Tips for making a decent map! [ALTLEX]

This is a mapmaking guide fueled by my annoyance at low-effort and play-begging maps.
Greetings everyone! I’ve put together some tips and tricks for building an enjoyable Gimkit map. This is inspired by other documents of the same general idea.

#1. Play begging/farming.
Please do not play beg! Play begging is the act of writing a description with something similar to “play my map please please please every 100 plays i add a summit”. PLEASE finish your map before publishing, or if you’re planning to add more as you go, finish the main attraction. Play counters are fine, and normal goals are okay, just please don’t make your map revolve around plays.

#2. Playtesting.
The amount of unplaytested maps is insane. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve encountered an impossible slope jump, a button that doesn’t work, or a downright NEFARIOUS amount of sentries. Playtest your maps before publishing and make sure you’re able to actually beat it!

#3. Invisible parkour (ugh)
…I am not going to sugarcoat it. Do not make invisible parkour. It’s not fun in the slightest, and is impossible for anyone who doesn’t know the layout. If you want to make a hard section, please just turn the opacity of your props/barriers down a bit.

#4. Terrain spam
Coherence is key! Never just drag your mouse around the screen. Place your terrain thoughtfully.

#5. Decoration.
Your level design may be coherent, but it might be too bland. Add props to spice things up!

#6. Bossfights
I won’t sugarcoat this one either - a sentry armed with a twister and 900 thousand health is not a good bossfight! I won’t go too in-depth for this, since I plan to make a unique document about this topic, but try to make multiple phases at least.

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A. Too much health - give your phases a reasonable amount of health. 1 thousand to 3 thousand health should be enough.
B. Environmental hazards - add some spots on the ground that damage you to avoid easily dodgeable attacks.
C. gadget switch for each phase - don’t make every phase identical.
D. If you want to make it harder, add multiple lesser sentries (3 at most for a more fair fight) with weaker gadgets.
E. Make the different phases change spots on the map so you can’t just camp out in one spot!

These are just the basics of boss battles, however.

#7. a really good map but with a word that will get you smited
Straight to the point - avoid any and all profanity, even if extremely mild. As stated in the terms of service, children as young as in kindergarten play this game. Please keep all language in your maps appropriate.

#8. Checkpoints
This is especially necessary for long maps and or boss rushes. Nobody wants to play for 30 minutes only to have to respawn all the way at the beginning. Add a checkpoint in each important area for extra fairness.

These are all the tips I could think of off the top of my head. Let me know if you have any questions. You can also share an image of your map and I’ll give you advice for what you could do.
Happy building everyone!

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Great job! Nice that your first post is a guide, we’re always looking for users like that. It’s also pretty useful. One thing I’d add are some pictures to further illustrate your point. (Oh wait, I just realized, new users can’t add pictures…maybe in the future?)
Yes @CC26, this guide sure is


Bro everyone is saying that this guide is

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So true. also no collision, fast 4x speed. Multiple people.

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Yeah, if i can i’ll probably add pictures in the future.
Thank you by the way!

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forums removed them

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ah right
i forgot about that

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Thank you! I’m gonna try to add dropdowns soon
(unless it’s really easy, then i’d do it now)

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I think this should be wiki

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Once you get basic (Trust Level 1), discourse will let you upload more images. I recommend storing your images somewhere because we wiped images a while back ago for storage concerns. You will receive trust level 1 by reading enough topics and replies.

You could improve the guide with headings.

example

This markdown code below will make the text bigger.

# example

example

I’m also not anti-memes, but if we could prevent this from becoming any more of a chain, that’d be great!

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Great guide! quick question, are you okay with me putting this guide in my resource guide? I just need to make sure in case you don’t want it there

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Oh yeah it’s fine
you are welcome to include it in the resource guide :+1:

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This feels liks a dupe in my opinion. Only because we have an extremely detailed guide about Map Tips.

I presume it’s the largest guide on the forums as Turtle had to make the part 2 in a separate post cause of the character limit.

That my friend is called aura, I believe if there should be a universal guide that should be considered for anybody trying to make a good map. It’s this one.

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oh i never saw that one
besides, my guide isn’t supposed to be 5 miles long, it’s just supposed to be a basic thing for starters

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