AI-Assisted-Map-Planning

Midjourney and ChatGPT examples of map planning

Blanket is my first map made from start to finish using AI to help plan ideas. I used AI to enhance my workflow, it did not replace any aspect of my workflow. Midjourney taught me that what I desired was Low Key Lighting and incandescent lighting; or that is to say full spectrum lighting in contrast to the limited spectrum of fluorescent bulbs.

I knew going in I wanted an office look and feel, but there was going to be a level design shakeup for my officer paradigm. After a few tries on Midjourney, I found what I was looking for. I think AI is sometimes used improperly, and as you can see I have used it to enhance my workflow and to more efficiently find my direction. The way the AI images look and my map Blanket looks are not at all the same, that is because I am always working from my memory and not trying to copy an image. AI images are also not very spatially intelligent, a careful observation can sometimes reveal there are physical impossibilities or improbabilities.

When it came to texture creation, AI came in handy again. Goldsrc relies heavily on texture expression, and what I do is take an AI image I like and then build the image out into 3D in the scene. This breaks away from it being just a generated image. If you consider where we come from, taking photorealistic pictures and trying to downscale them to Goldsrc, this is the same principle that always existed. You want images without predefined shadows, and that are not overly detailed and present in a large exaggerated frame. For example a window in Goldsrc Counter-Strike realistically is always at least 10 feet in the air at the highest. This is because a player will jump on the windowcill, and standup. You take into account what the player needs and bend the world around it, so you get the aesthetic of everything being enlarged.

This is where Counter-Strike 2 falls on its face, the developers simply do not know how to make Counter-Strike maps any longer, and perceive 'realism' to be some sort of guiding light -- and it's not. I'm teaching you what Counter-Strike mapping really is, and it bends to the players reality and needs, producing in the end an abstraction of reality, not realism.

Here are some Midjourney Prompts I used for environments:

Here are some Midjounrey Prompts I used for textures:

I used Wally software for WAD generation and editing, and Paint.net for photo editing. Both softwares are completely free.

Scaling textures in Goldsrc is extremely challenging at first, because a brick wall does not present the way you would think. The bricks themselves if they were made the correct dimension would produce a visual repeating effect because the base texture resolution is generally below 256x256. To compensate the brick facade dimensions are enlarged and exaggerated, producing a convincing and stylized version of reality that works with the engine limitations.

Even if you were smart enough to bypass engine limitations and use 4K textures, the game would not look better. This is a misunderstanding I am trying to teach, that reality is an abstraction, not realism. You will never develop charm unless you embrace restrictions.

Temp