I don't know about you guys, but I'm getting sick and tired of playing in piles of rubble and blown up buildings. So, I started a project the other day set in the Normandy countryside.

It features a less scathed and war-torn version of a typical town during the time period. Brothers in Arms was my main inspiration, and since it's about as authentic to building detail as any game on the market could be these days, I used the manors and farmhouses of that game as primary references.

Note: This compile took about 5 minutes. The lighting and skybox are not final, I prefer to finish my brushwork before I get to those things. The water looks kind of funny too? But like I said, not final.

Here's a look at the U.S. spawn and the entrance to the town itself.
http://img308.imageshack.us/img308/1262/preview10wv.jpg

A pond beside one of the farming manors.
http://img308.imageshack.us/img308/2826/preview29mz.jpg

Let me know what you guys think. PLEEEASE give me any ideas you have on what you would like to see in a countryside map like this.

Looks good Like the use of pond and hedgerow.
Something I've always thought of as interesting concept would be to do a map with a quarry or mine in it......

I'm also thinking of a harbour/ fishing village map but that's a whole other thread...

I think you're using the flash or other maps skybox ground texture for the gameplay texture so the details file is putting very small oak and popular tree's in instead of grass...

Good concept too...I agree the BiA farmhouse and small town levels were superb. It'll be interesting though to see if that type of open map works in the more weapons-accurate DoD. Good start but think how you want gameplay to go now. I would suggest build out the remainder of the buildings as mere lego-block buildings w/o real textures (use grey or orange guide ones) to get a working version to playtest. Great start!

thanks for the advice FuzzDad.

What time would be best for the map? In your opinions... Morning, evening, or night? It seems like when I'm making the map, I keep seeing stalking through the hedgerows at nighttime... like paratroopers or something...
but then again, night maps are annoying to most gamers

what do you guys think?

i'd go for early morning, like before 10am, alot of attacks would start then as the troops where rested etc.

Maps looking good so far :)

Looks good but you shouldn't use the flash skybox textures. 2 foot trees look akward in an urban setting like that :(.

The edges of the pond look a bit squarish.

nice start !!

A word of caution regarding the pond. Water looks great, but, it destroys fps in mp maps, I would suggest using it sparingly.

:)

Don't worry so much about time-of-day except for one piece of advice....don't go night or real dark. Dark maps look good but empty servers. Work on gameplay. What you could do now is create another small town as the other spawn area and either have farm fields or a causeway between them. Good luck!

ohh emm eff gee

that looks exactly liek what i wasw trying to do with a map after watching Band of Brothers... but your doing a hell of a better job than i could have. Looks Great!

Cool map !

Originally posted by ultranew_b
nice start !!

A word of caution regarding the pond. Water looks great, but, it destroys fps in mp maps, I would suggest using it sparingly.

:)

Thats not entirely true either though, I'm using alot of water in a map I'm making for the mod I work on. Theres 4 rivers and 4 majorly flooded areas so theres alot of water and it doesn't cause alot of fps drop combined with fog and zclipping. But I suppose on it also depends on the map and the person making it aswell.

looking good and cant wait to see more of it!!

Id love to see more farm house maps like this :) just like the bia series.. Cant wait to try it out :) lookin good so far.

looks very nice!
i can't wait to play some real open terrain maps!

btw. you're missing some cows there ;)
*hint hint*

are there any living cow models?

Originally posted by Majoris
are there any living cow models?

not yet! working on it..

looking good :)

be nice to have a run around

will there be alot buildings etc to hide in?

I'm thinking so, yeah.

At this point, the structure of the map is based on two adjacent little villages with a large causeway between the two, and an elevated road splitting the causeway.

The villages themselves are almost entirely flat, due to realism. Broad streets run through the centers, with narrow alleyways, hedges, and farm plots on the outskirts. Check out Brothers in Arms for a pretty close example of how the villages will be set up. The causeway in the center will give the terrain some variety and have a central chokepoint where (hopefully) some larger scale battles will take place.

On the edge of the town overlooking the causeway and road (where the middle flag will be) I'd like to have a couple windows for MG nests or something. Kind of like dod_schwetz, if that's the right name.

Thanks for the comments everyone :)
Keep feeding me ideas if you have any

At each end use one of the destroyed model building sets (like outside the argentan allied spawn) as your MG nest.

Here are some more progress screenshots. Sorry for the image sizes

The entrance to the town.
http://img506.imageshack.us/img506/9953/preview11lj.jpg

One of the side routes around the main manor, pond kind of in view?
http://img506.imageshack.us/img506/3421/preview29fg.jpg

The farm plots on the other side of the manor.
http://img506.imageshack.us/img506/8716/preview48ub.jpg

Let me know what you guys think.
Thanks :)

I'd like to see this map have some sort of unique gameplay instead of just flag capturing, jazz it up a bit. I'd give away my idea, but I'm saving it for my map. ;)

this map is lookin hardcore :)

Originally posted by Scooty Puff Senior
I'd like to see this map have some sort of unique gameplay instead of just flag capturing, jazz it up a bit. I'd give away my idea, but I'm saving it for my map. ;)

That's all we can do for now until the devs release more code. You can get ambitious like the dod_risk map...but for general dod maps it's capture the flag/capture the area for now.

That looks great so far! This is definetly one map im looking forward too:)

I can definitely tell this was inspired by Brothers in Arms -- the long house looks familiar. Looks like a pretty solid map, though that last shot looks fairly empty. Good luck, can't wait to see more.

I live on a farm in real life. They're a lot more empty than that, at least in western pennsylvania, but the hedges give it some seperation and places to hide.

I'm aiming for a less cluttered gameplay style, where running out in the middle of a field is dangerous.

Very nice, but this map definitely needs some cows :D

needs more cows and :sheep: ;)

Needs more Cowbell

(Looking great so far. I love it. ) :D

I dont really know much about mapping for source so I cant criticize but I will say that the setup you have in those pics looks great, keep it up.