My level design work

[Officer D]

Ya, so I thought I might as well share my level designing stuff with you guys too.
First some textures I created. Some where made with my digi cam and some are from cgtextures. They are raw pictures that have to get edited so they work for your game. Stuff like tiling, format, colors, etc. all has to be done with a image processing application. Btw games like GTA4 also used textures from cgtextures ^^

This shows how I use different pictures to make one texture.


Here some masked textures. Masked means that the alpha channel color is invisible.


This one shows how I created a tiled and masked texture out of that fence pic.


And this is the finished package with the textures in them.




Now for some modeling. These objects where created with BSP geometry in the Unreal Editor. Sure I could get a lot more high detail objects if I would use Maya, Max 3D, Blender, etc. for that. But don't forget the engine I am usinge this for is 10 years old and high detail stuff will cause lagg.

This is my car I made pics of it and turned it into a virtual car xD


This is how I create my skybox textures. It's a program called Terragen and it generates sky and landscape pictures. It's a really nice tool and you can make some awesome landscape pictures with it.


This shows me working with the editor. I made a video tutorial to show what working with the Unreal Editor looks like.


And finaly some of my maps I made

Duke Nukem with Unreal Engine xD I actually had to code a different gametype to make this work for this game. It's a single player map for a multiplayer game ^^

Anybody know the Cube movies? I did a remake of the Hypercube from Cube² This is also singleplayer type. You have to find your way out of the hypercube.

In this map I tried to recreate the Highway from Matrix Reloaded

For this map I was inspired by Dead Space. But I think it would work better for UT99 and not TO:AoT

This maps uses only my textures.


Well that is enough for now ^^

Criticism and suggestions are welcome It helps me make better stuff.

[mgold07]

So the game runs on the Unreal Engine. The Car's were a tad to stiff and stubborn (It looked choppy and blocked) try to smooth them down a bit more. The Dead Space and Essentials had really good models and textures.

[Officer D]

Thx and you might be right about the cars. So maybe I'll try something different. I just try to stay as low poly as I can.
Poly = Polygons. It means how much surfaces the engine is rendering in it's field of view. Going too high will cause the map to lagg or even crash. For online maps it is suggested to not go higher then 150 - 300 polys in your fov. Offline the engine can easily handle up to 2000 on a modern pc. Of course this is nothing compared to games from today where polygon counts go up to 20 million. But I prefer the old games when I play multiplayer. Why? Well, they are not overloaded with details, so that gives you a better awareness of your surroundings. I think this has influence on gameplay as well.
I have UT3 but it just isn't as fun as UT classic imo. Although this might change my mind Hardcore Oldskool Low-Poly Map Pack for UT3
Oh yea,
here are some other vehicles I made:
A fighter jet

A fishingboat. Lighting isn't on so that's why there are no shadows and stuff.

And a tractor

An other car with retail textures.

[mgold07]

Don't break it down, we people know . And for the polys try and use less polys all round or use a more powerful engine.

[Officer D]

np But I doubt everybody knows how game engines work. So that was just a little explanation.
I have done some experiments with the Crysis sandbox editor and the UT3Editor. The guys that are making the UT3 mod Tactical Assault even wanted me on their level designer team I didn't want to cause I am not that familiar with the new engine yet. I mean, many things still apply but there are tons of new things I still need to learn (Material editor, Kismet, Matinee, etc.) But when using this old engine you have to judge by what it can do. I could turn them into meshes and get really high detailed but I'm a BSP fan, obviously. Also UE1 meshes have bad collusion and lighting problems. The retail stuff also doesn't look much better imho. And I have to ask myself where should I save polys. The decos or the allround architecture. I think architecture comes first so i'd rather make low poly objects. But as you can see some of my vehicles have more detail. It just depends where I plan to use them.

[Officer D]

Building a tribute map to the warehouse levels from F.E.A.R.
Doesn't have the Havok physics but I hope the atmosphere is ok. Speeking of physics. Did you know that the Unreal Engine 1 has a grab funktion? With it you can pick up stuff just like in Half Life 2.
Anyway, back to the F.E.A.R. map :
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For the reflection on the windows I used a modulated flat sheet mesh with MeshEnviroMap set to true. Then use an appropriate texture for it and voilá. Reflecting windows without having a materials editor ..skillage

The sunshine is made with Revelation's RevSunshine actor. (Rev is a UE1 god and can make maps look better then other people do with newer engines)
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Doors open now in both directions so the door will not go through the player anymore.
Creepy door open/close sound. (thx for the hint amanwhodied)
Music that has a ~30 sek. pause inbetween so it will not loop constantly.
An additional evil sound on the Alma tv.
Farside Warehouse passage.
Volumetric fog in the small hallway part of the basement. + spooky sound when passing through.
++++
Changed a few visuals in- and outside (lighting, details)
Skeleton pop out of blood puddle with some ZoneProperty changes and other effects.



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Edit\\ Someone said that the pubble with blood looked kind of artificial so I did some changes. I am also working on a flickering light that will activate when the player comes near it.

[fixa46]

Damn, that skeleton scared the living s**t out of me!

Very cool old skool-models and maps. Keep it on!

[Officer D]

;D Haha! Cool ^_^
I was hoping that it would have that kind of effect. I couldn't tell cause I always know exactly when something happens.
Thx for the acknowledgement

[fixa46]

Yeah. I thought from the text that the "skeleton from blood" was the one that jumps at you in the real FEAR when you get close to the door during the hallusination... You know.

But I didn't even notice the blood on the hallway, and said to myself that "Cmon, keep going. I want to see the skele-AAAAAAHHHH"

And the scream... Lol. Sounded excatly like me when my Return To Castle Wolfenstein crashed.

[Officer D]

Oct 6, 2009 13:24:27 GMT fixa46 said:

Yeah. I thought from the text that the "skeleton from blood" was the one that jumps at you in the real FEAR when you get close to the door during the hallusination... You know.

Yea, I was thinking about doing something similar. I could add an Invisible teleporter and make the HUD flash up really bright. But it would have to be at the end of a hallway and the teleporter would have to bring you to a reasonable area. If I change it, I would have to redo the floorplan in that area and I'm not even sure if it would be better like that. After all this is going to be a multiplayer map. Gameplay has to be very fluid.

Oct 6, 2009 13:24:27 GMT fixa46 said:

But I didn't even notice the blood on the hallway, and said to myself that "Cmon, keep going. I want to see the skele-AAAAAAHHHH"

And the scream... Lol. Sounded excatly like me when my Return To Castle Wolfenstein crashed.

haha xD I actually still am looking for a different sound. That scream is a default UT death sound. ^^

[fixa46]

You should just do it like that when he teleports, the skeleton pops out with fast, "scary" music on it and then he suddenly teleports back. And the skeleton is seen nowhere.

[Officer D]

After I released TO-Bajesus and TO-FEARwarehouse, I started working on my Dead Space map again. This map will probably become a singleplayer map just like my DukeNukem remake (TO-HollywoodHolocaust).
I started with a zero-g room and when I think about it, I could make a mission objective just like in the original game. Throw all boulders into the fire beam to trigger an event. Here some screenshots from the editor:


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Here are the two maps, just incase someone has the retail version of TO or the UT mod installed
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Map Name: Bajesus
Map Type: Swat Game
Game: Tactical Ops
Version: 3.4
Author: Officer D
Players: 4 - 12
Bot Support: True
Programs Used: TO:AoT Ed 2.0, PhotoImpact 11, dBpowerAMP, ModPlug, Terragen

File size : 4,15 MB
Download : --Click here--

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Map Name: FEARwarehouse
Game: Tactical Ops
Game Type: Swat Game
Version: 3.4
Author: Officer D
Players: 4 - 12
Bot Support: True

File size : 7.04 MB
Download : --Click here--

[Rodeschild]

Pretty nice work here

[Paul Smart]

Quite professional looking stuff, I think.
I've had a hard time following all the information of stuff that you've said about working on this, about how you did certain things, and what's involved, but I can certainly see a lots of time and effort went into it, and it's turned into something very good looking.

[Officer D]

Yea, sorry for that technical language stuff.
I wouldn't go so far and call my work professional. I'm still pretty noobish in many things that are essential for good level designers. But thx for the compliments