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Building Left 4 Dead Maps With Google Sketchup
notthatwillsmith writes "If you're a fan of Left 4 Dead and you've ever wanted to build a zombie-filled map of your hometown, office or grocery store, Maximum PC just posted a how-to that shows you how to convert photos of real-world locations into ready-to-play L4D 1 or 2 maps. It's everything you need to know in order to kill zombies with your friends — in the comfort of your own backyard."
I'm just waiting for the "school" maps to appear. This game has already had to be mutilated to make it onto the shelves in Australia. I think once the first screenshots of a zombie-killing spree in some kid's high-school appear, that should probably do for it in the rest of the world as well.
I know when I was a teenager, I developed a Doom map based on my school. Didn't think much of it at the time (this was pre-Columbine) - it was just a fun setting while I taught myself level design - but I know that if I'd done that (and been found out) today, I'd at best have found myself in compulsory counselling and at worst in jail.
My wife uses Sketchup and Revit for her architecture practice. I wonder if there is a business opportunity converting her normal models to Left 4 Dead maps. It reckon it could liven things up.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Yeah, there will be a lot of shit but this is the case with ANY tool for making consumer-generated content. In fact, the harder tools lead to more crap because you have more people that can do something half right, so you end up with a lot of maps that are somewhat alright but generally suck. You end up with maps that have a good layout, but the doors don't work, the ladders don't work, and the stairs take a lot of jumping to climb because someone only made it 1/3 of the way through the manual.
This will allow talented people to make better maps quicker. It will also let idiots make better maps than they would have otherwise, so at least they'll suck less.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
Let's make a map using the White House and fill it with zombies.
No, wait, it's already been done in real life.
Nevermind...
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
Actually I'm convinced that easier to use tools will result in more useful maps, not more chaff.
Let's be sensible here. People will only invest so much time into creating a map for a game. So depending on how this time is spent, quality will either be good or bad. If it's easy to get a basic layout done and get ladders, items, movables etc. in place, they will spend that time fleshing out details and testing. If you have to spend already a ton of time on basic layout, that's gonna be what you will get.
Think of it as programming a game in pure assembler vs. doing it with C++ and DirectX. Yes, the latter creates an influx of a lot of average quality programmers who will suddenly be able to create something. But at the end of the day, which approach will lead to more games with less errors?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This was how the creator of the map "dismember the alamo" created his map of the alamo drafthouse (austin based movie theater chain) to scale. Hammer does a lot of things, but building real buildings to scale from photos is not one of them, which, presumably is why sketchup was supported as an importable filetype. If you can find the buildup thread on that site linked above, he does a pretty good tutorial (edit - you can find the sketchup/hammer buildup thread here). I would imagine this is what the Maximum PC tutorial is based off of.
Also there's nothing wrong with building a map of your school for quake/doom/halflife; I did it too back in the quake 1 days. Schools are the right size for deathmatch maps (I tried building mine and my friends' houses but they're waaay too small unless you scale the rooms waaay up, schools with their cafeterias and gyms are about the right size) and I never thought about rampaging through the actual school. So chill out everyone.
moox. for a new generation.
within the bounds of the EULA, you can import the Sketchup models into Google Earth. Also, a number of 3D applications are adding .SKP read/write support.
Outside the EULA, .SKP files are actually ZIP archives containing a Collada file of the 3D model, all the texture bitmaps, and some Sketchup-specific metadata files.