Kafe's Map thread

Kafe

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getting back into the groove of things again, mostly for now by expanding the surrounding terrain and getting a road connection added.
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Kafe

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I'm blocking in some of the first cave routes,
Winding, confined, dark and dangerous is the ultimate goal,

they're not much to look at on their own, so have some ragdolls I threw in while messing about

D0TLW0S.jpg

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Kafe

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Setting up foliage and other features within the natural spaces I've setup recently.
Alongside a couple extras, some camoflagued watch posts, and a really trashy rope bridge

RFWSld7.jpg

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This chunk of the world is shaping up relatively well (at least, it's been fun to do), Reckon when this is further along I will gather some folk to have a play around to get some thoughts before we build up the next areas.
 
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Kafe

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9oyClEW.jpg

Brief update for today
Making an optimisation change at the moment in regards to OOB trees.
I'll be stripping out the 3d model pine trees from the higher inaccessible cliffs that mark area boundaries. in their place will be card variants, with some small detail panels to help them look less 2d.

Mainly to help with performance, large number of trees are a performance hog and are frankly just wasting limited resources in the map. those meshes can be put to use in gameplay spaces instead.
should help in future make the ends of the map more obvious, and clear what you can't climb onto.

doing this over my existing spaces, so nothing new content wise today.
 
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Kafe

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Those tree borders are now over the existing region of the map.
Tackles some of the early wastefulness of using the model trees, should also help me a good deal to cover up some of the visibility optimisation for later as well.

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textures will need some proper attention later.
 
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Kafe

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x9q9tLh.jpg

Cooking antlions.

Also just using Gmod's fog editor to consider some fog inclusion as well, not to provide any draw distance tricks, hopefully with the way this is built I can avoid that outright. but more to give a warm haze of sorts. trying to prevent it from being too invasive and not obscure too much at range.
VaGVC6y.jpg
 
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Kafe

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Will be a delay on next updates.
I somehow managed to absolutely annihilate the displacement limit on the vanilla compiler.
Special thanks to saiid compiler not tracking the limits for displacement info, so it snuck up on me.


So I'll be doing a run through to cleanup and reduce the complexity of the displacements in the landscape at the moment.
I've not been particularly tidy in the past, so there's already been a lot of easy reductions made.
 
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Kafe

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Displacement budget is back in check, had a lot of redundancy to cleanup.
Give you an idea of what I had been working on prior to needing to tidy up my earlier work.

Coastline cave kind of deal. again pretty early due to the issues mentioned earlier.
aaq7ADp.jpg
 
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Kafe

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One thing I frequently do with my open world maps is splitting them up into chunks and containing them, this map is currently no different, the main draw for that is primarily an optimisation need, if I can split up environments in this way then I can keep them from loading and hit better performance marks.
It does however mean the map can break down into multiple chokepoints between regions, so I'm working to try and ease that pain through numerous potential connections, and keeping them relatively open.

alongside the train tunnels, there are a few other entry points to this section around the combine trainyard, a hidden away cabin, and a abandoned mineshaft. all of these will enable passage to the other regions on my creation list (Antlion town, rebel base, and combine base)

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Rebel base explorations are ongoing, the cave entrance was seen before, and due to displacement limits being a more concious factor, I've switched some of the environment other to a bunker concept for now.
Although after so much C24 combat, I've decided the silo doors are not going to be interactable, they'll all remain open by default as static meshes.
LEuReo7.jpg


One other exploration piece I'll likely rebuild, but a stolen power source with a trapped APC.
BDpMj0J.jpg
 
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deathwolf

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Displacement budget is back in check, had a lot of redundancy to cleanup.
Give you an idea of what I had been working on prior to needing to tidy up my earlier work.

Coastline cave kind of deal. again pretty early due to the issues mentioned earlier.
aaq7ADp.jpg
i love the vibe here.

just spitballing but maybe make the water the same water we see in Black Mesa Xen
Improved_Xen_water.mp4.jpg

and have the place become a little xenian hotspot vortigaunts or very brave humans can use
 
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Kafe

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Bit of a landslide since the combine were not very good at repairing an old dam.

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Mostly just getting on with doing more landscape variations through models instead of displacements. should help over time, but will look notably different from some of the earlier areas.
 
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Kafe

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Fishermen will be looked after.
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Although I am just nicking set pieces from Ineu valley at this point.
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But aside from that, I've setup a open-ended connection between my two main exterior regions. should still keep my optimization needs, but still allow aircrafts and not feel so obviously segmented.
Bit ugly atm, but working on it.
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Shadows still buggered, but that's just from choice of compiler, not a concern.
 
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deathwolf

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perhaps a small logging factory, could be a nice place to set up at
 
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