[Showcase] Port Aquitaine 2019

[Sage 94]

Whatup rA. Here's something I've been working intermittently for the past few weeks, it's a massive overhaul of a town map I originally made back in 2012 (Please do not bump that thread back to the front page) that I was fairly proud of, but looks sorta old and outdated now. This is probably the most custom model and texture work I've ever done on a map so far, but while a lot of those assets were made brand new for this map, there's also a lot of custom stuff I've re-used from stuff I worked on in 2019. Ever since I figured out how to retexture things (and it took years, because believe it or not, I'm kind of dumb), I've kinda gone crazy and done a lot of it. Just counting new assets I made specifically for this map, there's 48 new models and 80 new textures.

With that said, this map isn't just a revamp of the old one with slightly nicer models and textures. The town is much bigger and more modern. I always wanted it to be that way, but I couldn't really accomplish that with the assets available in 2012, and even if I did have those assets, I probably wasn't skilled enough back then to make them look good. I think the town's lost a little bit of its 'country' feel, and some landmarks have been changed- Most notably, the old graveyard with stone caskets in the northwest end is now a little marketplace with docks, and a few manor-style homes have been replaced with colorful apartment buildings and warehouses, but real world cities grow and change a lot over time, so I'm OK with this.

I don't have any interior maps finished yet, and the original Aquitaine had quite a few fields and extra quest-related maps in the surrounding forests and marshlands, so I'll have to update those too, eventually. I'm not 100% satisfied with this map either, and cut a few corners just so I wouldn't be working on it for the next month: I'd like to eventually retexture Malaya's car models into something that looks more realistic and less like a theme park ride, and I'd like to try making some better, more modern looking boats, too. I also got lazy with the marquee sign for the cinema and didn't add any movie titles or show times. I'll probably change that in the future. First screenshot is the old map, everything else is the new one.

 

[Akkarin 1,208]

Gorgeous!

[Deku 0]

Congratulations, it's cute

[Cydh 660]

Imagining some crowds of players

[Najara 189]

Truly outstanding, Sage! Everything blends in so nicely, great job on the light and shadows as well (more specifically on giving the trees a realistic shading by having it cast branch-like shapes on the ground). Excellent work.

The only thing I could offer additional feed-back upon - if you allow me  - is the choice of leaf model on top of/into the water. I don't know how it would look in-game but in the BE screen-shots some of these are quite stretched and therefore appear a little pixelized in comparison to the rest of the map. But other than that, I have nothing to add.

[Sage 94]

Thanks for the feedback so far. When it comes to the leaves on top of the water, I popped ingame to take a look, and this is what I got from some of the largest ones:

It blurs a bit more than what you'd see in Browedit, but still slightly pixelly. It might bother some people more than others, but OK with this as is- It doesn't really stand out to me, and I don't think most players would mind that much either. At least, not to the point where I'd feel I should put the time into making a new, higher resolution texture...