IT'S OUT!!

http://www.dayofdefeat.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=68516

LAST UPDATE BEFORE BETA 1 RELEASE! yeees, it's already compiling in the background! :)

http://img116.imageshack.us/img116/7668/dodplateauscreensvol031ib9.jpg http://img300.imageshack.us/img300/9721/dodplateauscreensvol032ds3.jpg http://img300.imageshack.us/img300/5740/dodplateauscreensvol033zi8.jpg http://img133.imageshack.us/img133/8871/dodplateauscreensvol034ub5.jpg http://img133.imageshack.us/img133/9417/dodplateauscreensvol035wl9.jpg http://img133.imageshack.us/img133/3844/dodplateauscreensvol037mj2.jpg


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Old message:

UPDATE! some new pics!

pic 1 (http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/446/dodplateauv4701la8.jpg) . pic 2 (http://img82.imageshack.us/img82/7259/dodplateauv4702zq1.jpg) . pic 3 (http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/2905/dodplateauv4703bw7.jpg) . pic 4 (http://img82.imageshack.us/img82/8838/dodplateauv4704hm4.jpg) . pic 5 (http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/5409/dodplateauv4705sc0.jpg) . pic 6 (http://img82.imageshack.us/img82/5386/dodplateauv4706nh4.jpg) . pic 7 (http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/1588/dodplateauv4707sa9.jpg) . pic 8 (http://img82.imageshack.us/img82/2903/dodplateauv4708us1.jpg) . pic 9 (http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/6053/dodplateauv4709cz2.jpg)

development is going good. i had some valuable input from wile e coyote during the last weeks and i think we did some very nice changes which help gameplay a lot.

technical: i did some serious optimization in several parts of the map. still runs fine on my computer... i haven't been able to join a playtest with 24+ people though.

i hope i can release a first beta soon. it's really time to see if the map works out.

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Very old message:


i finally found some time to map again
i was a little tired of dod's official maps, so i thought i'd start something a little more open...

there's not much to say.. it's still very wip as you can see by the grey buildings.
allies start on bottom (first few screenshots) and they have to move up the two levels to get to the plateau. there are 2 routes to get up. on the middle level, there are 3 objectives to bomb. plus an additional one (in the church on top of the plateau) which will become destroyable as soon as the allies bombed the last one.

right now, the map runs with a nice 60fps on my machine, dropping to 40 in some places where a lot of stuff can be seen... don't know yet about online gameplay with more people yet. hopefully it will work out.

ok, here are the pics:

pic 1 (http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/1148/dodplateaus01su6.jpg) . pic 2 (http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/8738/dodplateaus02no3.jpg) . pic 3 (http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/4200/dodplateaus03hg8.jpg) . pic 4 (http://img486.imageshack.us/img486/7866/dodplateaus04we2.jpg) . pic 5 (http://img486.imageshack.us/img486/7017/dodplateaus05sh2.jpg) . pic 6 (http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/1985/dodplateaus06lr7.jpg) . pic 7 (http://img371.imageshack.us/img371/5446/dodplateaus07lh0.jpg) . pic 8 (http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/5689/dodplateaus08im7.jpg) . pic 9 (http://img512.imageshack.us/img512/9836/dodplateaus09nw7.jpg) . pic 10 (http://img371.imageshack.us/img371/788/dodplateaus10wv0.jpg)

WTF I went to edit this post and it created a new one...

:confused:

My goodness thats gonna be a job and a half to optimize with all those foliage models showing. It looks great though! Is it going to be a det. map only or will you release one for traditional flag cap also?

Edit: You might want to look into adding the lost coast rock textures to replace those HL2 ones. They would match up real nice with the road texture your using. They are also just generally better looking I think.

Whoa, that looks pretty damn good... Look forward to seeing it progress.

really nice and open setting

Looks awsome man, cant wait to see the finished product

looks real nice m8
but goin to be a <3<3<3<3<3 to optimize

Looks fantastic and very different from most other maps. Tell me, when you have a playable version. I will host it on my mapdownload-website and on my server then.

thanks for the comments :)

you're all right, it will be madness to optimize. i hope i can get it done... good thing is, the map is divided by that treeline near the rails.. that helps me a lot. i'm currently using an occluder there, but i just read something about areaportals, so i might try those.
other than that, i'm working on lod-models for all the hedges and trees..
showbugget said i should optimize prop_statics ;)

for your question meleeme!:
i don't think i'll release a flagmap... but i'm not sure yet.
and i'll check that texture out.. i think it looks better because it uses a normalmap.. but i removed the normalmap from the mat of the current cliff-texture, because i'ts madness to have a normalmap on such huge walls.. i tried and the framerate dropped almost by 10 frames :P

i think i have to stay very basic with all the details.. especially with the houses... i would hate to see the map die because it doesn't run well enough...

That looks awesome, especially with the foliage. Good luck with optimising! :D By the way, which sky is that one? Is it the one used in Anzio or Flash?

looks great pedro !!

The rock textures shown in pics #5 and #6 are not very nice though.


:)

Originally posted by SilentSteps
By the way, which sky is that one? Is it the one used in Anzio or Flash?

lol, i don't even know the name of it :P
i think its the default one hammer assigns when there is none specified...
have to do my own with some more mountains and stuff ;)

Originally posted by pedroleum

for your question meleeme!:
i don't think i'll release a flagmap... but i'm not sure yet.
and i'll check that texture out.. i think it looks better because it uses a normalmap.. but i removed the normalmap from the mat of the current cliff-texture, because i'ts madness to have a normalmap on such huge walls.. i tried and the framerate dropped almost by 10 frames :P



Well yea im sure it does look better with the normal map and kills performance (unfortunately:() but I suggested it because its darker and more gritty looking. It would match up nicer with all the DoD textures instead of that really light colored rock texture you have in now.

EDIT: actually I think they used the texture I have in mind on the cliffs in Anzio so you might not even have to extract it and whatnot its probably already in the dod texture set.

yes, I am drooling just looking at this map. And crying too, hoping when this is done and released my favorite servers limit the sniper class to 0.

I gotta admit, on bigger open maps I find it actually at lot more fun when snipers are removed. snow_battlefield is a blast without snipers, but is just a shooting gallery for kill-crazy bodycount hounds who check their server stats every 15 seconds when snipers aren't removed.

And I would just leave the sky, unless you want to add a few clouds. Looks great as-is.

Very nice, but the buildings on the last 2 pics need sum good textures.

Originally posted by RA7
Very nice, but the buildings on the last 2 pics need sum good textures.

The process to build a map starts w/layout first and buildings roughed in w/either orange or other non-specific textures. You want to establish gameplay first, looks second. Most maps made by Valve start as "orange" levels with zero detail and almost every brush is textured in the orange guideline texture set. As they get the gameplay mechanics working they make art passes and during this timeframe decide on the texture set and start detailing things. Ped's smart to work his performance now before he continues to build detail...no perf no map...so I'm actually glad to see the designers texture set in use.

The train section and lake areas look very promising but the rest of it I could care less for, displacement forrests aren't very impressive at all on source. Not that those environments didn't exist but you'd be better off spending less of your time trying to make the map large + plain and more making even small areas very interesting in their own right. Its also far smarter perfomance wise.

Hope that doesn't sound overly harsh.

meleeme!
i'll check out the cliff textures. good thing is, i don't have to recompile to see the changes ;)

fuzzdad
yes, ped's smart ;-)
i really hope the performance works out... i would hate to see it die!

fmpone
i think you didn't get my intention with the map.... read my motivation in the first post..
the gameplay will be quite packed... there's only two paths to get up to the plateau...
large + plain: it's still wip, so expect more details! and it just looks very large because the skybox is quite wide... you'll see ;)

wile e
pm!

I love it, The last pic is my favorite.

Can't wait to play, actually I can but if I said, MAN I CAN WAIT TO PLAY THIS, you guys would be like, Your off your meds man!!

This looks like this one map I played for RO, very awesome! Great job!

Looks nice. Love the openess and all the foliage. You've got some texture stretching on the 4th pic though, if you hadn't noticed.

Originally posted by FuzzDad
The process to build a map starts w/layout first and buildings roughed in w/either orange or other non-specific textures. You want to establish gameplay first, looks second. Most maps made by Valve start as "orange" levels with zero detail and almost every brush is textured in the orange guideline texture set. As they get the gameplay mechanics working they make art passes and during this timeframe decide on the texture set and start detailing things. Ped's smart to work his performance now before he continues to build detail...no perf no map...so I'm actually glad to see the designers texture set in use.

I find that it's often a hassle to have to go back to parts of your map and change brushwork. If you have architecture that interferes with the layout of your map (say a tunnel or an extrusion of some sort), you have to change all the surrouding brushwork to accomodate the changes.

Originally posted by Dwin
Looks nice. Love the openess and all the foliage. You've got some texture stretching on the 4th pic though, if you hadn't noticed.

lol, thats actually a wip cornfield ;)

PEDROLEUM CLEAN OUT YOUR OLD MESSAGES

Grrrrr.......

Have the info you wanted, but you ain't ever gonna see it until you do some housekeeping in your PM box!

LOL can't e-mail you because you have that turned off

im sorry :P

looks incredible

a little update in the first post :)

Oh this looks beautiful I like having the open paths and it would be fun hiding amongst the corn :) I always wanted to make a sort of farm-ish level but the displacements kill my humble 1.6 GHz. Also does anyone know where I can get some good DOD:S props as I've seen some great custom ones in screenies

Originally posted by AkFuttySeben
Oh this looks beautiful I like having the open paths and it would be fun hiding amongst the corn :) I always wanted to make a sort of farm-ish level but the displacements kill my humble 1.6 GHz. Also does anyone know where I can get some good DOD:S props as I've seen some great custom ones in screenies

some of them are linked in this thread. (http://www.dayofdefeat.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=58640)

other than that, you can always look out for them in the releases thread. (http://www.dayofdefeat.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=40)

the new screens look amazing. If you got the fps situated, this could be great!

I hope you plan on testing it out soon.

Wow, this looks über awesome! I hope there will be some 24 hour servers playing this map once its done! :cool:

Nice work Pedro, looking very nice so far. I'm a great fan of out door maps. I've started to specialize in doing countryside maps as I think fighting in urban areas all the time is kind of boring after awhile, Plus it's a challenge to keep the FPS high and everything looking great :)

BTW Check your PM's :)

Just looking over the screenshots again. This is just a personal opinion but I think the lighting needs changing. It reminds me of fullbright at the moment.

Looks flippin sweet. Can't wait until it's done. The work you do is always awesome. When the release happens, it will be up and running on our server.

P.S. Just out of curiousity, do you have a completion percentage or a release time that you have in mind?

thanks for all the comments :)
i can't wait myself to play it on a full server!!!


akfuttyseben:
the screenshots are really lowres. it looks quite different ingame.
i was aiming for a low-sun-from-the-side kind of atmosphere and i think i caught that pretty nice ingame. i hope you change your mind if you see it ingame ;)


formologic23:
hmm, thats hard to say. i'd say its soon ready for a first beta.
completion: hmm, about 80% or so? uuhh, i don't know ;)

Originally posted by pedroleum



formologic23:
hmm, thats hard to say. i'd say its soon ready for a first beta.
completion: hmm, about 80% or so? uuhh, i don't know ;) That's cool. Again, no hurry to get it done. Quality takes time, that's for sure. Can't wait to play it!

Promising. Nice displacement work.

Nice map, open maps are a good challenge and if the FPS is good then you've done a good job.

Well I have seen it first-hand. It looks amazing. I personally think more tweaking needs to be done with the objectives, but there is no point in going further with that until there is true full-scale practice on it.

As Pedroleum said the real acid test is how well it performs with 24 players. I have more confidence in Pedro's map than 'ol Pedro I think ;)

Looks very good, hope you can keep your fps high without sacrificing much visual quality

UPDATE!! read first post!

http://www.fansoflive.com/forums/style_emoticons/default/omg.gif http://www.fansoflive.com/forums/style_emoticons/default/omg.gif http://www.fansoflive.com/forums/style_emoticons/default/omg.gif
the visuals are absolutely awesome!
i hope the gameplay is as good as well, but we'll find out soon!

:)

You're one skilled <3<3<3<3<3<3<3. :P
If you get that thing to run well fps wise, it's pretty much the best countryside based map I've seen so far.

Great job!

thanks, but i'm sure you only say this because i'm using your flak ;)

ITS OUT!!!

http://www.dayofdefeat.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=68516

colour test with fog

http://www.p2kio.com/dod/plateau-col4.jpg

http://www.p2kio.com/dod/plateau-col5.jpg

http://www.p2kio.com/dod/plateau-col6.jpg




http://www.p2kio.com/dod/plateau-col1.jpg

http://www.p2kio.com/dod/plateau-col2.jpg

http://www.p2kio.com/dod/plateau-col3.jpg

iieek!
thats exactly what my results looked like. i don't like it at all.
why do an open field map if i have to fog out half the level??

also, if you look at fps, the z-clip stuff isn't really helping. don't know why.

the only thing really helped is r_drawdetailprops 0 (which turns off the terrain grass)

i think you could do some fog, just less than those pictures.

I ran around in the map today. a little bit of fog (even if not for optimization) would make it more realistic and smooth.

atmospheric perspective if you will. it feels a little strange to me that the distant church tower doesnt even have a bit of haze.

this is what i am probably going to do. just for looks.

pic (http://img180.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dodplateaub1a0014zj2.jpg)

yeah, that is looking even more realistic than without fog http://www.michaelsadler.com/forums/images/smiles/thumbsup.gif