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Offline tilli

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first mapping attempt
« on: September 13, 2010, 10:18:45 pm »
ok, here my frist try at mapping
screenshots as soon as I make them

Tilli

Offline tilli

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Re: first mapping attempt
« Reply #1 on: September 13, 2010, 10:24:19 pm »
promised some screenshots

Offline tilli

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Re: first mapping attempt
« Reply #2 on: September 13, 2010, 10:49:05 pm »
looking at level 2

Offline Mattn

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Re: first mapping attempt
« Reply #3 on: September 14, 2010, 07:24:14 am »
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

Offline H-Hour

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Re: first mapping attempt
« Reply #4 on: September 14, 2010, 06:31:06 pm »
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. 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.

Offline H-Hour

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Re: first mapping attempt
« Reply #5 on: September 14, 2010, 06:32:12 pm »
Here's the quick tutorial on brushwork.

Offline tilli

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Re: first mapping attempt
« Reply #6 on: September 25, 2010, 01:44:42 pm »
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

Offline H-Hour

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Re: first mapping attempt
« Reply #7 on: September 25, 2010, 04:16:55 pm »
Looks like you're coming along well. I like the window frames and the little post boxes by the front doors. 

Offline Mattn

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Re: first mapping attempt
« Reply #8 on: September 25, 2010, 05:08:25 pm »
something "prefabable" in there? ;)

Offline Mattn

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Re: first mapping attempt
« Reply #9 on: September 25, 2010, 06:00:24 pm »
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

Offline tilli

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Re: first mapping attempt
« Reply #10 on: September 27, 2010, 08:42:30 pm »
hi

here comes the next version. Just some small changes.

tilli

Offline tilli

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coming to the end?
« Reply #11 on: September 28, 2010, 07:40:11 pm »
Another couple of small changes, mainly doors.

tilli

Offline H-Hour

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Re: first mapping attempt
« Reply #12 on: October 01, 2010, 11:24:03 am »
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:

Code: [Select]
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.
« Last Edit: October 01, 2010, 11:26:11 am by H-Hour »

Offline tilli

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Re: first mapping attempt
« Reply #13 on: October 01, 2010, 08:46:27 pm »
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."



Offline H-Hour

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Re: first mapping attempt
« Reply #14 on: October 02, 2010, 10:33:42 am »
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.

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the table tennis is ok in my version, not sure where the problem is

Hmm, interesting.

Quote
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.