: I think an ideal map would have a balance of realism and creative design.
: Realism gets boring, but too much liberty in design can make people say,
: "What the hell was THAT?" (Marathon 1, anyone?). Not that
: creative design is bad, I think it's awesome, and it's what us mapmakers
: live to do, but I think it looks better with some sort of realism. The
: extent to which the maps in Ch1 are symmetrical and "realistic"
: far oversteps these boundaries, I think, and get a bit dull.
My preferred take on this, which I don't always follow through so well as I would like (though the old Lava version of Boiler Room was a perfect example of Method A done right), is to follow one of two methods:
Method A) Build a perfect, realistic, optimally designed space for humans... and then break it. Something is malfunctioning. Something is damaged. For some reason this optimally designed space is not working as optimally as it was designed. This allows for creative mapmaking in what is broken where, what workarounds are available, etc.
Method B) Build a perfect, realistic, optimally designed space... for NON-HUMANS. Thus making your human player-character have to work around the idosyncracies of the non-human builders' way of doing things. Favorite example: the S'pht can fly. You can't. Therefore, some S'pht structures are less than idea for human passage, by assuming that anyone in here could just fly up that wall.
And again, I didn't follow these methods nearly as well as I wish I had, and in some cases I wanted to but couldn't find a good reason (a human-built area with no good excuse for being damaged, etc).
