As announced on both the forums, as well as the www.to-crossfire.net site, with the new 1.7 patch for TO:Crossfire comes a new map. The name has been chosen by the community. First by random names, after that, by a poll. The work-in-progress name of OBJ-This will thus be replaced by OBJ-Deluge.


Once There Was a Dream...
The map officially started as a 'boredom' project. Just a thing, a feeling, an idea that was at the back of my mind constantly. To get it out I started mapping. Being inspired by the FarCry game a little, I wanted to create something warm, moody and above all dreamy.

A very rough early version was posted on the development forums, due to an IRC discussion with some of my fellow developers. Enthusiastic reactions fuelled my motivation to make something of the map. OBJ-This.to2 was born. Now my initial thought was to create a sandy canyon with loads of water. Mainly dominated by terrain and less by buildings. Since this is not such an interesting layout option, mainly due to nade-spamming and the optimisation of the map, I decided otherwise. Create a dreamy Arabic-looking little town.

And Then the Dream Continued Even When I Was Awake...
Still recognise certain areas? I admit, it changed dramatically. But that is the beauty of being a level designer; dream, think, map. As you can see, the shadow and dreamy lights are the most attractive features of the map. I didn't want to create a complex map that looks good only because of the details. I wanted to create a map where you can dream about, but above all, play, with joy. The Arabic theme lends itself beautifully to flat rooftops and simple box-like architecture. Ideal for the game that the map is being developed for.

After these shots, I placed the map on our internal distribution network. This means that everyone can download the map and play with it. Now this is where true teamwork comes in. Various people responded to the map, giving hints, tips, ideas and best of all, inspiration.

Teamwork Truly is a Wonder...
As I can't work with a 3D modelling program, I create everything with BSP. We also often use this method: make a final BSP-version and slowly replace everything by mesh. Why? Because of optimisation (rather a better running map then a slow, laggy one) but most of all, because of the details we are able to give with meshes.

Perfect_Storm kicked in here as he gave a good deal of his time to modelling the needed meshes for the map. As he worked, he also put some quick screen shots on the forums. This way the team can judge and think-through the whole process.

  (read more for extra images!!!)

Beauty is Not a Gift, it's an Art...
While Perfect_Storm was modelling all the buildings and other required models, I started to optimise the map. First of all came the zoning, since this is actually the best way to get a map running at higher FPS with the UT2k4 engine. Now here I had a problem. The terrain is made entirely with an actor (TerrainZoneInfo) and that actor can only be in one zone at a time (technical talk, I'm sorry!) So the terrain needed to be transformed into a static mesh, since that is not affected by zoning. Leviathan picked up this particularly complex job (since it had 13,000 polygons.) During this process, the beta-test team tested the map with every new version. By giving feedback concerning bugs, time schedules and other issues the map evolved to a bug free and player-friendly map.

And Then There Was Light...
Even though the map looks sexy already, there are still some problems:
1. The lighting on the meshes looks cool but it isn't the lighting I once had in mind.
2. The map is anything but fluent, meaning the FPS drop from 110 to 20 on occasions.
3. Visual errors. For example, look at the water and you will see the reflection of palm trees, yet they have been removed to improve performance.

From now on the map is under the control of Spin. He is capable of reducing BSP tree complexity (more technical talk!), and reworking the original lighting of both static meshes and existing BSP, back to its' original setting. Furthermore, he optimised the whole map by adding zoning, static meshes, removing needless BSP and putting a little magic into the map.

Now my last task is to create new water reflections, adding a map description, a nice song (made by Pablo 'GuyBrush Threepwood' Delgado Rodriguez) and to fix the last known bugs. Note that this map has been under development for only one month; that is what inspiration can do to a team!

On a Final Note...
As I have mentioned a dozen times before; working in a team has so many benefits. Every team member has his own knowledge, strengths and weaknesses. As long as everyone understands those, you can form a great team and make, in our case, a great game. My weaknesses have been supplemented by people that have more knowledge. On the other hand, you can see my strength by just looking at the visuals and the general idea of the map. This understanding of our team, makes us ready for the development and release of TO:Crossfire 2.0 in the near future.

Thank you for reading, hope you enjoy the 1.7 patch and see you on the servers!


Pleun 'Ssswing`' Meuwissen

TO:Crossfire Mapper

Special thanks to:

Bruno 'Leviathan' Alex
David 'Spin' Goldsworthy
Ron 'Perfect_Storm' Kamphuis