Map design concept / WIP. mean streets of the deathstar

[KaiserJ]

http://www.springfiles.com/show_file.php?id=2311

^^ check out the fruits of my labor so far! v2 is balanced for *A mods.

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hurr my map. i made it in 3dsmax, using tiles. currently its just a sort of a proof of concept, i wanna see how efficient and worthwhile mapping in this manner is... certainly the heightmap as is will make for some peculiar games.

if you have a cool idea for a layout using the tiles you see, post it! i may make your map for you if its awesome, or at least steal part of your idea >:D make sure you do or i will just end up making something crap.


max render

springmapedit render

coming along nicely...

gotta change some of the tile textures for the areas with near-vertical slopes and make them grainy and dark so the stretch is less obvious... and somehow deal with the strangeness of the road ramps... but overall the textures lined up pretty much as they should.

also the curbs are way too tall. gotta fix that.

... im getting a strange curved effect on the slopes lower in the heightmap... anyone could give me a tip as to whats goin on there?

thx behe for the tip to use the selective blur, it worked great!

[smoth]

not sure, might just be sme making it look that way, did you check it in game?

[Gota]

This map is hardcore.
Will it have square meta lspots instead of round ones?

[KaiserJ]

square

good idea is good. consider it implemented :D

also... im toying with the idea of adding features... things that will sit in predesigned spots on top of inaccessible blocks (as to avoid the annoyance of features and pathfinding)

smooth i actually have a feeling it was the format i exported my heightmap in; or something with the max settings (tried a test just a moment ago of a similar gradient in SME and it appeared correctly)

[Forboding Angel]

Nice kaiser! I can't wait till you get this one done. Gonna be fucking EPIC

[Beherith]

Looks great! Please post some kind of top down view of tileset :)
Also, on the curved slopes: please import the heightmap, or part of it into world machine 2.1 basic (free) and check to see if its not spring being wonky.

Btw, how did you export out of max? cylindrically mapped gradient texture then render? If so, then that would explain the curves.

[SinbadEV]

Did some experiments with placing features on near vertical slopes that were wall textures... at the time it didn't work out so well... but I'd suggest you give it a try on slopes that units can't climb anyway.

[thesleepless]

i suspect the curves are because the map grid is not aligned to the heightmap grid if that makes sense

[KaiserJ]

well, theres another try at a layout; i suppose for a 18x12 map.

i've changed the textures on some of the "wall" sections, and i think it will address some of the slop-over on the texture alignment in the earlier screens.

@ behe : these are the ones i have so far


top row : wall, flat, wall
2nd row : road, ramp, 4way intersection
3rd row : long ramp, outside corner
4th row: outside corner, curved road
final row : short to long ramp corner connector

urgh i also have a short wall inside corner but i forgot to take the pic
there are 5 choices of skin for the basic flat square

and as far as exporting... im combining all of my tiles into a single object and then doing a uvwrap planar map from the side, trying to get as many relevant shades of grey as possible

[hunterw]

finally, someone who can make metal maps! wd

[Gota]

This should be called core/arm prime.

[Beherith]

This might seem foolish, but i would highly recommend you make the heightmap for each tile manually. I think your results would be much better and you would have tighter control over fine detail. Manually mapping these 12 tiles shouldnt be nearly as difficult as trying to export the whole thing in one go from 3dsmax.

Sure you need to keep the tiles in 3ds max too for rendering the texture with proper shading, (please dont rely on springs built in shading) but assembling the heightmap from blocks once you got the layout done shouldnt be too difficult.

If you want multiple level capability with manual hieghtmaps, just max them to 50% grey, and you can use additive blending to overlay them.

Also, i think the curves result from a little shading creeping into your heightmap render. Makes sense.

Edit: I seem to recall bryce being able to import all kinds of meshes and export raw heightmaps from them.

[BaNa]

man this looks fucking epic.

[Frostregen]

Nice one :)

Question:
Could you supply me with one Tile consisting of:
-Heightmap data (16bit grayscale raw would be best)
-Texture data (RGB)
Texture should not be preshaded.

Maybe i can integrate those tiles into SME. Sort of "prefab" :)

[smoth]

I think he is getting the tiles working first.

[CarRepairer]

mean streets of the deathstar

i made it in 3dsmax

win.

(but please don't make it a full metal map)

[KaiserJ]

thx for all the kind words guys! i was tired last night, brain was a bit scrambled. hopefully i can finish this tonight.

how about this for a scenario as to why there's a curve in the ramp... i was scanning thru 3dsmax render saving thinger and gimp opening window to see what i could correlate... that heightmap i used was a 16 bit .tga file (99% sure it was at least) and then gimp told me it was losing information when i opened it but it looked fine (edges were crisp etc) do you think that's what dicked it up?

ok and now a response to everyone.

@forb : thx man!

@behe : i have world machine 2 basic, i shall load it in and see what happens.

@sinbad : i think that was how agorms forest map worked... i wasnt thinking so much in that manner to put a block inside the feature, but to sit the feature on a small block with 90 degree sides... i can get away with it here b/c everything will be square or at least boxlike

@sleepless : tbh that was my first thought, but then i replicated the linear gradient (just drew a new one of the same dimensions with the starting and ending shade) in a different map, and it loaded up fine, no strange bump :/

@hunter : well, thanks to some people, who will remain nameless, who make some incredible "natural" looking maps, cities and industrial complexes are my last vestige of possibly making something better than someone else (or at least making something new... for now)
@gota : core? arm? what are they :D i was gonna call it New Lammas... although "kbot red light district" is also up there.

@behe again: i did actually consider individually mapping the tiles. truthfully it might not even be that hard; i could just redo the uvw textures with linear gradients. im just scared that having a slightly gradient on each might break my map, especially since i seem to have so much trouble getting a 16 bit heightmap. certainly it's the direction i will go if this continues to act strangely.

i actually used a pretty comprehensive tutorial (although it didnt say anything about turning off anti-aliasing, i suppose that was meant to be a no-brainer) but there certainly some steps i took to avoid having shadowing; i set the texture to be self-illuminating and turned off all ambient lighting from the scene etc. haha bryce! my first true love.

@ BaNa : thankee kindly!

@ frost. hmm... i can certainly supply the images, and if you could do that... wow, godlike. see bottom of this post

@ smooth : if my poor old brain can figure this all out, i think i get a cookie.

@ Car... hell no! no metal map! lol i was toying with the idea of mainly making bigspots, and having them be fewer (for the last layout i posted)

and for everyone... i dont have a problem sharing any of this stuff; i'd like to put the tiles into the hands of anyone who feels they can use them. (and as stated in first post... i have no delusions of grandeur as far as layouts go. i know others are better. i want them in on this to some degree)

option... i could upload my current max project file somewhere for you all to grab... is good idea? or a 3ds file or something... frost specifically im not sure if that would work for your request.

spoiler : its a very dirty file, lots of excess crap. and i don't feel like cleaning it. and each uvw texture was 1000x1000. lol idk i wasn't really worried about the filesize when i was making them. where 2 upload?

annnnnd now im done my coffee. time to go and eat a "ham steak" whatever that is.

[Frostregen]

Hmm, I don't have 3ds max,

but the non-pre-shaded textures plus the finished map (to extract heightmap data) would be enough.

16 bit tif(or raw) heightmap + rgb texture (non-shaded) for each tile would save me some work, but is not necessary.

thx,
Frostregen

[hunterw]

cities and industrial complexes are my last vestige of possibly making something better than someone else (or at least making something new... for now)

this is better than everyone elses metal maps.

only technical thing i will mention...find out which direction the terrain polys are split in spring and build your tiles to suit. ie, a pyramid will have two edges that are perfect, since the polys split congruent with them, and two edges that look awful, since the polys are split opposite.

i forget if the split is / (SW to NE) or \ (NW to SE)

[Forboding Angel]

New Immas? You sir are a gentleman and a scholar!