Hey everyone its me again. Just to get you all updated the 2nd Beta of Slav should be out sometime soon, but I also wanted to let you guys in on another project I'm working on, it's called Babis.

Info:

DoD_Babis is a set in a small Village in the Normandy Countryside. There will be a lot of destroyed houses and plenty of open space filled with bushes, trees, and plenty of broken walls to take cover behind. I will let you all know now that I am not being very tight on my poly counts, I am going to make this map how I want it made without having any poly restrictions. (I want to see what I can do with the engine.)

Screenshots:

Picture 1 (http://www.staticbag.net/Matt/dod_babis1.JPG)

Picture 2 (http://www.staticbag.net/Matt/dod_babis2.JPG)

Feedback:

As always I'm looking for the best feedback ever.. honest feedback.. if you don't like it let me know. Thanks everyone. Catch ya later.
(PS: The line above the trees has been taken care of.)

Just WoW!
I really liked the fog, makes it look very realistic.

i like it but whats with the dotted shadows?

hrmm i dont really like those rocks , in general it looks flat , the single treeline doesnt work for me 2 rows just looks more natural

then again not much to see yet as your showing 2 pics of the same area im guessing a spawn even and its early wip :)

keep it up try working on that terrain :)

I agree with IR about the flat rock, but if you will play a little with the texture it can look great.

I was pretty impressed with the pictures, hard to suggest anything yet but im looking forward to see some more of the same :]

TheCarnage55:
The dotted shadows are the powerlines, I'm really not sure why they come out dotted though.

IR:
On the topic of the terain, I knew the r_speeds where gonna be kinda hard once I added the rest of the area so I didn't wanna like have them start off being really high, so I'm keeping the terrain basic till I'm done and have a general feel for what I can and can't add based on r_speeds, and I'll deff try and change that treeline.

Thanks for the feeback everyone, I look foward to getting some more when I get some more pics up later tonight or tomorow. Thanks again. later.

Info:

Ok everyone, heres some more pictures showing a little bit more of the map, hope ya like it.

Screenshots:

Picture 3 (http://www.staticbag.net/Matt/dod_babis3.JPG)

Picture 4 (http://www.staticbag.net/Matt/dod_babis4.JPG)

Picture 5 (http://www.staticbag.net/Matt/dod_babis5.JPG)

The reason the power lines are creating the shadows is because they're set to "opaque" in the Light settings, just take it off because it doesn't look right, opaque entities don't seem to really work all that well and they add to compile times like crazy.

Looks damn nice. I love maps with this kind of setting, like small villages and houses. Not this skyscrapers used in other maps.

Info:
Hey guys, sorry for the delay, but I got kinda busy so I haven't been able to work on the map for a while, but I do finaly have to more screens. And I have the point system all planned out.
Heres a copy of the text file.
DOD_BABIS by Matt "Gopher" Boehm

July, 1944, Normandy

The battle to liberate Normandy drags on, as the allies have rough times gaining ground with the German defense being so imbedded into the country side.

American Objectives:
-Gain Control of, and protect the Wood Bridge.
-Destroy the church tower.
-Gain Control of, and protect the Stone Bridge.
-Protect the Cromwells
German Objectives:
-Hold or destroy the wood Bridge.(More points to hold)
-Protect the Church Tower.
-Hold or destroy the Wood Bridge.(More points to hold)
-Destroy the Cromwells
Textures by: "Kleinluka", "IR", "xerent", "Kamikazi!", "Absolut_Vodka".
And sorry to anyone I forgot.

Pictures: And now on to the pictures!

Picture 6 (http://www.staticbag.net/Matt/dod_babis6.jpg)
This picture shows the split in the allied route to the wooden bridge. (The area behind the tank has changed slightly)

Picture 7 (http://www.staticbag.net/Matt/dod_babis7.jpg)
This picture shows the Wooden bridge from the axis side of the water, after it has been destroyed by a bazooka shot.

looks good, i like it so far. the water looks a little repetative and opaque (non transparent, i dunno).

Hey this looks good!
Only thing that looks wierd is that the phone line poles are to close together... remove every second or maybe more.

yes, i would say less tele-poles too, and just make the lines out of solids textured black (scaled right up), maybe 3 units by 3 units (for a couple extra polys u get less compile time with shadows)

\__/ 3 pieces like that between the poles


other than that looks good :)

i think this map can easily become a classic. one suggestion tho. ok u said...

"The battle to liberate Normandy drags on, as the allies have rough times gaining ground with the German defense being so imbedded into the country side."

you should make it a rough time and take out so so it doesnt sound as childish... so it reads like this

The battle to liberate Normandy drags on, as the allies have a rough time gaining ground with the German defense being imbedded into the country side.

pic 1: looks good, maybe too many tele poles too close together.

pic 2: odd place for houses between mountains, didnt think the houses fit in there good. again, tele poles feel out of place. too close together?

pic 3: For seeing what you can do with the engine the houses look plain and small here. Also don't get much of a town feel and then you got a street car with no roads. Feels out of place.

pic 4: Good variety with house size. again same feel with tele poles and houses looking plain.

pic 5: Very nice, like what you're doing here. Mountain might seem out of place, but maybe cause I can't see whole thing?

pic 6: Like it, looks good. Good placement for tank.

pic 7: New lighting is a big upgrade. Good work. Good touch with hills water and broken bridge.

Overall, I like it despite a few out of place feeling things. Unique atomsphere. Maybe try to work a few more textures in there also. Don't want it to be super repetative.

Originally posted by syl
i think this map can easily become a classic. one suggestion tho. ok u said...

"The battle to liberate Normandy drags on, as the allies have rough times gaining ground with the German defense being so imbedded into the country side."

you should make it a rough time and take out so so it doesnt sound as childish... so it reads like this

The battle to liberate Normandy drags on, as the allies have a rough time gaining ground with the German defense being imbedded into the country side.

The liberation of Normandy has been much tougher than the Allies had first thought. The heavily armoured German forces are embedded deep within the farmlands and will not go down without a fight!

Thanks for the input guys. Yeah, I've got a few custom textures in the works to match the theme but give the map a little variety, I'm working out the whole telephone pole thing now. So Look for an update in the next couple of days. Thx again everyone.

nice fog :cool:

is there a way to activate fog in the default dod maps ? that would be kick ass

cl_fog 1 or 2

its clientside
you can activate it through console or mp options

Originally posted by IR
cl_fog 1 or 2

its clientside
you can activate it through console or mp options
so why is everyone telling me it doesn work with steam :confused:

cl_fog 2 doesnt work with steam.
cl_fog 1 only works with mini-map disabled

Pic 7 looks a little weired.
The RPG guy is standing on some earth and it looks like the creak stops there.
Or is this just some mud the was heap up to build a small crossing over the water?

If this is a crossing, why not make it below the water level? Put some sticks left and right at the bank to mark the crossover.

If it is not a crossover: Just looks stupid, why build a bridge when some meters away the creak ends? :D

By the way, put some more bushes at the bank, maybe some old trees or wood.
In the river/creak maybe some dead bodys? Or vehicles.

The other pictures look very nice. The atmpshere has a good effect, I like it, looks like a rainy day or week and everybody feels depressed, really cool.

At all, this could be a really nice custom map.

We need more pics! :D

Scale the water up to 2X or 3X at a min and do this:

1) Add -dev -console to the launch properties of DoD
2) When DoD starts go to the console and enter developer 2
3) Enter gl_wireframe 2
4) Enter r_speeds 2
4) Start your map from the console: map dod_babis

Turn off your minimap

Now...you can see what the engine "sees"...you are looking at the wireframes that the engine is drawing as you move around and you can see how your wpoly and epoly increase/decrease as the engine "sees" stuff. Try and keep your average combat area wpoly below 800 and eploy below 3000. You can swing up in both numbers momentarily but having high r_speeds causes severe fps loss.

Once you've run the map like this check out all the hot spots and try and redesign your brush work to lower those. hint brushes might be needed so if you experiment w/those do yourself a favor and add just one...then recompile...and see if it worked...to often hint brushes are placed incorrectly and cause more trouble then they are worth. If you want to see the map w/o the wireframes just type gl_wireframe 0 in the console.

Good luck!

Looks promising! :)

FuzzDad:
No offense, but I know all about r_speeds, actually if you take a look in the first few pics you can see the r_speeds in there, and I've been taking so long to get you guys an update because the first bridge area is reaching wpolys of 1050.

Hummer:
That particular picture seems to look wierd because the water level is low, the area your talking about is actually a shallower area of the creek that has run dry, when I fix the R_speeds up a bit I'll show you a picture of the are. Thanks again for all the input everyone.

I kinda like it, looks good and it seems to have good atmosphere.

Originally posted by DiGiTalySuICiDl
FuzzDad:
No offense, but I know all about r_speeds, actually if you take a look in the first few pics you can see the r_speeds in there, and I've been taking so long to get you guys an update because the first bridge area is reaching wpolys of 1050.


No offense taken...but you can never get enough good map making techniques IMO...even if repetitive at times.

If you have a w_poly over 1000 you'll have to figure out what combination of hints and brushwork will lower it. My guess is you could reduce some brush splitting with some effort and reduce those speeds. I also guess you could probably find one brush, or one hint that could significantly lower those speeds...IR and I find these things all the time in our maps...even after they've been out for ages.

Here's one small example...the picture on the right shows the effects of two additional hint brushes...one to the left off-screen and one to the right off-screen.