Classy Maps for Classy People - A CCBM Mapping Contest!

[LlamaHombre]

Thank you Mendez for hosting this competition, and thanks to all of my competitors for contributing! I think there's an absurd amount of potential in both these maps and these mappers for more, and I'm very excited to get to see where you all go from here!

I feel obligated as the first place winner to do a writeup, hopefully detailing how this map came to be and giving some introspection as to how this map as developed to serve as a base for new mappers going forward. This is something I plan on doing for my V6 maps as well, so stay tuned for those. If you've got the time, please take a look!

(click to show/hide)

Being honest, I just made a map for vanilla and checked off a couple boxes to make sure I was accounting for certain ranges, certain mobility options, etc. It sounds stupid, but classes is still MM8BDM, and the best maps in the core game all have pretty similar rules. A good centerpiece with varied options for getting to different parts of the map. Rooms that are easy to distinguish from each other via both layout and texturing. Use of open space that allows players to breathe, run, jump, etc. but doesn't force players to rely on homing weapons to hit an opponent. That's a lot of buzzwords, so I'll just point out a bunch of my favorites and let you do the homework of piecing all that together with the concepts I listed. MM5DAR, MM5CRY, MM9DW1, MM9FAK, MM9PLU, MM4DRI, MM7SHA, MM7DW1, MM6DW1, MM7FRE. At the end of the day, I believe that if you have all of this, there's zero reason as to why your map wouldn't work for either classic or modified MM8BDM play.

That said, I did mention a checklist. I was aware going in that each class has their own playstyle, and unique set of win conditions. I can usually limit these playstyles down to a few intended ones by selecting weapons and mobilities (which is why there are no homing weapons on MM9TOR or MM2BUB, maps with insanely open sightlines). Here's what I accounted for, using both classes and vanilla terminology.

Q: Long Range (Homing Weapons, Fast projectiles like Laser Trident/Ballade Cracker, DM3/Break)
A: Open sightlines down the center room

Q: Melee Range (Slash Claw, Tengu Blade mostly. For thought's sake I mentally assumed every melee attack came bundled with some sort of aerial dash.)
A: Upper platforms to ambush around the center room, tight hallways/low ceilings

Q: Flight (I'm going to start making my maps as if people have pocket rush jets now, just in case.)
A: Open air in center / light base, those aforementioned platforms to recharge on

Q: Hover (Stuff like Hornet, Tengu, Limit-flight like Astro, Shade, v6 Beat Call)
A: Same thing, open air and high platforms

Q: Faster speed (Scorch Wheel, Charge Kick, Wire, Pluto, Quick)
A: I think anyone actively complaining about jump stairs is a loon and hasn't thought about them any harder than "but i dont wanna press spacebar....", but I totally get the desire to move around the map and not bump into walls etc. I tried to make sure you have at least some path to where you can keep up Pluto speed, and worked with it from there (some slopes in Light spawn, northeast corner, etc).

Q: Slower speed (Frost, Hard, Junk, I fucking hate giving HSH anything but him too)
A: This is where I got the idea for the waterfall conveyors. I've been wanting to get my own shot at conveyor belts for a while, but this gave me the opportunity to really roll with it. I wish I could've used them more, but I'm happy with what's here. Gyro Pads also give them some help

Q: Burst Mobility (Classes with High/Wall Jumps, Wire, I'm including Elec Man here too)
A: Lots of cliff faces! The part in the center room by the Yamato Spear pickup's a good example, you can get to lots of different places without having to deal with geometry depending on what options you have. The pushdown waterfalls also help create flank routes against the one-ways depending on what you have. For the next version I'll probably cut the waterfall gravity in half to help make this slightly easier.

And finally, I can start on the dev talk!
I began working on the room in the center, establishing pretty much the entire room quickly and designating where entrances/exits would go. You can start dev on a map anywhere, but I think it's easiest to start in what you plan to be the center so that you can set the scope of your map early on. Things can change, and your "center" might shift to be some new part of the map, but establishing early on how things connect is important. My centers tend to be the most open rooms in my maps, as I feel it's important to get clear and visible sightlines on all ways out. So at this point I establish high ground, I establish the center platform and nearby 3d floors, and the connected high ground with the Flame Blast and Wire pickups. I pretty much finalize the eastern side of the center room while leaving some entrances in the north and south to deal with later.
I work on the northeast corner some, wanting to flesh out the lower ground and get that octagonal corner piece working. From here, I leave a wall where Light spawn currently is, not knowing what to do with it quite yet. I instead head back to south center and begin working on what is currently Wily spawn from both exits. Immediately I knew I wanted some MM3SHA-type setpiece here to get back to high ground sneakily, so I put in some jump pads. Later on I would add water around to give an audio cue for whenever someone takes that route backwards. I keep fleshing out Wily base, and for a bit of time it is pretty much just what you see along the grey floor. I added the 4DW1 water tank because it looks incredible in the original map, and I wanted to break up the sightline, promote some corner-peeking gameplay for trapper classes/weapons, give a new shortcut for high jumpers, etc. At this point, I started to realize having the room end on the waterfall section was kinda anti-climatic and stiff, so I added the section over there with the gyro pads and the high glass platform. From here, I punched a hole in the wall, and now had another entrance from wily base to the center. This naturally lead into the addition of the extra blue/yellow high ground on the south end.
Believe it or not, I originally wasn't going to expand beyond the wire pickup in the southwest, but I decided to try it and see where that goes since I didn't quite have ideas for the north end of the map. I'm very glad I did, because I think this room's an extremely important one for the map's flow. I have difficulty detailing and filling in large rectangle rooms, and I needed that energy for what would become Light base. For that reason, I decided to keep this room pretty simple. Some pillars, some overhang to break up flying classes and encourage people to stick low to the waterfall, and some small things at the entrance to the center room to break up sightlines from light base.
Speaking of that entrance, this is where I make the aforementioned changes to the western end of the middle room. I open up that hole in the wall and change the northwestern staircase so that you could jump off it to enter the big open hole. In addition, I add the jumpable pillar and platform toward the southwest. I don't expect much in terms of like huge game-making plays out of this platform, but I think its inclusion benefits the map in a few ways. One, it's easy to reach, low-commitment high ground for long ranged, and one that could be used to counter-snipe those taking advantage of the other corner of the room. Two, it's a valuable height to ambush those coming out of the lower entrance of Wily base. Three, Those with a dash or wall jump (or theoretically just enough momentum + SR50, if you're better than I am) will be able to make their way toward the rest of the high ground. It's not the pinnacle of map design or anything, but its inclusion to the room is one that makes the overall picture better in my opinion. At this point, the center is complete and all that's left is Light base.
This is the room that probably saw the most revision. It had a lot it needed to do: it needed to be tall to connect the remaining three exits, it needed more usage of the waterfall drops since at this point it was underused, it needed to provide some open space since the rest of the map tended to be more closed/narrow, and most importantly it needed to be interesting. What you see here is the result. The room began about as wide as the HSH-texture platform and the blue slope pathway beside it, but as my needs developed I added the gold stairway and the other upper platform to match the height of the entrance that's in the center. The 3d floor is transparent for some reason that I forgot, so I'm just gonna say because it's cool. The wall on the backside of the 3d floor breaks up sightlines, hides some sloppy texturing on my end, and let bouncing/trapping projectiles have more place up top here. I needed some high ground on the low half of the room so I put my 1-way fall there to make it more interesting, and then did the same on the other side of the room. The gyro pads on the upper end are to give more approach options and help out slower classes.
I think that's about all I've got for now. I'm open to clarify things or answer questions about my map if they come up.

I like all facets and parts of MM8BDM. I'm excited to see high level competition on my map, as well as for playing on it in other modes. Pub TLMS, vanilla duel, boss modes, roboenza, anything and everything. This was a fun thought experiment that will continue to effect how I map (making sure many playstyles are accounted for), but I hope people will continue to map for the whole of MM8BDM and not just for one mod or mode. The best and classiest maps are made that way, as many of my favorite new and custom maps are those that hold tightly onto the soul that made many of those original V1 maps so charming.

Uhh while I'm here, I'm bi, gay rights, trans rights, black lives matter, shoutout to Thunderono, check out our mappack REALPack, read Umineko no Naku Koro ni, remove Hyper Storm H, and look forward to V6!