With everyone moving on to other games and the RTCW community slowly fading out, I started this Enemy Territory map a few weeks ago while on vacation.
It's an objective based map that contains new models, graphics & sounds.
It is intended to be a fully playable map but the content will be slanted more towards fun, not competition.
May 23, 2005
The terrain portion of the first outdoor area is almost done, I pulled a few all-nighters and got most of the terrain worked out.
There's some work left to do on this area, mostly some detail work on the barn and more vis blocking, then it's off to the interior sections, the second outdoor area and the objectives.
We did a few online tests for playability and a few visibility issues came up. In one area the visible triangle count is near 40,000 (although it has a low portal count),
it plays fine with four of us airstriking each other, but it could become laggy with 32 players. It's too bad, because the terrain looks great and with the alternate routes
around the valleys it would be very balanced for competitive gameplay.
In the final version, 2 sections of the Axis valley were removed due to playability issues, including the barn
A few outdoor shots of the 4 valley version.
The small bunker.
Axis spawn huts and the barn.
June 8, 2005
I slightly decreased the size of the Axis valley in order to better control the visibility and FPS, the first image shows the new proportions.
I also made a minor change to the terrain, I went with a rockier texture on the steep portions of the terrain.
Overview with the old rock texture.
These next four images are tests of different skyboxs and lighting.
March 15, 2006
I have once again broken off work on this map so I could create yet another test map. The test map only contains various types of player spawnpoints.
There are initial team spawns, a flag-capture spawn and a constructable command post spawn that is available to either team.
Each spawn has an object camera and all of the required scripting so it shows correctly on the command map.
Some day I may package it up and make it available for download as a tutorial prefab.
April 10, 2006
I started on this about ten days ago after I created the spawnpoint test map.
Work is almost complete on the north valley where the Allies initially spawn and where the docs are delivered to end the game.
This is a separate self-contained map that will drop into the main map at the correct location, ready to be connected to the existing warehouses.
It's much faster to perform a full light compile without having to deal with the existing map.
I have made some adjustments to the skybox and terrain in regards to lighting, these changes will be adopted into the main map as well.
April 21, 2006
The Allied valley prefab map is done and is fully integrated into the main map, everything works as it should and the warehouse even got a new roof in the process.
The internal warehouse bays are all tied into the two valleys now. I wound up deleting one third of the warehouse rooms because it was taking the Axis too long
to get from their rear spawn to the objective room. The map is much better balanced as far as travel times go, but it not designed to be a competitive map.
The tunnel teleporters and new sounds are in place and scripted. There is a proper command map as well - no more orange compass.
The endgame & objective scripting is done too - I updated the new objective icon for the document carrier from one of my earlier test maps.
A easter egg for one of our guys and an overview of the whole map.
Loading screen snapshot and command map images.
June 28, 2006
Now its time to work on the interior objectives and contents - right now it's just a bunch of empty warehouse bays.
I have started making some ASE game models for static objects - crates, skids, furniture, etc.
The original models were vertex-lit and looked out of place, I changed the shaders to lightmapped and things render much more smoothly now.
I wanted to have some different looking crates scattered around the warehouse, we have been looking at the same wooden crates since RTCW came out in 2002.
I made a few new wood textures that are of a much lighter color than we are used to seeing - they came out fairly well.
I am using a warehouse single-bay testmap for all of my render and script tweaks - it now takes over six minutes to compile the main map with fast light rendering
and using a small boxmap saves a lot of time. All of the special artifacts, sounds and associated scripting are in this map waiting to be imported into the main map.
When all done, the main map will have around 675 dynamic entities in it - well below the max of 1024. I need to leave room for players, dead players, gibs, etc.
I removed 225 coronas from the light fixtures because I thought I was near the entity limit. When I realized I miscounted the misc_gamemodels I put them all back in - one at a time.
Screenshots of a test warehouse bay - in the editor and in game.
Screenshots of a test destructable column objective - in the editor and in game.
The original vertex-lit pallet model and the same model with some color adjustments to the texture.
A workbench model with a separate vise model and special easter egg.
Some of the new models in the testbox.
A new "German Friendly" logo without a swastica - it goes with the theme of this map.
July 4, 2006
A few shots of the ammunition storage area - empty and then lots of models with new light-mapped shaders.
July 8, 2006
I did a few test builds today of the map pk3 file so I could determine where some problems lie before putting the map through an online test.
Half of my lightmapped ammunition models did not work when run on a pure server and I wound up converting them to a new model file with a different name.
The map assets compressed nicely and the pk3 file will probably end up being around 12 megabytes in size.
The system variable "com_hunkmegs" has to be increased slightly to accommodate the map assets - from 56 to 72.
After my efforts in modifying the ammunition models for better lighting came out so well , I decided to convert some of the standard truck models as well.
The original vertex-lit blitz truck model and the same blitz truck model when lightmapped.
Epilogue:
Because I was working on this map project on and off for the last 2 years, I found that I no longer had a target audience to play it when it was finished.
The online community that I was part of had moved on to other games.
One server, the one that this was created for, lost more than half of it's regular players to World of Warcraft.
What was left were a bunch of whiny kids and players that were more concerned with killing noobs than completing objectives.
We did host this online on our server for a while for testing purposes but it was never released to the public. As newer games came out, the support for Linux server binaries disappeared.
A lot of game servers were running Linux and people running on that platform were finding fewer new games to host - us included.
The game companies were also moving to a different business model where extra content became a way to create new revenue and the support of freely modified games was coming to a end.
The console wars were in full swing and most of the new games were being written for those platforms, leaving the PC players with nothing enticing or playable, like the 2009 version
of
Wolfenstein.
To this day, the project still sits on my computer, along with all of the assets, progress saved maps, test maps, models, graphic, sounds and anything else I was working with at the time.