http://www.realitymod.com/forum/blogs/ Welcome to the Project Reality Official Forums! Project Reality is a realistic, modern, Battlefield 2 modification featuring a variety of new nations, including the complete British Army, weapons, vehicles, and new game modes. Join our growing community today! en Tue, 14 Feb 2012 02:31:51 GMT vBulletin 60 http://www.realitymod.com/forum/images/pr/misc/rss.jpg http://www.realitymod.com/forum/blogs/ http://www.realitymod.com/forum/blogs/6432/b302-bastion-surrounding-terrain-pretty-much-done.html Wed, 12 Oct 2011 22:54:21 GMT Hey everyone, just a quick one to keep you posted on development, Camp Bastion is now pretty much finished, it needs a few other additions but I'll have to wait for those to be made first ;) The runway model itself is another one of Rhino's amazing additions! :) The surrounding terrain is pretty much sorted too, again, its just awaiting a few other bits to be made to finish it off. Here's an updated minimap and a few screenshots of a Bastion (which is around 1700m x 1200m at its widest and longest points) in its current state:



An editor shot to show the full base (a large part of Bastion is in the surrounding terrain to save on space whilst still giving the impression of a larger base):


A few ingame shots:

(ignore the black patches to the right, the runway will be fixed with shaders etc in the future)








(please note that the tower in the image below is just a placeholder, as are the concrete barriers)














So what's next? Some more performance tweaks whilst I await Rhino's 'IKEA store' to finish manufacturing all its goods XD (New IKEA Store Opening in Helmand! - Project Reality Forums), then it'll be compounds, final details including all the new fields, final terrain tweaks, FOB buildings and cabling work, gamemodes, lightmaps etc, and finally on to testing :) ]]> http://www.realitymod.com/forum/blogs/6432/b302-bastion-surrounding-terrain-pretty-much-done.html http://www.realitymod.com/forum/blogs/6432/b290-another-sangin-update.html Sun, 21 Aug 2011 17:47:13 GMT Here's the latest update on the map (minus the work I've done on Bastion which is now nearly done). Once I've finished Bastion I'll be doing a lot of final tweaks and detailing while I wait for the final compounds to be completed. And then... its play time 8) If you come to PR CON 2011 you'll get a chance to play test it ;)







































]]> http://www.realitymod.com/forum/blogs/6432/b290-another-sangin-update.html http://www.realitymod.com/forum/blogs/6432/b274-sangin-its-getting-there.html Tue, 05 Apr 2011 18:28:29 GMT Hey everyone, apologies for the lack of updates on Sangin. As ever I have been working hard to get this map out to you guys as soon as possible... Hey everyone, apologies for the lack of updates on Sangin. As ever I have been working hard to get this map out to you guys as soon as possible (work/life permitting). Thankfully I'm now getting close to the final stages, although I still have a lot of work to do on it before we hit release. A massive thanks has to be said to Rhino for his on going support for me on this project; for the last few months he has been working solely to produce statics/vegetation that I need to finish the map. Without him the map just would not be happening, so make sure you give him some lurv next time you see him about ;)

Right, where am I now with it? Well, I finished roughing out the Green Zone at the beginning of January this year. Since then my main focus has been on optimising the map to ensure it performs as well as it possibly can for minimal to no cost to visuals. To that extent I have replaced, by hand, thousands of trees and hedgerows. Basically the way the bf2 engine works means that the more objects you have in the map the worse it will perform. Logical, yeah, BUT if you take say six trees, so six individual objects, weld them together and export them as one object and then put that one object in, despite having the same number of polys as six individual objects the engine will handle it a lot better. Now if I'd known this earlier in the development of the map, I probably wouldn't have put 2 hedgerows down for every strip of hedgerow to make it thicker but would have asked someone to make me a new one (which Rhino has now done). So in order to maximise performance I have had to, by hand, replace thousands of pieces of hedgerow :-?

Anyway, I've now replaced most of the hedgerow I will hopefully have to replace and replaced all the shrublines bar one. I am currently in the process of tweaking all of the fields, after which I will go through the map and replace a load more trees I've used as bits of shrub to break up hedge lines etc. Once that's done I'll do Bastion, sort out the surrounding terrain, and tweak bits and pieces then do the compounds and detailing.

Here's the minimap taken at the beginning of the year before tweaking, some stuff have changed but most of it wouldn't be noticeable in the minimap anyway since the majority of the work has involved replacing objects (certainly a contender for the most boring job in the world XD):



Here are a few more in game shots:





]]> http://www.realitymod.com/forum/blogs/6432/b274-sangin-its-getting-there.html http://www.realitymod.com/forum/blogs/6432/b172-sangin-development-snapshot.html Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:42:57 GMT I posted a slightly different version of this a while back in the Dev Forums but thought it might be interesting to share it with you all. Although... I posted a slightly different version of this a while back in the Dev Forums but thought it might be interesting to share it with you all. Although its nowhere near as detailed as IronTaxi's brilliant development journal for Siege at Ochamchira, it does give you a very small and highly simplified insight into some of the stages of development a map can go through along its road to completion.

Stage 1 - Pouring over a massive amount of reference material:

*imagine an image of me looking over an insane amount of ref material* (mainly trees :wink:)

Note that using plenty of good ref material, to use both directly and indirectly i.e. copying some of the areas you see and taking influence from some of the others, can make the difference between something that looks good and something that looks real (within the limits of the bf2 engine). A tip I would have for any new mapper is that when it comes to general visuals let the references do the work for you. Attention to detail both in your observations of the reference material and the realisation of these in the map, working out what does and doesn't work when you account for the restrictions of the engine you're using, can make a huge difference to the overall visual quality of the map.

A couple of the refs I used for the area shown below:






Stage 2 - Starting point:



:-?

Stage 3 - Some basics down:




Stage 4 - The area is roughed out:






Stage 5 - Then detail is added:








Stage 6 - Finally, well a lot more detail is added!:

More statics, completed compounds and other detailed work such as texturing, bits of over/undergrowth, terrain tweaks, new overgrowth fields, lightmaps etc. All of that will be done in the final stages of development. ]]> http://www.realitymod.com/forum/blogs/6432/b172-sangin-development-snapshot.html http://www.realitymod.com/forum/blogs/6432/b159-sangin-mini-update.html Fri, 22 Jan 2010 02:21:07 GMT I know its been a while since I've posted any updates, unfortunately real life got in the way yet again, however I'm now well and truely back on the case and am and making some good progress.

Lastest WIP minimap:



A few screens:





]]> http://www.realitymod.com/forum/blogs/6432/b159-sangin-mini-update.html