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Level Design RO-DG-Petros pre-beta thread

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DGUnreal

Grizzled Veteran
May 27, 2007
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Canada, eh
www.lilchips.com
#1
Since my previous level design studio contract is over and I have some spare time while I look around for more game studio freelance work, I thought I would do up a couple of RO maps.
I'll update this thread and screenshots every day or two while I work on these.
If anyone has any cool things they would like to see in a map, let me know, within reason. :p

Since I am a newbie at RO I trust that some of the better mappers (or TWI) might give me any required help with the RO-specific areas when I need it.

This is a few very early development shots of RO-Petros as of May 28.
This is about 7 hours total of dev time so far.
What you are seeing is a near completed base environment and placeholder trees and a building so that I can get a scale reference.
Coming next will be the road editing and all tree and bush placements.



Planned Features:
- large map size with hires 512x512 terrain
- dense tree and building design
- multi-figure-8 pathing layout
- at least four objectives
- a lot of custom features (textures, meshes and scripts)
- detailed environment including moving clouds, trees, grass, falling leaves, plus insects, real birds, etc.

Completed:
- main world setup and skybox
- hi-res terrain and initial layers and decos
- initial river
- moving clouds, moving grass, moving trees
- custom audio script is integrated (provides moving random sounds for environment)
- custom NPCs (non-player creatures, ie. real animals, birds in this case: vertex animated and scripted)
- some custom textures and sounds

To be completed:
- terrain editing for roads and train tracks
- temporary river FluidSurfaceInfo will be swapped out for a custom hi-res optimized xProcMesh
- river texenvmap
- custom staticmesh buildings (instead of using the common CSG Brush style)
- placement of RO trees and bushes
- placement of RO deco meshes
- custom train tunnel through tall mountain (?)
- custom train trestles
- custom destroyable bridge
- all RO specific actors
- perimeter volumes and blocking
- weather (light rain)
- beta testing
 
#3
Hopefully I'll do both. ;)
I always like to put a lot of relevant realism into my maps, so it should translate to RO.

Full map info and big screenshots are on the main site, first link in my sig.
The earlier maps were of course not as good IMHO. So far Aether, SpaceJunk and Sandstone I think are my best 2k4 maps, but I do have some new and better ones planned.
 
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#4
Lo DGU - thanks for your site which has helped me out if a few tight corners when mapping. Glad to see that you are still slumming it with the old tech in RO.;)

One question - where'd you get your skyboxes from?- RO is crying out for new skyboxes - we are all a bit tired of looking at the Great Frog In The Sky™ :) and the nice, but overused, Rakowice, pearly grey winter dome.

xProcMesh for water?!?1... spooooge!
 
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#7
If anyone has any cool things they would like to see in a map, let me know, within reason. :p
Click to expand...

Cool showcase!
Non mappers thoughts for an RO map:

You are working on a big map, so mby I am off base here, but how "gloomy" can you go? You seem to have made alien like environments with unreal maps, how about incorporating this to give a map an alien... altho very real look?, lets say a burning oil tank/depot map (Iraqi oil fires come to mind).
How taxing is it to have the sky gradualy change from hazy to a hellish crimson? This will give a feel of how sub-human the battle has become.

Just brainstorming, otherwise-be cool to see a Stug & SU grudge match. Some one also mentioned a "showcase" tank map. Not sure how important historical accuracy is to you tho.
My 2c!
 
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#9
Thanks guys.

Nestor Makhno said:
thanks for your site which has helped me out if a few tight corners when mapping.

Glad to see that you are still slumming it with the old tech in RO.;)

One question - where'd you get your skyboxes from?

xProcMesh for water?!?
Click to expand...

I wish I had more time for more tutorials and engine info on my site, but programming and mapping are way more fun than writing tutorials. :)
Unreal Developer Network and UnrealWiki are a mapper's best friends.
For lending support I usually hang out over at the BeyondUnreal forums, so I doubt I'll get much time answering threads here. I'm always available though if anyone asks me questions (on Unreal Engines).

My favoured mapping style is more realistic than what UT2k4 and UT3 offer, so I play a lot of BF2142, FEAR, T:V, but I map for UT because of the larger community.
RO may be old tech but I prefer the real-world mapping style, so I thought I'd kick out one or two maps.

Good skyboxes really make the map. :)
The Hipshot skybox pack is great, I wish he would create more (I'm updating that pack download page on my site at the moment).
HazelH has some good skybox sets on her site.
Skymatters has a few free downloads.
The spherical map in the UE3/UT3 thumbnail on my map preview page is a custom texture I edited for other sources. UE3 no longer supports the Skybox (in fact much of the CSG Brush method is not supported) so domes are usually used for skies.

xProcMesh is the way to go for putting any water into a map. It can usually look better and is usually significantly optimized in comparison to a FluidSurfaceInfo.
There are a lot of issues with using the FluidSurfaceInfo, especially for z-buffering.
I use custom software I wrote to extract and create my xProcMesh water for me, so it doesn't require too much work on my part.


GS_Schimpf said:
I hope we can supply you with ideas for new maps
Click to expand...

Feel free to supply me with ideas for this map... :)
I'll make the map downloadable as alpha through beta versions so that people here can give me any comments as I work on it (this is my first RO map).

... how "gloomy" can you go? ... a burning oil tank/depot map ...How taxing is it to have the sky gradualy change from hazy to a hellish crimson?
It could be gloomy AND realistic - burning oil depots were in no short supply in Stalingrad
Click to expand...

One issue with the burning oil would be the framerate hit from emitters, but using the bHighDetail and bSuperHighDetail flags would allow that to be adjusted per system settings.
Having the sky change color across it would be easy. I do have some skybox texture sets that are very hazey and red -- they do look alienish so I didn't consider using them.
I guess it depends on how far a map can be taken towards unreal (no pun).
 
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#11
Large outdoor realistic.
I'll try my hand at this one first, but thanks... :)

There should be updated screenshots soon, I have the layout and such almost done. I have planned a few custom staticmesh buildings that will be fully exterior/interior. I'm still looking for additional reference photos for various things but those will be coming later.
The map will have 4 objectives (possibly 6 I'm undecided if the closest structures to the spawn areas should be territory objs), including a communications tower on a mountain top, a railway station, an artillery radio building. Plus destroyables such as bridges.
Visually there is a river twisting and running around the map, forests, small lakes/swamps, rolling hills, mountains, and fields (maybe a mine field too :) ). Map playfield size is about 1 sq km.
 
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#13
Good to see you doing an RO map DGUnreal. Too bad you missed the mapping contest that just finished up ;) Mapping for RO should be very similar to UT2k4, you'll just need to learn about the RO specific actors, and things like destroyable statics, etc. Also in the imminent update we've added some optimizations to the engine that allow it to run better with really large terrains (stock UE2.5 engine has a "hitch" that causes the game to lag up every few seconds on large terrains - but we've fixed it in our build). One thing that usually trips up mappers coming over from UT - just remember that the visual style for RO is very different. "UT-ish" looking maps usually get beat up by the RO community. Anyway, looking forward to see what you make :)
 
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#16
smokeythebear said:
Looking good so far.Is it going to be a combined arms or infantry map? Early or late war?
Click to expand...

So many questions... so little time... ;)

I have yet to decide on the final vehicle/role load on the map.
I'm going to get more of the actual environment completed, then I'll post a map download so anyone in the community who wants can try it out, then I'll take feedback and set up the "battle scenario" loadout to what suits the community.

The map is sort-of based on some pics I saw of the Petros mountains (Carpathian/Ukraine). Here is a cool pic from adventurecarpathians.com.
The village located there that I saw wouldn't have been an exciting battle area, so I've taken a bit of artistic license in layout, and added things like the radio tower, train, etc. to my map.
I also couldn't find any hi-res 1/3 or 1/4 arcsecond DEMs, or I would have used real-world terrain from that area. So I algorithmically simulated it instead.

Sorry, I'm not a history buff, so I don't know if/when any battles occured in those mountains.


[RO]Ramm-Jaeger said:
Good to see you doing an RO map DGUnreal.

Too bad you missed the mapping contest that just finished up ;)

Mapping for RO should be very similar to UT2k4, you'll just need to learn about the RO specific actors

Also in the imminent update we've added some optimizations to the engine that allow it to run better with really large terrains (stock UE2.5 engine has a "hitch" that causes the game to lag up every few seconds on large terrains - but we've fixed it in our build).

One thing that usually trips up mappers coming over from UT - just remember that the visual style for RO is very different. "UT-ish" looking maps usually get beat up by the RO community.

Anyway, looking forward to see what you make :)
Click to expand...

Thanks.

I always show up late to everything... ;)

I have the actors pretty much down (they were pretty easy).
FYI I made some custom editor actor icon textures if TWI would like them. It makes the editing easier IMHO (except the RORole actors which you hid the Advanced/Display/Movement property groups... argh...).
My current area of lack is in the vehicles, weapons, roles. I understand them, but I'm not familiar with the various pros/cons/abilities/comparison of them all. But I plan on putting the map up for pre-beta and letting the community help me in this area.

Sounds cool. I look forward to seeing what you have done in the terrain area on the engine.
I'm very much into terrain based UE stuff. See this page.
I assume TWI is a licensee, so you can have a free copy of that when it is out of beta. Epic and a bunch of the top mappers are beta testers for me.
I always stick to maximum 512x512 though, and I haven't had any real issues with UE2.5 builds yet.

My mapping style gets beat up by the UT community, I'm used to it... :p
So I'm sure that a beating here will make me feel right at home... :D
So far even the mostly-empty map looks awesome through the Panzer III...
I'm hoping that my more realistic environment design style will be better suited to this type of game, although I'm not sure if I'm gritty enough, I tend to be more "wood-sy" green outdoors type.


CTF-DG-PineRidge-02.jpg


Feel free to PM me any time if you want a preview download of any map I'm working on...
 
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#19
[RO]Wilsonam said:
Welcome... the Carpathians... should always be said in Bad Dracula Voice :)

And I'd like to see rough/mountainous terrain done really well - nice fighting through there in 1944...
Click to expand...


"Velcome... ze Carpathians... one... one Carpathian... ah ah ah..."

countcapefq7.jpg


(sorry...)


Mountainous terrain...
Sans trees and shrubs at the moment, I'm working on that stuff now.



The first screenies at the top of the thread were in-Editor, this one is in-game in a tank.


Yoshiro said:
Yes we are a licensee of both UE 2.5 and UE 3.

And if that is a pic of your latest work I would love to check it out here at the office.

As to your icons, I'm sure the level team would like to check em out. I'll go poke one.
Click to expand...

Cool. I can let you know later this year when HMES is out to first Licensee use.

The green pic? That is one of my UT2k4 maps. See the links in my sig for more pics.
The RO map that I am working on is much better than that old thing... ;)
I'll keep posting new RO screens as I go...

Let me know where to send them (the icons). You can freely use them if you like them
I find custom icons are always easier to map with than the dragon's head (S_Actor), it's less confusing.
 
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