DISCLAIMER: This isn't to keep you from mapping, but to give you feedback and advice. Read to the end, I have a nice speech there to help you out and everything. I really do care, don't be upset.
Since I saw this map I've been wanting to write a long post tearing it up, and finally I'm going to do it, mostly in the form of a chat log I had with Nienhaus. I'll include their asides as well, since they gave good feedback too.
quiltyquilty: hideous transit tube system, ai core being copy and pasted and still made ugly, incredibly weird maintenance passages, poorly thought out department placement and layout
This was my first criticism. There's a massive amount of ugly transit tubes running across the map. They're hideous and very easily damageable, so I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the time the station is surrounded by useless, ugly, broken tubes from meteor showers. Also, none of them use the pass tube, so they can't be walked over.
A big problem you repeat over and over is copy and pasting from other maps, and then messing it up by trying to shove it into your map. This is a bad practice, and it's very very ugly. The AI core's empty room on the bottom right is a good example, so I brought it up.
The maintenance is fucking hideous in the map. It looks like an mspaint doodle on top of the map. Hallways should be shaped like hallways, boxed and square. Not just tumorous lumps all over the station. Half of them are useless and just there to fill space.
I'll comment on bad departments individually.
quiltyquilty: http://puu.sh/iuITE/bfc1b35a01.png
quiltyquilty: play botany and you know
quiltyquilty: this is absolute shit
That botany room is amazingly, fantastically fucking puny. That will be hell to move through when there's more than 1 botanist. Please.
quiltyquilty: atmos, a department that's easily capable of destroying approx EVERYTHING, is smack dab in the middle of a hallway
quiltyquilty: and can be effortlessly broken into
Atmos is on the edge of the station that way damaging the air supply is a feat. Here, it's effortless because it's surrounded on all sides by simple hallway. Breaking into the plasma room from space and obtaining a free canister is easy.
quiltyquilty: there's 1 good thing
quiltyquilty: http://puu.sh/iuIW2/2877663a60.png
quiltyquilty: that's not a bad theatre
quiltyquilty: especially with utilizing the ancient carpet sprites
quiltyquilty: no one uses those anymore except goon
quiltyquilty: i like that
This is a positive thing. I'm glad you found those carpet sprites, I enjoy them a lot when they're used on Goon. Good on you for using them.
quiltyquilty: 60% of dorms is covered by laundry room, and it cant be entered through the hall
quiltyquilty: you HAVE to go through the bathroom
quiltyquilty: http://puu.sh/iuIYP/d6d626f6ef.png
quiltyquilty: no choice
Nienhaus: What the fuck
quiltyquilty: also the bathroom is copy pasted from another map lmao
This is pretty clear. A lot of the map is tiny, cramped areas with completely horrible use of space. Why is the laundry area so big while the full dorms is so tiny? Why is the door to get in missing?
Also, you copied and pasted again. Stop that.
quiltyquilty: librarian doesnt have a backroom
Just saying.
quiltyquilty: THE FUCKING SAUCER BRIDGE
quiltyquilty: LITERALLY WHY
If this is a gimmick to spice the map up, it's completely useless and ugly as a gimmick. It limits the space of the bridge and makes it hideous for the sake of being different. Why not just try a different shape, instead of making it a whole damn saucer?
quiltyquilty: gravity gen is in all access maint that has no protection except 3 space tiles
quiltyquilty: which have cat walk on them anyway
Yep.
quiltyquilty: also medbay and rnd are across the station from each other
quiltyquilty: wanna get acid for rnd?
quiltyquilty: GOOD LUCK KID
Medbay and Science are supposed to be close for a good reason. Look at this work of mapping genius.
You can throw a beaker across, PDA chemistry "acid", and get your acid thrown back effortlessly. That's efficiency, and it's a great layout.
Nienhaus: Well now all you have to do is copy+paste this chat :p
Thanks Nienhaus.
quiltyquilty: theres a solar that requires command access to enter
Yep!
Nienhaus: Also don't be too mean to the point he'd stop mapping
quiltyquilty: if you dont be mean to mappers to make them stop, you get people like steelpoint
quiltyquilty: who consistently churn out shitty content
quiltyquilty: and due to the fact that he's the only real commonly contributing mapper
quiltyquilty: it's usually accepted
If you think I'm being too mean, I included this to show you why it's for your own good. I'm just trying to help.
quiltyquilty: http://puu.sh/iuJ8m/463801e591.png
quiltyquilty: 1 bomb
quiltyquilty: mining, cargo, arrivals, and eva
quiltyquilty: all gone
quiltyquilty: and thus
quiltyquilty: NO more space travel
Putting useful things together results in stuff like this, and that's why it shouldn't be done. Space it out and keep bombs from crippling a massive part of the game.
quiltyquilty: also the eva has NO supplies, but they decided 7 space suits was needed
quiltyquilty: ???
quiltyquilty: wait
quiltyquilty: THERES 2 EVAS
quiltyquilty: http://puu.sh/iuJbq/421b00501e.png
Nienhaus: What
quiltyquilty: THE SECOND ALSO IS FULL OF SPACE SUITS
...
Nienhaus: Well that's new :p
Did you run out of space in the first EVA? Was it an accident? Splitting the EVA is a bad idea, it makes it harder to get certain supplies. If you want to prevent the EVA from being easily bombable, why not make 2 FULL EVAS, instead of 2 half EVAS?
quiltyquilty: http://puu.sh/iuJc0/c4479f3347.png this escape wing can not be entered
...
quiltyquilty: a massive area that will probably have no one in it unless it's the end of the round
quiltyquilty: and it's directly exposed to cells
quiltyquilty: hm.....
Don't make security a block of swiss cheese, full of holes and shit. Make it at least mildly secure.
quiltyquilty: he copy and pasted the smes room. of all things youcould copy and paste you choose the worst
quiltyquilty: even worse is that engineering's tool room is far enough from the singulo that smes could work fine there
The SMES room is awful, ugly, etc. A fourth SMES was added to ease someone's OCD over the asymmetry, even though 1 or 2 SMES is already enough to store all of the power in the world. Also, stop copy and pasting.
quiltyquilty: http://puu.sh/iuJhH/37be40b3bb.png good luck rnd
quiltyquilty: if anything more than a toddler-sized scientist works there
quiltyquilty: everything is cramped
Same as botany. You need to manage space better.
quiltyquilty: http://puu.sh/iuJjj/3d0d11d49e.png this is the firing range
That's a joke, a literal honest to god joke. Certain guns that RND can make will kill you if they hit a target that close to you. Why is it so small?!
quiltyquilty: http://puu.sh/iuJkM/d3672b65cc.png i actually like this experimentor room
Nienhaus: :p
Good on you, it's kind of neat.
quiltyquilty: http://puu.sh/iuJlq/84d30e7c7c.png rnd is so small but robots has all this space?????
quiltyquilty: also more weirdly placed wires, copy and paste
More shitty distribution of space. RnD shouldn't be puny but Robotics rather happy and spacious.
quiltyquilty: xeno doesnt have a big pen, the big pen is 100% separate from the rest of the room
Why? This map is full of stuff that's different for the sake of difference, with no time put into considering if it's good or annoying.
quiltyquilty: http://puu.sh/iuJnP/7f6bd6357a.png in order to access too. storage
quiltyquilty: you must go through space
Fix this.
Nienhaus: I really hope that this is a matter of just a floor placement
Nienhaus: And not that he forgot so many doors.
I'm sure it's floor placement, right? Right?
quiltyquilty: http://puu.sh/iuJoY/a0abcaf6eb.png 1/2 of captains office is exposed to the hallway, the last wall is touching maintenance
quiltyquilty: all access maintenance
On Metastation, a single side of the captain's office is exposed to maintenance. This SINGLE tunnel is responsible for 99% of shitty assistants who snatch up the spare and make rounds god fucking awful, never calling the shuttle. Fix this.
quiltyquilty: http://puu.sh/iuJqB/824ff2d0aa.png if touched up, this hop office would look nice
quiltyquilty: but still copy and pasted from meta
Nienhaus: It's a little bit open
Nienhaus: For a HoP's office
quiltyquilty: im sure he'll fill it in
There's a positive.
THE SECURITY SECTION
fuck this security layout, fuck it
quiltyquilty: http://puu.sh/iuJsC/9b79fbeb7c.png
quiltyquilty: this entire department is wrong
quiltyquilty: all of it
quiltyquilty: 100%
Nienhaus: At least the warden can see all the cells
Nienhaus: Unlike some set ups
quiltyquilty: every map has that im pretty sure
Nienhaus: Isn't there normally 5
quiltyquilty: meta only has 4 to be fair
quiltyquilty: it can be flexible
The walls outside of security are ridged and ugly, again, different to be different.
There's 3 empty boxes.
The cells are exposed to escape.
Equipment is exposed to the hallway.
Perma is a small space walk away from escape.
The armory is understocked.
There's a WHOLE SHIT TON of copy and pasting.
Warden is way too fucking small.
The HoS office isn't even an office, it's just a room with tables in it.
The placement of the medical facilities is ugly as hell.
Everything is circuitous and hard to see and hard to use. You have to go to the end of a hallway and through a nearly hidden door to enter armory , which shouldn't even be a thing.
2 doors to the armory should NOT be a thing.
Execution is ugly as fuck.
Perma is incredibly puny, and is almost completely taken up by its botany. In fact, that's the largest prison garden of any /tg/ map, and it still has less trays than Box! Ha!
The asylum on Box is the equivalent to the medical center on Meta. Having both is redundant, because the asylum can work as a medical center and the medical center can work as an asylum.
That's bolded, because it shows one of the biggest issues with this map. It has no direction, nothing special to it, no purpose, no substance. It copies and pastes from other maps excessively, everything unique about it is unique in a bad way, it's so ugly and poorly laid out, like you had no idea what you were doing and just laid shit down hoping it would look good.
The asylum and medical center being shamelessly taken and used at the same time, it tells me you really don't understand a big part of mapping. And that big part is knowing if your map works or not. You aren't supposed to just build whatever and then hope it plays well. You're supposed to put thought into making a map, you need to lay it out in a way that you KNOW will be fun, and you need to make sure that you don't
fucking copy and paste so shamelessly that you end up having two variations of the same god damn room.
I'm sorry if this was too brutal or rough for you, but shit. I just wanted to get this out of the way. I'm not doing this to discourage you from mapping, I'm doing this to teach you one of the biggest things you need to know when mapping, knowing
how to create a map that will work. You can't just swing and miss over and over until you find something that works, you have to learn and understand what makes a map good and what doesn't. Because from what I can tell, all of the changes you made to this map aren't changes you made to improve the playing experience. You did them just to seem different. And a massive part of the map is just copy and pasted, so maybe if you can't make any worthwhile changes, you don't have any reason to be making a map at this point in time? Clearly, if you copy and paste from Box and Meta so much, you like those maps. Why make your own?
That isn't to keep you from mapping, but instead, you should take a break. Steam over mapping, practice more, and find out what you would like to see in a map. Just come up with an actual
idea. Not a Frankensteined, stitched together piece of garbage like this. Remember the positive things I pointed out. There's potential, you just need to learn more before you tackle something as huge as this.
Also...
Hibbles wrote:Posting to express hype, and if you get this in a workable state I'll bully Sticky until we playtest it.
No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No! No!