Marino (Offensive)

So here is the dev blog for my entry!

For this contest I have spent the past few days playing the game constantly (managed 24 hour playtime) as well as researching into the second world war, in the end I have eventually managed to settle on a smaller battle on the Italian campaign: The battle of San Marino. I've had to make a bit of a stretch on the battle to fit the map idea, as the country has a collection of fortresses that are a great fit for this game.

The gamemode will focus on the assault mode, the Commonwealth/ US forces will start in the town and work their way up to the final point, which will be the fortress itself while the German forces work hard to defend the location.

My intention with the layout will be to switch the combat style based on which point the players are at, starting out with close to mid range combat in the town, open area combat as they work their way up to the mid point, and then a mix of both as the players fight inside and around the fortress.

So far I have made some progress, several false starts and a few concept tests. And the result of all of that has got me with the bare design of the fortress and some of the area surrounding it. Need to do more with props, cover and terrain.

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Also, some reference images I am working with.

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Also using some 360 images, but the links on those are ridiculous

And of course, I've taken some liberties on the layout of the areas the map is being built off of.

Not much to show currently, but I'm working on it!

Update #1

Well, it's already one week into the contest, and things are properly underway for me, Although I seemed to have had a bit of a false start on the exterior of the fortress.

But what's been done?

First up, the building inside the fortress walls now has a path on the interior, it has a ramp going downwards to a underground section of the map. I've been building the doorways with the arch props in mind, been quite handy for getting map proportions done correctly.

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In addition to this, I wanted the underground path to have a ladder going directly downwards, but the game lacks ladder props at the moment, so I decided to take a different route and create a spiral staircase further down, the entire underground has essentially been designed to give a lot of tight fights, a risky area but a good shotgun, machine gun or flamer can clear the path where they would be useless trying to run up to the fortress above ground.

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Outside entrance to this underground to get into the fortress

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Finally I did not like the state of the outside, so I've been changing things up, first up I've messed with the terrain more, placing steep slopes around the fort walls, as well as a ramp leading up to get access to the fort walls from the outside (the tower on the fort walls has open windows to guard that area), so the attackers have three entry points to get into the fortress, all of which have a specific class needed to defend them. I'm not making more entry points as at most, I think that three entry points are enough for a single area.

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So current design idea.

• Underground path - great for flamers, machine gunners, shotgunners and smg users. Poor for snipers, riflemen and captains
• Outside paths - Fair for all soldier types but best with snipers, riflemen and captains (for artillery.)

Quote from LizardPL

8 hours ago, LizardPL said: Did your map randomly went fullbright? Had the same issue today lol.

Nope, I've just disabled lighting in the compile settings for sake of a quick test.

Update #2

Missed yesterday because a family member is moving away from home, so I was helping with that. Mainly giving up the majority of my workspace to let them store their stuff in preparation for the move and moving said items around for them. Anyway, onto the update!

I have made some progress since then, mainly with the outside. I spent a lot of my time staring at the exterior thinking 'how can I even get this to work' as I was struggling with terrain, cover and where to place the main point.

In the end I decided to use the exterior wall concept from earlier and had it cover the area surrounding the fortress. Helping to split up the playable area and also making sure that players cannot snipe from the fortress towers when players are dealing with the mid point.

Here is a image of the wall

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Couple things to notice is there are two ways in currently the one on the left is the mid capture point, being the exterior wall checkpoint. This has two towers with interiors, a tunnel and the small depot just inside (needs more props to look like one) the capture area will likely be on the enemy side with the sandbags and raised platform being the boundaries for the capture zone. Will also need to add some trees to the open area to make things a bit more convincing. (and also adding some stairs to get on the wall as currently you'd need to run all the way around from the fotress and that is simply not going to happen with players.

Image!

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To the right you will see that tank, it has had a bad trip after breaking down some of the wall, but it's opened a new path for the assault into the fortress, after a brief run across open terrain, the attackers will land nicely in a trench that runs across the field, and even has a house there providing extra cover. Half-way into the trench is a breakoff point to that building, so players can be more mobile around the trenches, jumping in and running out between fights quickly.

Must add trees across that stretch of open land, give attacks some protections at least.

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Up next are some changes in the fortress itself, I still need to open up some areas and work on them, but my main target is a piece of redundant terrain in the fortress.

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Currently, this is useless, no cover, it's not part of the cap zone and it goes nowhere. I currently have one idea and that is to make a path that connects this spot to the upper section of the fortress, so it would serve as a additional path from defender spawn into the action.

Back to work!

Update #3

First up, I lived up to my plans in my last update to fix some problems in the map, mainly that one piece of redundant space in the fortress from the final german spawn. There is now a path that leads down from the spawn.

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This path is only really useful for the final point, if you need to move to the mid point quickly, better to go and take the regular path.

In other news, the exterior fortress wall has had some adjustments. In the end with the addition of the trenches and the location of the second point, a lot of it was useless and made a long route to a different section of the second point that would never be used, so I've made some changes, mainly that I've cut off the majority of the exterior fence from being accessible. I removed the wood planks used to cross the hole and the connector at the fortress was also removed so it only made a ramp from the ground into the fort. In order to make the roof of the second point still usable however, I placed a quick bridge to cross the gap. I decided to still keep that piece of the wall as it worked as a fairly good wall for the map boundaries, it's either that or a cliff face after all.

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In addition to working on the second point, I have made more changes to it. Mainly bringing the depot part to life. I have added some props, changed the textures and made some more changes to the layout, while there is also now the bridge to connect to the wall, there is also a ramp to get to the elevated land.

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Movement around this area will be much stronger now for players that want to relocate on defence, or move up to the fortress on attack. Will need some playtesting to see how well this works.

Moving onto the new section of the map that I've recently started on. The path leading up to the mid point!

I want a lot of this map to have a uphill climb, as you work your way up into the fortress, so with this there is another hill to climb up, steeper than the last. But the attackers have old tanks, a trench and a farmhouse for cover to help them advance, along with the foliage. They will still need to go up against a hail of gunfire from the depot's fortifications however. But they can use two entry points to give the enemy a good fight. Meaning that the defenders will need to defend two chokepoints in this case which are spread far apart on this line. Each of those will suit a specific soldier type, as the regular entrance will favour close quarter weaponry and the open entrance will favour long range weapons.

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The farmhouse will also work as a forward spawn for both teams, during the start, this spawn will be held by the defenders until the first point is captured and once the mid point is captured, this will be the forward spawn for the attackers.

Spent the past few days on the starting point of the map and now..

It needs nothing short of a complete restart. First point sucks, badly.

Fortunately the bit I'm trashing is what I never came around to showing in the end (a town just outside the fortress area), everything else shown on the thread is still there as it still works in practice so far, will be looking to make some changes there still as there are things I would like to change.

Update #4

I finally got round to getting an update out, I ditched one third of the map's layout (fortunately it's nothing I had revealed) and rebuilt it from the ground up due to layout troubles. And I am very happy with the improved version, although I can still see things I can enhance.

So here is the overview of the entire map ingame.

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Or better shown in this image I made instead.

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Moving onto the new area, the starting area on the map is the town just outside of the fortress area, attackers will need to capture the town square in this area to move on upwards. This area is mainly focused on more close quarters fights, using the streets, side walkways and some building interiors to make their way to securing the town square.

The defenders start out in a building that is just out the outskirts of the town and they have two paths (potentially a third soon) to get into the main combat area, the first they have is the regular road, which ramps downwards into the town square, or they could take a faster, one way path through the building next to the spawn, defenders need to drop down multiple floors using holes that have been opened, reaching the very bottom and then cutting through a store on the road corner, which is also a great place to catch out any attackers taking the interior path at their spawn.

I want to spend a bit more time to get timings down so players can engage in a more fair fight.

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Attackers have multiple ways to reach the town square as well, from the start they have two options, take the building or take the street. Taking the building will give players a straight shot and helps to skip a lot of the road outside but there is only one way out on this path and it is directly opposite an enemy path as well, which will likely cause a shootout very quickly, this path is the fast, but dangerous. The second path at the start immediately branches into two more, they can take the road which will lead the players to the same area as the building path did, but provide better protection and a path to a second building which goes directly to the capture zone. The second path is even further out of the way of initial combat as you take an alley way, after a brief sprint up this path the attackers have a left turn which will lead into a section attached to the capture point, providing good cover for an attack, however the defenders will also be able to meet the attackers at this location as it connects to the longer route the defenders can take, but there is a jeep to provide cover for a quick escape.

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(got a doorframe there for an interior I have yet to get done)

The main capture zone itself is on a elevated platform right next to the road, I need to add cover, obstructions and something to serve as a landmark so players will naturally move towards it in the heat of battle. As right now there is not much to show, just a tank sitting about on the road by itself

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Outside of the new area, I have made one light change to the fortress capture zone, the tower has moved to make the fortress courtyard tighter to fight within. the capture zone for the fortress will involve the main tower and the area behind the inner wall, what you see under this text is the capture zone.

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Here is the courtyard now as well, which is also more faithful to the original reference image used.

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That's it for the update, cheers for reading!

While I continue to work on the map, you can check out a spare image that I don't really have anything to say about, but may just be nice to check out.

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Massive update.

There's a windmill now, with spinning blades

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It's also great for players on the attacking road coming up from the road, they can come into the windmill and take a opening on the back of the windmill to get to the trench.

Update #5

Mostly based around the first point, in the previous update I have shown the layout basis for the first point, although I was unable to show anything for the capture zone as it was not developed yet. That has changed now with some latest additions to the first point.

Adding context to the first point was quite quick for me, we're in the town so it's not going to be very militarised, so I figured it could be a market of sorts, and give it some more purpose by adding a airdropped explosive cache there too.

The area now has a ramp leading up with the rest of the open area covered with sandbags, those will still won't be enough as there are multiple other spots where you are exposed, limiting the camping spots but keeping people moving about.

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I also got one of the buildings opened up to serve as a defence or ambush point, there are two ways in, the regular door that is on the far right path, or a hole in the building that connects to the capture zone, the building is a mix of cramped and open depending on the path. And holding the building will be handy, as it gives access to a set of windows facing directly into the capture zone, allowing for a strong defence. Although it can be easily hit with grenades from inside and out.

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Also got to use displacements to create the hole, which was strangely fun, would like to do that a bit more.

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In other news, the storefront path that defenders can take has had a slight adjustment, the store that players need to cut through was mirror flipped horizontally and boarded up the left side windows, meaning that players cannot sit too far inside of the building and shoot from, instead getting them to take more risks by getting closer to the doors and closer to enemies. It has also been helpful for sightlines.

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Now to work even more on this area before getting the offensive gamemode properly functional and running with bots.

Sitting about on twitter and suddenly saw that the country the map is based in was trending for the first time since, forever.

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Anyway, map is hitting a snag, getting the gamemode for offensive to work has been next to impossible. The example files are total bork and don't even work themselves. Will have to see if anyone can save my arse before I rip it off in a rage.

No need to worry, got it working after I realised my major fuck up.

Some fresh shots.

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I've done some more layout changes, focused around the middle point and it's connectors, I never started detail on it due to how much I disliked it. Which came in handy for me!

First off I flipped which side the fortress is on in the map, which has changed the view for most of the map and has made the main entrance to the fortress closer to the middle connectors instead of the secondary access point, this should make the fight more focused around the fortifications.

This is my favourite view of the fort, can be found on the run up to the first point

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Need to adjust the design of the fortress area to prevent people from making the fortress a sniper spot for the first point, won't be too hard. Will only need to block access or prevent players from being able to abuse the fortress early.

With the mid point being far from acceptable for me, I trashed it and rebuilt it from scratch, taking into consideration the failures of the previous version and the changes to the map that have happened since then.

Here are the failures in the previous design which I've identified.

• Incredibly flat terrain - making it extremely unfair for attackers that area approaching, the lack of uneven terrain and cover made it too easy for defenders to shoot down the attackers and dominate the match
• Design favoured the secondary entry point - The main entry point is the road into the fortress, which includes two fortifications to guard the access point, however due to the position of it on the map, it was too far away for players to reasonably use as the secondary entrance was closer and easier to push through due to the lack of places for the enemy to fortify
• Redundant space - there was no reason at all to run through the main road, the stairs through the tower were more efficient and provided better protection.

So, what's been done?

First, the terrain has been changed significantly, adding a lot of vertical elements, starting off with the fort entrance being placed up on a elevated platform, but to help combat this the attacker side also has a lot of vertical elements with multiple levels of height to work with.

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If the attackers take the tower entrance then they are given two platforms to go to and you can drop down to each platform when needed.

the Secondary entrance is now gone for the time being and I will likely work on a secondary entrance, but make it much harder to use and more out of the way to serve as a flanking position.

There is also far less redundant space but still too much, I will work to resolve this problem through the second entry point when I create that again, but I will also add some buildings and other obstructions to provide more cover, which should also make the road path much more practical.