Athenova - Landfall

[Oceans14]

Athenova - Landfall

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Planet Athenova, Two months after the Battle of Geonosis.

The 41st Elite's 3rd Armored Division's debut in the Clone Wars is off to a bad start.  Forced down by heavy AA fire, they land several kilometers short of their designated LZ in the Athenovian countryside and, having lost all of their tanks, must overcome a CIS defensive position that was hardly mentioned in the mission briefing.

There you have it. This map is the first of what I'd like to think will be a multi-map campaign. As you'll see in the screenshots, I based it heavily on Omaha beach (because who doesn't love storming the beaches), more specifically the Company of Heroes DDay map. Out of all the dday maps I've played, I liked the design of that one the most, and did my best to emulate it here. The campaign scripting is halfway done, as is the actual level design. Logically it just made sense to work on the water, then the beach, then the cliffs, etc.

The units won't be stock, but at the moment they pretty much are because side modding is a whole can of worms that I don't want to open while I'm still finishing the actual map. They will be Phase 1, though. I really enjoyed playing the Aldura Campaign, so this in the style of Aldura with a hefty dose of Designated Days (WWII). I've wanted to do an Omaha beach map since I first learned about modding, but now I'm at the point where I know enough to make it happen Anyway, to the screenshots!

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Things to do (In no particular order):

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-Rocks, natural cover objects
-Foliage
-Terrain texture tweaking (say that five times fast)
-Particle effects
-Custom sides
-Remedy weird issues (terrain cutters not cutting, props randomly swapping between low and high rez, beach smoke effects noticeably absent, etc)

Credits thus far:

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-Jedimoose32 - Gunship wrecks
-Deviss and RogueKnight - Clone weapons

Also a shoutout to Marth8880 for his extremely useful SWBF2 lua API. If I've missed someone already, let me know. And of course, feedback is always appreciated! I'm super excited about this project, but I have the tendency to burn out - I have who knows how many maps just sitting around halfway completed. Hopefully this WIP will keep me motivated while also keeping all of you apprised of my efforts.

[MissingTexture]

Really reminds me of one of the Designated Days I played to death when I was younger!

I'd recommend adding a bit of foliage here and there, maybe even some corpses for added effect; but it looks interesting, nonetheless

[Marth8880]

This looks great! I really like the atmosphere that's been established here.

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I believe you can fix that reflection offset by adding SpecularEnable(1) to the Water section of your ENVFX file.

[Oceans14]

I'd recommend adding a bit of foliage here and there, maybe even some corpses for added effect

I had corpses but removed them for the time being as I'm still tweaking the positions of some props. As for foliage, I plan to add it but you know how much trouble it can be I figured I'd do that last.

I believe you can fix that reflection offset by adding SpecularEnable(1) to the Water section of your ENVFX file.

Thanks Marth, would I add that line under PC or water event parameters?

[Marth8880]

Thanks Marth, would I add that line under PC or water event parameters?

Either would work. All the PC block does is tell the compiler to compile the parameters listed in the block for the PC platform only. This is true for all ENVFX effects. For example, this:

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SunFlare()
{
	Angle(120.000000, -30.000000);
	Color(255, 255, 255);
	PS2()
	{
		Size(5.0);
	}
	PC()
	{
		Size(10.0);
	}
	XBOX()
	{
		Size(15.0);
	}
	FlareOutSize(40.0);
	NumFlareOuts(40);
	InitialFlareOutAlpha(70);
	HaloInnerRing(0.0, 255, 255, 255, 255);
	HaloMiddleRing(10.0, 255, 200, 0, 255);
	HaloOutterRing(40.0, 255, 127, 0, 0);
	SpikeColor(230,230,0,128);
	SpikeSize(9.0);
}

would tell the compiler to compile the file with the Size parameter's value set to 5.0 when compiling for PS2, 10.0 when compiling for PC, and 15.0 when compiling for Xbox.

[Oceans14]

Ahh, of course. That took care of it, thanks for the tip!

[SkinnyODST]

Wow, very excited! I congratulate you for even knowing how to get a campaign working. Campaigns don`t like me. Very interested to see what the sides will look like as well! Looks like there`s a lot of well placed cover around the map to move tactically which I also like!

[MikeTheBeast55]

I love the World War 2 Era of history and glad people still try and make recreations to the Battlefront 2 Engine which is very hard to complete. I definitely like the pictures so far and the progress done but much more as listed definitely has to be addressed. Still, this is something I most likely will pin and keep up the updates with, excellent job so far!

[Oceans14]

Quick update - Haven't had much time to work on this lately, but I just changed the water color and made the beach craters deep enough to actually serve as cover. I also spent some time making a flak cannon for one of the mission objectives, and placed some rocks and tree stumps around the cliff top. Trees and foliage will come later, as I'm still working out the placement of some props. Only a few screenies for today. I'll add more as I progress.

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At some point in the very near future Dropbox is apparently going to kill their public folder system and all my screenshots (ever posted on this site) will go offline. I'll address that when it happens, because honestly I don't have the time right now...

As mentioned in the original post, I will be doing custom sides for this map. Just to pique everyone's interest, I plan to have a rifleman, grenadier, automatic rifleman, anti-tank, and officer. Engineers, medics, snipers, etc will probably be locals. I do have loadouts for these units, but I'll save those for another update