game level since Duke Nukem 3D was the hippest thing on Egghead Software’s shelves (mention of that long-dead retail chain alone should ensconce a date firmly in your head—does anybody else still have their Cue Card?), getting into this stuff is difficult for me. Duke was pretty much a 2D game. Whenever I try my hand at modern 3D level design, I always complete a bunch of tutorials, have no trouble, and get all excited. Then I try to make something real, and I bomb… and never touch it again.
Hopefully, this time is gonna be different. Spurred on by a specific goal to recreate that long-lost masterpiece I once started, I’m going to start small and build my way up. I’ve chosen No One Lives Forever 2 as my game to modify, which may seem strange since it has a very small modmaker base, but the Jupiter engine and DEdit editor are very feature-packed and easy to use. A large part of my problem with 3D level design is the way rooms are assembled, and DEdit makes that very simple. You want a room? Create a solid brush, then press one button to hollow it out (invert all the normals, in technical terms). Voila! That’s it. So, at least I can get past room creation this time!
My friend Pooch outfitted me this morning with a scan of our high school’s floor plan, so I’m ready to get started. But first I plan to go through the rest of the tutorials I have available, which teach such things as creating doors, skyboxes, water, and soforth. After that I’ll probably get started with building the glorious high school level in stunning 3D. I just hope I can figure out how to insert enemy AI.
At least I’ll have some help in this—I just remembered this morning that the husband of one of our senior employees is a NOLF2 addict and an avid mapper. He has a couple of popular multiplayer Doomsday maps in wide circulation on the ‘net, and he’s always happy to help mapping newbies. Schweet! He appears to be pretty advanced, as he’s even included enemy bots in his multiplayer levels—the bots are equipped with lockpicks, and if you kill one (which is apparently pretty hard), you can use the lockpick on the door to a room containing phosphorus ammo and other sweet weapons. Great idea!
Okay, now I wanna go home and work on NOLF maps. Come on.
Categorized as Games, Games/PC