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Posted: Fri Jul 16 @ 9:03 am Post subject: Fan-feast, A L4D2 map for Fantastic Fest
Fantastic Fest is coming to the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar again this year.
Quote:
Fantastic Fest is the largest genre film festival in the United States. We specialize in horror, fantasy, sci-fi, action and just plain fantastic movies from all around the world.
Along with the cool films they have the Fantastic Fest Arcade at the Highball bowling alley:
Quote:
We are proud to announce our new independent games festival, Fantastic Arcade, which will run concurrent with the first four days of Fantastic Fest, September 23-26, 2010. Designed as a games spin-off event from the main film festival, Fantastic Arcade will feature fresh, cutting-edge games designed by independent game developers.
I am now one of those independent game developers. The Drafthouse has asked me to again re-create one of their locations inside Left4Dead2. I will be recreating both the theater and bowling alley, along with the rest of the shopping center store fronts. Above is just the first few hours of work. Taking a satellite photo into SketchUp, and using building shadows to determine the relative height of each building.
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These images are VERY early prototypes of the game map. What I have done is to re-create the building scale and position. Because the video game scale is 20% larger then the real world a map can sometimes end up feeling too small or too large. There are set objects in the video game world such as cars or doors. These help to ensure the scale in the game matches the feel of the real world. Effectively making the map 1:1 scale compared to the real world. The games wide viewing angle skews the perspective a bit, but as far as props and traveling around the map the scale is spot on.
I will be taking photos on-site on Saturday, once I have my own reference photos the amount of detail in the map will greatly increase.
Posted: Sun Jul 18 @ 1:36 pm Post subject: Re: Fan-feast, A L4D2 map for Fantastic Fest
I was able to visit the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar location and take lots of photos of the shopping center buildings. As well as the interiors of the Drafthouse and Highball.
But since the bowling alley and theater are located at opposite ends of the shopping center, I will need to include the entire shopping center in the game map.
The first step is to use my reference photos and Google SketchUp to model the different buildings to scale.
Below are images of the Drafthouse, part of the strip mall, and the Thundercloud subs located in the middle of the parking lot. Aside from the signs, all textures are rough substitutes using in-game materials. They will be later replaced with custom textures.
Posted: Sun Jul 18 @ 6:45 pm Post subject: Re: Fan-feast, A L4D2 map for Fantastic Fest
you are a map guru. that is for sure. Next up. Complete Austin Metro Map with 4 levels of fun! haha, just kidding but how awesome would that be! _________________ www.austinpcmods.com
Posted: Sun Jul 18 @ 7:24 pm Post subject: Re: Fan-feast, A L4D2 map for Fantastic Fest
It amazing how fast you can go from photo to awesome...
This time I am taking each chunk of the map and editing them individually, then I will piece them together.
These screenshots are of the thundercloud sub location:
Posted: Mon Jul 19 @ 10:17 pm Post subject: Re: Fan-feast, A L4D2 map for Fantastic Fest
I got part of the shopping center done today. It has four simples stores to enter and explore, based of course on the type of store really at that location. For example you can break into the guitar store and get yourself a guitar to use as melee weapon.
Posted: Mon Jul 26 @ 8:26 am Post subject: Re: Fan-feast, A L4D2 map for Fantastic Fest
More of the shopping center is done, this is the section between the Drafthouse and the Highball.
I managed to make some of the shops detailed inside such that the players can enter them.
I am currently working on detailing the parking lot and the last sections of the shopping center.
My goal it to have the skybox, shopping center, and parking lot done before the end of the month such that I can spend next month on the two main locations, and the last month on optimizing and making the map fun and playable.
Posted: Mon Aug 23 @ 11:31 pm Post subject: Re: Fan-feast, A L4D2 map for Fantastic Fest
Eh, I haven't been keeping this thread up to date, but I have been hard at work.
The Highball is a Bowling / Karaoke / Restaurant / Music venue owned by the Alamo Drafthouse.
One of the first things I wanted to do when this map idea came up was to make a bowling mini-game in Left4Dead. That when a player got a strike it would trigger the hordes to start coming. At first it seemed impossible, but though lots of trial and error I finally have a working bowling mini-game. The image above is just the prototype, but in-game I have it such that the players can pick up a ball, have it float in front of them, run up the lane, and have it release and travel down the bowling lane and knock over the pins. Complete with pin-reseter and two-frames of play before reset.
I also have skeeball working. The entire machine and most of the textures were made from scratch.
Posted: Wed Aug 25 @ 12:21 pm Post subject: Re: Fan-feast, A L4D2 map for Fantastic Fest
zittware wrote:
Great work!
What's next Pool in L4D2?
Or Pinball in L4D2
Seriously; great work. looking forward to playing it.
Don't get me started.
I stopped by the highball last weekend, they have already started installing arcade machines. _________________ www.ZapWizard.com
Posted: Wed Sep 01 @ 8:40 am Post subject: Re: Fan-feast, A L4D2 map for Fantastic Fest
I had been a little while since my last update, but I have been hard at work every day on the map. The interior of The Highball is about finished.
This part of the map requires more custom props and textures then any other. The doors are custom, the skeeball, the neon sign, and even the carpet texture in the map is extracted from a photo of the real carpet. There are nearly a dozen custom props inside already and I haven't even added the bowling to the map yet.
Posted: Tue Sep 07 @ 10:11 am Post subject: Re: Fan-feast, A L4D2 map for Fantastic Fest
Time for an update,
I finished the Alamo Drafthouse Lobby.
This took a long time to finish. The mural required lots of photoshop work to stitch reference images together, photoshop out obstructions and in general make it game ready.
The UFOs and Planes are built from scratch and textured. The little lights on the UFOs are even animated just like in the real south lamar drafthouse lobby.
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In the first Dead Center map valve has this big map of the US on some tables. The map has New Orleans circled of course. So I made my own with Austin circled of course, complete with a satellite image of the shopping center.
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I completed the main shopping center sign. I find it interesting that two years later no one has thought to replace the "Salvation Army Store" sign.
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I also made my own custom Fantastic Fest billboard for the front of the shopping center. _________________ www.ZapWizard.com
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