Designing Wargames: The Official Far Cry 2 Map Editing Guide, is your opportunity to share your map editing knowledge and get your five seconds in the written spotlight. The book will be published in early 2009. The book bridges the distance between playing and designing video games. Drawing on a variety of disciplines, including game design theory, military science, environmental geography, and urban planning, Designing Wargames provides PC, Playstation 3, and Xbox 360 gamers with in depth advice on creating their own multiplayer maps for Far Cry 2, using the user-friendly PC and console mapping tools that ship with the game.
How do I get involved?
Simply go to Farcrybook.com before January 28th , 2009. The submission website will close at the end of that day. Some fine print on qualification...you must:
- be 18 years of age or older
- confirm that your contribution is original, written by you, and not published elsewhere
- agree to transfer copyright of your contribution to the publisher of the book
- agree to allow your contribution to be copyedited and published in the book, including future editions of the book.
The deadline is creeping up, so if you're interested be sure to check out the website ASAP. This is a great opportunity and we hope to see some familiar names from our community end up in that book!
Awesome!!! Definately going to get my entries in :)
It's great that we have this kind of opportunities to show ourselves,this is similar to Far Cry 2 map contest...
In a way that we can show ourselves...
I'm not gonna troll i'm only going to post ONE comment. Are you ready? You can learn the entire Far cry 2 map editor in a few simple instructions. I guarantee I'm going to get some flack for this but when will they stop, and I also have the right to voice my negative opinion because this whole heartedly deserves it. You could save 1000 trees this year by not even printing out this book.
1. Learn to press buttons on an interface
2. Learn to understand an image, if the button has a picture of a level ground with raised ground than its most likely going to teraform raise the ground.
3. ???
4. You've made a map! Profit!
Are they making this for the people that want to make maps that haven't graduated elementary school yet because thats fine. Otherwise, this is getting really out of hand. If you can use the map editor with a controller and you need a map editing guide, theres something wrong.
I think it is great the editor is so easy to use. What I believe *hope* this book will focus more on is not discussing the tools but the mechanics, layout and structure that makes a map fun to play. Making a map might not be hard, making a map that is fun to play... well that is damn hard!
To my understanding it also featured map creation in general... YES this is a simple to use editor and it really doesn't need a whole book about it, however I don't think it's purposes are to talk solely about the Far Cry 2 editor since there is not much to talk about, but it is also to discuss map creation in general.
I tried to write about the Far Cry 2 editor for this thing, but I ended up finding myself writing about general map creation and mod creation with only one paragraph about the far cry 2 editor.
I do think that Ubisoft are trying to profit from this, but ohwell, they do what they do, and if you don't like it, so sad too bad really.
You also have to understand that although ubisoft did make this editor very simple but limited to use, people can be extremely creative as you have seen with the competition here on moddb. Ubisoft did not have to create the editor, but they did, just like their previous editors on their console versions of Far Cry. In the good old days looking back at some really really old games, alot of games used to come with some really simple to use map makers, which was a whole game in itself and allowed people to play the game using ideas they wanted to use.
Ubisoft didn't have to do it, nor did games in the past, but they did, and regardless of how limited it is, the map editor is very good and allows people to have fun with it, not use it as a tool to make full blown modifications.
I think that you're expectations in the modding scene are far too high Nullsoldier, and you're completely ignoring the fact that no developer has to release modding tools for their games, so if they do, think of that as a bonus, regardless of how limited those tools are.
Just to let you know what Far Cry editor is about:
LEVEL DESIGN:
level design is creating a level for a video game. Thiis is done by creating basic gameplay for the map, testing it, improve it, test it etc... this part is just about creating a great level flow.
You can then improve grafics the game design way: placing some nice objects anywhere in your scene, these objects have to fit your level style.
So if you know your so called instructions, you still arn't a great level designer. Everyone is able to create something good looking in Far Cry 2, even my grandma. That's the reason why this is a great editor to focus on creating a greate gameplay experience, because only then your mapp will be played by lots of people.
It's a nice way to learn some of the basics of level design...
If you want to be challanged with your environment artist skills you should probably try something like Unreal Editor.
Over a million crappy maps have been created with fc2 editor, this guide will probably make these "level designer" less crappy, so I think it's a great idea :)
yea i know its not a full SDK or anything.. but its not trying to be.. i love the editor for what it is, the fact that it has let other people that have never touched any sort of game development ever and had no intentions to do so, to make a map with ease is amazing to me.. i want more and more of this on consoles but i REALLY really don't want it to replace proper editors such as radiant or UE..
So what exactly are you supposed to write about? Just mini tutorials of how to do a variety of things with the editor, or your knowledge of level design in general not exclusive to the editor? I wouldn't know where to start. :(
click on the link there are 4 sections and each have there own subject to write on :)
I feel like a moron now. Thanks man. I am definitely gonna contribute something to this. :D