Show us your Mapping Projects

[Mr.Burns]

Hi all

In a similar vein to the "Show us your modeling Projects" thread I thought it might be interesting to have a centralised place for news and interim updates and so forth for maps people may be developing. Whether it be for release or just for a bit of fun it could be interesting to see maps develop.

I quite rightly deserve the title of "Worst mapper in the known universe" but to start the ball rolling I toyed with the idea of doing an alternative version of a familiar map (or 2). This was the result of a miss-spent lunchtime at work...


Yes I know, it's terrible and there's probably so much wrong with it it deserves to be deleted forthwith but it is just a learning exercise for me. I couldn't see any other suitable threads, my apologies if I have missed one, but if you have something interesting please feel free to add it below.

Kind regards

Monty

[MadGypsy]

I've been working with L3DT (blank designable map mode). I think I've just about figured out how all the settings will affect the topology. Here is an example of an area I'm working on.



Most of what you see was on purpose. All of what you see was designed by hand. The reason that only most of it was on purpose is because peaks go up but they also dig down on the edges (sometimes - probably an erosion calculation) so, my lake has some really deep spots where digging down on the peak edge multiplied where I dug down on purpose. Other than that, I made what I saw in my head to almost identical reproduction.

I have a long way to go. This map is 25 square miles. After I build the terrain I need to fill it up with stuff, 25 square miles of stuff. I plan to do a lot of cheating... turbosquid/cgtrader/equivalent

[Mr.Burns]

That looks promising MG and it sounds like it is going to be enormous. I haven't mastered the terrain side of things yet myself but I have a few ideas even though Quake seems a little limited in those areas compared to some of the more modern engines/tools.
If I can stop failing through the floor of the map it would be a good start

Keep us posted on how it progresses and evolves.

Kind regards

Monty

[golden_boy]

Be careful what you wish for...










From Scout's Journey, while it still used FTEQW. Waiting to be converted to mesh for Unreal Engine 4








Scout's Journey blockout, FTEQW










Doom 3 map, unfinished because Doom 3 mapping is kinda tedious and I got issues with AI not recognizing visportals and scripting difficulties










One of my multiplayer maps in its Warsow incarnation. "No Name Horse", beta, unfinished because not much interest from Warsow team (slackers)




Rubicon themed map, originally a chainmap with yesterday, unfinished




Blockout attempt for a Quake total conversion multiplayer mod




Quakeworld map, collab with Fenrir






A Hexen 2 map, unfinished because it broke the map format

[golden_boy]

Continued (forum limits a post to 20 images...)







Another Doom 3 map, discarded when I started the one in my first post












Crysis mod, "Double Helix", shelved because I kinda got bored.
















Remake Quake Project, e1m3, partly even with SJ logo from a time directly after the split. Now part of Rune of Earth Magic.

[golden_boy]

Continued...













Remake Quake project, e1m2, converted to q3bsp for test reasons, FTEQW, now part of Rune of Earth Magic.












Remake Quake Project, e1m5, converted to q3bsp and with heightmap terrain, FTEQW, now part of Rune of Earth Magic

[golden_boy]

Continued...



Remake Quake Project, design for DM3 remake, currently water area is done but map is shelved










Beginnings of Remake Quake e1m1, now much changed and part of Scout's Journey



After the RMQ failure, e1m1rq experimental Warsow build





e1m1rq, FBSP, FTEQW



Former RMQ e1m1, inside, now Scout's Journey Herd base























Last development using FTEQW. Note FTE bugs like fullbright models. Lighting with q3 map format also eventually didn't yield enough dynamic range. Map is currently converted to mesh for future UE4 development.

[golden_boy]

Continued...







Beginnings of converting Scout's Journey maps from BSP to mesh for eventual Unity or UE4 deployment







Using modular elements and props wherever possible.





Last step: Decided to go fully highpoly with the modules and apply subdivision modifiers, later baking each module to a unique normal map and texture. Have to fix the unintended curves there. This is basically a modern-day approach to environment art; highpoly hardsurface modeling / sculpting / baking and building as much as possible from modules.

Currently not putting the majority of my time into levels, instead doing concept art, design documents, and even gearing up for some freelancing work.


Oh, almost forgot...





Return to Quake... Former Remake Quake e1m6, now part of Rune of Earth Magic.

[Mr.Burns]

Holy Moly GB.
My primary point of reference is of course Quake one, rather than the newer games, but even I can see that those maps are incredible. You've really got a talent there.

Given my humble offering I now feel like I'm standing at the urinal and John Holmes and come and stood next to me

Keep up the good work GB they are great

Kind regards

Monty

[golden_boy]

Hey Mr. Burns,

talent is just the smallest part of it. The bigger part is piling on for years and years :-)

Keep it up, team up with others, steal all their tricks, it's as simple as that really!

- gb

[MadGypsy]

@mr burns

I am not using any of the Quake source/engines for this. I spent years learning Quake and essentially got nothing done. I switched to Away3D. It's fully open source, platform independant, written in 2 OOP languages that I have strong skills in and has no hard code. What I meam by that is, stuff like inventory, weapons yadda yadda are not programmed in. Actually maybe it would be easier to say that away3D is a 3D engine... it's up to you (me) to create game logic for the engine. I like that. It's a blank slate for me to work with as opposed to a filled slate for me to inject into.

Another thing I like is, blender is the only tool. Of course I can use other tools (and am for my landscape) but technically blender can do it all.

@ falling through the floor - place info_player_start 16 units above the floor. There is nothing special about that 16, it's just above the floor and too short to experience fall damage. You should place all entities off the floor, dropToFloor() will take care of getting it on the floor when your game starts.

@gb - oh my. Just today I got a text informing me my connection speed is throttled cause I used all my bandwidth. Long story short, this page has been loading for like a half hour. lol :sigh:

[Tea Monster]

Waaaaattttt??!!!! No quakkkkeeeeeee????!!!!!! Gaaahhhhhh!!!!!

[MadGypsy]

Of course no Quake. I'm not trying to make a mod.Why totally convert when you can simply carve your own path? It's probably about equal work but the latter results in a system you own. When I stopped trying to shove my ideas into someone elses engine, it became easier to get things done, it also became more apparent of what is happening behind the scenes without having to tear apart someone elses code.

At least once I shared some code with spike and he was all "yeah but the engine yadda yadda". There is just too many layers of quake to become deeply familiar with. You could write pro code and never be truly aware that the engine hates you and your code.... cause you "should never manually set a" and "dont do x y z cause kaboom"

Honestly, with all the lil tidbits that I've heard regarding DONT it makes me feel like quake is hanging on for dear life just to work at all...

[Shambler234]

As soon as i get my quake folder on this new comp i could work on my maps more often.


Sadly this comp doesn't have a CD drive, i do have an sd card with a writer/reader thumb stick.

[Mr.Burns]

After the extremely high quality of some of the content posted I'm almost embarrassed to post my meager efforts , but in the hope that it might just encourage someone to try and make their own contribution I thought I might add a snapshot of something I've been using to learn a little more about mapping...

fetch?photoid=275347.jpg

Apologies for the small image, QuakeOne.com appears to limit the size of image you can keep in your User album (which I'm sure is for a good reason).

It isn't very good, it hasn't had the textures or lighting finalised but at least it's a start and if an artistically challenged person such as myself can produce a rough proof of concept like the above using some very old freely available Quake mapping software then anyone can.

Kind regards

Monty