Awww shit son...

[Ford 1st MRB]

So yeah, fuck all you guys, n girl.

But seriously. I'm kind of in-between games at the moment. Not really playing anything in particular so I needed something to do with my free time. I tried DoD again, but the spark still isn't there. What it did though was re-spark my interest in mapping.

Soooo, I dug through my hard drives until I found where I stored the realism map that I was working on a few months ago. It's a city based night-time map. Most of the lighting in texture based, such as glowing street lamps, interior lighting from buildings (that also spills out into the street), and a faint glow of the waning twilight of the moon. I considered adding fog to the map, but I have always hated maps with fog on them so I scratched that idea.

What does this mean for you guys? Not a damn thing until it's finished or ready for beta testing.

Basic ideas I have for the map:

Every building is usable, except for the buildings outside the boundaries obviously.

Clearly defined boundaries for realism usage.

Playability as a pub map, meaning balanced game play.

Interactive mapping. This is something new that I am intensely working on. What is interactive mapping you ask? Well for example, when the map loads, a plane flying over head gets shot down and crashes into a building, causing an explosion and throwing debris everywhere. This is, I'll add, a work in progress. If it isn't feasible or causes lag issues, I'll drop it. I have never seen a map that implements this sort of thing though and think it will be a cool idea. Perhaps even something from the good old 1.3 days... Calling in airs-trikes to open up new routes through the map. A press of the use button on a discretely placed radio calls in bombers to level the walls into the enemies stronghold... or something to that effect.

The map as I said is city based fighting. I have the streets laid out, the basic ideas for where I want to place buildings, and a few other things.

This is definitely a work in progress, and won't be ready any time soon, but I will be finishing it this time. I hope.

Screenshots to follow.

[St-Denis]

Hope to see u soon Ford........

[GMoney BAR]

You know what FOrd? Take your pants off, bend over and I'll show you where the wild goose goes. How about them apples eh?

[Zachow 1st MRB]

Sounds cool when it is ready swing it over to the ordanance office and we will give it a whirl since that is our job.

[Connary]

Sounds cool when it is ready swing it over to the ordanance office and we will give it a whirl since that is our job.

Yea right, and we all will be test subjects for you.no hoggin it . /drool

[Ford 1st MRB]

Early, and I do mean early, screenshots:

Example of what I meant by interactive mapping. That car is part of the traffic that will be randomly going through the streets. Yes it's moving...

Proof that it's moving and an example of how the lighting will be implemented via the streetlights:

Need to add the taillights to that car. There will be Jeeps, tanks, other moving vehicles. Planes flying by, artillery going off, mortars, 88's. nebelwerfers, it's gonna be like a real war. Imagine that...

Yeah, I'm pretty much awesome.

[Dexter]

sounds wicked can't wait to see it!

[Cayen]

looks awsome id wish i could do that

[Kabasares]

Lookin forward to it

[Yamagata 1st MRB]

awesomesauce

[McCaskill]

FORD ur an awesome dude ha cant wait to see the map when its finished ive tried to make them but its too damn hard bc im reatarded.........like serious case of retardation!!!!! bahahah cant wait to see u back man!!

[Harlan]

i wish i knew how to do all of that lol

[Brewer]

I remember this map from back in the day, i thought you had finished it?

i know its awesome already.

let me know when you need some beta testers man i wanna check this thing out again.

[Ford 1st MRB]

Usable Flak 88 that allows entry into the allied courtyard via a destroyable building. The building that can be destroyed is usable, and will contain a sniper nest. The sniper will have a line of site to the 88, it's up to him to kill anyone trying to use it, or be blown the fuck up if he fails.

[Zahl 1st MRB]

Ford... i love you.. you want my babies?? awesome map, cant wait...

[Gooderham 1st MRB]

Excellent. One question for you, can you include "mouse holing" or the ability to blow your way through certain walls to gain access to the building next door?

[Ford 1st MRB]

Always wanting to blow something....

I don't know, I mean, yeah I can do it that and it would pretty simple to do. Just don't know how it would fit into my design. I'll see if it makes sense in a certain location and consider adding it in.

[Ford 1st MRB]

Progress is a good thing

[McKenzie 1st MRB]

I only have one question,

What the hell is that guy in the car thinking? Driving around during the middle of a perfectly good war! I mean really! How rude!

[Yamagata 1st MRB]

That should about cover it.

[Ford 1st MRB]

I got a little more done today.

This is going to take forever....

When Valve made their maps, they had teams. One team did the layout, one did the buildings, one did the textures, one did the 3d skybox(are outside the map), one did the lighting, one did the decorating (furniture etc), and one team for the touch-ups. I'm doing all this by myself

I got the 3d skybox done for the most part and the layout is close to being how I want it. I have one building complete with the exception of decorating. Another building is almost done which is what I spent the last 3 hours on. The back corner of the building is blown-out, and the brush work on something like that is tedious and time consuming.

One major problem I'm having is textures and models. The community that once was thriving with people making great models and textures is mostly gone and I absolutely hate valves stock models and textures. I found a way around this which is kind of cheap but as I said, I'm only one person. I thought to myself... what is a good map that has great textures and models? dod_kolsch is the first map that popped in my head. All the textures and models in that map are custom, made by the team that did that map. So, I opened the map and grabbed all the textures and models and have been using mainly those files in my map. All my building are of my own creation, but the map may look similar to kolsch as far as textures and models are concerned. The layout is nothing near the same, again my own creation.

In my bct map, all the textures were created by me, the walls, the wood floors, the targets, everything. That was by far the most time consuming part of that map and I really don't feel like doing it again for this map. Say what you want, I don't care lol. I may make a few textures if the one I need for a certain situation isn't already made, but that will be it.

[Ritchey 1st MRB]

for the textures, what format do they have to be saved in (and at what resolution)? i could lend a little photoshop action to ya if you have an idea of what you want.

[Ritchey 1st MRB]

also, if you have the ui maps of the models you want textured, i can knock those out too

[Ford 1st MRB]

All valve textures are .vtf format.

The resolution isn't an issue but the texture sizes have to be divisble by 2.

128 x 128

256 x 256

512 x 512

etc...

For higher resolution textures, 2048 x 2048 is the recommended size but the higher the resolution, the more rendering has to be done by players computers. I make mine 512 x 512

If you, or anyone for that matter wants to make textures that would be awesome. I'll explain how it's done.

Step 1:

Create a new document 512 x 512 in Photoshop with a transparent background. The textures MUST BE seamless so they can be tiled. Good place for textures: http://www.cgtextures.com/

Example:

Save the file once it looks good as a 32 bit .tga file. Make sure it's named appropriately. If t's a stone wall name it stone_wall01. There can't be any spaces in the file name.

Create a folder on your desktop named Targas to save the .tga or targa files to, this will make it easier on you to find and oraganize them.

Download Vtf Edit. This is how you convert the .tga files into vtf and .vmt files. Open Vtf Edit go to File/Import and choose the .tga file from the folder you created. When you import it, it turns it into a .vtf file automatically. You need to save the .vtf file to a new folder on your desktop. Name the new folder Textures. Once you save the .vtf to the folder, go back into Vtf Edit and click Tools/Create VMT File. When you click that, a window will pop up. The only thing you need to do with this window is click the Options Tab, then where it says surface 1: choose the surface type that best fits the texture. IE: If it's a brick texture, make Surface 1: brick. After you select the surface type, just hit save and save it to the textures folder.

One last thing:

Bump mapping

If you are going to make textures for me, they have to be bump mapped. It adds depth to the textures making them look 3-D instead of 2-D.

I know this sounds like a lot of work, but after the first one or two, the process is pretty smooth.

The types of textures I need are:

Indoor wallpaper

Rock walls

Tile Floors

Wood Floors

Cobblestone

World War II signs (anything that would have been on walls or buildings at the time of WW II. This includes German propaganda posters)

Make them look old though, I don't need bright clean wood floors in a World War II map lol. This can be done with simple brushes set to a very light transparency to add a dirty look to the textures.

[Ford 1st MRB]

One of the paths that can be opened up with the 88:

The 88:

The hole from the 88:

I decided that you will be able to shoot the 88 once per round, and it will randomly hit 1 of 5 spots, 4 of them will make holes that will not provide you any access points, and 1 will open up this hole. I did this to make the map different when you play it, so you have to react to how the map is playing, and make adjustments in the round.

That's all for now.