Trivia
Something you need to do before messing with maps.
With the Plazma Burst 2 engine, "Crate" and "Rope" objects are "Vehicles".
With the Plazma Burst 2 engine, "Allies" are "Enemies" (or "Actors") unless they are on the same team as active Player.
Player and Enemy objects will not collide if their team is set to "Alpha".
Allies won't try to pick your gun if gun is meant for your and ally's team only.
In the Plazma Burst 2 engine, the Lamp flare effect can be disabled.
Destruction of Lamp objects does not guarantee light map recalculation. Game will stop trying to do so if first recalculation takes significant amount of time for player.
If you want lighting to work properly on your map, overlap the backgrounds with the walls. Usually 20-30px is enough, although I'd recommend more. If you don't overlap them, there would be a white glow on the edge right where they contact the wall. This happens by the same reason non-overlapped walls show their textures - the background has an invisible line of pixels of empty space, receiving light from the ambiance and sky.
Some of Decorations will automatically generate a glowing effect with the help of "Lamp object" with the flare effect disabled. Additionally they will remove "Lamp" objects around (just so old maps don't have doubled effect).
None of Decorations collide. Their collision can be made with the help of invisible Movable object(s).
The "Pushing area" object can also deal 2 kinds of damage: basic and slicing. Second spawns hit particles and slices body in half on death.
The "Killing ray Decorations" deal no damage by default. Their damage can be created with the help of "Pushing areas" with slicing damage enabled.
With the Plazma Burst 2 engine, Acid is Water with damage turned on.
"Background objects" are just the background walls. To change the sky texture use the "Engine mark" object or Trigger logic.
Shadows are generated only over Background objects in Plazma Burst 2.
Plazma Burst 2 engine automatically creates Lamps with the disabled flare effect around Background objects with the brightness based on average brightness of current sky texture to generate the global illumination.
Shadow appearance is based on the each player's game settings.
Enemy object skills are based on the "difficulty level" which is selected by player. In multiplayer, the difficulty level is "Impossible" by default, unless changed with Trigger logic.
Manipulation of the gameplay and the level appearance can be done with help of Engine mark object(s).
Not all objects' properties are restored on round change in Multiplayer.
Synchronization of most objects isn't done automatically in Multiplayer. Synchronization of movables, for example, will require additional Trigger logic.
Do not let the appearance of too many of the characters on the screen, as this may cause a drop in performance in some cases.
Do not place too many walls on the map, but rather separate the level by few maps. This will speed up loading of each map, as well as raise performance during the game.
Do not use too thin walls. Some of the players and objects may go through them, especially if the quality of the physical calculations at options of the player set to LOW.
Try to avoid imposition of water areas, because these places will not look good.
Try to place the walls so that they overlap each other. Otherwise, between the walls will be drawn a distinction and, moreover, fast moving objects (grenades, weapons, even the players) can become stuck in between them.
Try not to place the field of water over the walls and always put the background behind the water sites. This will help your map look better.
Allies on your map in case of following the player will only move left or right, if possible, jumping / crouching to reach player, but they will not build more hard ways (than linear) to reach their target.
On your map, like in single player, computer controlled Characters are able to change their weapons to more suitable for a particular situation depending on such factors as distance to the enemy, weapon's damage, frequency of fire, the spread and current status (loaded / not loaded as in the case with the railgun lite, Proxy's shotgun and rocket launcher).
To make the sky beyond the map do not distract the attention of the players, hide it with walls.
Play more with lighting, lighting effects, sky light can be created with Flare-free lamp of low power, located along the perimeter of the sky line at regular intervals (eg 200 px).
Keep away more than 4 lamps which have the Flare effect from appearing at one screen.
On maps designed for Multiplayer Deathmatch mode add several (1 for small arenas, 3 for big arenas) complete sets of heavy weapons (rocket launcher, railgun, bng) and several (one per player, or more if your arena is enough big) low-grade weapons (pistols, rifles, maybe defibrillators).
In this version of the game in Multiplayer maps does not make sense to place computer controlled enemies, allies, barrels or vehicles. They will be removed, and the triggers associated with them, can cause errors during the game.
Connect your singleplayer levels with help of trigger's 50 action type. You can also display notifications to players with help of trigger's action type 42.
Do not make Multiplayer maps too large. Players can very easily get confused or lost on them. And leave it during 10 seconds. And it always good to make your map look good.
For red/blue team-based game modes use player teams 12 (Red Team) and 13 (Blue Team). Blue team usually located in left part of map and Red team in right part. Use suffix _b for inversed gun and projectile colours. This way for Blue team gun models should be gun_pistol, gun_rifle, gun_shotgun_b and for Red team these: gun_pistol_b, gun_rifle_b, gun_shotgun. For guns which has defined colour you can also define for team parameter which equal to owner's team. Player skins must be 74 for Red Team and 73 for Blue Team. Game will automatically replace skins 74 and 73 with Player-defined.
By using #F0F8FF color code, you will found that your text is completely “invisible” same color as the screen. It is useful for preventing hints covered the conversations.
Strict casual and all heroes in same region only work for noir lime, hero and proxy.
(Multiplayer only) It's nothing bad to add weapons around the map, especially if it's designed for DM and TDM modes. Having all weapons concentrated in 1-3 spots would result in people camping around those spots.
It is never a bad idea to make a map look better. This also helps when trying to get a map approved.
Don't rush when making maps. Always test your maps before publishing them. Some problems may show up where you don't expect them at all.
Un-publishing or removing a map decreases your level developer rank, depending on the amount of votes and overall rating of that map.
In multiplayer, to create an area in which you do not want any player to spawn in, you can cover those areas with pushers or invisible doors. Note that special parameters such as pusher's damage and door's speed are not necessary to configure.
Regarding map ratings, if your map receives an average rating of over 4.5 and accumulates a total of 25 votes or more, you'll be rewarded with an extra 3 leaderboard points as a token of appreciation for creating such well-loved maps.
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