2018: Mapcore's Year in Review

Keeping with tradition, I'd say it's about time we took a look at what our community has achieved throughout the year. If last time I was saying how 2017 was a year of immense growth, then 2018 was surely one of significant change. And it hasn't been without its troubles and anxious moments. No change ever is, but I believe it to be for the best. We've seen some of our friends become parents, change work fields or get their first job in the industry. We've even seen a few pursue their dream projects. And for that, we have to applaud them. It takes courage to keep moving forward and to realise when it's time for something new. In the meantime, I hope this article inspires you and I wish everyone 

good luck!

2018: Mapcore's Year in Review

SteamVR - Gulping Goat Space Farm

by @Steve, @marnamai, @The Horse Strangler, @Sersch and others at Scraggy Rascal Studios

produced in collaboration with Valve

"Scraggy Rascal has been working with Valve to create all new SteamVR content, we've been given a lot of liberty to create these locations. Our goal was to create interesting and fun locations for the player to explore. These projects, over the last couple months, have been a crash course in Source 2,VR, project management, delivering within deadlines, working together as a team and personal growth. It has been an invaluable experience and great opportunity ... and we're just getting started!" - marnamai

Darksiders III - Art

by @The Horse Strangler and others at Gunfire Games

"Probably one of the biggest challenges the artists and designers faced on Darksiders 3 was working with both a platforming and fully connected streamed world. This meant that everything exists all the time. While we streamed levels in and out, areas couldn't intersect and we couldn't do the classic "Small exterior, big interior" swap. This was especially challenging because of how much verticality our design must support. We had a few "vistas", but for the most part every aspect of the level was accessible. If you can see it, you will likely be able to get there, jump on it, fight around it, etc. Fury, the main playable character can double jump, swing, float, glide and even rocket jump over 10 meters high. Personally for me it completely changed how I looked at art filling up a space. Every single mesh we placed impacted design. Art was design, and design was art." - The Horse Strangler

Europa

by @[HP]

"Europa is a relaxing narrative experience. The goal with this game is to offer just enough challenge that its rewarding to get from one area to the other for more than just the visuals by using environmental hazards, platforming sequences and light puzzles that you can beat by exploring.The game is split into linear sections and wider areas, that's at the core of the game and as you play, you keep improving your characters moving ability, which will further exploration and give you the ability to solve newer light puzzles. There's none of the typical character upgrading systems, rather, the levels will offer the incremental challenges and the sense of progression. Europa's main focus lies in environmental storytelling and immersing the player in it's universe with passive storytelling, evoking awe and bliss with colorful watercolor-like art and music." - Helder Pinto

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive - Turnpike

by @Squad

"For a while the "Highway Restaurant" theme has been sitting in my little Concepts.txt file. When the Wingman Contest was announced, it felt like the perfect opportunity to turn this idea into a map, as its relatively small size would be fitting for the Wingman gamemode. The casual nature of Wingman made me add some elements that I would not normally add to, let's say, a Defusal map, like the TF2-esque team color coding (albeit subtle), the moving vehicles and the silly bomb target. Additionally, since the playable space is (almost) completely indoors, making it nighttime felt right, as it both emphasizes the interiors and makes for an atmospheric blorange background." - Squad

Dying Light - A New Hope

by @will2k

"A full-fledged custom single player campaign that ties in to the original story of the main game. It will see the main protagonist, Kyle Crane,leaving the City for the countryside to search for a specific elusive medicinal herb and bring it back to Dr. Camden who believes it could be the cure to the Harran Virus. This campaign is a one man show as I’m doing everything myself: level design, environment art/detailing, story creation, scripting/quest creation, custom dialog, custom audio, custom materials/textures, custom foliage systems, custom brushes for terrain painting/sculpting, lighting, manual nav mesh tuning, scripted NPCs…" - will2k

Prodeus

by @General Vivi and Michael Voeller

"Prodeus is the first person shooter of old, re-imagined using modern rendering techniques. Oh, and tons of blood, gore, and secrets. Creating Prodeus has meant a lot to us over the last year. It feels great to finally be doing something for ourselves. It can be pretty ambitious at times since there are just two of us, but I’m confident we can pull it off. Keep an eye out for the end of February for a big announcement." - General Vivi

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive - Ruby

by @catfood

"When I was on vacation in Portugal years ago I was so impressed by the city Lisbon that I really wanted to build a map that has the same vibe. At the time I was already working on different projects so I decided whenever I got enough time to work on a map this size I would go back. So early 2017 the moment was finally there, I went back to Lisbon to shoot (~2000) reference photos then made a list of things that are iconic for Lisbon and started working on Ruby. Adding a lot of height differation, warm colors, tile patterns and ofcourse trams was essentiental to get the Lisbon vibe." - catfood

Subnautica

by @dux, @PogoP and others at Unknown Worlds Entertainment

"A mix of Survival, story, mystery, resource gathering, base building with some accidental horror and plenty of deep, deep water. We had not long finished up with Natural Selection 2 and were hungry to develop a different kind of game. During development we were (and still are) a small team but the game kept getting bigger and grew into something far larger in scope than originally planned. So we soon realised that what we had could be turned into something really unique if we put our heads down and just cranked on it." - dux

Unreal Tournament 4 - Chamber

by @Ubuska

"I used Halo and Warframe artstyle as a reference. The goal of this project was to make fun and cool looking map with 100% custom art that is 100 mb in file size. To achieve that I used several advanced techniques such as custom vertex normals, deferred mesh decals, no bake, tiling base materials and masks. There are basically 5 or so texture maps used in the entire map,  most of the filesize space was taken by lightmaps. I learned a lot doing this project in terms of composition, art direction and optimization. Hope you enjoy this map as much as I do!" - Ubuska

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive - Pitstop

by @Quotingmc and Quadratic

"It is not often that CS: GO receives a new game-mode, especially one as competitively focused as Wingman. I was understandably pleased at the announcement of the 2018 CSMapMakers contest for the mode. Pitstop was my entry where I set out to create a thematically bold centre piece for my portfolio. With the help of my teammate Quadratic and support from multiple Mapcore members, I learnt a lot about taking a level from a simple blockout to completion; I can say for certain I’m thrilled with the end result!" - Quoting

Black Mesa - Xen

by @JeanPaul, Adam Engels and others at Crowbar Collective

"While building Xen we had to design, iterate, and iterate (then iterate some more). We took what we thought we knew, and put it to the test. We learned how design and scope work together, and how to build momentum as a team. We are extremely proud of what we have accomplished over the year(s)! Despite the long and occasionally frustrating timeline, it has been a real testament to the commitment that this team and this community have for Half-Life." - Adam Engels

Unreal Engine 4 scene

by @Vorontsov

"So I decided I would step out of my comfort zone and create a small environment in an engine I've never used before, UE4. Although I think I did a fairly decent job at the time there were ultimately many nuances I could have done better, but that is the artist dilemma. This project taught me the value of properly blocking out your environment, gathering as many references as you can and to have patience and not rush through assets, when breaking any of these rules I was punished for it. Stay tuned for my next project which will be a giant mech, coming soon Valve time TM." - Vorontsov

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive - Opal

by @MikeGon

"My goal with this project was to make a fun and compact defuse map, with a simple level flow, ample verticality, and an overlapped layout! I wanted to have interior and exterior, and break the grid a lot, to avoid having that "90 degrees grid" feel in the layout. I needed to have a vista on one side of the map to help with orientation, so I decided to make it a coastal town, inspired by those found on the island of Skopelos, Greece. Expect more updates in the near future, as I'm not yet satisfied with it. Since this is my only CSGO map, I want to put all my time and effort into it, and focus on quality instead of quantity. Thank you everybody for your support and feedback! <3" - MikeGon

Insurgency: Sandstorm - Precinct

by @Xanthi, @Squad, @Jonny Phive, @LATTEH, @Steppenwolf and others at New World Interactive

"Precinct, was a fun and challenging map to work on. We decided early on to melt District and Contact two of our very nostalgic maps together into a single large-scale urban environment. The goal was to preserve the nostalgic feeling and at the same time create something unique and fresh not just a 1:1 copy. In the block-out stage we started playing with different terrain heights, which eventually was the key to accomplish our goal. Terrain height was a bit of a trial and error process; I remember driving up a hill and not having enough torque, oops!!" -Xanthi

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive - Killhouse

by @FMPONE

"Killhouse showcases brutal duels, player reaction times, and close-quarters combat. A highly vertical layout ensures the sort of unpredictability and replayability ideal for CS:GO’s 2vs.2 "Wingman" game-mode." - FMPONE

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive - Station

by @Roald and @untor

"All experiences contribute to where I am at this point. I am just a hobbiest but I think I learned alot about level design just by doing it and enjoying it. Overal my goal is to improve myself on level design, but also enviorment art. I think I archieved a goal on level design and it's now time to continue on enviorment art. This is where untor morozov comes in. I have met untor a while ago. He made this map 'Waterfall' which was pretty populair. I liked his designs and added him as a friend. When I had this wingman map going on with positive feedback I just contacted him again to work on it with me and since this moment we have had a incredible teamwork. I am gameplay orientated and he is art orientated so we were a great couple. We just enjoyed work on this project and respected eachother and had alot of fun." - Roald

The Gap

by @Yanzl and Sara Lukanc

"The Gap is a sci-fi thriller first person narrative exploration video game. You play as Joshua Hayes, a neuroscientist trying to figure out what happened, barely remembering anything about his past. It started as a project for our BA thesis and has now grown into a standalone game. It's also my first "real" indie game project, helping me learn a lot about Unreal Engine 4 and game development in general." - Yanzl

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive - Alexandra remake

by @Serialmapper

"My first successful map was born 10 years ago for CS1.6. It was done in just 4 days. Since then it has been ported/improved several times on CS:S then finally on CS:GO. It always had a "dust" theme. Initially i wanted to remake it with an "inferno" style but when the new dust2 came i switched the plan to use the new assets. The map was and is frequently played on public servers especially in Eastern Europe so i had plenty of feedback to improve it. For some it's just another "dust" map, but for me it's my dust2." - Serialmapper

Far Cry 5 - Wetland Turmoil

by @grapen

"I wanted to try working with location design in an (imaginary) open world game for the first time, so I made this backwater cabin neighborhood. At the time I also wanted to see what the limits were in Farcry Arcade and how far I could push it. The level has fixed spawns (a limitation of the editor), but I toyed with the idea of making it work regardless from which direction the player would have approached it. The pathing and player guidance is more or less shaped like the number eight, with the church acting as an outlook. Your task is to eliminate all the bad guys. In the end I wanted to do so much more, but couldn't due to technical limitations. All in all it was a fun experience to make it." - grapen

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive - Trailerpark

by @OrnateBaboon and @Skybex

"We wanted to make a map for CSGO, using a theme that had not been seen in any previous version of Counter-Strike.The map had to incorporate everyday plausibility, provide for enough variety so that things remained visually interesting,  but also be flexible enough to allow for the use of low geometry for easy grenade strategies. Being able to immediately recognize a theme in a map is always important, so with all this criteria in mind, A trailer park fitted the bill perfectly. There is still some way to go before a full release, but 2018 was a great year for progress on this project." - OrnateBaboon

Unreal Engine 4 scene

by @Corvus

"I was inspired by games like stalker and the last of us. The goal was to make something photoreal with a lot of foliage. It took a couple of iterations but I think I achieved the goal in the end. While making this project I've had to learn a lot about Speedtree to make all the foliage, it was a really cool experience. Right now I'm in the army so unfortunately I can't make any more scenes right now, but after I'll come back I'll try to make more scenes like that." - Corvus

Overwatch - Busan

by @Minos, @[HP], @PhilipK, @IxenonI, Phil Wang, Lucas Annunziata and others at Blizzard Entertainment

"Busan was a challenging map to make. Due to the game having 12 different heroes on screen we have a somewhat limited memory budget for maps, that includes all models, textures, effects, collision data, lighting information, etc... Fitting three radically different areas (Downtown, Sanctuary and MEKA Base) into one single map budget required us to find new ways to optimize our work. In the end, we were even squeezing kilobytes out of collision data to make it all fit, no kidding! But the result speaks for itself, the map was fun to work on and we are very proud of what we accomplished!" - Minos

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive - Highlands

by @ElectroSheep, @El Moroes and @'RZL

"We wanted to make a map in Scotland because, thanks to dishonored 2, we were browsing a lot of references froms this area and we really loved it. I also went myself here in holliday after that. We asked one of our close friends to make some special props, like the police van, the taxi, the phonebox and some others. Unfortunatly the hard development of Dishonored 2 put us in a difficult state where we weren't able to work on the map. So we lost motivation. Then RZL contacted us because he didn't want the project to die so we gave him the keys. And RZL became busy too ^^. Life sometime say NO I guess, hehe. Now Highlands Is my only advanced project I still didn't finished and I'm ready to give it a try, I hope." - ElectroSheep

"Highlands...is this map is a joke? Certainly no but we can say that the development is quite longer than what we expected. Perhaps we learn well how the famous "Valve time" works? :p No seriously I think we can explain that with the motivation. Of course we were motivated to create something cool with this map but with the time and, I think, with what we live in our life we never took the time to do it correctly...I mean we never had a constant rythm on the map. This (and other personal things) led to the current statut of the map; a still "work in progress" map started in 2014. But ElectroSheep came back and his goal is to finish it, and because he's right, I'll come back too to help him. Just, be patient (again) ;)" - El Moroes

Battlefield V - Fjell

by @Puddy, @Pampers and others at DICE

"Fjell was an explosive experiment which paired a new Battlefield dynamic, planes and infantry only, with an epic gosh darn mountain top. Tackling this design combination was like dealing with a bear after you've kicked it in the balls. It was a fun challenge and even though its extreme gameplay is quite polarizing when compared to more middle-of-the-road maps, I am happy that we went there!" - Puddy

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive - Iris

by @BubkeZ and @Oliver

"Iris was born out of a shared interest in the TV-show "Seinfeld", funnily enough. One day BubkeZ noticed I had changed my Steam profile picture to a photo of "George Costanza" and just like that the wheels were in motion! In the beginning, BubkeZ had the vision of an old city environment with lots of dirty alleyways and brick architecture. We didn't want to fall in the trap of making the map look too bleak, so we came up with the idea of making a mid-century town set in autumn. While the map certainly have visual elements from the 50's, I would say the overall theme of Iris is american auto-industry. Making the old cars was definitely my favorite part of making this map!" - Oliver

Unreal Engine 4 scene

by @Brightness

"I have always been a fan of retro and vintage, so this was like a dream to me. After watching the first season of True Detective, I immediately fell in love with the office set and the way the series was shot. I have definitely learned a lot from this project, mostly lighting techniques that can fill your scene with a story. The goal was to recreate their environment in my own style, and I'm pretty satisfied with how it turned out. I definitely wasn't expecting this much of positive feedback and I'm really thankful for this community. I want to do something with the environments, not just as a portfolio piece, but make a short film or make a small adventure game out of them." - Brightness

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive - Insertion 2

by @Oskmos

"Being the follow up to the first Insertion it will have the same overall concept with the spawning and open-world like layout. However this time it will be a more urban setting and overall higher quality art assets. I always love to make environments that feels real. And that are familiar. Its all made up. But the details and various elements in Insertion 2 is from my childhood basically. Friends that grew up in the same place I have recognizes it aswell." - Oskmos

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