Planning layout

copy the layouts, people have been doing that for over 10 years now - would help to know the game you're planning a map for too

just learn to add your unique twist to it, that can be many things, planning on paper isn't required at all for relatively simple structures found in CS and TF2, the key is to analyze what makes official levels work!

simply boot up some popular levels and run around them and try to figure out whats going on

Try doing a bullet point list of what attributes you think makes de_dust2 so popular and successful.

You could for example use de_dust2 as a starting point and then modify some chunks

Honestly it depends on the type of shooter and its really important to know the mechanics of that game. Also a lot of trial and error.

I second what everyone said. No point in reinventing the wheel, specially if you're starting and learning. Just study and analyse other peoples maps, specially the good ones of course, lol. (Although it can be a really good learning experience to open and analyse bad maps as well.)

“Good artists copy. Great artists steal.”

Pablo Picasso.

Learning.

Learning to copy! -HA

If anything, you guys are learning to miss the point real fast.

Make a copy of Dust or Nuke or Inferno or something, but change some things, then play it. You'll figure out pretty quickly what makes those layouts fun.

I'd say: worry about distribution of the map when you actually have a map to upload on the workshop.

I think you are trying to "grill too much meat at your first attempt" (as we say in where I live - see other topic about making money off a map). I say this because of personal experience: don't think too much.

On the subject of copying, I've read one time that a famous writer "sat down and copied an entire book by another author, just to understand how it feels to write (and finish) a great novel". Unfortunately i cannot find the original, but it's pretty self-explanatory.

Yep I agree with blackdog, you seem like you're trying to run before you can walk (to use another idiom lol).

To put it bluntly, you're way off the level of skill where you should be seriously thinking about selling maps, having huge successes, etc. At this point in your quest to learn, don't worry about all that shit — just focus on figuring out what exactly makes maps work, why they're successful, and try to rebuild what others have done so you can learn how they did it.

That last bit is more important than anything else. Nobody is just born into the world as an artist, film director, musician, etc. They spend years observing what others do, building on it, etc. In fact, the entirety of humanity is built upon those things that came before. If we wiped out everyone and everything on Earth right now apart from a few people with no memories, they'd have to go through thousands of years of figuring out how to make things all over again. Don't just dismiss your peers' creations, use them.

So as has been said, start looking at other peoples' work and learn from it. Once you can make something equally as good (Could you build dust2 from scratch right now equally as good and optimised?), then you can think about doing something more original. Learn how to lay bricks before trying to architect a house.

Inventing layouts is really just about experience and understanding the game it's designed for. You have to know what kind of things work and what don't, and that's learnt through experimenting.

You can of course learn a lot from looking at other successful maps, and there's the usual obvious advice like making sure you carefully time how long it takes each team to get to key points (you might want it to be equal for violent clashes, or not equal if you want one team to have time to set up), making sure there's facilities in each area for each kind of class, etc. There must be a million tutorials that cover things like this.

More than anything though, experience and experimentation. Look at any WIP map thread on MapCore and you'll see people putting their maps out there for testing (MapCore has held regular playtesting events for CS:GO), and then people give feedback on what works and what doesn't. Even veteran and pro mappers need to do this.

Just have fun! Make whatever wild ideas come to mind and see if people like them. That's how true creativity happens.

It helps to play the game a lot to understand it, and in games like CS to try to at least watch some competitive matches since competitive players tend to focus on the most efficient and advantageous parts of the maps.

Regarding CS defuse maps this article sums the basic layout http://www.egir.dk/index.php?page=vhe_layout.htm if you understand that you can change it to make yours more unique like for example on de_nuke where the bombsites are on top of each other

Besides that you need to take into account the timings of the map, how much time it takes each team to reach the chokepoints and bombsites, if Ts can switch sites fast enough to make a fake, if CTs can get to each bombsite after the bomb plant with enough time to retake and make the defuse, etc. It seems like nowadays smaller maps are preferred due to those timings being smaller making the games faster, that's somethoing that you can play with as well.

Finally you need to take into consideration each type of weapon, that is you need to have separate sections that favour long, medium, or short range weapons. You can solve this by looking at the lines of sight in the map, that is how much of the map the player can see in a certain point, long lines of sight help snipers more than rifle players, and tight areas are better for pistols and smgs. So ideally you want two or three areas with long lines of sight for awpers, another two or three that are more cramped like small corridors and stuff like that to help in pistol rounds and have the rest of the map with average lines of sight for rifles action.

Hope this helps.