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HavenForts: Construct JetFists - The Chronicles of Wargasm (Episode 2, NeoForts)
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Old 01-20-2007
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Default Steps to producing an in-game map.

Following FictiousWills successes, and the posotive feedback from the community, we've decided to do another series of development logs. This time however, we're going to go right the way through, as we do it, the creation of one map. The process is decisivly longer than modeling, and all aspects of visual mod design will be included at some point, including texturing, playtesting etc.

The aim of this project is to:
  • Create a new and visually attractive environment for the player to experience
  • Experiment with a different type of map design
  • Use as many custom textures and models as possible to bring the map up to v2 standard

We've only been planning for a few days, but we've come up with the following design specifications for this project:
  • The map will have a grassy, WW2 style battlefield with plenty of natural cover
  • A centeral bunker/pillbox will be reachable and possibly holdable using a system of teleporters to create a strategic objective and in effort to reduce stalemates.
  • The build area should be familiar to SF players, with flat surfaces for building and raised areas to build up to.

The team members involved in this are of course, myself, o_nobody_o who will be providing the concept art work, Stieffers and/or Fic for modeling and KG for any additional textures. Of course, that all depends on how busy they are with other things.

The first concept sketch, a basic overview, has been completed by o_nobody_o. It shows the general idea for the layout and what we should be aiming for:


Of course, this early into production, the designs are very flexible, and nothing is concrete. I amended the map to make it more level-designer friendly, and adding unit measurements to areas to give a better idea of size.

Firstly, I rotated the entire map 45 degrees to give a right angled L shape. Hammer, generally speaking, hates diagonals, and trying to make something entirely at 45 degrees will end up with points lying off the grid and other nasty things.

The blue dotted line represents where my displacements (terrain) will be created - The bumpyness of the cliffs will be 'painted' in. It is also a rough guide of where the skybox will be placed - It is important that the sky goes around the map instead of just boxing the whole thing in for optimisation reasons.

The thick black line is the point of symmetry. This is a basic hint of where things will match up - but this map, trying to be as natural as possible, will have some minor differences between both sides.

The thick green line is showing that neither of the two bases can directly see each other. This is one of the major points of this map. It discourages people from camping in their forts, and is also very useful optimisation wise, allowing the map to be much higher detailed.

The red boxed area is an area I am concerned about. Note the diagonal trenches. This shouldn't be too hard to work around, but it's going to make for some interesting displacement work.

Finally, I added in the size guides. They're just estimates for the moment - Hammers grid works in powers of 2 and it makes things a lot cleaner if you stick to it. One unit = One inch, to give you a size reference. This maps going to be big!

Next in development comes the orange map. I'll explain more next post, once I get rolling.
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  #2  
Old 01-20-2007
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Looks interesting, like a curved more detailed valley map. I think it would be good if the pillbox is quite high up overlooking both bases.
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Old 01-20-2007
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The only thing I'm worried about is that there will be no reason to go to the outer area as the shortest route to the other base goes near the pillbox. Also people in the pillbox are like asking for a sniper bolt to their heads.
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Old 01-20-2007
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let them do their diary, its not necessarily about the gameplay of the map. Although it is important, its not the point of this here topic.
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Old 01-20-2007
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Looks awesome!...
...
....

release?
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Old 01-20-2007
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Khuskan View Post
... and nothing is concrete.
That's a first!
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This comment is entirely the opinion of Mudkip and doesn't reflect a final development decision one way or another. The topic is currently being discussed, and testing will take place in order to decide on the ideal course of action, based on decisions made during that discussion.
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Old 01-20-2007
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First orangemap draft is done:


An orangemap is a developmental phase where the basic layout is constructed using simple textures, as to get a feel for the size and features of a map. In this case, I feel that the canyon down to each base should be a little bit longer. The actual build space is fine (just a tad smaller than fieldtrip, though will be reduced further when I actually put something there).

It's almost ready to be terrained, after the length of the canyons is increased slightly.

Valve claim they call it an orange map because -some- of the development textures are orange, but I think it's named after the orange glow that valves radiosity engine gives your map when compiling light with those textures :-P. The lighting on the cliff walls is a little funky, because they're already displacements.

Pastori, I share your worry about the pillbox and I'm thinking of putting it on the outer edge, once displacements are complete I can carve a hole for it and put it in the ground.
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Old 01-20-2007
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Awesome! lol
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Old 01-20-2007
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I've broken the map up into suitably sized displacements and started applying textures and blends:


There's a lot of work to be done in that respect though ;-)

A displacement is basically a big mesh of triangles that you can manipulate into very convincing terrain features. Although they have a lot of tris, they actually render a lot faster than regular brushes (blocks) in a map as most graphics cards have subroutines especially deveoped for them.

I'm off to work now, but when I get back, I'll finish up the texturing and start shaping the terrain.
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  #10  
Old 01-20-2007
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i like this new diaries... very interesting to see how it develops

btw, what is a pillbox (never heard bout that.... and google can't find a german translation x) )
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