jackophant

Life's been busy and it took 6 months to get an internet connection after moving, but Stupa is still limping along:
de_stupa_e5

Life's been busy and it took 6 months to get an internet connection after moving, but Stupa is still limping along:
de_stupa_e5

Quick Update
Got busy with some art test stuff, but hopefully should see a release within the next week or two. Thanks again for the support guys. In the meantime I took a little gif of the 3d skybox timelapse.

 
Here is a mp4 version with a higher framerate.

Don't forget to try and incorporate balance into the map. If one bombsite is particularly open maybe make the other bombsite more enclosed to give variety to the gameplay. Again, balance long sight lines with short ones so sniping and shotguns both have their chance.
Also balance height: One flat level isn't fun and on a 2D surface it's harder to make gameplay more interesting. Experiment with increasing or decreasing the elevation of certain areas and then converting the floor to ramps to meet them but being careful of how steep these ramps are. I think a good measure is for every 2-4 units forward, go up 1 unit.
Other things include making sure you're always "moving forward" toward an objective, you don't want to be taking turns over 90 degrees that make you feel like you're walking back on yourself.
This is from the perspective of counter strike mapping, but I would hope this generally covers other games.

Start with an idea, draw it on paper (if you want to) make it, delete it, start again, revise it, delete it, start again, starting to get somewhere now, revise it, hmm, feeling better, revise it, nice. Then, play session, man this sucks, start again, The point I'm trying to make is, if it's a new game your in for a world of pain, and if it's a well understood game that your modding for, it's not easy either, because you'll have to go through many of the struggles the devs did because you don't have the info they learned. Making good maps is hard and takes a lot of commitment and failed attempts before you get it right. Spending the time to really understand the game your making a map for is essential, and a lot easier to do once a game is out and your making maps for it, than when it's in development and changing all the time,
The most important map I made was for a competitive tournament for cs 1.6, changed completely How I approached level design, it sure helped that I was a serious player at the time so I understood the game. But, I made LOTS of crappy maps and cool looking maps before that, so I got the visuals and technical part down, then it was about the gameplay. You really don't have to do things in the order that many schools teach you, drawing > layout > art, the point is there is a ton of things to learn and you'll need to be good at them all, so just have fun and do what feels right at the time. 

Brest is best

A choo choo
Blender; Substance D5 + Painter; composited in photoshop + retouched. And ofc, sketchfab
(I know I've been posting a lot in this thread but I wanted to share this one really bad!)
*EDITS*
Staff Picked on Sketchfab
Featured on Blender Nation

Brest is best

Brest is best

Brest is best

Brest is best

Brest is best

Team
Vaya
Terri
Lizard
Initial Layout design
when I started thinking about potential layouts I had a couple of visions in mind- having played sniper elite v2 a couple of months ago I really liked the idea of longer ranged combat over courtyards and town centres. This was the point it was decided the map would take place in some sort of township
We decided to use  terri's csgo map's layout as an initial template as this was a similar french-town theme and I could envision a number of the areas rebuilt to fit DOI's gameplay. Obviously the map was far too small for DOI so I rescaled the whole map by 4X. This formed a decent, if slightly janky, framework to start implementing paths and gameplay areas on- the structure is there but we need to make it work for DOI
Theme
From wikipedia:
In the Second World War, the Germans maintained a large U-boat submarine base at Brest. In 1944, after the Allied invasion of Normandy, the city was almost totally destroyed during the Battle for Brest, with only a tiny number of buildings left standing. After the war, the West German government paid several billion Deutschmarks in reparations to the homeless and destitute civilians of Brest in compensation for the destruction of their city. Large parts of today's rebuilt city consist of utilitarian granite and concrete buildings. The French naval base now houses the Brest Naval Training Centre. A wartime German navy memorandum suggested that the town should perhaps serve as a German enclave after the war.
 
I saw quite a lot of potential in this City as it gave a lot of location options:-
A port A Uboat command centre There's a river snaking throughout the city destroyed buildings (we can tweak depending on the time during the siege we've chosen) Germans were well entrenched in Brest before the invasion so we can show this. We currently plan to have each capture point/spawn in a thematically unique area. Unlike maps currently in the game the CPs will all offer logical story-driven advantages to hold - IE the cities port or the main bridge over the river
 
The name of the map is still up for debate. phonetically the name of the city sounds a little too close to 'breast'...
Current progress
- Terri rapidly building a library of awesome themed props for detailing out the areas. Each area will contain unique 'hero props' (see making of agency article) to help orientate players.
- I've completed overall connector/pathing design with some super ugly detailing. (once I've completed the next compile this will be added on this thread)
- Lizard is using the VMF template to start an art pass. This stuff is looking amazing.
 
Next steps
- confirm timings of CP points are fair for both teams and other team cannot 'interrupt' initial capture.
- playtest, playtest, playtest
- implement some of lizard's artpass with terri's props.
 


 
 
 
 

STATUS ALERT
We had a 5on5 competitive test earlier tonight and it went well I'd say. There'll always be minor things that need tweaking but the overall structure is "there" now. Friggin' finally I say. I had a look back at some of the older versions and man, oh man, is some stuff embarrassing. To begin with, we've playtested 25 versions. 25. Jesus christ. And some of my earlier design choices make me cringe now. I think a big part of the problem was that I was trying to balance new stuff with the agency legacy, wanting to stay true to the original map etc. When I abandoned that and just said fuck it, it's a new map, things went a lot smoother.
In the name of science, here's a side-by-side overview shot of the first playable version (December 2014) and the current version (September 2016).

I5-6600k @4.3GHz, an asus z170i motherboard, an r9 fury from Sapphire, 16GB of ram. The CPU is air cooled by a noctua medium sized cooler (I'd have to look through boxes to remember what it is though  ).
Issue with mini itx cases is the choice of cpu. Haven't found a mobo with support for better than a quad-core (i5-6600k or i7-6700k were my choices) in mini itx. There are some for mATX though, but it's a bit bigger.
A 530W PSU, which is a bit borderline, I'll probably buy a new gpu when Vega line up comes up to have something less power hungry to have more headroom for the cpu overclock (to 4.4- 4.5GHz).
And it's a fractal design core 500 case. Not the tiniest case ever, but you have the place for 3 drives, dust filters included, full size gpu support, an aio liquid cooler with a 240mm rad etc. The full package, overall a good case!

I just saw someone actually get a basket in the waiting room. I never thought I'd see the day

Fed up of being depressed and fucked off so went and did something that I've always wanted. Bought my dream car.

It's been nice to have a quick read and catch up here, it's been a while guys 
When I'm back properly I think I'll do a teeny update as I've been quite busy, but the real limiting factor is that I'm now into my 24th week of having no internet! 
 
Go find some fucking hipsters, I'm sure Edinburgh's full of the fuckers  <3 

It's been nice to have a quick read and catch up here, it's been a while guys 
When I'm back properly I think I'll do a teeny update as I've been quite busy, but the real limiting factor is that I'm now into my 24th week of having no internet! 
 
Go find some fucking hipsters, I'm sure Edinburgh's full of the fuckers  <3 

It's been nice to have a quick read and catch up here, it's been a while guys 
When I'm back properly I think I'll do a teeny update as I've been quite busy, but the real limiting factor is that I'm now into my 24th week of having no internet! 
 
Go find some fucking hipsters, I'm sure Edinburgh's full of the fuckers  <3 

Just finished my holiday movie ^^ was a ton of work but worth every second ...
 

Got a job on Friday at another city near me, and I married the love of my life on Saturday. All in all, a good weekend.

I'm officially a UK resident now, got back today the papers from my application.