Let the pictures speak for themself. I am not the maker of the map, I only did the cubemaps. All hail Bumgravy. Cuz he's the man. I'll try to get it up on the server,.
Heres the minimap: This map was made using terragen to create a heightmap, and dispgen to turn the hieghtmap into displacements, which I tweaked in hammer, extrapolated to make the skybox and added random crap to like the poweer towers and rock props etc. I found this process way quicker than making a map normally, and as you can see I managed to get some pretty decent looking terrain from it. Thanks to Dz for sorting out my cubemap problems for me and taking decent quality screenshots which wouldn't be possible on my rig Download emp_dune_b1(3.25mb)
I made a tutorial on how to use terragen and dispgen to create terrain : http://forums.empiresmod.com/showthread.php?t=6332 How does the map play then? I was worried it may be unbalanced towards NF becaus of the layout and ref locations, tell me what you guys think if you have played it.
It's not unbalanced towards nf cuz of layout, it's unbalanced to nf cuz they got light tanks and be does not.. And that half my team felt for driving jeeps =P
Looks quite good. Haven't played it so i can't say anything about the gameplay, but i did make a tour in spec mode. - I think some textures could use some extra work though. Some displacements seem to have textures that apparantly look as if they should be the same, but they aren't. I think that sand texture which blends with grass is one of them. - The 'round' displacements that serve as rocky obstacles could be a little less ... round ;-) - Those sand textures use a detail mask, which is very nice. But when you have horizontal and vertical faces that are sewn together as one surface (the round obstacles for example), the 'shadows' of the detail mask don't match. I don't know it this can be fixed, but for my vehicle map i copied the vmt of that texture and removed the detail mask line. This way i can use the texture with detail mask on large surfaces, and the one without mask on small obstacles where i want to get rid of shadows not aligning properly. - The dynamic shadows in the map look quite yellow. Was that on purpose? - Maybe there was a little bit too much light? This could just be personal taste though. That's all that i noticed. Keep up the good work!
Thanks for your comments guys. I have been told the BE base should be moved somewhere, not sure where, maybe I will just make an impassable cliff between the 2 bases to cutoff the direct route between them. Yeah I need to work a bit more on the alpha blends I think. Yeah you can probably tell they were more thrown in at the last minute as an afterthought What would the line in the VMT be for that? No it wasn't, I run the game in DX 7 with everything turned off so it's quite hard to remember to test stuff like that Ill try and change it.I didn't even know if my wires on the power towers were working until LordDz tested it for me lol, he had to build my cubemaps because my pc couldnt handle it. This is something that depends on what settings you are running the game in I suppose, but to me all maps look like they are running on fullbright if anyone else could comment on the brightness of the environmental light that would be great. Thanks for your comments
"WorldVertexTransition" { "$basetexture" "Common/Terrain/sand_01" "$basetexture2" "Common/Terrain/rock_01" "$basetexturetransform" "center .5 .5 scale 4 4 rotate 0 translate 0 0" "$basetexturetransform2" "center .5 .5 scale 2 2 rotate 0 translate 0 0" "$bumpmap" "Common/Terrain/sand_01_normal" "$bumpmap2" "Common/Terrain/Generic_Terrain_Normal_01" "$bumptransform" "center .5 .5 scale 8 8 rotate 0 translate 0 0" "$detail" "detail/detailclouds" "$detailscale" 0.1 "$surfaceprop" "sand" "$surfaceprop2" "rock" "WorldVertexTransition_HDR_DX9" { "$detail" "detail/detailHDR" } //"%detailtype" "sand_rock" "%tooltexture" "Common/Terrain/tool_grass01a_dirt01a" "%keywords" "empires" }
Well apart from a couple of minor cosmetic changes (thanks silk) and the depth of water in the oasis, the only real problam anyone has picked up on is the starting places. So I am considering just moving the BE start base any releasing a B2. Unless anyone ahas any more comments or suggestions? Should I add more impassable areas, or leave the map open and easy to travel? Should I compromise some of the buildable areas and add more cover in the open sections? Should I change the ref locations (bearing in mind I will be changing the BE starting point)? The only time I have actually played this was the day it was released, and I can't seem to get it played on Ghost anymore. If you have played this map at all I would love to hear your opinions and suggestions.
Map needs some high ground that can support a base... its too easy at the moment to sit on the hills and shell the bases to hell. Maybe some more trees and general eyecandy round the oasis? Foilage, cover, stuff like that? More eyecandy in general too be honest. Looking good though!
love it, move the nf base to far west (possibly a lot better spot) balance out ref distances, test with driving to them to ssee who can get there first. check the noclip's, i was told you could get vehicles (read: cv) in a no-infantry clip brush area.
you can drive vehicles in that area behind the destroyed power pole. Guess it was south west. but the area is cliped off for players so you cant walk in or out.
how long did this map take, in hours? I think more maps this size are exactly what empires needs. the perfect thing for 20 player servers.
