DoD_Bastogne beta 1

Well, here it is. my first attempt at a non HLDM map. this is a pretty early beta, but I thought I'd show you guys how it's going, and get some input.













The r's are pretty high in one or two of those screens, but I thnk I can fix them.

The wreckage looks odd, not very natural. Also in the second shot, the little roof the pillars are holding up looks pretty damn thin.

But otherwise nice. :smile:

looks good till you ger to thr rubble area, walls a bit thick, doesnt look right..

otherwise tis ok i guess

Hey ORPH, the wife and I are wanting to Map for DOD, any advice? Do we just use the DOD fgd in the set up?

I want to make a Snow Forest map.. I have a wide array of old WWII war movies I can choose from.. So the mapping ideas are endless..

Your map looks good, the pillar roof is way thin.. The Church is awesome.

How do you pull off the round window without doing a carve?

($)

MoneyShot said:
Hey ORPH, the wife and I are wanting to Map for DOD, any advice? Do we just use the DOD fgd in the set up?

I want to make a Snow Forest map.. I have a wide array of old WWII war movies I can choose from.. So the mapping ideas are endless..

Your map looks good, the pillar roof is way thin.. The Church is awesome.

How do you pull off the round window without doing a carve?

($)

uhh i dont do DoD bud, sorry.... but i'd assume you are correct, use the dod fgd

red question= this is how

IMO that tut does not illustrate a very good method. I guess I should do a tut on how I do it.

Thanks for the feedback guys. I knew there was somthign wrong with the rubble, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

Is that snow I see in the screenshots? Shouldn't it be collecting on the ground and rooftops? :smile:

Also, the pillars on the church entrance seem a little odd. One is taller than the other...

Nice map though, if a little disjointed in theme. :smile:

Tracer Bullet said:
IMO that tut does not illustrate a very good method. I guess I should do a tut on how I do it.

just do me a favor, when you post yours, don't post it as a superior version over that tut, the author is somewhat of a god to mapping, i would not like to see this go badly :wink:

I'm in the midst of a retexture that will encrust everything in snow.

I decided on the theme a bit late, and since I chose the battle of bastogne, I need snow. you know, December 1944...

Orpheus said:

Tracer Bullet said:
IMO that tut does not illustrate a very good method. I guess I should do a tut on how I do it.

just do me a favor, when you post yours, don't post it as a superior version over that tut, the author is somewhat of a god to mapping, i would not like to see this go badly :wink:

Mmy mehtod is based on his, I just use different tools to speed up the process.

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<TD style="FONT-SIZE: 11px; COLOR: gold">? posted by Tracer Bullet</TD></TR>
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<TD style="FONT-SIZE: 11px; COLOR: gold" bgColor=black>? posted by www.snarkpit.com http:>Orpheus</A></TD>
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<TD style="FONT-SIZE: 11px; COLOR: gold">? posted by www.snarkpit.com http: Bullet??>Tracer Bullet</A></TD></TR>
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<TD bgColor=#151515>
IMO that tut does not illustrate a very good method. I guess I should do a tut on how I do it.

</TD></TR></TABLE>just do me a favor, when you post yours, don't post it as a superior version over that tut, the author is somewhat of a god to mapping, i would not like to see this go badly :wink:

</TD></TR></TABLE>

Mmy mehtod is based on his, I just use different tools to speed up the process.

</TD></TR></TABLE>wipes brow

k then, thanx

and I could show an entirely different method for those circular windows. And MoneyShot, maybe you don't know, but I do mostly DoD mapping, so really if you have a DoD question I'm more than happy to help.

I've been meaning to ask you about it Gorb. you ought to do a tut for dod noobs, sort of general guidlines and such. maybe a wreckage tut as well.

Picture 1.

The fittings and fixtures look a little chunky and underdetailed at the moment. European chapels/places of worship etc are usually more spacious, and darker. Try reducing the size of the walls (ie thickness) and brushes, and widening the area a little. It will pick out details better, thus be pleasing to the eye. And you get more space to play then! More area = better map in DoD.

Picture 2.
Nice concept, again feels a littlle "boxed in" and chunky. Maybe take away the wall to the left and develop more detail on the pillars/mantle. The roof is way too thin though.

Picture 3.
Again, needs more room! Add alleys between houses, gives people a place to run for and fire from :smile: Again, chunky brushes used a little too much. Also, check the texture where the side wall becomes the end of the house, sloppy textures.

Picture 4.
This is nice, add details to the houses. Put some alleyways, or dugout door entrances add to authenticity and gameplay.

Picture 5.
Add more torn up concrete around blast areas, with the large piles of rubble. Smoke, scorch marks and consistent colours (ie grey rubble grey/brown hole) will liven it up. Put a back on those houses!

Picture 6.
This is the best shot - the grey rubble with a few tweaks will look fantastic, it looks good now. This brown building at the forefront lets it down, its just so plain and like a block with a few holes in. Make it look and feel like a real building!

Looking good so far mate, nice ideas coming through :smile: Scale up the playing areas a bit, work on ambience and refine the brushwork and you could have a really nice map on your hands :biggrin: GL.

Gorbachev I could really use some advice..

1: how do I set up Hammer to map for DOD?

2: Any tips of the trade? ( since this is rather broad question, any advice you have to offer would be great. )

($)

P.S. And Orph, sorry I ment to say Tracer.. but for some reason I typed your name.. sorry about that.

I hate to tell you, but I feel like I'm in Whoville. Some of the architecture is just way out there - the first three pictures, in particular, occur to me as very odd and overscaled.

I don't think this is purely your fault - DoD seems to have adopted an unspoken policy of making the most unreal-looking textures possible - but you still need to make keep the scale down, and not have such wide spaces.

The other problem is the wreckage - a problem Kraftstoff suffered from, as well; that the rubble seems to be coming from nowhere at all or from some obscure place. Also, the huge chunks of buildings you have amidst your wreckage - no. Just no.

There's snow in the air, and none on the ground.

Houses in France, even in Bastogne (yes, I saw BoB), are not that large nor odd looking.

Sorry, these criticisms do involve making big changes in the map, but they're the real problems I see. And clink goes my two cents.

very very nice :biggrin:

ive been trying to find a way to add snow in my CoD map for ages, Where did u get that snow from?

do you need some pics to use as overlays there Korny?....i have quite a few.... :wink:

Doc Brass... :dodgy:

yes m8, That would help allot. If I am thinking of the same thing as you.

IMO the church is too unrealistic. The outside entrance with 4 columns isn't a typical feature of French churches. Roof underside is tiled, needs to be timbers or another tex.

Inside stuff - looks a bit small but hard to say from screenies. Church benches usually face towards a raised altar area. Not sure about the flat ceiling, in a churches main hall i would expect to see the roof underside or some type of vaulted ceiling.

I would check out some reference material for a church or copy the church style from avalanche, anzio etc. or MOH/COD maps.

Most of the streets and other buildings look much better tho' :smile:

ttfn

Korn- The snow is a nifty little feature that requires no work at all in dod. all you do is set the weather to "snow" in the info_dod_detect entity. it acualy looks great ingame because it's not just a sprite. the snow actualy hits surfaces and stays for a second before melting away, much like the sparks from the tau cannon.

• everyone else. the church looks funny because when I built it I was thinking of an italian theme, and yes, many italian churches have flat ceilings. it will be changed. the same goes for the odd looking buildings. there is a crossover between southern europe and northern europe which I haven't yet eliminiated.

I've completed a retexture to make things look more wintery. I'll probably make all the buildings a bit shorter, as well as make them more realistic (less whovillish :smile: ). thanks for the feedback guys.

I'll post updated screens as soon as I can get to a place where I can compile again.

Tracer Bullet said:
I've been meaning to ask you about it Gorb. you ought to do a tut for dod noobs, sort of general guidlines and such. maybe a wreckage tut as well.

I considered doing this during the last snarkpit days, but I never got around to it because at the time I was the only DoD mapper with the exception of 1 or 2 people. But if there is demand from a few then I can most certainly do this for you guys. And I'll include a basic setup of Hammer for DoD (for MoneyShot and more). I'll just write up a small batch of relevant DoD type tutorials and I'll type them up. Hopefully this weekend.

Gorb- it sounds as though you'll have at least two takers, me and Money. we'd both apreciate some help.

A little update. I think it's becomeing much less whovillish.

I like the looks of this map, but that's basically all I can say from screenshots. Some specific gripes are below, from what I could make out:

• Scaling: Some world objects seems to be too tall and large. Like the church benches in the first image. They seem vastly out of scale, and much bigger than what they should be. On the other hand, the windows in the other screens seem to be far too small to be real, and look more like ventilators.
• Wreckage: Just looks odd. I see broken buildings which look like they were built broken. You can probably add metal bars sticking out of them to make it look better, and maybe show some of the building rubble itself.
• Picture 4: funny looking rocks under the roof in the building on the right. They look wrong
• Pictures 4,5: Your buildings all sort of "terminate" in the sky, and the endings are visible. Make sure this isn't visible in the final version. (Maybe you've noclipped for that shot?)

One other problem I can notice is that the level seems too tight and full. Maybe this is how DoD maps are, but I just don't like gameplay to be that constricted. Maybe some slightly wider spaces, with other forms of cover? Otherwise, it mightl just look like some overbuilt maze.

I'll get on making that tutorial soon. And frag...the HL engine is still a limitation here, you're only going to get so much in the way of open areas...close combat is a lot of fun in DoD, it's not BF1942.

In this last screen, to the right of the church, there is a wall of a building wiht a massive chunk missing. Maybe it's just me but I doubt the small part of the wall remaining near the middle could support all the weight above it.

Thanks for tyhe comments S, but at this point, I'm considering just scrapping the whole thing.

Tracer Bullet said:
Thanks for the comments S, but at this point, I'm considering just scrapping the whole thing.