Day of Infamy - Schlag

Hey guys, I recently got permission from @cashed to remake his DoD: Source map "Schlag" for Day of Infamy. I thought I'd make a thread to track the progress of the map.

Certain parts of the original map are inspired by Carentan (atleast I think they are). You can find the original map here: http://gamebanana.com/maps/129734

Not much is done so far, but I've got what I think is a decent adaptation of the layout for Day of Infamy's gameplay (a starting point at least). Right now I'm focusing on opening things up, based on the type of gameplay you tend to get in a standard Day of Infamy map. The main game-mode I'm focusing on is Liberation. I do plan to support Co-op and Frontline as well.

Design-wise I'm going for something similar to the map "Crete" with 3 control points around 150ish meters away. I like the idea of all cap points being roughly in the middle of the map so nothing is given for "free" and everything can be contested.

The biggest thing that worries me about the layout in Day of Infamy are the air/arty strikes from officers. I think one solution might be to make more houses able to be entered, but this will probably have to be playtested.

Of course I still haven't placed cover on any of the cap points or in between the points, but you gotta start somewhere

Screens below:

https://imgur.com/a/r5XNl#3P3TVRb

It's very large and barren at the moment, but I'm trying to keep it that way so I can be more deliberate with the cover placement/sightlines etc.

Some progress screenshots:

[Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/BeTfZho.jpg]

Redesign of the top graveyard site.

[Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/v2jFCIE.jpg]

I've made sidewalks and roads much larger.

[Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/GWa9rTL.jpg]

More big roads

[Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/rDjplCC.jpg]

Redesign of the bottom farm site

[Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/oaJUgKy.jpg]

Redesign of the middle site.

[Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/VGAUeI7.jpg]

These are the interiors of the buildings in the middle square, they're all connected right now.

Most prop cover is placeholder, like the endless clones of the same tiger tank

The hardest part was making all of the roads bigger, because it caused me to have to rebuild large portions of the map due to the large sight-line changes - but now that it's done, things should move much quicker.

Quote from Vulgarman

On 3/29/2017 at 3:00 AM, Vulgarman said: Great moving with placeholders, do you have planned VVis/areaportals/optimization for the level at all at the moment?

how polished do you intend to make the final version?

I'll polish the level as much as I can, hopefully it resembles something that would fit into the current map rotation.

Hello again! It's been a while, but Schlag is not dead! I've been working on and off on the map alongside some other projects (and playing too much WoW), but I'd be lying if I said I didn't hit a wall.

That wall was the foliage I needed to create for the level, as there wasn't much information on sprite foliage creation that I could find. NWI recently released a brand new foliage system, probably the best the source engine has ever seen. This gave me no more excuses to put off trying to figure out how to create grass properly. It's been a struggle, but I finally got a version of it that I'm starting to feel okay about. I thought I would document some of my attempts here.

Here's what the first iteration looked like. Pretty enough at a distance, but really ugly to look at up close.

[Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/qNH6aeR.jpg]

I was really unsure of any best practices when it came to this stuff, I started to explore other games and found that their shapes were pretty simple and almost stylized (even games going for a more realistic look). So I attempted to create something along those lines and ended up with something okay-ish at a distance but really unnatural up close. Basically the same problem as before, just for a different reason. The games I took inspiration from clearly had better shading and better artists to stylize the foliage properly in order to achieve a consistent look.

I revisited the original scan version, and tried out some new techniques in photoshop and ended up with my current version:

[Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/Z76InY5.jpg]

I've still got some work to do, but the main aliasing issue is gone and I feel much more confident going forward.

(also, not sure why gfycat gifs get formatted so weirdly sometimes, hopefully it isn't stretched out on your end.)