Introduction to Game Creation: Custom Maps

Mapping has become one of the most important aspects in game creation. Back in the mid nineties it would take one guy about a week to create a kick ass map to go into a game, not it could take a team of 5 to 12 people several months to create a map that won’t even make it to the final game. The good news is that a lot of games these days come with some kind of map editor. These editors are normally similar to the editors that the game developers use, only simplified so that just about anyone can use them. For the past 12 years or so, pc games have allowed you to share these maps, and newer console games have built in features to do so, but that doesn’t mean that everyone should. Though there are thousands of vary well made custom maps for games out there, some of which are better than the professionally made maps, but there are ten times as many bad maps out there as good ones.
So how do you create a good map? To me the best way is to simply pick a feature of the game that you liked, but felt that there wasn’t enough of in the game to feel completely satisfied, and build from there. This could be a defend your base scenario in a real time strategy game, it could be a place to get that 1,000,000 point grind combo in your favorite skating game, or having a thirty mile straight away to get to top speed in your favorite racing game. Whatever that features may be, just remember that the biggest mistake that most people make when they try to create custom maps is that they make it way to complicated, and when that happens the map looses all of its fun.