Map contest - 8v8 pure-PvP Map (no AI)

owner of the new demo 0.67 can participate as well, just make a backup of your "../media/maps/map2" folder and proceed like below. The only difference is that your "map_pvp" folder has to be named "map2"

Deadline: 07.07.2012 - 7pm UTC
Send your map(s) to contest@modulaatio.com and don't forget to add your forum nickname in your mail!


Update: I had the wrong Label name in the hedgehog object, should have been #mesh and not #hedgehog. I fixed it and updated the file. For those who downloaded the map_pvp before right now may just change the object Label (right-click on the hedgehog pobject--> object properties) (thx Comjak)


You want to share your creativity and make your map official, as the first PvP-only map? Then take your chance and the best map will be the 4th official RWR map and the first pure PvP map! On top of that you'll be awarded with *** 3 RUNNING WITH RIFLES LICENSES ***
We will try to make your mapping attempts a bit easier in this thread and don’t be scared, it’s really not a big deal to make a map!



What you'll need:


- INKSCAPE (a vector graphics editor), free and pretty easy to use.
- the map template. Extract the content to your "../media/maps" directory.
- optional: a raster graphics program (Photoshop, GIMP, paint.net ...). I use gimp myself, and it is free.

If you are already confident with map making then you can start right away but you have to follow the few rules:

• Take the map template provided in the link above.
• The dimensions of the map are 300m (width) x 250m (height). The units in inkscape for the map are 2 units = 1m (important: remember that the maps in inkscape are horizontally mirror-inverted to the map shown ingame)
• The map boundaries are marked with sandbags to have a visual indication ingame (you can change it with whatever you want but those have to stay inside the big red rectangle, which are the physical boundaries which can’t be trespassed (behaving like an invisible wall)).
• Use only the objects, infrastructure and buildings provided in the template.
• The green base will be a fixed starting base of the greens, the grey base will be the starting base of the greys.
• The yellow bases will be randomly distributed to the greens and the other one to the greys at the start of the round.
• Max spawnpoints per base = 3 (you can add/move them freely inside the spawn base).
• The size of the bases (grey/green/yellow) can be chosen freely (just move and/or stretch them).
• Textures aren't important! We will ONLY judge the map according to its playability. The esthetic fine-tuning can be done AFTER the deadline before it will be (if you are the winner) introduced as an official map of RWR.
• It will be INFANTRY-ONLY i.e. no drivable vehicles will be implemented in the map.



1) Terrain part 1: grass, sand, asphalt and road:

Draw content on each layer in Inkscape. Colors in these layers don't really matter, what matters is where the content is and where it's not.



2) Terrain part 2: the heightmap:

- In the "height" layer, it's usual to use only shades of grey, each of which will be mapped to a certain height level in game. Completely black color i.e. 0 corresponds to 0 meter level, white i.e. 255 is 25 meters. The water level is at about 2m, i.e. shade of 20.



- How you create the height layer contents is up to you. To keep it simple, you can just place rectangles of different shades around the field and possibly blur them a little to make the hills less steep. Another option is to create a base height map in e.g. Gimp using clouds (filter "render>clouds>difference-clouds" for example) or even fiddle around with inkscape filters to produce a random cloud. On top of that it's easy to use rectangles to level certain areas of the map for even areas around buildings etc..

PS: remember that only the inner 800x700 area inside the boundaries is important for the heightmap, not the full 2048x2048! Of course it needs to be a bit more than the area inside the boundaries since you can see the terrain behind the boundaries.



3) Exporting terrain images to *.png

The layers in 1)-2) need to be exported from Inkscape to *.png-files.

Proceed like this:

- download this small inkscape extension.
- Unzip the content to your Inkscape extension sub folder, e.g. C:\Program Files (x86)\Inkscape\share\extensions\.
- Once done, restart Inkscape to have the "Running with rifles" submenu in the Extensions-menu with the "RWR png output" item.
- When you're done editing the terrain, select "RWR png output" to generate terrain alpha splat and height maps; you need to provide the path to your working map folder in the dialog the first time you run it. Optional: keep the "generate the map view" field ticked if you want the extension to output a map.png (recommanded). It can take a while, like a minute, just let it run.
- When it completes you'll have _rwr_*.png files in your working folder, * being asphalt/grass/height/road/sand (optional: map_view). You can now close the "RWR png output" window.
- Now, double click "process.bat" (located in your map_PvP folder) to finalize the images.


That's it, good luck!


4) Tips, tricks and troubleshootings

- Don't place your spawnpoints too near from each other, it might crash the game.
- If you try your map with the AI, use 50 AI and not more.
- If you have a pop-up window "png GDK pixbuf Input" after using the extension which wants to Link or embed a picture, then press cancel (most likely 5 times in total for every layer it tried to export), save your work and copy/paste the "map_PvP" folder to your desktop and apply the extension there. It fixes it but I am not sure yet why this happens. Then put this folder back where it formerly was.
- The TAB-Map will show the whole 2048x2048 map, not "zoom in" the 800x700 area (not implemented yet).
- Some tricks (on how to make platforms for example) are written directly into the provided objects.svg file ("library" layer).
- The color of objects (fill or stroke) in the map never matters. They have different colors just to make it easier to differenciate.
- Everyone is allowed to submit MAX 2 maps!

Completed a beta of my PvP map. Looking for volunteers to test it out?

Any takers?

ComJak

_________________
ComJak's house... stay out of it

Maybe not the best idea if you don't want others to take your idea
You can send it to me, I'll test it since I have to behave neutral anyway.

haha how do you test with only one player?

_________________
ComJak's house... stay out of it

This sounds really interesting. I think I will be in.

Just some questions : can we work in team ? I will probably work with San if it's possible.
Are we really limited to the included props ? We would like to add some of ours if it's possible. If not, we will just pain textures.

you can work with a whole football team if you want, the good thing is that you'll be able to test your map in real conditions
And for the textures, you can use any of those in the vanilla texture folder if you want but not customs textures you made yourself.

Ok for the textures. Because of this :

I thought we were able to use our own.

I meant with "not important" that we won't judge the quality of the map on the textures, thus use those already existing in vanilla. Thanks

I am a professional animator. I model with Blender and Zbrush, Is it possible to make all new content? I would like to make custom cars, and some Asian style buildings.

Hi TACO, welcome to RWR!
Not for the map contest, which is limited in that sense to give everyone the chance to make a "simple" map with the same starting conditions.