dod_fishtown (working title)

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these are some pics of the latest compile. i'm almost happy with the overall layout, but i'll probably rebuild the church, and possibly some of the surrounding buildings. there's still no damage to any of the buildings or streets yet. that, along with other street furniture, can be added after the initial vis optimization, when i know what areas can afford it in terms of framerates.

The broken factory is the axis spawn point, and will have another exit at the side, which can be used to get to the centre of the map quickly.

http://www.quantum-physics.co.uk/images/dt01.jpg















the building in the centre of the last pic will be the allied spawn. the road that leads up the left side of the picture will have an unassailable drop-off that makes it one-way. this should balance the quick exit to the town centre that the axis spawn will have.

i'm not really looking for anyone to spend any time looking for things that need fixing here. i can already see plenty of those myself. :/

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i eat paint

It looks really good. I <3 it already. It looks like the layout will give some nice gameplay too. I wonder what you're doing for vertical play ... if anything.

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Blame it on Microsoft, God does.

Looking good Fishy, your definately going for the large scale, which I
really like. Nothing worse than confining a map to the same
restrictions of the older game. I was wondering what you fps is like in
some of the big open area's. The good thing is that on my PC the
official maps all run in the red all the time, so if you can get
something thats over 30 fps your laughing, at least in my case. It'll
be the fine detail that will kill your performance, so it's usually a
good idea to add most of it as you go, like you've done in the town.

I don't know if thats your finished sky box, but I'd definately look at making it more realistic.

As far as layout goes it will be interesting to see how it turns out. I
don't mind the whole path based thing that has most of the official
maps have, so you spend the entire round fighting over a few square
meters, but I'm looking forward to maps that give you a lot more
choice. It's what I'm doing and I'm glad you seem to be too.

Keep up the good work, it's really starting to take shape :smile: .

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Ham and Jam Contributor
http://www.hamandjam.org

'Get your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!'

Crono, there are only two buildings, atm, with any insides. both offer an upstairs exit that can lead onto some rooftops. there are more planned, so hopefully there'll be more to gameplay than having it concentrated at street level. bomb damage will open up new routes too, allowing access to some more rooftops. (should also make the streets look less sterile)

Agent S, the skybox is partly finished. i'm mostly happy with everything at the back of the map(the fields and lake etc.), but the section of skybox next to the railway is really only placeholding. i'm not sure if i want trees or a factory there. it'll come down to performance in the end.

with the vis optimization that i've done so far, most of the areas play at just a little worse than the official maps. there are still one or two places that cause spikes on the worldbrush and static prop graph, and cause my fps to hit the red, but that's mostly to do with the church. the church that really needs to be remade before too long. hehe, maybe if i keep saying it, i'll end up doing it. :smile:

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i eat paint

If you have a look at some of the ground textures, you'll notice that
some have skybox or similar in their names. The detail that is
generated on these includes trees and things that are all sprites, so
using some of them should cause virtually no drop in performance. They
are made specifically for skybox use. Of course all the tree sprites
are nice and bushy, as opposed to the twigs we have to use in the main
map :sad: .

I've figured that if my map runs about the same as the official maps
then its okay, since everyone has been running them fine online for
months now.

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Ham and Jam Contributor
http://www.hamandjam.org

'Get your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!'

well, the church is gone, as are some other bits and pieces. it can be a bit of a worry, chopping a large area, then wondering how the replacement part, that may or may not be floating around in my head, will turn out.

i've managed to leave large areas alone(relatively speaking, of course :smile: ), so the pics that i've already posted still resemble a good chunk of the map.

here's a few pics of more recent developments. the compile was hatchet job, so there's no pretty skybox or fancy lighting. a full compile is still a long way off....

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i eat paint

Internet connection groans savagely

That last set, was awfully, unoptimized Fishman.

Anyway, the one thing I was going to comment on, you seem to be addressing already. In the first set of screens, the building tops seem cropped. The hotels/factory/house all seem universally the same height.

In the second set of screens, you have altered this some, but now they seem cropped, in sections. You have houses one height, motels one height and so on and so on.

Perhaps its just me that sees it as such. My only remaining comment is, the roofs all look the same. You seem to have but one architect in the village. Hire some more and add some metal siding or wood shingled roofs. Any village, no matter where has a mush mash of old/new projects going.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

from street level, you don't really notice the roofs too much. once i've finished with the layout (about 80% atm) and started optimising, i'll be looking at areas that can take the extra detail of more damaged roofs/walls/roads etc, so that might break it up a bit more.

the clipped look to the tops of some of the buildings is because the tops are in the skybox, which wasn't in the compile.

what i think it really needs is a couple of decent wooden buildings. a barn or two, and a few leanto/log store/outhouses. hmm, maybe even a sawmill. /me looks shiftilly at gwil...

haha, a sawmill it is. i just this second pictured how to fit it in. it ties up the allied base perfectly, gets rid of a huge open area that might eventually have become a vis problem, allows me to seamlesly tweak a transition to the skybox that was causing a problem, and in general, save a lot of finishing off time.

i'm away to marvel at myself in the mirror now. bbl :smile:

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i eat paint

Every town I know of has two things this map is missing. A park, with kids playthings and a dilapidated empty lot. Build a place where no accounts put trash when no ones looking.

Another thing you might add, a building being built. You know.. pegs in the ground with string to mark the location of stuff.

shrugs

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Leave PEGS alone, why does everyone always wanna bury PEGS.. =) lol

It does look good. but it doesn't look like WWII to me.

reminds me a lot of remagen from MOHAA and remagen v2 from CoD:UO, but with a terrain and train area. very interesting. i don't have dod:s, so i really cant say anything more than that.

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___My Site___ | www.leveldesign.nl

I love the shot looking out through the windows. Could maybe use a few decals as some of the surfaces are a tad uniform, but it is just looks like a really nice setup around there with the curved stairs and all :smile:

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

the sawmill was partially built, surrounding buildings were put in place, the little culvert where the burning tank was became a decent sized river, various other stuff like rebuilding parts of the train station were also done, and then hammer refused to open the file again. well, it sort of opened it, but would use 99% of my cpu for 4 hours before i could select a brush, and half an hour response time for every mouse click. that sucked. even the backups in the autosave folder wouldn't open, so that made it suck some more.

i hate rebuiling the same stuff after a loss, so the river/sawmill etc were abandoned in favour of a street. as the area is the exit from the allied base, i wanted it to be roughly the same shape and size as the exit from the axis base, which was the wide open railway station. so, either the street had to be a lot wider than i'd like, or the train station would need to be narrowed. the axe fell on the station, but i don't think it suffered too much, and might even have been improved a little, though it still needs a bit of bomb damage.

i know i've said before that the layout is done, but i think that this time it's true. i've 3 buildings to finish off the insides of, and maybe another 2 or 3 building faces to seal off some map edges. there's tons of little bits that need some attention, but nothing that's a problem. the skybox hasn't really been thought about, other than to keep it as simple as possible. a burning village on a hillside looked good in lostcoast, but would probably hamper performance in a large multiplayer map.

anyway, here's some recent pics.













and i've just noticed that flags 2 and 3 have their numbers mixed up. :cool:

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i eat paint

Considering all the visual information contained in each screen , your FPS are holding up rather well Fishman.

In fact, I notice a noticeable increase between these screens and the preceding ones. Whats the diff?

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Orpheus said:
Considering all the visual information contained in each screen , your FPS are holding up rather well Fishman.

In fact, I notice a noticeable increase between these screens and the preceding ones. Whats the diff?

there's some basic outdoor visblocking with sky brushes above some of the buildings, but it's incomplete, with gaps that probably make it only effective in part.
func_areaportals probably help too. i've started adding them to areas that i think could use them as i go. mostly sealing up buildings.
and this was a normal compile, the rest have all been fast shots, but that doesn't guarentee better fps.
i spent a lot of time optimizing a previous version of this, which turned out to be a waste of time because of subsequent changes, so i decided to build with vis in mind, but not spend any time building for it. now that the layout is all but done, it's time to see how playable i can make it. hopefully i can get the fps pushed up a good bit more. :smile:

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i eat paint

Well, your efforts are clearly showing. Well done.

One thing that is currently standing out in my mind:

Although I have never lived in a town that is as old as this one appears to be, there are commonalties between living spaces.

1) Back doors to houses, they always have a well defined path. Either to a clothes line, or a neighbors home.

2) Gutters, or even the lack of them have a rut in the dirt where rain water drains according to the contour of the landscape.

3) Buildings have water marks and scummy places where the sun never shines and mildew forms.

4) Wind blows debris to places and deposits it there always.

5) Chimneys have sooty residue, always.

6) Bird poop is ever present.

7) And last but not least. Where is the privacy? I see no clearly defined home zones. No limits/boundaries of each abode.

All of these suggestions are just that, suggestions. I hope that they in no way cause you to lose sleep.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

most of that is planned for, but it'll be part of the final stages. paths to doors will be either displacement alpha-mapped paths, or overlays. some existing boundary walls are earmarked for demolition, and replacement when i start on a civic wall building program, which sort of covers point7

gutters in the street, i think will be detail that i can do without. same goes for the bird s**t. there should be enough debris to break up any streets that are too plain.

as for windblown rubbish in the streets, weren't the people too poor to have that back then?

stain overlays have been getting thrown onto buildings while i'm working in their local area, but cloning overlays, for quickness, has thrown up errors during map load, so i'll need to place them one at a time, which sucks, because i cant get new overlays to appear in hammer until i save/exit/reload the vmf. that's partly what's held up the paths too.

telephone poles and wires, sandbags, craters, vehicles, market stalls/shop front area, 2 blocked road exits, 2 bags of assorted overlays, a skybox, 4 bags of optimisation weed, and all of the other unfinished stuff that, in my head, will only take 10 mins, but in reality will probably take at least a week each, all need to be addressed, but will be worked on when i know what areas have the best and worst fps

ah well.........

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i eat paint

My condolences to your woes..

I never realized that you were having so much trouble getting hammer to cooperate.

I will shut up now.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Based off of the latest batch of screen shots:

The map isnt quite done im aware, and maybe you havent gotten to this
yet, but the map looks like its too clean and steril. Add some debri
for that war striken look that makes DoD maps look great.

With that said I look foward to seeing this map done!

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Posting And You

From what I can see from the overlay, the axis will be able to cap their flags almost instantly, but when they allys try to cap flag4, they will be shot at by the axis who capped flag two. You might want to think about that

there's buildings between them, so it's not a problem. that's not to say that the flags can't be moved; they probably will be, depending on feedback from any beta release.

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i eat paint

I'm really not a DOD(S) expert so I keep this short. But from the screenshots alone I can tell that this map would benefit from more contrast in lighting. Right now it looks almost monochromatic.

Let the sunlight come from a flatter angle, make it 2, 3 times as bright. Most importantly add some color to the lights. Give the sun a slight yellowish tone, even thought the sky is so grey. Just something to try that could spice up the atmosphere I think.

What I was trying to say is once the axis cap their flag its not very far for them to get into a position that they can shoot at the ally flag. Its only a few seconds run, and even if the allys cap their flag before the axis shoot them, it seems like it would be very difficult to prevent the axis from controling that flag fairly easily. I could be wrong though. Other than that, when does it come out? looks great!

like i said, there shouldn't be any problem. there's no fast route between those flags, or to anywhere that will dominate the other.



reaper, i don't know what you mean about monochomatic; the colour seems fine for me. the light env settings are leftover from when i was playing with some mild fog to give a hazy effect, instead of having bright clear sunshine and hard edged shadows.

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i eat paint

i've uploaded what is basically an alpha of the map. i'm not really looking for any feedback about textures, dodgy displacements, lighting etc. anyone that looks at it will see what is obviously still a work in progress, with too many problems to list.

that said though, i'd be interested to hear comments on where the gameplay might falter due to the actual layout and the routes and whatnot that are accessible.

www.quantum-physics.co.uk/files/dod14.zip

the big red 'errors' will be some custom models that i've held back to keep the filesize down. it's about 16mb now, which is already a bit much for a looksee.

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i eat paint

16 :eek:

Oh my... I haven't got DOD yet. Can this thing be viewed in HL2DM?

For you, I'd find time to download 16.

Inquiry: Will DOD be a Steam item too? I am getting seriously annoyed with this ep1 update.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

I've had a quick run round and its looking really nice carnt wait to see it once its a little more polished.

Anyway I noticed a coupple of little bits.


That looks like its being held up by a 1mm thick piece of metal.


The little bit of the wall hanging down on the right could do with being raised a little as you can catch your head on it and get stuck. I can see it being a problem when lots of people want to rush down there.


These brushes dont seem to be aligned properly as I can see the sky box in that little gap.

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Tinterweb site
Deviantart

Human knowledge belongs to the world

ah, the first pic is a bit of a signal gantry that was left behind when i moved the rest of it. i've known about it for ages, but keep forgetting about it when hammer is open. just like many other little details. :/

the general area of the 2nd pic, a mostly collapsed building, still needs to be finalised. the wall with the hole looks like it'll be made solid, with the exit into the side alley instead of the main street.

i hadn't noticed pic 3 before. it'll be a little bit of nodraw thats sticking out.

there's a whole stack of similar little fixes that need done, so it'll probably take a while

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i eat paint

Quick glance of screenshots- 3rd one looks nasty and blocky, fix that. The one someone wrote a 4 on theres some misaligned texture on the stairs. Other than that I'd just add more generic stuff to make it look as if people were there.

I'd suggest a load of furniture barricades, or strewn around, and the occasional suitcase of clothes- everyone obviously ran away from there, unless theres a closet full of skeletons.... I suppose want you want to do is think from what direction 1 side got to the town from, and make it look as though they fortified it with what they found.

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-[Better to be Honest than Kind]-

dod_fishtown is now dod_mortimer, a name that, for some reason, seems right somehow. it would probably have been more apt for some sort of death-timer map, but, meh..

as it stands, there are only 5 cap points, which is one less than there were last week. 6 caps always seem too much to me, but i think i've unbalanced it a little by dropping to 5. i'll see if i can get the nice people at dodfederation to give it a playtest, and finalize it for beta release from there.

here's a few screenshots from the most recent compile;













the map's about, but not quite, ready to be whored as a beta. i'd pakratted, zipped and uploaded yesterdays compile before i noticed overlapping brushes at the axis spawn, and a hidden visgroup of displacements from the same area. other than that, i already had a small list of snagging and polishing jobs that still need done. none of them are major, mainly missing light sources and badly lit models. it will probably add up to a couple of nights work, so i should be able to get this as a releasable beta quite soon. until then, anyone that's keen enough for a look-see at it's current state can download the 10meg zip from here.

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i eat paint

Personally, I think you should scatter these screenshots all over the net. They will not only illustrate a fantastic looking map but they will also provide visual aids for people who want to post excellent screenshots at less than 100k.

/continues drooling.

Question: Is DOD worth the money? I wanna buy something new when I get my new PC.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

DoD:S is definately worth the money, some beautiful maps and great gameplay to be had.

Downloading now, fish.

Gwil said:
DoD:S is definately worth the money, some beautiful maps and great gameplay to be had.

You have no idea how odd it is to be on broadband again, but limited to such a small PC.

I'll be so glad when I get my new one.

/me adds DOD/S to list of "Recently Desired"

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Downloading it now...at some horrible horrible sub-10kb/s speeds :sad: Sadly I don't have DoD:S installed right now (needed the space for BLOODY MASSIVE and so-far-underwhelming Dark Messiah) but I'll try and get it sorted and give some feedback soon. Judging by the screenshots, its looking like a very solid map but I find the lighting rather unappealing. Really glad to see you still working on this by the way :smile:

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

God damn it, now you've gone and inspired me to start mapping again.

I'm not a DOD player, thus not competent enough to give any real valuable feedback, but looking at your screenshots reminds me of all the reasons people like this game. Some beautiful parts.

Screen one could benefit from a small beam of sunlight for some contrast. I see some changes to lighting from the earliest screens which I think are a huge improvement.

One detail that bothers me for some reason: The cobble texture on the stairs in pic 2 seem terribly out of place.

hmmm... very nice! :smile:

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Why snark works.

BTW, I bought DOD/S tonight as well as a few odds and ends for my new PC.

Was remarkably cheap. I thought it'd be a bit more than 20 bucks for the game.

Will look at map tomorrow Fishman.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Thanks for the positive comments, folks.

Orph, I doubt that you'll be disappointed with your purchase. Like Gwil said, it combines great gameplay with some of the nicest maps I've seen.

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i eat paint

I cleverly took these photos and then forgot where I took 'em from so... I hope you know :biggrin:

It seems to me the biggest problem is making sure the player doesn't get where he isn't supposed to be. I found these ones pretty easily;









Then there was some odd texturing;



And I don't know what this was....

sorry Toatstie, but those are from an ancient version. i posted a link to the most recent version along with the last set of pics, instead of updating the link in the map's profile.

http://www.quantum-physics.co.uk/files/maps/dod_mortimer_a3.zip is where it's at now, if you fancy another try.

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i eat paint

Oh, my bad. I just took the link from the front page.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Without going into specifics, I think there is one major issue that
needs addressing somehow, fish. The map is constructed well enough and
has plenty of scope for z-axis combat, use of MG's and snipers which
aren't indestructible BUT - the layout needs something more..

There is a distinct lack of open area firefight potential (eg Anzio
church/plaza, donner or flash's main street) - the layout seems too
tight in places, which makes it harder to navigate and appreciate.
Admittedly, the best way to learn a map is through testing online with
other players and some good old fashioned fighting, but I couldn't help
but feel that I was fighting in a tight and unnavigable maze of
corridors, sometimes.

Sorry if that sounds a bit harsh or it's too late to be making major
design changes, I just feel it needs opening up somewhat, and perhaps
"landmarks" adding. Perhaps there is too many routes?

It feels very similar to the map "dod_salerno" - nice idea, but
sometimes lacking those recognisable features and perhaps
overpathed/large.

Orpheus said:
I thought about this map the whole time I was out on this run. I have some suggestions but....

... If you aren't going to use them, I'll abstain.

if it's a condition that your ideas must be used before you give them, then please abstain. it's not like i'm not interested in any suggestions; i've already got a some of my own, and i've already made changes to;
the axis spawn, securing most of the train station behind sandbags and train cars.
the tunnel thing that ran from the sunken cafe area through to the allied main street. it's now a wine cellar sort of place.
the flag at the cafe area has been moved up onto the street above, and is now a pallete of spam, 2 man objective.
various lighting, especially turning of the flickering lights in the axis spawn that were killing framerates.

that's some of the things i've already done, and there's still some i want to do. the allied spawn needs be extended to the building on the opposite side of the street, as they all spawn too close to the action atm. also, a defensive wall of sandbags/rubble needs built across the street, giving cover to the spawn exits, and providing a vantage point to take out any enemy spawn campers.

rugs, telephone poles and sandbags are also on my list, though sandbag placement is subject to change, depending on any feedback the map gets regarding balance.

that's for a beta release to test the actual gameplay. there's other changes that i'd like to make, like making a decent skybox, or fish models to swim in the pond, or even doors on the axis spawn builings. right now there's no way in or out of those buildings, other than the windows, or a door on the roof. but things like that don't really affect gameplay, so they can wait for a final release.

the only reason that i'd be closed to any suggestions would be based on how good or bad i thought they were, divided by the amount of effort they may take.

Gwil, the release of argentan compelled me to make a lot of changes to my map. argentan had the same open gameplay that i'd been aiming for, and reminded me of my own map in a lot of ways. but playing it made me realise that i didn't like the gameplay that came with it.

maybe i overreacted a bit when i tightened everything up, but i've aimed for a stlye of play that i prefer, while still attempting to give some scope to other players. the maze of corridors effect that you feel shouldn't last too long. as far as i know, there are no identical places. possibly because i built it, but put me anywhere in the map, and i'll get to almost anywhere else within a couple of sprints.

opening the map up again would be quite a difficult task, though there's one possibility that i can see (i've got the mini-map as my desktop) that would make the centre objective a larger arena, a la avalanche. a lot of the brushwork is important to areaportals, hints, clips etc, so i'll have a mess around in hammer to see how much work i'd be looking at.

meh, i'll be old and gray before i get this finished... :rolleyes:

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i eat paint

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Screw it then.

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The best things in life, aren't things.

No disrespect Orpheus, but your ideals of Europe beings some kind of
backward nation (i'd wager this is set in France) is historically way
off the mark. I think a lot of the criticisms of "cultural" setting are
ill founded.

france led the world in indoor sanitation, and was even using ultraviolet filters to purify drinking water as early as 1900, but the whole plumbing aspect is really a moot point, at least as far as my concern for historical accuracy goes.

i know some people consider it an important factor in creating their maps, and i wouldn't disagree, but the lack of consistent resources puts limits how well this can be done. litter overlays containing plastic bags is the thing that twists my nipples most, so i need to compromise historical accuracy, or have no litter. easy choice, really.

as long as i don't stray too far beyond them, then i don't really have a problem with the inaccuracies that are already inherent in the game.

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i eat paint

i've uploaded some more pics here. there's a few changes since the last version, but all of them are cosmetic. i had a look at creating a larger middle area, but tbh, it would be easier starting a new map.

I need to track down a couple of blend textures that throw up a warning on mapload, and I think a couple of invalid spawns too. Other than that, I intend to leave everything else alone for a final release HDR compile. (Unless I get important feedback before I have a spare day to actually run the compile)

dod_mortimer_b1 here.

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i eat paint

I downloaded this a few days ago Fishy and after a quick look through I was thoroughly impressed. The attention to detail is excellent and the layout, which is rather open, gives the feeling you are moving around an actual town rather than a pre-defined path.

There are some issues that I've noticed, mostly minor, so I'll put up a detailed breakdown/critique when I get a chance.

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Ham and Jam Contributor
http://www.hamandjam.org

'Get your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!'