AMP 2

[Beed28]

(by the way, you should totes press automap when you've roamed around the stage for a while)

Knowing what was in a certain map in the first AMP-MP, I'm not going to fall for that again. If it ends up being dirty, I don't see how it would be funny.

[Mendez]

Hey Beed

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Comment removed.

[Mendez]

I'm kinda releasing these maps piece by piece to show that I'm still doing work on this project, although I haven't really made many new layouts myself. I'm just using Maxine's layouts for now while we brainstorm ideas for other maps. Here's one of the maps Maxine made herself for AMP. She did the weapon layout and the general layout, but I did a good amount of work on the aesthetics too.
AMP19 - FROSTED PANE
Here's some screenshots:

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Also here's a preview of the next map I'm working on, which is codenamed "Project Ozai" for now:

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[Korby]

Waveman hype is real

[LlamaHombre]

That first screenshot in particular looks incredible.

[Emmanuelf06]

Really nice ^^
WaveBike on lava? Special wavebikes then :3
Nice to see there will be an update of this packmap! =)

[LarissaFlash]

Lava  bikes?
 

[Max]

Now that I have XSPv2 done I can come back and make new innovative maps for this project wheeeee

Possibly AMP04 - Offworld

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We have a quite a bit left to do but with Mendez's AMP15 and his remake of my Wave Man and my AMP19 and stuff progress is looking pretty sweet

[Knux]

A moon map? Pretty cool concept.

BTW, you should probably remove that ancient poll. >_>

[Mendez]

Everything up to this point has been scrapped and I'm starting from mostly scratch because it was getting far too messy for me to keep track of all the stuff I wanted to do. Like, there's 5 scrapped layouts, a dozen unused tilesets, and at least 3 good gimmicks that are still in the "proof of concept" stage because I've been too lazy to work on anything. If anyone wants to use the scrapped layouts for a map, contact me. Max's maps will not be used. This will be entirely on myself and I'll try to do as much as I can on my own. Here's the list of maps I want to make, and here's a list of tracks that will go with the maps.
Maplist:

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AMP## - Name (Theme)
AMP01 - My Favorite Things (Aesthetics)
AMP02 - Glazgow Style Mile (Mall)
AMP03 - Graffiti Rhapsody (Streets/Rails)
AMP04 - Musique (Nightclub)
AMP05 - Adjective Location (Aesthetics)
AMP06 - Let That Sink In (Temple/Jungle)
AMP07 - Space Oddity (Moon/Base)
AMP08 - Storm Drain (Sewers)
AMP09 - Shipping and Handling (Factory)
AMP10 - SallyLandscape (Nature)
AMP11 - Airborne Emperor (Air/Castle)
AMP12 - In the Cave of the Ruby Queen (Underground)
AMP13 - Project Ozai (Fire/Lava)
AMP14 - The Cold War (Winter/Military)
AMP15 - Crescendo (Roguelike/Aesthetics)

Soundtrack:

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Track_## - "Song" by Artist [Comments]
Track_01 - "Hypergiant" by Fighter X
Track_02 - "Aquarius" by Tappy
Track_03 - "Activation Theme" by Bit Shifter
Track_04 - "Love is Insecurable (Original Mix+)" by Chibi-Tech
Track_05 - "Now Rock" by Fighter X
Track_06 - "Cradle (Cover)" by 2Player [Originally composed by Graeme Norgate, Grant Kirkhope, and Robin Beanland for Goldeneye 007]
Track_07 - "Silver Surfer (BGM 1)" by Tim Follin and Geoff Follin
Track_08 - "Comme Il Faut" by USK/Fighter X
Track_09 - "Lo-Tek Resistance" by Fighter X
Track_10 - "Splicing" by Stad
Track_11 - "Indignant Divinity" by Flashygoodness
Track_12 - "Cure Lvl. 3" by Fighter X
Track_13 - "Epic Thunder (The Rage Within')" by Fighter X
Track_14 - "Good Journey (Don't Say Goodbye)" by Danimal Cannon
Track_15 - "Zone Ender" by Fighter X
Track_B1 - "Megaforce (The Afterlife Touch)" by Fighter X
Track_B2 - "Yukitake" by Stern Fucking Zeit
Track_B3 - "The Afterlife" by Fighter X
Track_D1 - "Doggtales - The Moon" by Madbrain

Actually, I just remembered that Ruby Queen was all finished so I guess that's 1/15 of the work done. Here's the work being done on AMP01 right now:

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That's all for now, just wanted to let people know that I wasn't dead, and neither was this map pack.

[Mendez]

Currently preparing for finals, but in the meantime I'm looking at the kind of textures I want to use for the map, and how I want the layout to flow. I already have a general idea of what I wanna do, but honestly what I want to do is provide a layout that feels new to people, and feels less like a collection of sectors and empty rooms. The coolest maps are the ones that blend rooms together in ways you didn't think about before, or have rooms that feel fun to move around in. I think one map that I gotta give credit to is Pik's ultra-massive but ultra-distinct FPS01. Like, a few of those rooms are honestly just fun to jump around in, especially this one:

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I hope to craft a room as platform-centric without making it unplayable, but for now my main focus is just making the maps look pretty.

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Gonna put both of these screenshots in the 3rd post of this topic so you can look back at the progress. Expect updtes later.

[Emmanuelf06]

The last pic, looks like the map is very flashy.... X_x
can still put brightness low, anyway...

[Mendez]

Edit: Gonna reserve this post as a sort of progress report on AMP01, screenshots will be in the third post as always, but my insight and rants will stay here.
Yeah, I think the map might be a bit too brightly colored, but I really did wanna make a flashy map haha. Anyways, today's progress pic is a simple extension of yesterday's section, with Needle textures to provide a darker contrast to the super bright Astro textures introduced so far. I really don't like having tilesets that clash with each other, so I used a tileset that wasn't too dark but still fit the general palette I was going for.
Okay, that last statement was B.S. but it helps justify using my favorite tileset in the entire game. HSH comes close because the palette is so delicious, but it's not as... I guess, applicable to as many settings as the Needle textures are.

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In case you're wondering what's with the daily small updates, let's just say I'm fighting to beat my own version of "The Avatar Project". By the way, I've decided to post the rejected layouts on the 3rd post too since I figured they could be of more use to other mappers. The layouts aren't that amazing, but they could serve as a nice template for other mappers to bounce ideas off of. Gonna post more updates when I get the chance.

March 14 update:
Have you ever had those nights where you're thinking out loud to yourself about certain things and end up with a desperate craving to scream "I still matter in this world" before suddenly being hit with a depressing realization that makes you consider-
Well I have those episodes from time to time, but to help me cope, I'm gonna start trying to teach the community my tricks to mapping in the hopes that I show how mapping can be simple, fun, and rewarding. Today's lesson will be on the thought process on map size/shape. When you first map, it's obvious that you have an idealized vision of what you want your map to look like. More often than not, however, you see maps that feel much larger or smaller than they need to be. This is why it's important to take note of the size of your rooms/corridors/paths so that the player doesn't get lost or feel hopelessly seperated from the action. The general rule of thumb I follow is to use more than 4,000,000 square units of space but less than 16,000,000 square units. Basically, make a map between 2000x2000 and 4000x4000. Of course, you shouldn't try to fit your maps in a square. In fact, I completely discourage that. Make your map shaped like a massive triangle, or like a big circle, or a bunch of large overlapping rectangles. What I've noticed a lot in maps these days is that we tend to fit all our ideas in a big rectangle, and rarely try to break away from that shape because then it feels harder to connect rooms together. This is why I'm a big fan of Shade Guy's MMWTHSH map, because it breaks away from a rectangular mold to produce a layout that is fun and unique to move around.

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For my map, I took a few queues from MM3NEE and MMWTHSH to produce a layout that doesn't feel as rectangular as usual, with emphasis on moving between two corners of the map. Of course, my ideas still fit in a 2816x2624 rectangle though, so I guess I'm not great at following my own rules. I promise it will feel refreshing though.

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Final exams are finishing up tomorrow, so I likely won't make any posts until Wednesday at the earliest.

March 16 update:
This update isn't as massive as the others in terms of progress, but I do have some neat screenshots to show you. If anyone remembers the mall map Galaxy Sisbro (I still miss you fam) made years ago, and also remember the changes I made to it, then you'll probably remember the unique teleporters I made for them. They worked similar to the teleporters in Rozark's past/future map, but I would argue my teleporters felt more seamless than his. In any case, I'm gonna start using those kinds of teleporters more often now because they offer less chances of telefrags and let the player keep moving after teleporting. For these new teleporters to work, however, the teleportation lines must parallel to each other. Otherwise, you gotta check some flags to ensure the player keeps their direction, and that causes the player to stop moving for a small second which practically negates the purpose for making these teleporters in the first place. I'll upload a map to the third post that shows the teleporter in action so you can see it and copy it (which I assume Rozark did when you notice the updated version of his past/future map

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The steps are a placeholder for now

Still not sure what to do here (._. )

Another teleportation wall seen here

I'm stuck on the kind of layout I wanna produce, but hopefully by Friday I can get everything figured out. Then I can move on to item/weapon placement, and finally move on to the next map.

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Gotta pay homage to my roots, yo

March 17 Update:
Finished up the layout for a room and finally got something super cool coded. Trust me, when you see it in action, it will be pretty trippy. It's gonna be for the southeast corner of the map, and it's gonna be about as pretty and bright as the northwest corner of the map.

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Current layout of the map

The layout should be finished by late Friday or early Saturday. Then comes the items and whatnot.

[SaviorSword]

Nice work Mendez.

Seein' how I just appear here and there, so ya can take what I have to say with a grain of salt.

Size matters, sure, but size isn't EVERYthin' when it comes to mappin' for ANY game really. Games with naturally fast pace say ol' Sonic games will naturally demand bigger maps to accommodate the pacin' of said game. This is why if ya threw Sonic into say Mega Man 3, the rather "large" game we would know of it would be a rather short experience. Same goes with if Mega Man was thrown into say Sonic 3. Mega Man just doesn't have the speed to navigate the massive environment without the environment gratin' on the player's patience to simply go from point A to point B. This example does consider the mechanics of the Spin Dash for Sonic and Mega Man's weapons.

Now with the game mechanics/physics/pace in mind, those are probably the utmost important elements to tailor yar map to. For MM8BDM there's no vanilla weapons that is hitscan in any sense of the word and the player travels rather slow on foot, so the effective weapon range of most weapons are rather short-range'd. To translate that feature of MM8BDM to a map means that maps can't exceed a certain size else the size itself will become a permanent obstacle in the map and interfere with the game's pace/flow.

Not to mention there's not a whole lot of mobility when it comes to vertical travelin' either, so tall maps will also be playin' on a shortcomin' of MM8BDM.

Now I would go on with other examples and what have ya, but I've gotta go durin' this post. I might finish the post another time.... or never....

[Mendez]

I kinda like the advice you're giving, albeit a bit general. Personally, when making maps, the mechanics/physics/pace never cross my mind because I've played the game enough to know almost exactly how everything works. That's another piece of advice kids: Play MM8BDM before you map for MM8BDM. That advice may suck now, but you'll thank yourself later. By the way, there's more updates on the first page/AMP01 post in case you all wanna see.