So after 3 years of just sitting on my HD, I don't know what to do with this map, if I should finish it or hand it off to someone else who may be interested. Of all my maps, this is the second that would be publicly seen and is also a map that has seen hundreds of hours of playtesting. I designed this map in 2006 and finished it's layout in 2007 - when I was working on Cave2k7. Luckily I had a job in a computer lab that allowed me many hours to work on things - unfortunately I didn't have the ability to play multiplayer, so I had to do testing with bots. However, the playtesting was still limited as I hadn't settled on a good waypointing layout. Since then I scrapped the waypointing so I could redo it later.
Anyway, this map is just the layout and texture. Due to being old and busy, I haven't had an ounce of time to work on sceneries and artwork to finish it. Though you can't see it well from the picture, but this map was an attempt at a 3d look - so basically you could consider it 2.5d. I used a checkerball pattern to design the texturing. So it basically looks like a textured ball. Even though it may look simple as in terms of layout, it was actually difficult to design the layout without affecting the properties of the texture, I had to do a lot of slicing and chopping to open up areas and had to use a lot of tricks to keep the poly count low.
Not only that, but the MSPainted background you see is actually a mockup of what the real background is going to look like. I'm using the same texture and also using polies, creating the blownout background with depth and also proper shading - then when that's finished, then chopping and making an image out of that to use as a large background scenery (that's the only way to keep the player in front) - I so wish, you could have polies that the player could stand in front of. When I get home from work today, I'll post some pictures of some background texturing in progress.
Anyway, it's quite a fun little map. When I was designing the map at the time, back in 2006, I remember reading a post that asked why there weren't many unique maps. I had a eureka moment, and imagined this little moon that had seen a lot of war and harvesting of resources. I guess if you want some technical details, you could also imagine it as a blown out hunk of rock that lost it's center of gravity, it's falling in low orbit, and it and players are pulled by the gravity of the planet it's orbiting.
So what do you guys think of it as a concept? Would you like to see it finished? I wanted to finish it for Halloween of 2007, then 08, then this year, but sadly, dunno if I'll get it done by that time. I might post the work in progress if anyone is interested in working on it. Otherwise, I'll just keep plugging away at it, as long as there is some interest.
Here is a pic of the empty map. Like I said in the paragraph above, the grey background would be made of polies - which is then transformed into a background image. The background image would then fit pixel to pixel making the whole image of the moon seemless.
This pic shows the scale. Note my crappy attempts at the craters lol. Unfortunately all I had at my disposal that day at work was MSPaint and some other crappy photoediting software. They also turned out dark for some reason - but they are craters... and backwards *facepalm* (the light source is from the upper right) hehe.
Added Images: Oct 16, 09
Here's an ugly concept drawing. Besides craters the moon would have some blast marks on it. It would also have some old left over junk such as a communication station with satellite dishes and antennas and probably some other stuff like a marker light on the surface or the leftovers from some old spacecraft or moonbuggy type vehicle.
This image is the simple guide I made to get the globe shape.
I forgot that my latest work is on my HD on my older machine - which I'll get up and running tomorrow.
