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RD Oddball -> WaR mapping - behind the scenes (11/30/2008 11:03:20 PM)
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“WaR map making – behind the scenes”
by Jim Martin
11/25/08
For Close Combat – Wacht am Rhein Shane Cameron was the main map maker on the map making team and able to claim responsibility for roughly 43 of the 64 tactical maps appearing in the game. Nine tactical maps plus the strat map, created by yours truly, as well as a dozen stock CC4 maps make up the balance. The only way you get to the point of being able to do that many maps in such a short period of time is by doing it...and doing it LOTS. Shane has done literally hundreds upon hundreds of maps for various mods over the years and is one of the most prolific map makers in the CC community. By comparison, I've done around a hundred in my time in the CC community. And it's not just the volume the work he's done. Shane does some of the best quality maps available for CC.
With all that map making going on the development team thought some folks might be interested in knowing what goes into making a map. I'll attempt to give you an overview here.
Before continuing I'm obliged to mention that no effort worth while is done in a vacuum. Many folks GENEROUSLY contribute to the map making effort by doing painstaking research or very generously donating artwork they've created that will be useful to our cause. We've identified these folks in the game credits but it's worth mentioning here as well. Research for maps was done by Neil Nello, Platoon Michael, RD_Roach, Shane Cameron and myself. Research is comprised of finding period aerial photographs of the tactical map areas to be represented on the strat map. Any available sources are used. Books, internet, actual maps, etc. Since our strat map has 64 areas that meant finding aerials of all 64 of those areas. No small task! Amazingly nearly all of them were found however there were a handful for which we could find no aerial photos. When that happens we either make something up based on written descriptions of the battlefield or turn to community map makers for contributions. Several very generous folks offered use of their map graphics. Namely Pvt. Grunt (Grant McTaggart), Vic Boutillier (yukongold) and Ernie M.. In most cases small bits were used (houses, vehicles, etc.) and in others map road nets were used with our own textures redrawn over top to maintain consistency of look across maps in the build. One example being Pvt. Grunts interpretation of Malmedy road net and building arrangement. We are very thankful for these contributions to help us round out our map research.
Once research is done a map design is created based on the research findings for a given area. Ability to understand what you're seeing in an aerial photograph is a must. The design is created by the map maker and the primary goal is to create tactical offensive and defensive challenges taking into account the maps location on the strategic layer with respect to other tactical maps as well as blending those challenges with what the research found. So there's a fair amount of thought that goes into how the buildings are arranged, what the terrain is like, placement of trees, where the road net runs, line-of-sight, etc. Rough sketches are sometimes done then the drawing of the artwork begins.
Photoshop is the primary tool of Close Combat map makers. The ability to layer graphics so as to allow ease of alterations later on is the key advantage Photoshop gives a map artist. The background texture is usually laid down first then detail is slowly added. Road net usually goes down first or maybe some tactically significant land feature such as a river or location of a town or a hill. Then everything else falls into place. Depending on the complexity and experience of the artist this process can take anywhere from a day or two on up to a week or two. And it's not a linear 9 to 5 thing either. Sometimes inspiration strikes at the least opportune moments and you have to work when the creative juices are flowing. To try to force yourself to stick to a regime will make the results look forced and uninspired. Sometimes that means working a little on one map until it's either done or you've lost the vision for it. In which case you set it aside and work on a different one and return to the one you set aside when the vision comes back or the creative block is gone. So you can have several maps in progress simultaneously.
I've given you a highly abbreviated version of the process but hopefully you get the picture. Doh! No pun intended. Another portion of the map making process is coding the maps to make them playable within the game. I could write an additional three pages on that topic but essentially it's placing an element tile on every 10pixel x 10pixel square of the map to tell the game how to treat each graphical representation of the tactical area. For a 3,600px x 3,600px map that's 129,600 tiles! Yikes! If it wasn't for the heroic efforts of a small team of dedicated volunteers you wouldn't be reading this article. The build wouldn't exist! Mark Hoffrichter, John Davidson, Andrew Williams did the bulk of the map coding and tweaks. Stand up and take a bow guys! Shane, Steve McClaire and myself also contributed to this effort.
Sometimes you stand back to look at your map creation and feel you've exactly replicated the vision in your head and sometimes you stand back and wish you'd gone biking or something else. In the end it's a creative process despite the fact that these are representations of real, tangible places. In cases where good aerial photos exist the maps are often exact replicas of the historical locations where the real life battles were fought. Where research doesn't exist and was lost to the ages they're strictly creations of the artists' imagination. Either way it's a whole lot of fun and I highly encourage anyone considering it to give it a try. Maybe you'd like to draw up the battlefield your grandpa fought on that he's told you so many stories about? Or draw one up from a bit of history your fascinated by. There's an extensive modding community for Close Combat with lots of tutorials and tools to get you started. Closecombatonline and CloseCombatSeries being the two biggest. For those folks more interested in data modding that's available there too.
Don't be fooled. Making the first map or mod is quite a challenge. There's a lot to take into account all at once. But stick with it and after a while you'll be an old pro just like our own Golden God, Shane Cameron.
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