BF2S Forums Spokane Bf2 Map Update

At times it can be quite boring but its an ok place. I'm kinda suprised someone decided to make a map of Spokane rather than  a larger city like Seattle or LA

IMHO i think its very 'un-proportional'

you look at the size of the cars, and we can all agree a humvee is slightly larger. that one parking lot could fit like 200 humvees lol.

i think you might wanna lower the area. its kind of large.

Unclean009 wrote:

At times it can be quite boring but its an ok place. I'm kinda suprised someone decided to make a map of Spokane rather than  a larger city like Seattle or LA

Believe me, I considered creating some big cities but they have several issues. First of all, even a 64 player map wouldn't provide enough players to make an engagement interesting even if the level was restricted to a 1 square mile area. Big cities are... well they're BIG, which is ok for vehicle maps but rather boring for infantry maps. Typically, the most popular infantry maps are those that are tight and personal. Secondly, the number of custom static meshes required to replicate a large city like LA, New York, Seattle, San Fransisco, etc would bring most players PC's to a crawl. Probably only the top 5-10% of PC's out there would be able to play a big city map that maintained the same level of detail found in the current BF2 levels.

I actually live across the river from Portland, Oregon and have only visited Spokane once last summer. Personally, I can't say whether it's a nice place to live or not, the geography just seemed interesting. The reason I chose it as a potential map concept is that it's downtown region was small, compact, and blended urban and natural elements together. Not too many cities have waterfalls running through them with a park island in the center of the river.

If BF2 could support 256 player games and the average player's PC hardware could push poly's better than they currently do then I might have considered creating a larger city.

Last edited by LG-MindBullets (2006-02-27 17:03:22)

Still looks brilliant, good job. Theres actually a lot of tactical possibilities on this map also. Bridges at both sides of the map leading to the rear of the enemy.
You already started creating it?

PFCStenzel wrote:

Unclean009 wrote:

At times it can be quite boring but its an ok place. I'm kinda suprised someone decided to make a map of Spokane rather than  a larger city like Seattle or LA

You from Spokane there unclean009?

My parents live in the valley up there.

Well im from the northside, not techically in the city but hey, close enough

Landepaukku wrote:

Still looks brilliant, good job. Theres actually a lot of tactical possibilities on this map also. Bridges at both sides of the map leading to the rear of the enemy.
You already started creating it?

I haven't actually started working on the map yet. I'm currently doing some contract work for a company that is creating art assets for a PS3 game. I also work full-time as a professional technical artist and computer animator for a multimedia company so my time is stretched thin. However, as soon as I finish the side work I'm doing now, which is due March 24th then I should have a little free time again to get started.

Here's the plan for making the map:
1) Contact Dice/EA and see if they'd be willing to allow the map to be included in an upcoming patch that would offer the level as an official map for ranked servers.

2) Do some more research on the area such as taking photo/video reference and collecting topology maps. It seems that their are actually quite a few members on this forum who live in or near Spokane so maybe I could get some help from them. I know that downtown Spokane has witnessed over a billion dollars in growth over the last few years and that there are actually a few new large office buildings that don't show up on the Google Earth reference images I used for the concept. I'll probably end up taking a weekend to drive there and do some on-site research since Spokane is only 5-6 hours away from where I live.

3) Determine what buildings I want to make accessible (probably the mall, the arena, parts of the hotels, and maybe the convention center/opera house) and how they will be positioned. For the most part I'll try to recreate the city as accurately as possible, but to accomodate for game balance and playability some adjustments will probably have to be made. I'll actually start creating the level at this point including the terrain and object/structure blockouts. The blockouts are basically dumbed-down versions of the objects that populate the level without any real detail, textures, or final touches. The primary purpose of the blockouts is to allow me to get something into the game that I can test play with. I also give the level basic functionality at this stage such as adding vehicles, AA sites, mounted guns/TOWs, and setting up Control Points.

4) As soon as I'm done tweaking and test playing the level with the blockouts I can move on to working on the final in-game assets for the level;  static meshes (including LOD's), collision meshes, normal maps, textures, etc.

5) Once everything is completed for the level then it needs to be test played some more. At this point most of the major issues should have been identified and resolved by step 3 so hopefully only minor adjustments and changes will have to be made. During this stage I could actually open the level up for testing by other players.

6) With everything tested and finished I upload the level and all the art assets. Ideally, I'll be uploading the map to an EA server so they can bundle it with an official patch or map release.

7) Download, patch, and play.

8) Get owned by LG-MindBullets who knows where all the secret passages and invisible collision meshes are. (Just kidding)

Meth is the big problem for Spokane...its kinda sad actually...

PFCStenzel wrote:

The Arena does not have a Rollaway top.  It is completely enclosed.  Sorry to spoil it for ya.

maby u could make it opened up just 4 the game and make the plas attack helocopter spawn in there that would be so cool!!! i hop u can convince ea of putting it in that is the coolst map iv ever seen!!

Dude.. This is awesome. I live in Spokane and can get you any pictures or whatever you want. Just lemme know