DDraceNetworkDDraceNetwork

📏📐 Mapping Guidelines

For your map to find its way onto DDNet, these guidelines are here to assist you. While they aren't mandatory rules, we recommend considering them before submitting your creation on the DDNet Discord. Taking the time to test your map thoroughly with yourself and friends, ensuring smooth functionality, and polishing the design can greatly enhance its overall quality. The guidelines are here as a helpful resource to optimize your submission.

🎮 Gameplay

1. Consistent difficulty

Large spikes in difficulty lead to an unbalanced gameplay ; too easy or too hard at times, it’s unsatisfying for players and it’s impossible for testers to rate during the testing process.

  • Your map should be balanced throughout the whole map - don't put a Brutal part in the middle of a Moderate map.

2. Nice and clean

Special tiles shouldn't be overused, used if they're not needed or used to fix cheats. Avoid situations with e.g. speed ups + deep + infinite hook + jump refill + tele gun + stoppers...

Special tiles are anything but hookable, unhookable, freeze, unfreeze, and death.

  • The gameplay can't be intentionally misleading or confusing.
  • The gameplay can be hard but it should be easy to read.
  • The structure of the map should help read the gameplay when zooming out.

3. Recoverability - situational

  • It depends on the style of the map but in general, in parts where it's easy to fail, there should be ways to recover.

4. Claustrophobia

  • 4.1. Spawn
    • Your start area should be big enough for at least 10 players to start. Make sure to place multiple map spawns off the ground.
  • 4.2. Parts & transitions
    • There has to be enough space in parts for comfortable movement.
    • Unless the map is team locked, there should be enough room for everyone in t0.
  • 4.3. Platforms
    • You can save room and avoid blocking by adding platforms or hookable tiles.

❗ Too much space can be overwhelming.

5. Equitable

  • You should give fair amounts of play time for each player in a map (if one player does a long part, then so should the other). Also, in general, avoid making parts that require players to wait for excessive amounts of time.

6. Teleport

  • 6.1. From
    • Ensure that every teleporter is red (which will stop player movement and cut their hook) unless you intend to use blue teleporters to retain hook and movement.
  • 6.2. TeleCPs
    • There has to be enough space in parts for comfortable movement.
    • They shouldn't be skipped or missed.
  • 6.3. (C)TOTele
    • For every teleporter, ensure that there are multiple (C)TO-tiles and that they are not placed directly on the ground.

7. Spam

  • Avoid chat-spam caused by carelessly placed on/off-tiles as well as gametile-spam.

8. Team size

  • Only force a certain team size if the map requires it (e.g. if it contains a lot switches, is heavy cheatable with many players), not as an excuse for tight mapping.

🎮 Design Guidelines

1. Colors and contrasts

  • The design must have appropriate contrast so that it's playable even without perfect light conditions. On the other hand, it shouldn't be painful to look at.
  • Avoid too small color variations for gradient or it will lead to color banding.
  • There has to be a clear distinction between foreground and background elements.
  • Contrast and saturation shouldn't be too high so the map isn't an eyesore.

2. Unused

  • 2.1. Images
    • Ensure that every teleporter is red (which will stop player movement and cut their hook) unless you intend to use blue teleporters to retain hook and movement.
  • 2.2. Groups and layers
    • Make sure there are no unused images (marked as dark blue in the 'Images' tab of the editor), mistakenly embedded or external images (marked as red). Also, don't add the same image more than once.
    • Check for empty, unused groups and layers.
  • 2.3. Envelopes
    • Remove all the unused envelopes. A green envelope means it can be removed.

3. Image format

  • Your images should respect the "Power of two" rule. The size should be [..., 64px, 128px, 256px, 512px, 1024px, ...]. It helps with performances, rendering, compatibility and compression. Make your images as small as possible until they start becoming blurry.

4. Layer size

  • Ensure that layers aren't too big. When your map is finished make the layers as small as possible (but don't cut off any parts).

5. HD (High Detail)

  • All non-gameplay relevant decorations should be marked as "detail" in the editor. Map credits are excluded. Sometimes it's good to keep a few cosmetic layers, so that the map doesn't look completely naked. Walls, freeze, other essential tiles and the background should never be HD.

6. Background

  • Ensure that the background is not transparent and is large enough for all screen resolutions (use the 'Proof' button in the editor to check what players will see; the area within the white borders has to be covered).

7. Entities off

  • Always add an entities off sign if you put any information the player has to know about in the design (e.g. signs, text, or tips).

8. Logo

  • Map logos have to be behind the tees.