Daigo (contest version)

[JorisCeoen]

This thread has officially moved to 3D section, the new link can be found here: 

You can find a history of the comments and developments of the V2_1 beta below. All new feedback should be posted in the new thread 

Edited September 30, 2022 by JorisCeoen
2022 release update

[gordonfeetman]

Jesus Christ this looks sick man, keep the pace up

[Vanx]

extremly stylish

[shawnolson]

It would be remiss to leave out the level editor you are using...!!!

[Serialmapper]

@JorisCeoen

You are quite experienced with this kind of japanese medieval themes.

https://gamebanana.com/wips/47319

https://gamebanana.com/maps/177542

[Serialmapper]

try here 

 

[ynel]

Oh man. We picked the same theme. But you look much better at this point! But good luck, your map looks very promising!

[JorisCeoen]

Historical comments:

28/09/2019

Spoiler

Once more have I made some progress on this map. It's now been a while in beta-state, but will stay so even after the last updates. Daigo is not entirely what I've wanted it to be, and misses a lot of polish and atmosphere that I wish I was able to include in its current state. Since I feel that is not possible I've decided to redesign a large portion of the map. This includes all of the roofing, ground textures, trees and much of the woodwork. The fish, newest basewall rocks and cornerstones are there to stay, but everything else will undergo a completely new design. I will also incorporate more color to the map to make it more alive and thematic. Needless to say, this will take a lot of time, and Daigo might not get an update within the next month or two.

The redesign should also be beneficial for the performance on the map, which I was made aware is currently terrible. I've learned so much over the past month that a lot of the stuff I had made months before, now don't make sense to me anymore. So I'd rather take this drastic decision now, and complete Daigo in a way that works for everyone, including me .

To not end it all so dramatically, I'd love to share some screenshots of how the map looks now, if you hadn't ever seen it yet. Below are some last screenshots of Daigo as it stands now. Download link: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1881843696

 

I'd like to make a special mention regarding the programs I've been using to design all of the layout and artwork, which are the Wall Worm tools for 3DS Max!

 

02/02/2020

Spoiler

WORKSHOP LINK: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1881843696

I present to you: de_daigo (beta-release) by @JorisCeoen (level design, artwork) and @shawnolson (technical assistance and Wall Worm Model Tools)

Daigo is a competitive 5v5 defusal map, set in Japan featuring a large castle. It is geared towards all kinds of playstyles (short and longrange) and features some verticality on A-Site.

The map is in dire need of multiple new passes, such as overall optimization, clipping, lighting and material-model management, and improved artwork. I'm aware that there will be numerous nodraw gaps throughout the map (and dev-textures), and that there's currently no 3D skybox to give more depth to the map.

The development and design of the layout and artwork is entirely made by me. All technical assistance with the creation of custom content and level design tools was managed and coached by Shawn Olson, creator of the Wall Worm Model Tools. This mean that the entire map was designed from scratch in 3DS Max. Hammer was never, ever used to create anything related to the art- or brushwork. It's all still a heavy-WIP, but the map will be improved over time, with more custom content (that will be better managed versus the mb's in filesize).

Hope you enjoy the project for how it currently stands. Without Shawn, this project would never have come to its current status, which is least to say fully functional and playable. We will update this post in the future as more progress is being made 

28/02/2020

Spoiler

So, I've decided to tackle this project once more, due to a particular request. I've thus finished an important asset that I have created both as part of the project, but also as an exercise to learn procedural design for both modeling and texturing (to ensure that I can change anything and any part of both the models and textures visually, at any time going backwards or forward, and without destroying the creative hierarchy of the asset). Not only was this an eye-opener because it allows for endless possibilities, but it also allows you to have the precise mathematical information for depth, normal mapping, phongmasking and more importantly -regarding this case- blendmodulate textures.

Below is an example of the new basewall rock texture, and its blendmodulate texture that was created based off the Render-to-Texture procedurally generated model:

Spoiler

It's hard to explain just how much procedural design changes the way you look at creating pretty much anything, but it makes so much more sense to the point that I don't see myself going back to photoshop or GIMP at almost any step in the creative process any longer. Creating textures from reference images is nice, and you can achieve some nice results, but if you want the power to do just anything you want with no artificially generated information, procedural design is the way to go. Substance Designer and B2M are really great, and you can do awsome stuff with it, but deriving textures from actual geometry that can also procedurally change is one step further that's nothing short of being amazingly perfect.

I also want to stress how much more detail there is to this procedural texture, which is only 1024x1024, compared to the one there is in the current version of Daigo, which is a whopping 2048x2048 and physically generated off a reference image. It's just ridicilous.

The goal with the blendmodulate texture is to allow for a wide variety of blending between the plaster walls and the stone, while also having other blend possibilities between this 'blendline'. This removes the need for a wall made out of a tesselated model, breaks the repetitive pattern of the texture, is cheap, and also saves up huge amounts of mb's in filesize while also being less straining on the eyes. Not to mention, since they are displacements, I can easily change the shape in a fine way to make it look a little more natural as opposed to completely 'flat'.

Once the whole project is over I'd love to go more in-depth in the whole process of achieving all of this entirely in 3DS Max and export it easily with Wall Worm, but for now I'll continue fixing the remaining things in the map and hopefully get a new playable testversion sometime around the 8-10th of May.

02/05/2020

Spoiler

Here's a follow-up on the basewall, and some additional corners. Most of the walls are now done. Some of the old ones will remain for now in the next playtest version, as I'm now advancing in my planning and working on the dragon and fishmodels, that I hopefully will have finished in the next two days!

Spoiler

It's a lot cleaner, more natural, better colouring, and the rock models and displacement texture flow seamlessly into one another (You might notice that at the top-right side there's a straight line between the rock and plaster wall, that's just because I forgot to alpha those).

I'll post some new screens when the dragon and fish are done as well 

08/05/2020 

Spoiler

Tomorrow, I'll upload a brand new version of the map, with many improvements. I won't go into much detail yet, but here's a current W.I.P. for the Fish Statues (called Sachihoko in Japanese):

Spoiler

 

18/05/2020

Spoiler

Daigo has been updated, (B2_1) and a lot of changes have been made since the last version (B2). I don't feel like it's worth mentioning the changes, because most of them will be irrelevant in the future. I've updated the original post with images of Daigo's current state, but it'll undergo such big changes that it's not really a good reference any longer. I'm going to implement all I learned in the last two months into the redesign of nearly all the artwork in the map.

Should you still wish to download the map: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1881843696

04/08/2020

Spoiler

 As more time has opened up in my scedule recently, I've been able to work on redesigning quite a few important assets of Daigo. I've been working silently on T-spawn for the past month to slowly but surely rework all of the roofwork (for the whole map), as well as a lot of additional woodwork and foliage. All of it is still WIP, but I've reached a point where I can finally start moving forward into the map. A lot of additional details are planned to be added, and some of it already exists, but I'm not adding those until the very end of the whole rework. I've also decided to use the newest prop_detail techniques to design most of the flowers and grass stuff so I can have total control over the variation and placement across the map.

I'm working hard on getting all the assets procedurally placed, so that I can also change things later on in the development of the map (such as balanced coloring and thematic material). Below is an rough example of the T-spawn rework:

Spoiler

 

25/08/2020

Spoiler

I've made some more progress with rock gardens and a staircase. These will eventually replace some larger areas alongside the building walls and sloped surfaces to add a whole lot more natural setting to the map. They won't be at the main keeps or central square to keep it more authentic to the original reference, but since everything around it is completely artificial, I'd figured it would be nice to implement the typical Japanese gardenesque style around the castle. Below are some images (still WIP)!

Spoiler

 

 

Edited September 30, 2022 by JorisCeoen
Adding historical comments for cleanup

[fewseb]

34 minutes ago, JorisCeoen said:

With the contest being over for many entries, is it possible to move these out of the current category (into 3D). I’d like to continue working on the map once I’m back from holidays, and don’t want to clutter the contest forums when posting later on.

They usually do that once the contest is completely over

[Twinnie]

looks very clean i like it!

[CommonCrayon]

Looks Great! Hope you're still working on it and Good Luck!

 

[JorisCeoen]

7 hours ago, CommonCrayon said:

Looks Great! Hope you're still working on it and Good Luck!

Thanks man! Don't worry, I'm working on it on a regular basis, but a few things (including moving to a new place) are currently on the planning, making consistent contributions just a little slower for the moment. I have no fixed ETA, but I'm hoping to finish a first playable test sometime mid-october.

Edited September 15, 2020 by JorisCeoen