Gloom Map Depository
User Made Maps
We're sure many of you out there would like to create your own maps for others to play in Gloom. As you know, Team Reaction will include user made maps into our releases if they meet our standard of quality. They must be aesthetically pleasing, and also have good design along with being even for each team. We do have some rules that you must follow in order to have a map that will be eligible for distribution by Team Reation. The rules are as follows:
1. Water
There should not be water for many reasons on maps, but there is an exception. Water that is only to the foot of marines is okay. The water must be shallow enough so that hatchling and kamikaze heads are not submereged. The gloom code was not designed to handle situations where players can become fully submerged.2. Brightness/Darkness
We ask that it be normally bright in marine bases and dark in alien bases. Inside the main area of the map it can be normally lit. Don't however think that the "main area" must all be one style of lighting, use varieties in different areas to keep your map interesting.3. Style/Architecture
The style and architecture should be futuristic. We ask that you don't make a school yard, train station, or anything else that wouldn't really make sense to be a battleground.4. Holes/Crevices
There can be no small holes. This is due to the nature of the Quake 2 models, any place that a hatchling can fit, a mech can too. Believe it or not, in a crevice where a hatchling can go a mech can follow, which will most likely result in errors or the mech model becoming stuck and clipping into the walls. Be careful to allow enough space in all parts of your map where building is allowed so that players can spawn without being clipped into a brush.5. Bases
There must be at least 2 bases (one for each side) in the map. 3 or 4 possible areas for bases is ideal although not necessary. Please do not be redundant with room design (i.e. each room looks the same). The bases should start with some defences, preferably the same points value for each side.6. Lifts/Stairs/Etc
We ask that you do not make small stairs or lifts. The reason being is because the larger models (i.e. the mech and stalker) will look incredibly strange while going up/down them. There is also the possiblity of the model becoming stuck on one. Elevators especially can be very dangerous due to the large bounding boxes Gloom uses.7. Items/Powerups/Etc
You cannot put any items, powerups, or anything of the sort on your level. Gloom's code was never meant to handle this sort of thing. Please only use Gloom entities when mapping extra items.8. Crouching
Do not make small areas where humans have to crouch, crouching is bad. Also note spiders can't crouch. If you must limit access to a particular area, make use of the Gloom entities such as trigger_hurt_aliens or trigger_blocker in extreme circumstances.9. .zip directories
Make sure all sounds, textures, and other things are either in their appropriate folders in the zip or have paths directly to there respective folders. Without this organization, players will have a hard time getting the map and all its facets to work right. Your directory structure should look like this:/maps/
Your .bsp file and an optional mapname.txt should go here. Nothing other than .bsp or .txt is allowed here./textures/yourname/
Any custom textures (.wal, .png) you use should go in a sub-directory under textures with your name./sound/yourname/
Any custom sounds (.wav) you use should go in an appropriate subfolder under sounds./models/yourname/
If you use custom models they should again be in an appropriate subfolder under models.Your .zip MUST extract to the gloom directory without problems. For example, the paths in the .zip file MUST be /maps, /textures/yourname/, etc. Having /gloom/maps, /Quake2/gloom/maps, etc is NOT acceptible and your map will not be accepted on the GMD. The reason for this is that it makes it very hard for newbies or people setting up servers to extract the maps if they don't all go to the same predictable location.
10. Filenames
The map file name and all other media used in your map should be lower case. Textures referenced in the .bsp file should all be lower case. This must be done to ensure your map works properly on case-sensitive file systems such as those used in linux. Additionally, your map .zip filename MUST be the same as your .bsp name (eg if your map is gloom2000.bsp your zip MUST be called gloom2000.zip)11. Entity Limits
Due to the amount of sounds used by gloom itself, your map must NOT contain more than 100 unique ambient sounds (target_speaker) at an absolute maximum or you will find the map will crash the server during intensive gameplay. Keep in mind you are free to use one sound on multiple target_speakers as only unique sounds are counted. The same goes with mapmodels (mapmodels are brush entities such as func_door, func_rotating, func_platforms, etc) and other expendable resources. Gloom doesn't use as many models as sounds, but try to keep below 100 again for future compatibility.12. Submitting to the GMD
To submit your map, find one of the GMD Staff on irc.edgeirc.net #gloom. Do NOT email your .zip file to any member of staff without their explicit permission, this will most likely end up in your map being immediately deleted and the GMD hating you forever.You can view some of the advanced entities used in Gloom here.
Now that you have read the rules, we wish you luck in your maps. Remember to send them to us when your finished if you would like them to be made available to the public. We reserve the right to deny or approve any submission. Thanks,
Team Reaction and Gloom Map Depository :)