UFO:Alien Invasion
Development => Mapping => Topic started by: tilli on September 13, 2010, 10:18:45 pm
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ok, here my frist try at mapping
screenshots as soon as I make them
Tilli
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promised some screenshots
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looking at level 2
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nice job.
there are some points i would like to point at though.
* the roof brushes/textures are looking a little bit misplaced and boring compared to the 1st level of your map
* doors are missing the upper brush - you have made doors just a hole in a wall. please look at the other doors in the game and keep that style.
* try to use the terrain feature (texture blending) for the long walkway (on the back of the houses/gardens) - it would not look like carved with a ruler anymore then (see e.g. the fueldump map)
other than that it's a really nice start. again: good job
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Hey tilli,
I agree with mattn, it's a very nice start. If you don't know what he means about the terrain feature, look here (http://ufoai.ninex.info/wiki/index.php/Mapping/Materialsystem#Terrain_with_two_stages). If that doesn't make any sense, let me know and I'll give you a demonstration.
You've done a really good job of managing the dimensions and the map shows a good eye for getting those things right. It's really easy to mess that up, so it's obvious you've been planning and not just throwing brushes around.
I've attached several images. One of them shows you what mattn was talking about with doors missing the "upper brush". They need to show the wall above the door.
Another couple show you things about the textures. I thought the brick texture could stand to be scaled down. Also, you use flat textures for most of your walls. Even though we often see our interior walls as fairly flat and white, there's actually a lot of color variation and texture going on. If you use a totally flat texture, it can often make a wall seem fake, so it's usually good to have at least some texture on a wall, even if it's subtle.
Also, walls tend to have borders on the top and bottom that help "glue" them visually to the wall/cieling. We don't have many good interior wall textures at the moment, so you may not find what you need. But if you wanted a simple, light-colored interior wall texture I could make that for you. I would think it would at least have a runner board on the bottom and maybe a bit on the top.
Overall the construction is good and you've made good use of prefabs. But if you want to go a bit beyond just walls and prefabs, you should start looking at doing a bit more brushwork. The final thing I'll attach in the next post is a big image with an example of how you can start to add more detail through your brushwork.
Again, nice start! With a bit of touchup this could definitely be a skirmish map. And don't be afraid to venture up the z axis. It's not as hard as it may seem.
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Here's the quick tutorial on brushwork.
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Hi
After all those helpfull comments I tried to implement some of them. So here is the next version (but definitly not the final version) of the map.
tilli
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Looks like you're coming along well. I like the window frames and the little post boxes by the front doors.
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something "prefabable" in there? ;)
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i hope you don't mind that i've created a prefab from your map: http://ufoai.git.sourceforge.net/git/gitweb.cgi?p=ufoai/ufoai;a=commit;h=8447458bc3a691357787d3fe055999834da523ed
attached are a few screenshots with some issues i found in the map
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hi
here comes the next version. Just some small changes.
tilli
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Another couple of small changes, mainly doors.
tilli
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Finally got a chance to look this morning. Looking good. Let's talk about some optimizations/fixes you can do on the map.
1) You can run ufo2map with a -fix parameter. This will (in theory) automagically set all the downward facing surfaces with the nodraw texture. Since the game view is top-down, we don't need to render the under-side of brushes, and setting them to nodraw significantly reduces the number of surfaces the engine has to draw. It may result in some abnormal changes, though, so you'll want to check your map afterwards. Run with this:
ufo2map -fix base/maps/yourmapname
2) Nevermind about the list, I just made another image I'll attach. The image mentions a texture attached. This is bed003.png and bed003_nm.png. Drop these into /base/textures/tex_furniture/
Once you've made the optimizations/fixes, we can start talking about what it would take to get the map in-game, how you would add dropships/ufos, and how you can use the material file to do some things.
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mattn, h-hour thanks for the help
some things: what are alternatives for the roof009?
the table tennis is ok in my version, not sure where the problem is
regarding dropships: I intend not to need a dropship and even wrote a little mission briefing/ explanation for that (sorry for the not so smooth english):
"Aliens have landed at the town of ???. Local forces managed to respond fast, were able to kill some aliens and seperate them from their craft. Unfortunatly some of the aliens managed to break through the local forces and reached a part of the city which hasn't been completly evacuated.
Also the number of aliens is estimated to be small, they have nothing to loose and so will attempt the create as much destruction as possible before being hunted down. Your mission will be to engage and eliminate or neutralize any remaining aliens. Please be carefull as there are still civilians in the area! Any injury to them or extensive damage of the city property is going to have a negativ effect on the appreciation of the Phalanx organisation."
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some things: what are alternatives for the roof009?
I don't know. Checking my 2.3 installation, I don't see any good matches at the moment. Soon there should be nightly builds of 2.4 and radiant for windows, so you won't run into this issue any more.
the table tennis is ok in my version, not sure where the problem is
Hmm, interesting.
regarding dropships: I intend not to need a dropship and even wrote a little mission briefing/ explanation for that (sorry for the not so smooth english):
If you don't have any dropships your map can't be included in the campaign. If you just want it to be a skirmish map that's fine. You don't need dropships or alien craft. But the skirmish menu doesn't support a mission description like you describe.
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the texture (table tennis) was rescaled in master (to power of two) but not in ufoai_2.3
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I don't know. Checking my 2.3 installation, I don't see any good matches at the moment. Soon there should be nightly builds of 2.4 and radiant for windows, so you won't run into this issue any more.
Then I will wait for the 2.4 version and rework the map to final status then.
If you don't have any dropships your map can't be included in the campaign.
There are already maps without dropships in the campaign!
But of course I want my map in the campaign (if the devs want them), so please send the lesson about putting in a dropship and ufo.
tilli
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oh wait - that wasn't correct - you can add a map to the campaign without a dropship - even without ufos (in fact there are already some maps without dropships and ufos)
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That's right, I forgot about maps like Bunker.
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ok, I think I managed to switch to dev 2.4 version
so here is the next upload of the map
tilli
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should we add this to data_source now?
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mattn: grünes Licht,
but no warranties
and please rename it for the ingame use
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rename to what? what should be the name for it? can you maybe provide a maps.ufo entry?
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Hey tilli, it's looking good. Nice work on the material file as well. Here are a few more things I found. Once you make these changes and let me know the new name for the map, I'll get it into /data_source/.
Do you want to try to get dropships going or not?
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h-hour, thanks for the quality control, I hope I got everything
the light are ok, so no changes there
no dropships or ufos for this map (it will stand as it is for the moment), the next one will include them (promise)
so next try for upload
can please somebody with more knowledge then me should fill out some things in the barbone .ufo
tilli
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something like that
btw. please try to choose an english name - small_street e.g.
mapdef YOURNAME
{
map "YOURNAME"
description "_This is the description for YOURNAME."
multiplayer true|false
teams XX
gametypes {
1on1
1on1on1
2on2
2on2on2
coop2
coop3
coop4
}
maxaliens 8
aircraft
{
craft_drop_firebird
}
// ufos
// {
// }
terrains
{
grass
mountain
}
cultures
{
western
}
populations
{
village
rural
}
}
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sorry, of course it has to be english
thanks for the infos on the .ufo
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Great work tilli, I hope we see more from you :)
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btw the sandbox is veryvery red... it looks surrealist