DM_KotB

[Akinaro]

[duz]

Woah! Great map, but it can't or shouldn't be considered a DM/TM map with this CTF layout... even being an improved version of Bridge. Add an upper part and we have a map to replace MFM!

[Akinaro]

Updated because I forgot to put some kits on the towers.

[Wes]

Wow this is epic. Well done man! Certainly could be a great CTF map too.

[Home]

Are you making the polygons in PolyWorks, taking a screenshot, then editing them in PhotoShop and making them Scenery / Texture then? Or are you making the Sceneries / Texture before you start doing anything in PolyWorks?

[Akinaro]

Im making layout in PW, checking in game how scaling and movement look/work, and then just extract layout to ClipStudio(work best with graphic tablet). Then I choose few textures and multiply them to whole map. Then just cut useless part of it and draw some shading with those hard edge hills and set few more textures as a grass or rocks, then import whole map to GIMP and prepare it to indexing colors and cutting. Im indexing image to 120-240 colors, and then revert it to RGB pallet so size is cut half keeping almost 95% quality.
Then using PNGOUT plugin (by Ken Silverman) I can squeeze size to even 1-2MB without loosing any quality(map size is 6MB because half of it size are default soldat sceneries that I put ther)
After you prepare sceneries, In PW you just make huge polygon to see whole texture you made, and on top of it you make polygons based on part you made on textures, and scale them to map size(scale is set to 3.8 I found out that on 2k screen its still look good without using default soldat 4.5 scaling)
If you make remake you can use old polygons as a reference so after you finish, map can be almost 90% the same as old one so no one would complain that you change some polygons.
Its true that using one big texture with all map parts is a bit weird, but Im doing that for long time and none of players ever had problem with it, and because you use less polygons and bigger one you have less polybugs(and if its my fault) and map even if look complicated actually work better than map that have 2000+ polygons.
If Soldat would have proper multi texturing or at least detail layer you could squeeze from soldat even more.

Whole map using this method can take from 7 to 9 work hours(stretched to week or two) mostly because map is big, smaller map like Rat cave or arena2 could be made quicker.


One time I tried making such map using old stretching method like default maps have and you would need to use HUGE amount of polygons that not only slow down game but are not close to what you would want.

Some people dont like realistic look, and especially this style, but you can do whatever you want, because you are not limited to polygons and whole map is made in graphic program, and with some time you can make map that is not flat and its not look like it was made in 2002


Also sceneries like bridge or towers are made using default soldat textures and sceneries, about 2-3 hours for all of them, its just cutting shading and scaling.

[Home]

Visual quality is really great, though you still got the Soldat art style. I didn't realize that the polygons were made like this until I opened the map in PolyWorks. I think it is a really great mechanic and a nice workaround to push visual quality without killing the performance. I will try this too.

What I don't understand though is how you work with the texture scaling problem. Are you resizing it with 3.8 scale because your texture Resolution is 3.8 times higher than Soldat defaults?

And is there an useful mechanic for making sure that you are working in exactly 4k when editing the texture in a graphic program?

[CCalp]

I know I am repeating myself again and again, but...
You could make a big difference (of such a kind you actually desire!) if you were a bit more cooperative trying to work together with the soldat dev team. If you don't want to (re)make maps, you could at least serve as a good source for knowledge and/or help with specific graphical elements. I'm sure you'd be able to create some excellent tutorials.

[Akinaro]

heh, trust me, Im not a problem here
Imagine that for all those years(not on forum) I manage to "cooperate" with loots of people in Soldat. But statistically 5 of 20 people on internet no matter what you do or say, gonna hate you because of opinion difference. And funny thing about 5 people here have problem with me when rest is getting my point, or dont care/ignore.

And beside that I said lots of time that Im actually not interested at all in development of soldat. Because world is big and wide, and Internet is not ending or starting here, and people actually work on other projects or games, and they can even make money from it, and they have no problem with cooperation, and soldat is just small fun old game that have nice mapping program that is so easy to use that its actually fun to make something on it, and you can threat it as a another graphic art program, and it have really enjoyable forum where you can always relax and look how others bend time and space to fit their current opinion


Also you need to expect that someone gonna read our two post and reply with really funny comment where they totally ignore our point and stick to small part of our posts. Lets guess who its gonna be?
Or before that Furai gonna came here and, as he said in shoutbox, close every topic where I post something(it would be funny actually)

[%%%%%%%]

I'll be the person to read your posts and reply, but not with a really funny comment.

I'll say this: In spite of our different stances on Supine position, if I was in charge of Soldat's development, I'd probably make Akinaro the head of the map-making division. The nigga knows his stuff, no question about it; as outlined above, he practically engineered the big-polygon concept and using PNGOUT to reduce file sizes. And he's obviously passionate about the game and its graphics. Almost any graphic he makes, whether it be a map, texture, scenery, gostek, etc., is worthy of being added to the game.

[Home]

Thanks for the detailed information on this method. I really appreciate it and I have to agree with CCalp here, you could really do some excellent tutorials.

I am not sure if you are right though when saying people don't like it. The feedback seems to be really great? I can understand problems with adding maps that were made like this to the default maps though, because you would need a texture for every map and every map would have many very own sceneries. It looks like the devs want more "global" textures and sceneries (I know my Englisch is bad).

My personal opinion is that there shouldn't be a problem with every map getting own textures and sceneries and it is common in other games anyway. It also allows much higher quality as you have proved.

Your work looks really great and I am a bit sad that there is no parallax, animated scenery or lighting engine in Soldat. This game could look so much better than most other 2d games.

[smiluu]

But of course I need to warn you that some people here really, really dont like that method, even if it work, its look better, and its faster to make map. So dont expect too much "love" if you would use it.

Only downside to that technique is that you're creating assets that aren't usable pretty much anywhere else. If every map was made like this, we might have a flow of original textures but nobody would benefit from it.

[%%%%%%%]

But of course I need to warn you that some people here really, really dont like that method, even if it work, its look better, and its faster to make map. So dont expect too much "love" if you would use it.

Only downside to that technique is that you're creating assets that aren't usable pretty much anywhere else. If every map was made like this, we might have a flow of original textures but nobody would benefit from it.

He actually just addressed that in his other thread:

Your method also requires a unique texture for each map. Right now there's only ~40mb worth of textures which are shared between 97 maps.  With unique texture per map, 97 maps would need ~680mb worth of textures alone (at best), not counting any of the sceneries. If other mappers used the same method, your Soldat install would quickly bloat up to a few gigabytes from the custom maps you download.

Some maps have really similar style, using the same texture but with different order and part usage, and taking in to the account that some maps are really small and symmetrical size would take from (maybe) 450-500, especially when most of sceneries that take half of space for every map are used repeatedly on different maps.
Not to mention that even now my soldat folder taking almost 2gb :]
And as I said, you cant keep that 4k HD in game that would weight 100MB. HDD space is nothing today, most of simple mobile games take from 200-500MB, and we talk here about PC action game that aim to 4k and other 2D games also had to adapt to bigger size, its nothing new or bad.

[Akinaro]

Only downside to that technique is that you're creating assets that aren't usable pretty much anywhere else.

(...)but nobody would benefit from it.

Nope, it can be used, its just need more work, and different approach to making it if you would make it for default(for example coloring and parts layouts). Im making those maps for fun, as a free time hobby, its chaotic and with loots of workarounds.

But here would be nice to have proper multi texturing, because now imagine that you can use 2 or 3 texture files and you can use parts from different maps...
Only limitation would be your imagination of how map would look.

And on second, could you explain that because I have no idea what you are talking about.
No benefits? You talking about players that would have benefits of having better looking maps(not that style like this because this is just what I like on them)
Or people who make maps, that they would need to just use graphic program to create map and then move it to PW. Compared to any other game where you need to use multiple apps and tools using two programs is not that complicated.


But as I said in other topic:

But beside all that, I actually have no idea why this discussion even exist because as I said lots of time:
A. Those maps are not made to be default in any way
B. This method is not perfect, and even if you could adapt it to full 4k its still not that great.
C. Those maps are not polished at all just like they not optimized, if you would making map to be default it would be made in different way ant they would just look different.

It would be nice that people remember that, before they start thinking that it way to make default maps, because its not made for that, its nothing more than workaround for limitations that soldat have now.
And to use it as default you would need proper multitexturing and you would make that map in totally different way that Im doing now.

[smiluu]

You don't have to justify your reasons to using that technique, I just said it has it's downside and that's not to say that it's a bad technique entirely. I'm not criticizing your style, I'm just saying what the cons are.

No benefits? You talking about players that would have benefits of having better looking maps(not that style like this because this is just what I like on them)
Or people who make maps, that they would need to just use graphic program to create map and then move it to PW. Compared to any other game where you need to use multiple apps and tools using two programs is not that complicated.

I'm not talking about the quality of your maps or the unrealistic standard of quality that your technique puts on maps, I'm talking about the management of assets and resources. I meant it gives little benefit to the textures library as an asset which other mappers could use. They're not impossible to use, but very unintuitive to a beginner mapper and I think if you have skills to use them efficiently you might be better off making your own texture bundle instead. This is not a skill every mapper has however. I work on a lot of open source games, so the re-usability of assets is just a personal preference of mine. As it so happens, this is a community driven game with very open assets which gives possibility of modding and mapping, so I think that's important. This is not a real problem in Soldat, because it's almost two decades old game and it already has a vast variety of texture assets, but this does not change the fact that assets that are limited in usage are practically litter and take up more HDD space than it's worth.

HDD space is nothing today, most of simple mobile games take from 200-500MB, and we talk here about PC action game that aim to 4k and other 2D games also had to adapt to bigger size, its nothing new or bad.

Mobile games are for the most part not community driven games and whatever assets they have are meant to be enjoyed the way they are initially presented. Everything changes however if you implement a level editor to your mobile game, you just have to have re-usability in assets or else you put incredibly high standards for mapping skills.

EDIT:

But beside all that, I actually have no idea why this discussion even exist because as I said lots of time:
A. Those maps are not made to be default in any way
B. This method is not perfect, and even if you could adapt it to full 4k its still not that great.
C. Those maps are not polished at all just like they not optimized, if you would making map to be default it would be made in different way ant they would just look different.

Irrelevant. The fact is your technique exists and so does it's pros and cons.

[Akinaro]

Sadly I need to say that over and over because people still think that its the way how default maps need to be made. And its not, all they need is proper multitexturing so we can use few files on one map, and this would not only make mapping nicer but after that we can even make few such big textures and just choose few parts of it depending on map style and you dont need to shade and color every polygon separately, using just bigger polygons you choose part you need and you still have all details and shading on it, its just like using sceneries but gathered in one file that have ts own style(mountains, grass, underground, background hills).

And its not unrealistic standard of quality that its put on map, they are not perfect at all and just because default soldat maps are shi#y as fuck people get such feeling.
Beside that did anyone of you tried making map for soldat like that? Im assuming no, because if you would try few times(not once), you would see that you dont need any specific ""advanced"" mode of map making. Its nothing more that basic usage of any graphic program(especially using layers).... and nothing more compared to current map making for soldat. Making map on graphic program(using default sceneries and textures), preparing it to put on texture file, and then switch to PolyWorks. If you worked on any other game or mods you would know that this is walk in the park compared to any other game.

Its not like current map making would change, its looking for problem that doesnt exist. Default maps ALWAYS should be best looking and best working because players spend there almost 90% of time. And other map makers ALWAYS find a way to keep up with it. Good mapper know how to deal with it and find workaround, bad one always gonna make bad map...
Also all my maps use default soldat texures and sceneries(even for buildings like bridge) its nothing hard to put all those textures and sceneries to PW and call it official map making pack that would be updated with every version of game.