Heya everyone,
Been a long time reader of these forums, follow all the dev journals and discussions. Love Demigod, bought it at release and have been playing it since (although I have taken a break in anticipation of these two new Demigods (was getting a little bored)). Anyway! I was looking in this section and saw some cool ideas for maps, and some people who’d started working on them. I figured, hey it’s raining and stormy outside and sleep is overrated - and here I am 6 hours later. It’s far from a masterpiece, due to my somewhat newbish skills with 3DS Max in the modelling department (I’m more into particle effects), but it’s a start. I think it’s quite simple compared to some of the other brilliant ideas I’ve been reading, but I wanted it to be feasible to implement.
Here was my atrocious artistic first envisioning:
At first I thought, I’m going to keep this small, maybe a 1v1 or 2v2 map. As with most things as the process continued I grew steadily overexcited and flushed the idea in favour for a 3v3 or 4v4 sized map. I wanted it to be a big map.
Then I sat down and started making it. Here’s a few renders (it’s in the early stages and I couldn’t render and best settings since I’m on my laptop):
As you can see I wanted to sort of bring that dark vs light aspect to the board. I also thought it would be cool to have (if possible) the pawn that shares the losing teams colour shattering at the end, similar to how the citadel breaks. So I made a quick animation for that (once again apologies for the quality):
The floor is meant to be a molten lava – at the moment it’s just a box with a texture on it. Soon I’ll hop into Realflow and start getting some dynamic fluid simulations to give some nice natural effects. There’s also a couple of glass platforms on the there, that will have something significant on them (I wanted a different material to emphasise this).
As is stands from a technical standpoint, I don’t know what can be gotten into maps and what can’t. I don’t know if I could say use fumefx and have some blazing torches, or whether it’s just not compatible. So, at worst this is an artistic idea at best it’s hopefully something that could work.
I know some of the screenshots from above are a little hard to make out (the black doesn’t show up fantastically), so here’s just a screenshot of it inside the editor:
And finally, just to give it some sense of scale, here are some sort of perspective shots:
I know there’s still a lot that needs explaining, like where exactly all the minions run and the flags and portals etc. This is just me trying to make a foundation and I hope, although it’s basic, some people might like it – thanks for reading J
Really interesting!
lacks depth!
Promising
Although my ideas can be slightly wild, I can even see this as kind of normal style demigod map with the creeps and the like/
Perhaps even a TF2 Payload-esque map? Moving ones own giant pawn all the way to the others King piece/citadelwould allow the team to win too ?The chess imagery may have gone to my head
Why not Make the citadel a chess piece? ...
yep you should be able to do that.. a mod (which i think u need for a new map) also can replace models and textures for existing items... for more info take a look in dgdata.zip/lua/mods.lua it explains a bit on that
I like the idea, and what you've done so far looks awesome (especially the animation).
yeah, definitely... Make the citadel the king.
Nice Work!
Ooh ooh, and then we could make different races, and, and, we can make one called Terran (up for suggestions), and each race would have a unique ability, like, Terran for instance, they can make all the structures fly away, to another part of the map, and the only thing that could hit them would be angel pawns, and the spirit pawns!!!
Lol, I couldn't help myself...
Seriously though, love people making new maps, this game could surely use it!?!
DaBRUM
Well I'm glad there's at least a few people who like it
Honestly I was on the verge of giving up after "it lacks depth" (I couldn't really understand how one could draw such a conclusion from a screenshot of a completely empty playing field, with no description of flag/building/unit placements/paths etc).
But two or three comments on here have brightened my hopes a little, and even if it isn't much good I shall continue a bit longer down the path, maybe I can even sway a few opinions along the way
Edit: In reponse to the idea about making the citadel a king, I thought about it but in the end I decided against it (doesn't mean I won't change back though). My reasoning was, a) that I wanted this to be a map which a theme, rather than an alteration to the game, and I think that changing models would take away a bit from that and b ) it would undermine the significance of the two pawns in the middle, which are for one a lot larger than the citadel, and secondly are meant to represent the faction struggle - neither can advance till one falls.
Even if the map will not turn out good (i'm not saying it won't), you have to take it as you having learnt quite a bit, so the next one you make will be even better! So keep up the good work
Looks very nice! I hope you can finish it.
I really like this idea, buttttttttttttt
...It's uneven. The right side (from white's perspective) only has one square to push up while the right has two. Though I guess this would be cool, because from what I understand, the far left path is only connected end-to-end, and not to the middle path at all. It'd be interesting to see how that'd play, as ranged Demis could follow on the outside and just. Well. Kill those in the middle.
I like your work and idea, but that's really my only problem with it. Possible solutions:
-Leave it as is and see how it plays.
-Add an area similar to the right, but that doesn't solve the range problem, so
-Make a connecting path in the center?
Just my thoughts.
Leviathan isn't symmetric either, one side is constructed differently than the other. It doesn't really really alter gameplay other than one team will be playing more on their right side and one will be more on their left. I don't think playing on one side is more difficult than the other though.
I don't know, maybe we should conduct a survey and see if right-handedness corrolates to playing better on the right side of a map?
It's an interesting point for sure - one side is a mirror of the other, but the way the board works (with one team's side having one colour) it was always going to be a little off centre and I tried to work with that. Thank's a lot for the feedback though, it's very much appreciated
Also, here's a screenshot of my new lava fountain that'll go behind each person's base:
I'm trying to think logically about how things will work ingame. So, the actual lava bed will have to be made indepenant of the lava flow (opposed to the lava flow building up the lava bed as it would in a usual simulation), so that the lava flow can be looped infinitely. I'll work on the lava bed next.
Niiiice! Very cool looking map!
And keep the lava idea, it looks awesome.
But i have a question: The edges and the floor looks so shiny and all, can this actually work in Demigod? I mean can demigod display these reflections and the shiny edges?
It's a good question and I don't know the answer. I doubt it - I don't think I've seen reflections in Demigod (correct me if I'm wrong). That's something I'd be very interested in knowing myself Maybe someway to bake the reflections? Or maybe clever texture use?
To be honest, I'm currently in the mindframe I should make the best I can, then once I've gotten there, work down to a stage it can hopefully be brought into Demigod.
What I'm going to do next is to create some torches (in some form or another) around the rim of the board.
Anyway, reflections or no reflections, your idea is awesome, and original.
So keep it up!
All signs point to... maybe. Demigod uses FXO shaders for the maps. Theoretically if he was to compile his own shader that includes reflection, and link it to the GR2 map files then in theory it would work work. Reflection require alot of memory but by the same token it's a flat plane so it might be possible.
I might care to mention at this point no one has successfully found a way to bind a shader to a polygon in the in a map.
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