Lionhardt's WIP Mapping Thread

[Franck83]

maps are supposed to be played, so the most important thing imo is the gameplay. but the visuals are also experienced differently

Of course, np exo, i developped because lionhardt wanted to understand more precisely my aesthetic point of view. Of course, all of this is not mandatory. And aesthetics are about personal feeling.

[Exotic_Retard]

well since im here i might as well give some feedback

in general i would say that the map isnt quite clear - for example there are some places where you have cliffs but they are quite hard to see if you dont tilt the camera:

here you cant really tell without looking hard where it starts and ends - the scout there is in the middle of a cliff

meanwhile this cliff is traversible but doesnt look any less steep from the top (party due to the shadows) I think making impassible cliffs having some different texture to passible ones could help

next, there are some height differences in your map (obviously) but they could be a little clearer - you used sandy texture to show areas that are lower down, maybe make some higher up areas a little darker as well? Im thinking that this plateau and the little platformy thing above it could get something to set them apart as being higher

some of these cliffs have pretty sharp points, could be smoothed out a little.


your map has lots of decals which is cool, and when you zoom out they fade away and seem to be replaced with other decals which is also cool. but theres a point where the close ones have faded out and the far ones havent faded in yet which leaves it surprisingly bland looking - so just lowering the fade in threshold a little should solve that:



anyway i dont do maps so i dont know what im talking about so whatever, and i didnt touch gameplay at all but i think that apofs suggests were not so bad. well whatever, hope this helps.

[Lionhardt]

Thanks for the hints, I will see what I can do about those things.

[Morax]

Hey, Lionhardt, when you say you go back and forth between Photoshop and world machine a bunch, can you describe some common issues and how you resolve them? For example, you don't like the shape you got in world machine, more you go and adjust in Photoshop... What tools in Photoshop are you using and how do you control the pixels so they blend with the rest?

It's a very open ended question, I know, but hopefully it leads to something.

[Lionhardt]

Believe it or not, but my primary tool is the brush and my secondary tool is the eraser, lol. Yea, don't quite know what to tell you. Depends on the type of terrain feature I want to sculpt. If I am not happy with the slope of a cliff and I still have the original layer I will maybe adjust some levels or stack the layer a few times, applying blurs and transparency to different copies of the levels. If I am not happy with the shape of a mountain I will likely add a new layer and paint over the existing mountain with a low intensity brush and the brightest grey value the mountain is supposed to have, stacking color the closer I get to the peak of the mountain. Then I will blur that layer and possibly get the eraser, set it to a medium value and carve some channels into the layer I just drew. Then I will blur that a little bit again and reimport into WM and have a look. If I am not happy with the orientation of a feature I will either rotate the layer (if I still have it) or cut it out, rotate it and blend it back in with blurs and the the smudge tool. If I want a very symmetric shape I will often search the internet of shapes, paste them in my heightmap and blend them in. For ramps and such I obviously use the gradient tool and pick the colors for the low end and the high end of the ramp with the color sampler tool. For craters and other pits I often use the circular selection and the circular gradient tool. Then I will make the edge of the circle look more irregular and maybe smudge around in it a little...

Yea... really depends. There is no right way to to all this and the tools depend on the type of terrain you want to make... for example adding bumps to a mountain can also be done with the cloud/ sprinkles/ whatever brush tips. And to get more natural edges of plateaus you can use the simulated brushes that add some randomness from the get go.

[Morax]

Holy damn that's like super try-hard haha. I came to the acceptance phase that getting "the perfect heightmap" is pretty bad. I'm using a mix of world machine and manual terrain creation I'm the editor for now. I will have to try and adjust some manually in Photoshop next... However now I need to get my current map done...

Thank you for the tips, though!

[Lionhardt]

Little update. Added more secondary terrain features to break up the monotone green surface. These bunkers are very shallow and have no big effect on gameplay. Also decided where to probably put ACU spawns.

11.JPG (144.2 KiB) Viewed 5071 times

[Morax]

That texture blending, did you do this in the official or ozonex editor?

Looks nice but need to see some 3d shots to get an idea of how the terrain works.

[Lionhardt]

No, I did that in the official editor. Actually I also removed some of the sand areas again. Looked kinda meh. I replaced them with ridges... still not happy with that though.

[biass]

Looks okay, i would both consider A: putting the spawns on the 2 and 7 o clock positions, so that both sides of the spawn are not occupied by a ramp, and trying a darker tex for your cliff faces

lighting isn't too contrasted, and the top down image loses a lot of vertical depth so i would keep working on it, it's of course not a catastrophe though.

gl with having to explain your entire workflow everytime you post an image kappa and kappa