Everquest UT2004 maps - continued

I've finished fitting out the level and testing it with bot pathing and pickups, and I've moved on to cleaning up/reworking the geometry and textures. I'm taking a lot of care not to take aware from the classic old feeling area but there are things that just plain ugly, and the UV unwrapping and texture resolutions of the originals are beyond hideous.

I've spent some time chamfering corners and unwrapping the level as well as adding some more geometry to make the castle feel more like a castle.

Before:

After:

As you can see there's some extra trims and castle details, which are still quite blocky and keep with the old school geometry of the castle but add a lot to the aesthetics of it. I then decided to move on to recreating my first texture.

I modelled the bricks in 3ds max and imported them into mudbox to sculpt. Using screenfiltering to extract the base texture and normals (not that UE2 uses them xD) I also extracted some cavity maps and other masks to help my in photoshop while painting. I put a lot of time and care into making sure i matched the colours shape and values of the original texture to keep it as authentic as possible.

                                                                    Original texture:  

New texture:

I took a lot of inspiration from modern sculpt to handpainted styles as they make as much as of the diffuse channel as possible, the only channel ut2004 and everquest uses for textures as it's all vertex lit.

Here's the new texture in game

It made me realise I have a lot more UV's to sort out xD especially on the inside of the castle but it's a lot more pleasant too look at already. I also made a quick spec and took a render in marmoset showing the tiling texture with full diffuse specular and normals for future use on my portfolio website.

That's all so far this evening, I'm going to sculpt plank textures from the bridges and wooden flooring soon and perhaps make a mesh and sculpt the cobblestone wall just outside the castle. Thanks for reading

-Andy

Everquest UT2004 maps

So I've started this year playing and looking back on good old classic fast paced shooters. Mostly playing UT2004 and also deciding to play some classic Everquest Project 1999 and I thought it would be a bit of fun to take the dungeons from Everquest and make them play or work as a classic arena shooter map.

So I've started with the dungeon known as Crushbone, which is one of the most famous newbie dungeons from the game.

I've kept a lot of the classic old school modelling in tact and fleshed out the rocks and wall areas with some ut2004 cliff meshes.

Thanks for reading
-Andy

Blockade Progress 18th oct

Been 10 days since my last post so I figured I'd post another update on the games progress. 

I've got quite far mostly over the last 4-5 days, sorted out the camera, planned out the player characters proportions, which are very similar to Bomberman. Made icons for the movement abilities (the icon in the top right hand corner of the screen) sorted out a health and power bar. Tested out some basic split-screen.

Back to Unscript

Today i've been practicing states and reading through the lowest projectile weapon and pawn classes, to plan what i need to rework for my games prototype. Yesterday i organized my

 

After a few months of 2d/3d commissions I've decided to go back to learning more Unreal script. Picked up a game i setup in a few days before summer. I'm continuing with my Voxel art theme for the game, as it compliments some of the entities I've been programming quite well (block spawning actors which grow outwards as the level progresses).

The Power game uses a progression bar for the whole Game session which progressing over either time or Score, as the Power level increases it updates the game world and all the players within it.

 
 The graphics have been layed out in sheets and the materials reference only a fraction of the UV Co-ordinates.