Hey everyone,

Official Mapping Guidelines are coming but in the meantime, here's some basic info to get you started. Note that the game is in active development so these can change at any time! We'll do our best to keep you up to date when and if it does though. A Spark pre-alpha update in the nearish future will include the official Mapping Guidelines.

Overview
Both the marine and alien teams have up to 16 players each and spawn in their own base at the beginning of the game. The marine base has a Command Station and room for all 16 players and a collection of other marine structures. The alien start has a Hive hanging from the ceiling and room for 16 players (including the huge and fearsome Onos) and room for some alien structures.

Besides the two starting rooms, there are 2-4 other main rooms that can be used for either marine or alien bases. There are also 4-7 resource points which can be captured and built by a team to give that team extra resources. NS2 layouts will typically have 6-10 rooms (bases plus smaller rooms for some resource points) and are simpler than the sprawling, nondescript corridors found in Natural Selection 1 maps. Rooms, resource points and other high-conflict areas should be relatively simple geometry-wise to lower confusion and aim interference. They should also be a little
bigger than in NS1 for less chaos.

To make maps easier to learn, rooms should use landmarks wherever possible. Landmarks are unique lights, props, soundscapes or themes to make them unique in the minds of players and easy to remember and describe. They should be easy to describe (“Warehouse”, “Sewer”, “Glass corridor”, “Loading bay”) or easy to remember (loud machinery humming, covering up footstep sounds, one huge mining drill coming down through the ceiling, a huge lava waterfall, etc).

Sizes
· All sizes are in inches
· Primary routes 160 to 192 wide, 160 tall
· Secondary route entrances/exits are 80 wide, 128 tall
· Wall textures are 128 tall
· Floor textures are 128 wide
· The male marine is 77 tall
· MASCs are approximately 100 long and 50 tall
· Doors are 100 by 100
· The Onos is 120 tall, 90 wide and 120 long (he must crouch to get through doorways)

Cover
Due to the ranged vs. melee combat, marines have a distinct advantage in wide open areas without cover. Medium to large hallways and rooms should have plenty of crates and props as cover for aliens. Marines will occasionally need to take cover as well.

Avoid Level-Over-Level
Commander Mode is the ability for Commander players to play the game from a top-down view. This is handled automatically by the game but does place special limitations on level designers: maps can't have “level over level” geometry. If one room is built on top of another, the commander can't give orders in or see into the lower room. Because of this problem, overlapping hallways and areas that cross over other areas should generally be avoided. Girders, catwalks, balconies, pipes, and other smaller geometry can overlap as long as they don't really block commander access to the area below them.

Q&A Update
Marine and alien start locations are both fixed. There are NOT three hive rooms like in NS1.
For vents, use our special vent models (they are coming in an update soon).
Nope, we're not supporting multiple levels for Commanders.