What happened to the first post here?

[EDIT]

Nevermind, saw what Egg said above.

Erm... Its gone...

As for the sky, how did you rotate it? Animation?

Its a function in the sky file. All skies rotate, just so slow you can't notice. He probably sped it up quite a bit.

Edit: It looks like my worst fear has been met: I hit the object limit. The town itself is basically complete, only a few buildings need to have their walls adjusted to look a bit better, but I still have little details I'd like to add in, such as benches and lamps, as well as some animated gunships. If I'm going to do this though, I need to decrease the number of objects. Making the town smaller isn't a very attractive option, but I remember seeing somewhere a while ago that a possible way to get around the limit was to combine several objects into one in XSI. I don't have any modelling abilities, but if any modellers out there could help me with this, it would be greatly appreciated.

Well, since the first post still hasn't shown up, I'm going to go ahead and re-post the story and description of the project, just so anyone seeing the thread for the first time can actually have some clue as to what's going on. Whenever the original post shows back up, I can just delete this one.

Story: Several months after the outbreak of the Clone Wars, the CIS invaded the world of Aldura. Although Aldura's industrial impact on the war is small, the planet's position in the galaxy gives a significant tactical advantage to the faction controlling it. The Repbulic immediately sent a fleet of ships carrying legions of soldiers to retake the world. The battle for Aldura degenerated into a bitter stalemate, with each side controlling one of the two main continents on the planet. Now the Republic makes one last desperate attempt to drive the CIS off of the world.

Map Description: This the first map of what will be a series of several. In this map, the Republic assaults a small coastal town occupied by the CIS in order to create a beachhead for the coming campaign. The town has been shattered by a previous orbital bombardment.

If you haven't gathered it from previous posts, one of my lofty goals for this series to take a stab at campaign mode.

Wow! An object limit! My tatooine map is stuffed, and I got no limit. You must have a lot of stuff. Didnt even know a limit existed.

Well, my suggestion would be not to get new models, but instead, cut down on all unneccaseray stuff. Like if you have 10 randomly placed garden props, take out like 5 and make the rest look even in a pattern to make up for the space. Or just make the map smaller, for a close up massive experience. Good job on this! I think though it may be possible to change the limit. Take a look around. Im not sure, but maybe there is a way besides ze.

Edit: Posts reshowed up.... Also, making the Cis engineer just have a fusion cutter aint a good idea. I may reccomend adding a blow torch, a weapon that takes health from enemy vehicles, or burns the enemy with a flame.

Yeah that object count limit is pretty high though I've got like 2000+ objects in my map, and it works fine (most of the time)

I checked how many objects there are, and there are 1039 total, I think. I thought the game could take a bit more than that, but maybe it has less to do with an exact number as it does with something else, I really don't have much knowledge regarding it. Either way, I'm pretty sure that's why the map is freezing at the load screen right now. The reason there are so many objects in this map though isn't because it's that huge, which it isn't, but because every single building had to be made piece by piece. Pretty much every object needs to be there at the moment, but I'll see what I can do with modifying a few things.

Actually I just checked, and my map was crashing at 1095

I got rid of about 10 objects today and was able to get the map working again. I'm still trying to think up some ideas about how I can readjust some things to use fewer objects, but I'm not having much success. Although in its current state the map looks pretty good, it just doesn't have the feeling of being truly complete without the tiny little details that would take up about another 100 objects. If I can't come up with a good solution in the next day or two for that, I'll put the mapping on hold for now and work on perfecting sides and localizations so I can still get some good progress done.

Sides take up A LOT OF TIME! Do sides, and by then, you will have it figured out. Take a bite out of campaign while you are thinking.

I'll be away yet again for a few days, so I won't be getting anything done over the weekend. I don't have a whole lot to show right now, except that I changed the sky just to see if I'd like a darker atmosphere, and I think I do like it. I'll probably dim the lighting a bit as well.

I like it! It looks like it suits the map better than the last sky.

But now it looks like a snow map. It matches the fort, but I dont think itll match the grass outside the fort.

It looks fine. However I think the Gian speeders shouldnt be there.

Nice.
@Grev: I kinda agree with you, but I think they'd be okay if reskinned. Cammo colours maybe?

Nice! Are those a bunch of Mygeeto assets?

It's all Rhen Var, with a few Naboo planters added in. As for the comments on the Gian speeders, they aren't ideal, but they're the best I could find in the shipped assets, and as far as I know, there aren't any custom destroyed landspeeder models out there. I hadn't really considered reskinning them, but that might do the trick. Camo is out, as they're meant to be civilian speeders (luckily the main chunk only has one tiny gun on it that can pass as a random antenna or something), but a more dull color could work since it would match the surrounding colors.

Edit: Is this any better?

Its fine, but I dont think that it should be here at all. The chance that t he orbital bombardments wouldnt completely obliterate the ship is very low, and it doesnt seem to fit. It also lowers the object count if removed.

I think it looks awesome and should stay.

Grev wrote:Its fine, but I dont think that it should be here at all. The chance that t he orbital bombardments wouldnt completely obliterate the ship is very low, and it doesnt seem to fit. It also lowers the object count if removed.

Well a speeder wouldn't have to endure a direct hit from orbital bombardment just to be damaged. It could have simply been caught in an explosion or blasted into the air by the force of nearby orbital strikes. I think it really adds to the setting and gives the feeling that this is a destroyed town and not just a bunch of ruins.

I still sort of stand by my earlier suggestions. Another suggestion I have is to add a rubble or some kind of dirt terrain underneath the destroyed buildings to make it more realistic, because it seems sort of strange that the buildings wouldn't have their own flooring and logically rubble within the buildings would collapse and fall down into the foundations. In general I just think that using a variety of ground textures would really enhance the map and give it some more visual detail. Just a suggestion though.

This is looking wonderful.