I can't see the pics !!!

Oh phew, somebody posted before I stopped using Ubuntu(Testing). Thought it was some missing support...

Anyway, yeah, pictures aren't showing. :/

yea dropbox wont let us see them.

Sorry, guys. I didn't know dropbox would cut rights. Hopefully these work:

Looks good.

Looking forward to seeing that in-game.

@Gonzo
Is it just me or is that structure just a mash-up of the Beach Assault structure + the Spire from "Halo" + the Halo Reach Forge bridge thing?

Like it looks exactly like those 3 bits stuck together.

I guess it kinda looks that way, but like I said, there was no copying and pasting going on; I started from scratch. Any similarities to anything other than the Beam Emitter and Death Island base are purely inadvertent. I took inspiration mainly from the two aforementioned structures, and then tried to use some general Halo 3 shapes. For example, the top spire is influenced by the spire on the Citadel in Halo 3, and the various angles and features in the tower are partially inspired by the large arches and braces from High Noon.

I feel like there were more specific sources I used, but nothing else is coming to mind. I didn't really stare at anything; I just envisioned a Death Island base that had something tall and cool on top for aerial cover, sketched a preliminary design on a postit, built the base, then sketched a profile on another postit for the tower part. That's usually how I build Forerunner structures.

Any ideas for the interior? I'm trying to keep it simple but sexy, because it doesn't need to add too many more polys. I was going to attach a portion of a c10 interior as suggested, but it's a 10K mesh, and considering the whole interior likely won't receive much use, I've decided (for now) against it. I have an idea for a Death Island inspired interior with connections to a beam emitter source. Basically, small, sweet, and useful (maybe add some teleporters).

I actually like the beam tower base in revelations myself; i thought that two of those sitting directly across from each other over a canyon connected by a bridge or man canon would be awesome. Just a suggestion.

i need new pants.

The spire looks really wierd. Mainly due to the extremely lot poly side, and then the other half being well... detailed.

It's a symmetric design aside from the way the cliffs and dirt interacts with the structure. How is half of it more detailed?

Dosent take much of a genius to tell that the detailed side is much more detailed then the rest and is fairly inconsistent. It has much more angles, bevels, indents, etc then the low poly side. Both look good separately but put together they are very inconsistent.

That's what bump and textures are for. :)

Don't ever rely on bumps and textures.

Ah ok. The design is not finished, as is obvious. I did invest a lot of time on the "detailed" half. The other half will receive comparable detailing, as will the port where the beam lets out.

Updates:

Fleshed out the exterior some more, wrapping most of it in natural elements in preparation for merging with the main map.


Bottom view of the basic interior. I was originally going to have a spacious design connecting to a portion of a c10 interior but went with something simple to save polys. As this is not a main base, there is not much to see. There are two small hallways that have no multiplayer purpose, but hint at a larger interior beyond what is immediately visible. Additionally, there is a window (which will be filled with glass) that shows a small room where the beam is visible when emitted. I understand the view is confusing, but all will be made clear when testing opens.


Side shot of the interior. To the right is the window to the beam emitter. To the left is a small space where a weapon could be. It's mainly there for cover and looks.


Planned:

Update low poly half and beam port.
Complete rear of structure where massive support beam meats ground (too blocky and undetailed right now).
Map the thing.

Suggestions? I'm not completely satisfied with the interior, especially the shape of the window, but it's what I've got for now. I don't want to invest too many polys here.

Actually Gonzo, if you make the terrain fairly low detail, you could save polys there. Also if you use like a .scenery file for some of the structures and design them in the map then export them separately then you could save a ton on your actual BSP. I think so anyway. I don't see why that wouldn't work. Portals would still be needed though.

The terrain, as it will be smaller and a bit less detailed, will afford me more polys elsewhere, such as with this structure. It will not be scenery. I don't see how making something a scenery item saves polys. It might save the odd few here and there with no seams to create, but ultimately it will stilled rendered.

If we could do things in this engine as is possible in later engines in terms of optimization, that'd be great. Specifically, I'm referring to the idea that a BSP is made simple and details are added in a fashion similar to scenery items. This saves on seam polys. For me to do that would require a significant amount of work.

nice work

A minor update:



Added a bit more detail to the front end. The interior of the spire was inset a bit, its base cleaved in two and chamfered, and a small extrusion running the length of the top of the base added. Not a lot of detail, I suppose, but it adds a bit more life to the area. The spire itself was also embiggened a bit. Honestly, I'm not sure what else to do to spice that part up without investing more polys. I, personally, am satisfied with the result, though I might add some more detail around the beam port.

EDIT:

Wrapping up the design; got a lot of exterior mapping completed.



The blue represents untouched faces; it serves as the color of my +sky. They'll be mapped eventually. It looks a lot better with a basic mapping set up.
Edited by CAG Gonzo on Sep 22, 2012 at 09:42 PM

that does look amazing

needs more floor and wall variance, the heavy tiling looks bad. other than that, nice job thus far!

yea it looks bad in max but ingame it looks fine.

How do you meat ground? Is it like where you slap a side of beef on the ground? Or other stuff... That'd sound disgusting, just slapping a side of beef on the ground. I don't even think you could do that, unless you were fairly strong. I mean, those things weigh more than a young teenager. How are you going to hold it out and slap it on the ground? You'd have to be like... Rocky. On Protein Supplements. And in Siberia (Rocky IV had the best training scene EVAR!)

Simple. I put a giant freaking steak around the port. The beam emitter sends a lovely beam full of delicious A1 Steak Sauce, evenly coating the delicate meat surrounding said port. I was very hungry when I wrote that.

Updates:

Structure has been merged into a significantly reduced red side (but it's still large, nearly as large as Death Island). Rolling cliffs and hills meet to produce a nice, natural terrain with a good amount of variety. A cave now connects red side to the pathway leading to the minimap. Instead of natural bleed-in (as in overflowing dirt and cliffs) in the minimap, the majority of the exterior will be composed of a basic Forerunner wall. This is to save on polys that would otherwise be spent on meshing the terrain and minimap.

Connecting the pathway to the minimap is a basic gateway, similar to the gateway structure separating the grasslands from the snowy terrain in Halo 3's level The Covenant. This is again to save on polys, and will allow me to add some scenery doors to block off the exit in gametypes like race and oddball (forcing players to get creative if they want to get out).

I haven't started work on the new minimap yet, but it's next on the list. Red side is nearly done in terms of the main play surface. I pretty much just need to finish fleshing out the pathway to the minimap and connect red addendum to it all, then make the lake area neat and purty.

Ideas for blue side? Also, I am considering removing the base additions to drastically cut polys. This means the interior of each base (in red base, the main room in the security installation from b30, and the beam emitter interior from blue base). The rooms exist now to house the flag, but that is a deep location and is not that easy to access, so I may delete the rooms (saving like 10K polys) and put red's flag where it normally goes in Death Island and blue's flag somewhere equally accessible. These 10K polys saved can go towards better cliffs and terrain and more exciting Forerunner content. I'm leaning towards this idea, but I want to know what you guys think.

Pictures will follow when I have a more concrete product to display.

iz veri naiz. cutting down the bases sounds like a good idea but not to death island. make it a little deeper than death island, like an extra room or something.

What Dark said, I think. Maybe not necessarily all the way down to Death Island-style, but you could probably trim down the excess a bit.

Death Island room? Just a basic room conforming to the Death Island theme? What about blue base?

Also, I am considering removing the crashed Halcyon from the map. The cruiser is scenery right now, at 4K polys, and its crash site requires special design. Plus it kind of unbalances the map in terms of aerial and even ground cover. The cruiser is likely to be a MAJOR camping ground as it is in Extinction. Lastly, as I continue to shrink the map, it will become increasingly difficult to effectively place a downed cruiser that's nearly a third the size of the map (in its current iteration).
Edited by CAG Gonzo on Oct 18, 2012 at 09:55 PM

Update!


Prototype for the minimap separator. heavily influenced from a separator of similar function from The Covenant, this structure gives a bit of cover, represents a nice way of hooking up the minimap to the rest of the map, and allows me to place gametype-specific doors (I think you can do that; if not, it'll be an inoperable vehicle) to block of access to the rest of the map. Plus it looks cool for the low amount of polys used.

The terrain is on the high end and will be optimized further down the road. It is also still a separate object from the actual structure. The two will be boolean'd later.

I went with a Delta Temple theme in lieu of the typical panels_generic_ext and stock theme. I think the colors work out nicely; nothing too flashy or complex. The interior is mostly stock bitmaps.



As you can see, the interior is not that large. Wide enough for a Scorpion and Wraith. The interior is roughly 3 times longer than a Scorpion and features four braces on each wall with a center-line extrusion running the length of the ceiling (also has lights). Obviously there are a few faces left to map, specifically the large trapezoid. I need a good idea for it.

Feedback? Don't give up hope on this project yet! Ain't no way this project is going to just die. Not after all the time and energy invested in it by me and you guys, the community.
Edited by CAG Gonzo on Oct 23, 2012 at 05:52 PM

bumpdates?

Has this even made it into the game yet?

yes, he even posted links to some vids of the map in-game, the links are in a previous page

Just saw the video.... (My reaction.) "God damn! Halo maps are not meant to be that big!" Jesus, you won't find anyone even if you have max players. This could be a whole damn campaign map if you wanted it too. XD

yeah, that's the problem with maps this big, as good the map is, it'd be useless to play online when the max amount of players are 16...

hows it goin there gonzalicious?

This map is being resized to a more appropriate size for Halo CE. I have a rough approximation of the default clipping distance based on in-game estimation. That is my guide; my goal is to size the map such that there will be little to no clipping, even with Halo's clipping measures in place. My estimations place this clipping distance at around 2.6km, +- 200m. That will equate to a map roughly the size of the main playing area of Extinction. My hope is this will not only look better, but also play better.

Bumpdates:


Here's a shot of the current iteration of red side. You're looking at ~20K polys. ~8K to the two structures, ~0.5K to the minimap separator (at the far end), and the rest spent on cliffs and terrain. Right now I'm keeping the mesh on the high-ploy side as I continue to see where this designing goes. It may end up such that a high-poly cliff and terrain mesh is acceptable.

Some notes: The main red area is a lake. The lake is surrounded on all sides by terrain (mostly beach-type). Red base is situated in a nook (as it has been) and the neat structure is running parallel to the main width of the lake. The end of the "road" was supposed to lead into some cliffs and the cave that leads to red addendum but I came up with a better idea.

For a while now I've noticed that red addendum now seems a bit awkward to fit into red side. If I put it in at the end as planned, red side would still be relatively large. So I figured why not instead connect it to the neat Death Island beam emitter thingy? This gives more purpose to that structure, a better reason to go to red addendum, and it just seems like a great idea. More design potential unfolds here as I consider how to best mesh to two parts. Some sexy looking interiors are coming. The vehicle tunnel that leads out of the addendum can still connect to the end of the road as planned, but the tunnel will be changed to allow access from the road to the interior of the emitter. The walkway out of the addendum will then connect up on the other side, facing the minimap as it has been.



Here you see the cave that connects the minimap path to red side. The cave has ample room for tanks to pass through; I aimed for something not too far off the size of Ice Fields' caves. The cave itself (as well as the minimap path) have rolling curves and undulating terrain, more so than before. I wanted to add more geographical variety and break up the flatness. This is much more apparent in the shot below:



Here the side profile of the path is easily visible. The ups and downs and some fun and exposure while the curvature of the path itself obscures the majority of immediate line of sight between the minimap separator and the cave. This will hopefully ward off some camping (I'm thinking a well-placed Scorpion acting as a gatekeeper). The paths are all much shorter and smaller than they previously were; before they could easily conceal several Pelicans and likely stood around 100m high on average. Now they are much more suited to a simple pathway and are around the typical cliff height of many CE stock maps.



Observe the beauty and simplicity that is the minimap separator. The bitmap palette matches the new Forerunner walls I'll be using to surround most of the map (oops, spoilerz). Not much is going on here other than what was mentioned in my last post: keep it simple, section off the minimap and the minimap path, and provide a way to add in some gametype-specific blockers.

As always, I welcome feedback, especially as red side is wrapped up and focus turns to blue side and the minimap. I'm exploring with a modified version of Gephyrophobia as the minimap, as suggested.