Saturday, June 17, 2006
5 ways to create an attractive hallway for CS:S
Hallways are the essence of most maps and levels in CS:S. Think a hallway is just four boxes with wall textures, ceiling texture and a floor texture and your hallway is bound to be drab, boring to play in and uncomfortable to walk in. A hallway should have it's own life and tell it's own story. Even new places have some history in them and it's all told through imperfections. Everything is about imperfections with hallways.
1. The 10 foot rule. Never leave more than 10 horizontal feet of a wall exposed without either a decal or a prop on it. Ten feet may even be too much. Five feet might even be a better rule of thumb for walls and just placing a light doesn't generally cut it. In the example photos I've added the lockers along the wall with a light and a chiped brick decal.
2. Floors are dirty. Make sure to have dirt, trash and paper decals on the floors or else the texture repetion becomes obvious, the open space is blinding and the lack of depth to the story of the area of that map is also depressing.
3. Ceilings are rarely touched. Since so few people ever touch ceilings, for the most part, they're always in a good condition. Floors are walked on and everything falls to the floor but ceilings are clean and orderly like the day they were built.
4. The Vegas Rule. In Vegas the carpets have insanely busy patterns and the ceilings are totally drab. The creators of Vegas casinos know that you wont want to look down because the patterns are too busy and you won't look up because the ceilings are so drab so you look right in the middle to where all their casino machines are. This is the same for a hallway. You want to draw the player's eyes towards the end of the hallway where the enemy is coming from right in the middle of the vertical view.
5. Empty Hallway 7B811. What is this hallway for? If you can't determine what the building does or what is moved around in the hallway from a quick glance, the hallway isn't done. A hallway should have some sort of story or at least a purpose to it. Typically I pick a theme for a building interior and use five to ten decals through most of the building to express that theme. The example map has a paper theme to it so I have paper strewn all over the map. ¶ 12:44 AM
Hallways are the essence of most maps and levels in CS:S. Think a hallway is just four boxes with wall textures, ceiling texture and a floor texture and your hallway is bound to be drab, boring to play in and uncomfortable to walk in. A hallway should have it's own life and tell it's own story. Even new places have some history in them and it's all told through imperfections. Everything is about imperfections with hallways.
1. The 10 foot rule. Never leave more than 10 horizontal feet of a wall exposed without either a decal or a prop on it. Ten feet may even be too much. Five feet might even be a better rule of thumb for walls and just placing a light doesn't generally cut it. In the example photos I've added the lockers along the wall with a light and a chiped brick decal.
2. Floors are dirty. Make sure to have dirt, trash and paper decals on the floors or else the texture repetion becomes obvious, the open space is blinding and the lack of depth to the story of the area of that map is also depressing.
3. Ceilings are rarely touched. Since so few people ever touch ceilings, for the most part, they're always in a good condition. Floors are walked on and everything falls to the floor but ceilings are clean and orderly like the day they were built.
4. The Vegas Rule. In Vegas the carpets have insanely busy patterns and the ceilings are totally drab. The creators of Vegas casinos know that you wont want to look down because the patterns are too busy and you won't look up because the ceilings are so drab so you look right in the middle to where all their casino machines are. This is the same for a hallway. You want to draw the player's eyes towards the end of the hallway where the enemy is coming from right in the middle of the vertical view.
5. Empty Hallway 7B811. What is this hallway for? If you can't determine what the building does or what is moved around in the hallway from a quick glance, the hallway isn't done. A hallway should have some sort of story or at least a purpose to it. Typically I pick a theme for a building interior and use five to ten decals through most of the building to express that theme. The example map has a paper theme to it so I have paper strewn all over the map. ¶ 12:44 AM
