So, what are you working on right now?

[chakkman 380]

They seem to be extra fragile, as they break on stone surfaces.

[stumpy 242]

On a map I've been working on, every so often, there is a place where you need to use a rope arrow to get in the place quickly, there is a rope arrow hidden in plain sight in case you don't have one, there is another way in but it means dodging undead things that are wandering around, although they are not in yet.

[snowy 15]

On 8/14/2019 at 11:13 AM, peter_spy said:

My perspective in general is that with all the tools and arsenal available, you can make players feel extra smart if they are able to find a way to progress without using any tools, only their wits and observation skills. Kind of like in Hitman series, where you have tons of weaponry available, but the most satisfactory assassinations aren't assassinations at all, more like "unfortunate accidents" you prepare

I like the ideas of allowing multiple play styles through a mission, similar to Hitman and Deus Ex. Ghosting, blackjacking and combat are standard. Key hunts, lock picking, underwater parkour and rooftop parkour are less standard. How would "unfortunate accidents" play out in a TDM mission? Would a "whoops, dropped a heavy box onto a guards head" count as such an (unscripted) unfortunate accident?

[VanishedOne 543]

I think it's Penny Dreadful 3 that has an inconveniently placed guard outside a mansion, a place where the player can look down on him, and some moveable crates nearby...

One thing with rope arrows is how easily you can get back down without leaving the arrow behind: for example, if you can open a building from the inside, or use scenery to break your fall.

[Goldwell 2439]

During my mapping session today I wanted to try something I haven't really ever done before.. draw concept art and then build a scene based off of it.

As you can tell I am a very talented drawing artist

But I gotta say it actually helped with the direction of the scene overall

 

[VanishedOne 543]

That reminds me of the concept art Melan sometimes includes with his mission files.

[demagogue 1252]

We could have a whole topic just on this, but what is everybody's opinion about drawing out a level in advance of building? I draw a top-down map, and sometimes in the margin I might draw how I think the scene might look. But I draw it out as a guide. Maybe about 80% of it I'll build as it is in the map, but another 20% I'll improvise as I go with buildings or orientations or features. Well, sometimes, if it's like a mazy outdoor area, I'll just leave spaces open with general comments like "trees and brush here" and completely improvise areas like that. 

My thinking is that, except for a few key things, nothing is sacred or set in stone, and I let myself feel free to change things around once I'm in the editor dragging stuff around. But I plan like that from the beginning. It's part of my more general strategy of node-based plotting. I plot an FM based on nodes of key events, and the whole story is connecting those nodes together. So that works for the mapping too. I'll plan out the rooms for key scenes, but the rest of it is basically connecting the nodes together in a space, and that's what I'll leave open for improvisation as I go. 

What are all of your thoughts and strategies for the balance between planning and improvising? 

[Epifire 784]

It will probably have to change for me in the future but I hate drawing myself my own concept. It's a strange thing but I feel a lot more comfortable (usually) just hammering it out in the editor rather than going through a ton of concept. I do the thing where I take down notes that I toss on my desktop and usually refer to online references of the real thing I'm trying to attain the look of. But that's also from a modeler's standpoint where I do a lot of blocking and going over the design in the early stages of it anyways.

However. Having very rarely been given 1:1 concept art, I will say knowing the shape and color pallet to something before even starting it blows my mind. I think drawing your own concept really depends on your workflow because I used to do it in the past but dropped it because it somehow gave me tunnel vision on the scope of the project right off the bat.

[peter_spy 1530]

Having a limited color palette (e.g. picked up from a movie or a painting) and sticking to it is awesome. Everything looks much more consistent. You can add variety to it, like having slightly different color palette per location type, or just slowly adding colors as you go (and matching it to what you already have). All in all, my assets look much better since I started doing that.

[snowy 15]

As a newbie I'm still working out a best strategy for creating a mission. I took a lot of notes on the TDM / TTLG / Quake fan missions, either because they have an interesting unique event, setting, low poly architecture or models I can study and reproduce in DR with brushes. I completed the Springheel and Sotha tutorials. Then I immediately tried to make my mission, spending 12 hours on it before losing interest on this map idea. That didn't work out well.

Now I've switched strategy, doing TDM speedmaps inspired by the Quake speedmapping community. Trying to create a really short 2-minute finished TDM mission within 100 minutes (excluding planning time) and doing something original and new every time. Builder church, rooftop parkour, city section etc. They're toy missions, but so far this is the most fun way for me to get better at DR and keeping at it.

[chakkman 380]

23 hours ago, Goldwell said:

During my mapping session today I wanted to try something I haven't really ever done before.. draw concept art and then build a scene based off of it.

As you can tell I am a very talented drawing artist

But I gotta say it actually helped with the direction of the scene overall

 

The shadow/light play, and the dark atmosphere makes me lust for this. 

[peter_spy 1530]

Working with @SeriousToni on a painting set. Well, I'm just the carpenter

[Jedi_Wannabe 215]

You can almost feel the bumps and cracks in the oil on that canvas. Bravo, Toni & peter! Every week I am blown away by the creativity of this community.

A courtyard at the back of my mansion/villa is finally taking shape. Almost nothing is complete or final yet, lots of optimization to do, but I can finally see my first mission coming together. Messed around with the model scaler a bit to get some new trees, I was shooting for a Tuscan villa vibe.

I was trying to scan some sheets out of my notebook, but I needed a firmware update and didn’t have time to mess with it before work. I draw out a top down view and go loosely off of that, scribbling notes here and there.

Edited August 27, 2019 by Jedi_Wannabe

[Amadeus 344]

Love the pool area! Where's the jacuzzi

[Jedi_Wannabe 215]

Ah damn you just gave me an idea! The answer is in the master bathroom of course. I planned to connect the kitchen below the master with a dumbwaiter, so a boiler room nearby for laundry and other hot water could make sense. 

[JackFarmer 475]

Hidden Hands: The Lost Citadel, Part I: The Weir

 

 

 

Thank you so much @Dragofer. The skybox forest section of yours is perfect for the mission's requirements.

As with Vitalic Fever, I will introduce several new Builder's inventions. Some examples are shown above:

a. the medieval walkie-talkie (strange messages ahead!)
b. the century-old crane (can be rotated in two (!) directions)
c. the ancient AI charger (nobody knows how it actually works)

....and lots of other items/machines for which I still have not figured out what purposes they should fulfil in the first place...let alone how they should be named!

Hmm...Amadeus will have to come up with lots of crazy readables explaining the items in question!

The mission will consist of three parts. All three parts will be in one mission.  Hopefully I can show more at the end of the year.

Edited August 29, 2019 by JackFarmer

[NeonsStyle 572]

Looking great. Really like your garden Jedi.

[Jedi_Wannabe 215]

I love the atmosphere Jack! Can't wait to see more. Always impressed with the mood you imbue your maps with. It's the air of mystery that always grabs me. How do the separate parts work? Is each part a different difficulty?

 

Added a light to the pool, and moved some others around, got a balcony put in which of course is pointless if you can't use it or get to it. So spoiling a path of ingress is ok as it should be obvious when you see it in game. The point was nailing the execution of getting your taffin' arse up there from ground level. Which is fun, but my challenge now is portalling the yard correctly so it doesn't run like crap when you're above the pool. I haven't figured out my perfect workflow yet for mapping, and like most noob mappers I suffer from a sense of scale. Currently I build a scene and then 'pull the void in' and move the sealing geometry to fit the area to cut out wasted space. Not sure if that makes sense, but doing that with good use of VP I can get this rather large scene to run around 15-50fps with an avg of 25 or so. I've got a crappy frankenstein machine that might have been decent 8yrs ago and all my settings are at max. I hope it would maybe run better for folks with better machines but it does make me worry about the viability of this area. Still not sure if it's Tuscan enough, might change the white brick to match the stucco outer walls like the barracks and servant house.

Thank you Neon, you replied as I was typing all this lol

Edited August 30, 2019 by Jedi_Wannabe

[AluminumHaste 1052]

That looks great! I can't wait to go swimming!

One of the cool parts of Baffords in Thief 1 was jumping off the balcony into the pool.

[Jedi_Wannabe 215]

Yessss Bafford’s might still be one of my favs, probably because I played that Eidos demo over a hundred times before I got TDP.

[AluminumHaste 1052]

14 minutes ago, Jedi_Wannabe said:

Yessss Bafford’s might still be one of my favs, probably because I played that Eidos demo over a hundred times before I got TDP.

Same, and same with the Thief 2 demo that was on the pc gamer disc at the time. Loved that demo.

[JackFarmer 475]

Wrong topic, content removed.

 

 

Edited August 31, 2019 by JackFarmer

[JackFarmer 475]

On 8/30/2019 at 3:43 PM, Jedi_Wannabe said:

I love the atmosphere Jack! Can't wait to see more. Always impressed with the mood you imbue your maps with. It's the air of mystery that always grabs me. How do the separate parts work? Is each part a different difficulty?

 

 

Hello JW,

Thank you, I hope that you will like this new mission. I want to liase as soon as possible with Amadeus for the readables and dialogues. I hope you will contribute with your talents this time as well. New Horizon will be on board as well , and I hope that Goldchocobo will also contribute.

As for your questions:

1. The first two parts have only one directive: find a way into the next area. This is old Core Design TR style and the reason why I still like these game so much. For part III I have not decided on anything till now, but the objectives will surely be different there.

2. There will be different difficulty settings this time. It shall become very important to ghost the first part of the mission and I have something similar in mind for part II.

I will get back to you asap!

[NeonsStyle 572]

Exquisite work Dram. Thank you

[Springheel 4630]

On 8/29/2019 at 4:05 PM, JackFarmer said:

Hidden Hands: The Lost Citadel, Part I: The Weir

 

 

 

 

 

The mission will consist of three parts. All three parts will be in one mission.  Hopefully I can show more at the end of the year.

I would suggest revisiting the texture scale of the walls in these shots.  The mortar between the stones looks far too thick and it is really distorting the sense of scale.