How realistic is it to...

[Guest]

How realistic is it to make your own map provided you have practically zero experience with mapping? When I say map I mean, the size of a small space station I mean recreating Black Stall Station as seen in the Clone Wars with interactive objects like a "press E for hologram" "press E to open door" "press E to spawn ship" and a small combo of buttons that if specifically done X X Y Z X would open up a door (if that makes any sense.) With it's own small hangar and making a 14-meter long ship with it's own interactive space, i.e if you activate the cockpit controls you teleport to the same ship but outside of the space station and vice versa- if that's even possible with one or two few custom follower droid NPCs (I got the modelling part down I think, just have zero clue on making an NPC). I wanted to make my own skybox or borrow one similar to Siege of Dac and slap a few asteroids and place Concord Dawn in the background. How much time would a beginner take on that? Below is an image of how the main room should look like just with it's own flavor and without the five thousand laser-turrets Cad Bane keeps around for any unwanted Jedi...

[Ramikad]

It is possible, technically speaking. More or less every feature you listed is doable, except for maybe the droid followers (at least if we're talking MP). It's certainly going to be difficult if you say you have no experience with mapping, so to prevent possible frustration I'd suggest you this tutorial section to give you a basic knowledge of how mapping works in Jedi Academy. In particular, redsaurus' tutorial seems to cover most of what you want to do.

As for how much time it would take, there's no way to know until you start mapping. It also depends on the level of detail you want to have in the map.

Also, I feel like having the ship seal up, take off, exit the hangar and fly around the station would look and feel much better than being teleported out - and it's doable.

[Guest]

Never seen something like that before though so I thought it was impossible to have a working ship have it's own "worldspace" and still be ride-able unless I'm reading something wrong lol 

[Aldro Koon]

It's gonna take years/several maps before you produce something that has an impressive end result for most people and probably yourself too.
And hell even then, you will always will think you could have done several things better.

Your first few maps are gonna be rough, so I recommend small projects as a good way to learn. But save dream projects for later I would say.
Focus on brush/patch work and generally creating fancy rooms by simply creating. Practice makes perfect.

The rest can likely be solved rather easily by asking around and doing research. It is not the tricky part.
Although that is assuming its not MP as that has more restrictions in terms of NPCs following and what-not, but even so -- the rest should be mostly doable.

[Circa]

Like Aldro said, start small to learn. Even if it's just a prototype of the map you want, go into it knowing you will probably start over from scratch a few times along the way as you learn how to do things better. Mapping is an art and takes practice. The hardest part will be learning Radiant and all of it's nuances and hidden features and achieving your goals. Ask questions here and on the JK Discord if you haven't joined that yet (link is in the bar up top). Check out my compiled list of mapping resources as your first step:

https://mapping.jkhub.org