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Level Design Query: Actual Requirements for Whitelist

Falidell

Grizzled Veteran
May 22, 2009
645
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Mesa,Az,USA
heya,
i'm just curious about the actual whitlist standards? like what does it take to get on? general difficulty? trader distances?, AI ease of movment through map?, certain distance/chance of item spawn within a certain distance?... i'm finishing my kf-Defence map up and i heard it's off whitelist and i aim to get it back on :)

much love
-Fall
 
I think there is a version of KF-Defense on the whitelist, called KF-DefenseSunset.

I dont know what the REAL requirements are, but this is what I look for when checking the maps:
1. Must contain no obvious exploits.
2. Should have more than 1 trader.
3. No cash spawns.
4. No high tier weapon spawns (eg. no random EBR's lying around).
5. No massive weapon/ammor/armor/health spawns in one place.
6. No ridiculous amounts of pickups in the map (like, if you had 50 pickups in a small map like Defense..)
7. Specimen pathing must be decent, so they dont get stuck anywhere too often.
8. Should containt enough specimen spawns.
9. No respawning bots (like MilitaryStronghold had, they break specimen spawning)
10. Distances beetween the players and the specimen spawns should never be ridiculously large, because it allows you to line up specimens and take them down like flies. Looong hallways are such.

Thats all I can think of for now, but remember its only my idea of a whitelistable map. Tripwire havent given us any guidelines for this, unless you count the mapping contest requirements which werent exactly that clear. Oh and of course the map doesnt always need to meet ALL the requirements, it depends on the map.

In the case of Defense, since its a "fun map" and doesnt rly meet the standarts of a normal KF map, imo such map shouldnt be whitelisted in the first place. I mean, Im actually working on a fun map atm with a whole bunch of other mappers and we arent even planning on whitelisting it, unless we think its actually HARD ENOUGH so it cant be used to level up quicker.

The new version of Defense (Sunset) has ladders on the walls which allows specimens to climb up. Thats the thing that makes the map whitelistable I think, dispite of being a fun map its still sorta hard and you cant camp on the wall and lob nades down on the helpless specimens anymore.
 
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Level 1
General camping areas or places where most specimens cant reach but sirens and husks etc can. Maps are allowed to have a certain amount of these but too many means non-whitelisting. If a level 1 becomes a big problem after KEPT approval and whitelisting, our decision can always change. A place where clots gather around you and don't attack would be an example of a level 1 exploit.
A level 1 can also just be a fault in the map that makes players get stuck or something that breaks the map or prevents the game from continuing. (not the same thing as a map that is broken from the start. that is obviously more severe.)
This can also include an overabundance of ammo boxes or weapons in a small area. Or an area that funnels specimens and causes them to come at you one at a time instead of all at once like they should. Anything that brings down the difficulty of the game greatly because of something map related is a level 1.

Level 2
No map may have any level 2 exploit. These are exploits/glitches that allow you to be nearly invulnerable or completely invulnerable from specimen damage while you camp away and shoot to you hearts content.
this is our system for categorizing exploits. it is a more specific off-branch of the whitelisting requirements.
 
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you guys need to ease off the restrictions of maps.
just cause there's money or tier 3 weap spawns doesnt mean the map should be refused whitelisting.

you guys should just stick to actual exploits, not whether you think a map is too easy or if there's too much stuff for people to pick up.

just cause YOU find a map easy, or scoff at the amount of pickups, doesnt mean others will.
 
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Hey man I hope that rule isn't set in stone - when it comes to story/mission maps? Given that weapons and ammo are provided in lieu of the regular Trader...

Of course not, like I said it depends on the map. Obviously mission maps can have ammo/weapon spawns piled up in one place, if you cant access the trader.

you guys need to ease off the restrictions of maps.
just cause there's money or tier 3 weap spawns doesnt mean the map should be refused whitelisting.

Like I said the third time already, it depends on the map and they dont have to meet all the requirements (which are only my personal requirements).

And another thing we've said a million times is Tripwire says the final word so if they think free Scars and EBR's are fine then so be it.

But you gotta understand there are basically 4 major types of maps:
1. So called normal maps (Manor, Departed..)
2. Mission maps (Damnation, Hive)
3. Survival maps (DeathPit)

and then we have

4. Fun maps (the one were you drive with a car for example)

Basically, fun maps should never be whitelisted because they are most of the time ridiculously easy and make leveling up much easier too. And... why cant you have fun without leveling? Thats beyond me.

We recently played this Ace Unlimiteds version of that survival map what ever it was called (he raped the map imo), he just added a huge staircase thingy in the middle of the map and TONS of supplies on top of it. The map itself didnt have any exploits but it doesnt mean its not a grinding map.
 
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you guys need to ease off the restrictions of maps.
just cause there's money or tier 3 weap spawns doesnt mean the map should be refused whitelisting.

you guys should just stick to actual exploits, not whether you think a map is too easy or if there's too much stuff for people to pick up.

just cause YOU find a map easy, or scoff at the amount of pickups, doesnt mean others will.

it's not about whether or not a map has tons of ammo or weapons. it's about whether a map has tons of ammo and weapons in one room making the rest of the map obsolete. maps must remain balanced and not have rooms that encourage camping. camping is fine, but a map shouldn't have a room made specifically for it that funnels all the specs in one at a time and is loaded with unlimited ammo and weapons. this is considered exploitable as you can level your perks with something like that rather quickly.

a harsh enough infringement on the difficulty of the game is not whitelistable. defence_b2 already proved that. suicidal must play like suicidal, not hard or normal. if a map is too easy it becomes a grindfest for people trying to up their perks without difficulty.

just because those maps aren't whitelisted doesn't mean people can't still play them though. we aren't shunning the map from ever being played in KF ever.
 
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it's not about whether or not a map has tons of ammo or weapons. it's about whether a map has tons of ammo and weapons in one room making the rest of the map obsolete. maps must remain balanced and not have rooms that encourage camping. camping is fine, but a map shouldn't have a room made specifically for it that funnels all the specs in one at a time and is loaded with unlimited ammo and weapons. this is considered exploitable as you can level your perks with something like that rather quickly.

KF-Colosseum is a perfect example of this.

EDIT-Disregard this, Olivier just told me there was a version the I hadn't seen where this was fixed, sorry.
 
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