New Asteroid Map: Apophis v2

[Beherith]

New asteroid map, its originally a 16*16 map, but for obvious reasons play area is limited. Used voidwater and a special skybox constructed from the Eta Carinae nebula image made by Hubble.

If anyone wants a rundown on how to make a passable skybox from a flat image, I can write up a tutorial. But I'm still stuck with how to do a perspective transformation so the skybox doesnt have a bit of distortion. If anyone knows how to do this, please tell me.

The real challenge in asteroid maps is making a heightmap on top of the asteroid that blends well enough into its surroundings, and making everything just fit well, without sacrificing realism.

The play map on this asteroid is extremely simple, kbots pass all. vecs have a hard time.

Also, there is no wind on this map. Ever.

In the future I would like to add floating space debris, but I couldnt figure out how to export my textured rocks out of bryce. I got the model out, but failed at getting the uv mapped texture out of bryce or carrara.
Would be nice if I could get that done, since its much easier for me to use procedurally generated textures and uvmaps; I suck at drawing and find uv mapping to be a horrible waste of manual labor.

Asteroid heightmaps can only be made at 16 bits; since the map is about 3000 elmos tall, it really needs the detail only 16bit raw can provide.

Used World machine for the heightmap - with an extremely elaborate and hackish ~50 filters to generate it.

If anyone needs help in making this kind of map, Ill gladly help. World machine free edition is sufficient to make smaller asteroid maps.

The skybox is released for free use by all, I reserve rights on a case by case basis to the height, metal, texture and typemaps.

Texture is Carrara.

Thanks goes to Auswachsbar and trepan for some lua, Braindamage for some tips.

Download the map and see for yourself!
http://www.springfiles.com/show_file.php?id=2328

V2: Fixed the music bug. There will be no music until next version of spring









EDIT:My peet server seems to be down atm, so no screenies

[Auswaschbar]

Dude, this is the most awesome looking map I have seen in a while.
Also, I like the music.

[mmisc]

just awesome

[Otherside]

map crashes on load for me. :S

[CarRepairer]

Looks amazing, can't wait to try this out.

[Beherith]

V1 crashes on load, v2 should be fine, if crash persists, please report.

[TheFatController]

Awesome, very impressive

If the skybox could be made to rotate it could be made quite vertigo inducing

[MidKnight]

http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.ph ... 44#p384944

[Otherside]

[thesleepless]

in space, no one can hear your music!

looks amazing! *downloads*

[1v0ry_k1ng]

Wow. the texture, height map, sky box, the way it all fits together...

This is a historic moment for spring: the first map that makes spring look like a professional product. the map blends with the sky box in a way that looks entirely natural and seamless. The sky box is beautiful. this map could be from star craft II for all their professional mapping artists.
If every map looked like this spring would have about 500k players by now

the only thing approaching a flaw ive noticed is that the texture map is full of little transparent holes that you can see the skybox through on the other side, which looks pretty queer considering its meant to be a solid lump of rock...

[zwzsg]

Using the same technique, can you make a map with several small asteroids, instead of a single huge one, so that we have at least one space map done right for all the space mods?

[Saktoth]

This map is absolutely spectacular, and i've actually been wanting something just like this. Cant wait to see it in game.

[thesleepless]

just tested it out, my only disappointment was that i couldn't use allterrains to sneak around the edge of the map =(

edit: just noticed those little black holes too when i zoomed in real close, odd!

also, a little bit in the east north east breaks the illusion

edit: on another note, north seems to have a huge advantage with the steep slope providing protection?

[Neddie]

Using the same technique, can you make a map with several small asteroids, instead of a single huge one, so that we have at least one space map done right for all the space mods?

Beherith has stated that maintaining the illusion of a full asteroid with multiple points of reference is difficult, since the terrain is bound to the same plane and must shadow out at the same point, yet objects of different offset from center would never do that.

[Beherith]

About the holes in the texture:

http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=20687

If anyone knows what may cause this, I would be very grateful. Ive seen it on other maps before, but never in this quantity.

[smoth]

On a void water map solid black becomes transparent try replacing all of your 0,0,0 with 001,001,001

[Beherith]

You mean all the bits in the texture that are 0,0,0 ?

Hmm, this could even be used to fake different heights of asteroids!
Just one thing, this bug doesnt seem to appear when shadows are on.

[smoth]

yep.

[Saktoth]

Just wondering if there is anything preventing you from terraforming into space and walking on it in CA? Typemaps in the 'water'? Still wouldnt prevent building though. Its like that in a lot of space maps (you can even make ships on some). Though i dont suppose this would matter as much as one with several separate asteroids.

Ill test that myself when i get the chance.