[REL] DoD_Stuttgart_b2

    Hey.

    I've been starting this in February; due to some more or less deserved successes in my real life occupation as a student of laws (yuck!), I was able to work 24/7 on this project. A rough estimation should come to about 440 - 480 hours so far, which is OK I guess taking in consideration the medium dimensions of the map. Download at the end of the first posting.

    Anyway, the setting is as follows:

    - Southern Germany in early 1945. American troops press to the east crossing the Rhine. On their way there are several large cities, among them Stuttgart, home to some of the most important war related industries in Germany.


    In order to prepare for the american assault, all the bridges of the largely destroyed city get blown up, while scattered Wehrmacht and Volkssturm battalions use makeshift fortifications to set up a last line of defense...

    There are six flags - four 1-man-caps, 2 two-man-caps. The locations of these flags are balanced in a way that allows both teams to cap the map out in reasonable time, since the capture time of all those flags is relatively short.

    Side objectives are several bomb zones that will have a more or less significant influence on the environment. Blowing up a target will deliver different advantages.

    Blowing up doors will open new routes. Those routes include decent sniper or MG locations. Also, two of the doors block 2 rooms full of German and American MGs, Panzerschrecks and Submachineguns which can be used (with the limitation of each weapon only having one magazine to keep it all nice and balanced). The last target, a generator, will cause parts of the street illumination to become switched off, changing the environment and, in parts, the gameplay.

    Enough information now, here are the Screens:

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    Thanks to piu piu for the excellent overview + skybox... giving it the special touch !

    http://www.albatros44.de/stb2/dod_stuttgart_ldr_b2.zip

    By the way - this is the low-detail, no-hdr-version, I call it SAD - Server Admins Darling, and somewhat sad indeed that players are too impatient to download a 30 MB bzip2 so I had to keep it at about 23 MB in that format (26 standard-zip).

    The HDR-full-p.i.m.p.-version will be finished by april... hopefully...

    Next set of screens:

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    For those who aren't annoyed yet , four more thumbs and two additional "making-of" pics for some insight in the idea *behind* this vertical gameplay study:

    [Blocked Image: http://www.albatros44.de/stb2/stb2a10k.jpg]

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    Two Youtube Videos:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V15bCO1DHbI

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYLJUKGAR6c

    see my reply here (im too lazy to put this up here now as well and translating it...)

    the 4 extra pictures and your concepts look better but try to do the same things there as well!

    there is one thing i absolutly dont understand: why is there air attack on the city while allied soldiers attack on the ground? suicide?

    though this map isnt that cool. the graphics are all rough and blocky and unlovely made. for example this tower roof or the lighting. i remember you posting a first screenshots like a month ago but for this setting a professional artist would require at least 3 months of full time work.

    i am pretty much sure you can do better if you take more time and invest in more --> custom <-- content. for example make some need textures that look more like a german city before ww2. make the ruins more detailed. pick a lighting that fits the situation. there is a bomber attack and i dont see any light flashes at all.

    you'd handle your custom map projects better if you would start learning modeling and creating textures now.

    Looks like another map that survived another earthquake in 1942.

    +interesting

    +tall building

    +tanks and planes

    +premiere


    + crates

    -local propaganda

    -white lighting

    -no driveable tanks

    total overall score=

    6/10

    .. DODGER..

    hmm it's not a bad map at all but it could look a lot better with better lighting. The light-env is too uninteresting and some of the interior lighting needs more contrast.

    Hmm, I hate to be the guy that shits all over a map because I'm not some expert or anything, but I feel that this map is on the whole very poor.

    Allow me to explain, I've seen your previous work. One thing is for sure, you have an incredible grasp on the conceptual and the composition elements of mapping. In fact this is probably one of the best DOD:S maps released in terms of purely conceptual ambition.

    Unfortunately your brushwork is, frankly, terrible. You use basic cubes with textures and clashing selection therein, some of the most simplistic brushwork I've seen in a passable map... and honestly I think you've spent way too much time trying to make something epic and on a large scale and not enough trying to make something realistic and impressive. Which is a shame, because you clearly have the technical knowledge.

    Basically my advise mapper to mapper is to sit down and work on a small scale, try and polish up one scene and get expertise doing that. Understand how to make impressive brushwork (study some of Valve's maps) and then just go back and revisit these monsters with the lessons learned. Because I think at this rate you're just picking up bad habits and throwing them into an enormous map

    I hope you understand, it would be a waste to continue in your current style.

    Quote from FMPONE

    (study some of Valve's maps) .

    Agreed. I have learned alot from the open source maps, and then I really mean ALOT of new information.

    There's a lot to like in the map and it's quite unique, unlike anything I've seen come out of the dod:s custom maps, but it does appear to be pretty rough around the edges. If you could implement some of the suggestions above, especially in regards to the lighting/brushwork you could pull a lot more out of the map.

    A few critiques, the arches in the warehouse screen could be a lot smoother, seems you only used about 6 brushes for each arch. Also, some of the buildings simply don't have the same structure as others. Maybe try and keep a consistent level of polish on all of them, otherwise they just appear awkward when placed next to one another. An example, the destroyed building in the third screen at the top of the thread, you basically just have a triangle to indicate a destroyed surface. Doesn't have quite the same amount of time put into it compared with the surrounding buildings.

    Also, try to disable shadows on certain props. A lot of the time they, like the corner stone prop, tend to fit a lot better without the shadow casting.

    Quote from Erratic

    A few critiques, the arches in the warehouse screen could be a lot smoother, seems you only used about 6 brushes for each arch.

    That scene puzzles me - it looks like a warehouse but there are umbrellas standing on carpets and a sign of a "Café" in the background.

    Did the people in Stuttgart move their cafés into warehouses during the war due to too many bombs raining down outside?

    Looks like a big level and lots of work, but it overall looks a bit rough - I agree with the others. The "Peek & Cloppenburg" sign made me chuckle though..

    It looks interesting, but the lighting & texturing in places makes it look really flat and disjointed. I don't much care for the sky, either. The sky is blue, orange, grey and has sunshine poking through, but the environment doesn't seem to match it at all. It doesn't feel like there's much of a coherent colour theme. Look at Erratic's DoD map and you'll see what I mean -- it has a strong and immediately arresting look to it whereas, with yours, I'm still trying to work out what time of day it is, whether it's warm/cool etc.

    I agree with what FMPONE said. Start small and build up a coherent theme in a smallish area of the map. Once you've got the feel & look just right, then work your way through the map. Right now it's all a bit scattergun and feels a bit random.

    I'd have to say it would be extremely cool as a HL1 map. However it doesn't quite give justice to the Source engine as it is today.

    I can't dismiss the map altogether at all either. You've managed to make me feel "wow this is cool" and "bleh that could be so much better" at the same time, something no other dods map has ever done.

    Hey guys!

    Thanks for the replies so far, I'll start answering the rest tomorrow.

    Quote from hessi

    there is one thing i absolutly dont understand: why is there air attack on the city while allied soldiers attack on the ground? suicide?

    Yeah, well - got me there. Actually I wonder why there is the same scenario at the Valve-map Argentan, though there it's merely a flyby. In fact, there have been airstrikes in dod_ramelle and some other older DoD maps, too, and I really did miss that feature, so I felt I should take the liberty and put it back in.

    Quote

    though this map isnt that cool. the graphics are all rough and blocky and unlovely made. for example this tower roof or the lighting. i remember you posting a first screenshots like a month ago but for this setting a professional artist would require at least 3 months of full time work.

    You once mentioned a large scale map should take about 600-700 hours of work, if I'm right. In fact, adding the texture and overlay work, I should come to 550 hours for a rather small map - three months are pretty relative, and as a matter of fact I've had six weeks of intense action here, speaking of 12 to 15 hours a day.

    I'm not a professional artist, though I could certainly spend even more time with a clean consciousness if I was one .

    Quote

    i am pretty much sure you can do better if you take more time and invest in more --> custom <-- content. for example make some need textures that look more like a german city before ww2.

    Thanks! I mentioned it above - I'd really love to put in more custom stuff, but this SAD-version will have to stay at it's 27 Megs to make sure it's getting played sufficiantly.

    I'll probably go for the 50+x MB limit in the HDR version.

    Quote

    make the ruins more detailed. pick a lighting that fits the situation. there is a bomber attack and i dont see any light flashes at all.

    True - those flashes will certainly be added .

    Quote

    you'd handle your custom map projects better if you would start learning modeling and creating textures now.

    Well, it's not that I'm not able to create own stuff, it's my desire to keep the mapsize reasonable (at least for this map).

    I know there are people who need more than 100 MB to create something that looks decent, but I really doubt that players will accept a trippled filesize for optical polishing.

    I'm anxious to see whether the light or full-detail version will perform better playerswise.

    Anyways, you're right in most points there - even more valuable to me, since this is input from a "pro". Cheers mate.

    Dodger:

    Not sure whether you've played DoD before or know what it is, but there are no driveable tanks in it, neither jeeps nor planes, usually not even useable artillery and such. It's a shame, but DoD is limited to infantry combat :/.

    Concerning the propaganda: what exactly is bad about it? Not enough of it? Too much of it? Or the quality of the overlay textures? I guess from the historical aspect it's on the whole adequate.

    The lighting is everything but white - the brightness of the light_env is at 131 148 137, a greyish-green note, with the ambience at 70 105 113 shows a darker, blue-green-greyish tone.

    @ FMPONE:

    Hey ,

    thanks for the tips so far, very appreciated.

    Concerning the Valve maps - I did look at them, and I actually didn't find them to be realistic, nor impressive. I rather found them to be a bit boring and blant, a problem that is highly critical for many DOD:S players. I would even go so far to say that it's the main issue discussed among the majority of the players. What's making it worse is the really huge filesize of those maps; I do wonder where the extra mbytes have been stuffed into them. If you substract the prop_static overflow, there's not much left to work with, architecture-wise, not to mention the sometimes extremely simple brushwork.

    My brushwork can be improved, though, that's true, but it beats the examples of, say, dod_flash or dod_anzio by lengths; in fact, it's a way harder job to do a inner-city map using real examples of buildings (which most of those in my map are) than making just another village on the french countryside .

    Did you donwload the .bsp and take a close look at the brushwork? I'd really appreciate it if you had the time .

    On the whole I have the feeling that you're right, though it's probably hard for me to see it with your eyes, if you know what I mean. That's the problem with a subjective view, which I have...

    Erratic:

    Quote

    There's a lot to like in the map and it's quite unique, unlike anything I've seen come out of the dod:s custom maps, but it does appear to be pretty rough around the edges. If you could implement some of the suggestions above, especially in regards to the lighting/brushwork you could pull a lot more out of the map.

    Thanks, I will - I'm glad to get some high-level feedback, so I'd have to be stupid if I was going to ignore it .

    Quote

    few critiques, the arches in the warehouse screen could be a lot smoother, seems you only used about 6 brushes for each arch. Also, some of the buildings simply don't have the same structure as others. Maybe try and keep a consistent level of polish on all of them, otherwise they just appear awkward when placed next to one another. An example, the destroyed building in the third screen at the top of the thread, you basically just have a triangle to indicate a destroyed surface. Doesn't have quite the same amount of time put into it compared with the surrounding buildings.

    Funny thing now that you mention it. They were (or are, the building still stands) exactly shaped like that. Concerning the structure of the buildings - I get your point, but it's not any kind of lazyness on my side that some buildings look worse than others, it's the fact that I'm working on the basis of pictures. It really looked like that - awkward.

    The solution I could come up with would be to improvise on these buildings, setting up some more diversified architecture on place of the simple half-timbered buildings; this would mean reducing the historical point of view, but then again I feel it could look dimensions better.

    Quote

    Also, try to disable shadows on certain props. A lot of the time they, like the corner stone prop, tend to fit a lot better without the shadow casting.

    Good point, willdo.

    Quote

    That scene puzzles me - it looks like a warehouse but there are umbrellas standing on carpets and a sign of a "Café" in the background. Did the people in Stuttgart move their cafés into warehouses during the war due to too many bombs raining down outside?

    Looks like a big level and lots of work, but it overall looks a bit rough - I agree with the others. The "Peek & Cloppenburg" sign made me chuckle though..

    @ FrieChamp:

    Those umbrellas still are there today. The cause is the glass roof which can't be darkened and therefore guests at the café get a little irritated sometimes by sheer floods of sunlight hitting their eyes .

    The hall burned out though in WW2 and was rebuilt with a rather different inner architecture, but the café still exists. Inside of it, that is .

    @ Defrag:

    The effect of the sky is indeed intended.

    It's a daytime scenario with a heavy storm coming up - except from the orange part, which resembles a burning skyline to the east of the city, the sky is taken from a real picture of just such a setting. I'll probably have to change the lighting in order to fit the sky.

    @ Furyo:

    Gracias .

    Well yeah, I really wonder whether it's a good idea to use the source engine for such a scenario. As I said - it's not a problem of missing technique or sheer lazyness , but rather the fact that high numbers of custom content and models in a inner-city layout of that kind will lead to either skyrocketing filesize or crumbling fps. Maybe I should settle for another engine some day...

    First of all, I'll finish that HDR-version I've mentioned. I'm really looking forward to what you folks will think about it - maybe the additional custom content and sourcifying will eliminate a part of the "roughness"?

    Thanks again to everybody,

    Albatros

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