|
Post by Stanenberg on Oct 21, 2016 19:11:46 GMT 1
Hey fellow blitzkrieg mappers, as most of you may have realized, i wasnt too interested in Mapping or BK in general during the last few months. Recently however, i have regained interest in Blitzkrieg as well as in Mapping for the Game. Special thanks to Joseph_Porta for motivating me with his amazing screenshots, bb for dropping my name here an there and Denis for motivating me to map! Enough off-topic...lets start. Seeing the Fall Weiß maps i started wondering why they look so good, so i went and analysed some parts of them. What i found out really improved my mapping. I wish i would have found it earlier (my previous maps look so dumb now:-/ ). I thought why not share some mapping tricks, on how to make maps look better with the less experienced mappers in this community. This is not a beginner mapping tutorial on how to use the mapping editor. Its more like an advanced tutorial to improve the look of a map. Maybe i can help some people whose maps look sometimes pretty...lets say weird . Lets start by what i learned from the Fall Weiß maps. (credit to joseph_porta)1st: Create something like a backyard. It adds a lot of depth to your village and doesnt make it look so roadbound. 2nd: Place the House close to the street with the entrance close to the door. No sane person would like to go through his garden before he enters the house. In the backyard you now have space to design a garden. 3rd: Use objects that make sense. Think about what a farmer/villager in eastern europe would have in his garden and what he wouldnt. Try to avoid weird things. Placing a shed is always a good way to fill space and make the village look more detailed. Unfortunately i am mapping with kursk, which offers only limited garden objects. Especially the objects added by the Stalingrad addon improve the detailing of a garden. 4th: Add flora! This is maybe the most important one and a mapping trick in general. If something doesnt look detailed, place more flora. You shouldnt place less than 1 tree and 2 bushes for each house/garden you map. Place more trees around your village, flora take up a lot of space and makes the entire place look tight and detailed, so try to cover up emtpy space with flora. As you can see in the final result, our "wrong" house doesnt look that bad compared to "right" house (which is actually the left ), but the left house just has a much more realistic and more detailed look. Tell me if you want more, or if you think its useless. If you have your own advanced tricks, feel free to post them below. Stanenberg PS: the person who can spot the two example houses on the map when it is done gets a cookie
|
|
|
Post by ariete on Oct 21, 2016 20:56:34 GMT 1
more
|
|
Mat
General
Posts: 1,814
|
Post by Mat on Oct 21, 2016 23:29:18 GMT 1
"Use objects that make sense" Great! i never tried to spell it out
|
|
Joseph_Porta
Pukovnik
Half-Czech / Half-Norwegian
Posts: 398
|
Post by Joseph_Porta on Oct 22, 2016 13:00:31 GMT 1
Hey fellow blitzkrieg mappers, as most of you may have realized, i wasnt too interested in Mapping or BK in general during the last few months. Recently however, i have regained interest in Blitzkrieg as well as in Mapping for the Game. Special thanks to Joseph_Porta for motivating me with his amazing screenshots, bb for dropping my name here an there and Denis for motivating me to map! Enough off-topic...lets start. Seeing the Fall Weiß maps i started wondering why they look so good, so i went and analysed some parts of them. What i found out really improved my mapping. I wish i would have found it earlier (my previous maps look so dumb now:-/ ). I thought why not share some mapping tricks, on how to make maps look better with the less experienced mappers in this community. I am happy I could contribute to refinding your passion for mapping. And if it helps, I have had that feeling many times now. Whenever I learned something new in mapping, I thought my old maps looked dumb. Whenever I made more unique Polish buildings, found better topographic maps, I found my old maps to be of inferior quality. In fact, this has been partially to blame for FW never getting released. 2nd: Place the House close to the street with the entrance close to the door. No sane person would like to go through his garden before he enters the house. In the backyard you now have space to design a garden. Nice point! Especially in Poland and in the Czech Republic (Central Europe, that is), most houses are close to the road. Here photographic evidence is helpful for mapping. However, there are of course always some few exceptions to the rule.
|
|
bb
General
Blitzkrieg junkie (tried to quit several times).
Posts: 1,362
|
Post by bb on Oct 31, 2016 21:19:07 GMT 1
Detailled maps are time consuming and the most exigent mappers usually produces less. Is very easy to "lose the line" and give up in the middle of project after some problems in the mapping or in the scripting, just check the forums here and around to see this: there are several "working progress" which never saw the light of the day. The most prolifict mappers, like Manhunter, Louis XIV, Brendel, clearly used the random map generator in the map editor. Others, like myself and Keppitsimple, uses old maps to edit. I'm not saying these solutions are good, the random mappers artist (meaby with the exception of Manhunter) usually made boring and repetitive maps, the "recyclers" work can be very disappointing (I remember someone once said he couldnt stand another version of a manhunter map). I think one solution should be working with the templates in the random map generator. I mean why not try making these villages in the templates? I'm sure Manhunter edited his templates, cause his hamlets and fields were very peculiar. This is certainly a challenge, but is not impossible and, in the long run, will result in time saving on mapping. Other solution is to blend simple maps with more complex ones in greater projects. In my modest opinion, is not necessary to transform all maps in a decisive clash of titans (as Glantz book), this is the issue of Tedi88's and some Staneberg's works, which are probably the most meticulous mappers in the actitivity. The Storm on the North chapter is almost a complete collection of "final maps", for this I mean those complex maps which you expect to find in the end of a campaign. His chapter, therefore, could easily be transformed in a full campaign by adding some silly simple maps (as those made by myself, LOL). Also is posible to improve the recycling of maps by a better use of the map xml editor tool or by enlarging it as I discussed in the other topic. P.s. I hope the guys cited here wont mind about my criticism. I respect the work of everybody. P.s.2 I didnt comment Kaoz work because most of his maps are to Western Front and I almost dont play this scenario. I just played his soviet chapter in OA.
|
|
Denis
Pukovnik
Posts: 423
|
Post by Denis on Oct 31, 2016 21:58:12 GMT 1
I dont agree at all. Recycling old maps and using random generator can be boring after time. Its fine when you do this alone. You bring life to these old maps with your amazing mission design but what if everyone use same mapping methods? It would be all the same and evolution in mapping would be gone....I will rather play couple of good and unique maps than thousands of shitty maps.
I think some compromise between quality and quantity must be made. You can make some extremely detailed and beautiful maps but its extremely time consuming to create longer chapter - campaign like that. In my opinion its possible to create nice, detailed map pretty quickly even without random generator or fields. All you need for this is a good mapping system. Stanenbergs guide is great example of this system.
|
|
|
Post by Stanenberg on Oct 31, 2016 22:19:02 GMT 1
For me, BK was always "playing history". To me, the Bk gameplay alone is boring and not enjoyable. I play the game for the historical flavor. The difference in maps inside chapters come with the difference in the operation you map. Big/epic and small/simple maps is just preferance. About recycling: I dont want to be productive and fast. I want good maps, even if they take time. The mapper must find a good balance between size of his project and his available time, but imo the goal should be to produce good maps, not many maps. It is quite disappointing to see how maps with mapping standards from 2003/2004 and even multiplayer maps who look like my first attempts to make a map are still being used. Its not about making a super-detailed amazing map, but just have a decent looking standard. Templates are a good choice for mission designers who cant map and have few time but want many maps. I think the community can make better maps then these templates...but ok thats my opinion. I would appreciate it if you bb , would post an advanced tutorial for using the template maps here Edit: Maybe i am influenced a bit by the german community. Most maps started were actually finished (no Fall Weiß equivalent) and mappers like Eiszeit and mr.frost72 made extremely detailed maps very quick.
|
|
bb
General
Blitzkrieg junkie (tried to quit several times).
Posts: 1,362
|
Post by bb on Nov 1, 2016 0:43:01 GMT 1
This argument is interessant: but I'm not criticising your way of making maps, meaby my english is not good enough, LOL. I'm just suggesting (for everybody) to explore more the editor tools because it helps a lot in saving time, this should not mean to repeat the old random maps, but making new types of maps by editing the templates itself. By the way, I'm sure MK and MB campaign were made using templates and also I have the suspicion Mr.Frost used it too.
|
|
|
Post by Stanenberg on Nov 1, 2016 0:48:52 GMT 1
I am not sure if you mean random fields or the map templates. Everyone uses random fields lol
mr.frost used other tricks to make his maps quick, so did the MK/MB creators.
|
|
bb
General
Blitzkrieg junkie (tried to quit several times).
Posts: 1,362
|
Post by bb on Nov 1, 2016 1:26:17 GMT 1
I'm talking about random fields but mainly about the graphs composer and the templates composer. I'll try to explore more this tools. EDIT: do you know something about mr.frost tricks? I' d like to learn something with him.
|
|
|
Post by Stanenberg on Nov 1, 2016 2:11:05 GMT 1
mr.frosts mapping tricks i know:
- Usually most of your map is just terrain (forrest, fields etc.). The BK editor offers pretty nice fields in the random field generator and if you combined these fields and improve them a bit, you can fill huge space on your maps with little to no effort. You only have to map the special parts of your map. Almost every single of his maps uses these fields (Urban maps like [HF] Köln '45 are an exeption).
- For the Road to Stalingrad campaign he used a special trick with the villages. He saved 2 or 3 standard villages as xml file, so he could just place an entire village by copy-pasting the xml. Then he would edit it a bit (exchange a few houses and details) to make it look different. His villages generally look very similar to each other, so he might have used this trick in earlier maps as well.
|
|
bb
General
Blitzkrieg junkie (tried to quit several times).
Posts: 1,362
|
Post by bb on Nov 1, 2016 21:52:21 GMT 1
Fields generator is a good tool, but the original fields are boring after some time. Is possible to edit the fields xml files and make new custom fields (I made 1 or 2 to panzerwaffen, but I lost it). I think MrFrost had his personal custom fields. Do you use the original fields or do you have some custom fields too?
And the trick with the villages is really cool, this was exactlty what I had in mind by using templates. But, I think is possible make this by editing graphs xml files, I just dont have any clue how to do this...
|
|
Mat
General
Posts: 1,814
|
Post by Mat on Nov 1, 2016 23:09:31 GMT 1
About Fields:
Its very easy to modify the existing xml files
-----
Im wondering why im missing seeing one of the mappers posted something about Filters ! when exploring filters as selfmade mappingtools the world has turned around 180 dgrees
|
|
Mat
General
Posts: 1,814
|
Post by Mat on Nov 1, 2016 23:18:36 GMT 1
Since Nivals Vanilla Edition all the sub developers didnt see the big offer of creating a Folder and Listing System based on Vanilla that can go hand in hand with Mapcreating, Fieldsets, Containers and Filters, so no one ever used to do so
|
|
bb
General
Blitzkrieg junkie (tried to quit several times).
Posts: 1,362
|
Post by bb on Nov 4, 2016 1:30:56 GMT 1
About Fields: Its very easy to modify the existing xml files ----- Im wondering why im missing seeing one of the mappers posted something about Filters ! when exploring filters as selfmade mappingtools the world has turned around 180 dgrees We could start to share some custom fields to mappers developers.
|
|