Hello everyone,
about a week ago, I wrote about the Russian map making competition – in short: the best player-created map in “historical” and “e-sports” category wins the author a new gaming computer (why oh why can’t we have this stuff on EU server :( ).
A very curious thing happened. While chatting with Locastan, he mentioned that a Russian friend of his with the nickname of S0me0ne created his own map for this competition. In BigWorld engine. As you can imagine, that got my attention. As it turned out, some other guy (not this player I think?) got the BigWorld map editor for WoT from somewhere, hacked it (?) and S0me0ne used it to produce a map for such a competition.
Before you ask – no, I don’t have the editor, I don’t know where to get it, it’s not public and even if it was, making your map work in WoT would require it to be installed on server, so making it just so without this sort of competition and Wargaming would be a waste of time anyway. Still, two facts are very impressive:
- Bigworld map editor is out there somewhere
- the player made a map in seven days or so (it takes an entire Wargaming team like a month or something? Or three?)
For a first attempt, it actually looks really good, let’s check it out.
Kiev
Map is based on historical Kiev map from 1941, based on the Battle of Kiev. It’s a summer city map, size 900 * 900 meters. More data about this map (screenies from creation etc.) can be found in the Russian thread.
Here a video of the map:
And there is a night version as well:
Some screenshots from the day map itself:
And the night map:
SS you are unfair this time, he might have done it in a week, but it’s not like the map is ready.
Besides, it’s likely that most dev time spent on the maps is about balancing more than anything else.
That being said, it would be nice if WG would introduce some player made maps after they are actually approved and balanced.
I agree with that, it was kind of harsh to say WG is taking a long time putting maps into rotation, imagine if they made them in 1 week’s time, what kind of balance issues would we have then?
terrible map, just randomly placed buildings…. and horrible graphics, my tablet shows better graphics then this shit. bunch of amateurs.
well idk how much time they spent on one map, but in the past few months it clearly wasnt enough. Sacred valley – dropped out of game after like 4 patches, Pearl river – rebuilt two times, Severogorsk – sucks even more than before. But yeah, I rather dont even imagine what would it looked like if they make it in one week.
tbh gameplay-wise this map looks shit
So what? They spend months of “balancing” maps only to come up with shit maps like Serene Coast (first versions of it at least), Dragon’s Ridge, Komarin, Komarin 2.0, Westfield assault mode, Malinovka assault mode and such.
Komarin 2.0 is a joke anyways. Wg must have made it (keep it) completely shit on purpose because there just is no way to take it out of the game and work on it so long without making it even 1% better.
I doubt wg even tests the maps at all. Maybe a handful of rounds with their own alpha testers and if the map doesn’t bug out and fail completely it is put into the game and forgotten. Wg only cares about utter shit maps when players keep pointing out the flaws and shittyness of the map for months and months. Some of the maps are still hilariously unbalanced when you look at win ratios for the bases and wg just doesn’t give a shit.
No, most dev time will be spent in meetings about every minor change. When one person is allowed to just do their own thing with unlimited hours the work can progress very fast.
And I agree the map is far from finished, I’m sure a WoT dev can knock up a map which looks pretty in the same number of actual work hours but he isn’t doing it in his parents basement and leaving half eaten pizza on the floor.
As it is it has many hours of balancing to go and I don’t think those spawn points will ever work, they render three quarters of the map irrelevant.
That’s exaclty what I thought – it’s not a problem to make up a map in 3 days (especially when WG has all those templates like cars, barrels, street signs etc) but I would say that the balancing takes the longest time. Balancing across all playable tiers, all vehicle types, visibility balance etc.
Well, you can say that WG screws the maps anyway, regardless of time taken for testing, but still the test, regardless the results or how they utilize them, takes some time.
wow i realy like the noght map
Breaking lampposts becomes like breaking down trees to an extent, kill the lights in the local area and you might have an enemy hiding in the shadows
yea thief edition lol
Looks quite ok. I am gueassing though that there is more to map making that making then putting stuff around and making it look good. I would love to have a go at it in the night model. The lights makes it look wonderful. I guess some of the problems with night fights are diminished with this.
What else to say… Let’s get our hands on World Editor, Model Editor and Particle Editor… ^_^
It’s not just done by bulding a map in a week, it needs to be balanced for both sides. And besides that you always should have good spots for arty, TDs etc.
This map seems much confusing with so many chaotic buildings, more like a labyrinth. looks unplayable for arty.
“Unplayable for arty”? Sounds good to me, every map should be like this.
Sooo you can make a night map in BigWorld, now that’s tempting.
Well the time difference is largely due to the fact that wargaming actually has to model and skin many of the objects, while this person has probably already used objects from the sets created by wargaming.
But the map itself is still pretty impressive on its own for the time he took.
Wow, so that’s what night time battles would look like.
Graphically nice? Yes, but balanced for gameplay and ready to play on? Far from it.
There is a shit-tonne more involved in map creation than moving meshes around to look nice.
Also, the Bigworld editor has been “out there” long time, for several years before WoT’s development infact, and its no secret and its not that hard to get a copy yourself if you know what you’re doing.
Can you torrent the editor plox ?:)
Cool stuff. But the map looks like it only had one day. I see major problems with it just at a glance. But the fact that the guy even got the program is impressive still.
Best part, marry go round in the middle of the road.
LOL name can be found on google but might be a fake from all we know :P
Creating a map isn’t that hard if you got the right tools – especially for WoT where the geometry is really primitive compared to other games (seems like the author used many templates from other maps). But as the other people already said: balancing and performance finetuning to run it smooth under all conditions are the hardest part of the work. I think I know what I’m talking about, I made maps for Quake III, Half Life, Counter Strike and Return to Castle Wolfenstein in the past.
Would you kindly make some maps in your spare time out of drafts we send to you? Please? :)
This map makes no tactical sense. It’s like he threw lego all over the floor and copied the layout.
So, SS, now if you please dig up this editor for us :) .We could start messing with our own ideas and seeing ow WG treats intellectual property ;) they would eventually become templates for WoT maps – just as this Kiev is (because it is, by no means, finished).
I have the Dev kit on my PC but i sadly cant find the DL link anymore. But i remember the Download for it was called BW191 or something like that. it only works with 3ds max 2009 as far i know.
There were a few versions on the internet awhile ago and probably still are. I had the editor all cracked and all but it was old version. 1.9 and from what i understood it’s from the 7.0 patch days.There is also 2.0 version.
Anyway back when i had BigWorld editor 1.9 fully cracked and working, i had it because i wanted to see the internal models of tanks (back then they were available,but later removed). Shit i couldnt even open a tank model. I didnt recognized any WoT model.
Only some FX such as smoke and fire, blizzard, etc. The world editor was working but i havent bothered to import WoT building and other prefabs. That old editor came with a fantasy test game btw.
You guys can find alot of results by googling : BW191.rar
But as i said it didnt recognized many of WoT files back then, so i doubt it’s useful now when WoT changed alot. And believe it or not the editor was also copy protected.At least the 2008>onwards version, when BigWorld engine was not bought by Wargaming. Even if someone manages to get their hands on it, they would also need a crack. But im not sure about it, maybe they’ve changed it.
Oh and if you guys really want it, then go to bigworld engine and buy a license. It”s US$299 annually.
2.2 version if someone really wants it http://www.protank.su/skachat-dvizhok-bigworld-2-1-0/
But as SS said : making it just so without this sort of competition and Wargaming would be a waste of time anyway
For me, it looks so cluttered. Too much buildings and objects even for city map. Nice try, but as was said, its not only about place some objects into map, but place them to be balanced, optimized and playable. And i think that so much buildings and objects = low FPS for many of us.
This map might be made in a week, but it’s unlikely a good map for balance reasons – I see multiple issues…
Looks like some sort of first experiment checking out all the props rather than an actual map, totally flat surface with buildings scattered around and a road in the middle of it all. Sorry if this sounds harsh but while WG made some utter crap like the new version of the winter map with name i can’t type, the maps are mostly good with nice attention to detail.
Also only city map = limiting tank classes, SPGs and paper TDs that need some breathing room.
Windstorm is a nice example how a city should be made while being a tad bit too hilly still.
- How about a French city (Caen) with some bocage outskirts (dont mean full of hedgerows)
- Dutch farmland with river and nicely placed brick farmhouses and windmills and oak/maple tree landscape with thick sections of forest
- Already seen a screenshot of WG making a decent city map
http://www.thehistoryblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Peenemunde-in-Mecklenburg-Vorpommem-Germany-on-September-2-1944.jpg
http://shop.xyzmaps.com/images/uploaded/lrg_taraposter_goldbeach02_big.40ac6e.jpg
http://ww2today.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Genoa-bombed-June-15th.jpg
http://www.strangecosmos.com/images/content/158238.JPG
http://www.matthewarnoldphotography.com/gallery/large/2011_02_Tunisia_BattleAkarit_111.jpg
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Photo/_new/120511-sahara-plane-19.photoblog600.jpg
http://www.1×1.fi/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/hist_us_20_ww2_pic_ger_berlin_russian_part.jpg
There are soooooo many ideas for maps… (we need minimum 2 more desert maps, at least a dozen city maps and a buch of “forest” maps) (sorry for “spam”)
Looks really amateurish and imo wouldn’t really be good gameplay wise. On the other hand WG brainiacs “reworked” Severogorsk from an okayish map to biggest turd of a map in game. It’s almost as bad as Komarin is, if not worse. Two fucking forced choke points and middle as third one.
>inb4 this map was created by Putin for the next Kiev’s invasion.
The cap points are spawn points as well? If so, it’s pretty dumb, since the teams would never visit 2/3rds of the map.
Also, dev teams test balance and use new stuff in the map (I think he might have only reused the old stuff or stolen/borrowed textures from somewhere, whereas dev teams have it tougher with that). The map itself might be unplayable, because the buildings and objects react in a wrong way when destroyed.
And don’t forget fans aren’t limited to 8 hour work a day. If he’s a uni student, he might’ve easily spent twelve hours a day on it.
“If he’s a uni student, he might’ve easily spent twelve hours a day on it.”
What kind of uni is that???? And what degree will you get from it? McDonald’s worker PHD?
BTW remember Sacred Valley’s village? People actually go there… what a shock!
Uni doesn’t have Easter holidays any more then?
IT uni where you can easily get the degree by what you already know, especially when making maps like these already? ;)
Also, Sacred valley has spawns on opposite sides of map, so it’s logical that some people go the shortest way. This is not the case here.
You don’t need the game engine to make a map which will work in the engine. You don’t even need any specific ‘map editor’. Just any 3d modeling suite. Create a flat plane, maybe add some extra polys to form bumps and hills, then use the buildings and trees already made, place them where you want them, skin the thing, add the waypoints and you’re done.
What takes the longest is balancing, optimizing and adding small details.
To those saying “it looks amateurish / unfinished” – that is what an alpha map looks like.
Also: the lack of ‘grass’ is an indication that this map was not made in the engine itself as the bigworld engine im pretty sure contains built-in tools for adding grassy sprites which can not really be added any other way
Yeah. Small details. People forget about this easily. Recently I’ve noticed that when I break a house (only partially) it’s usually pretty detailed inside, not only walls anymore, but bookcases, inside doors, beds, other stuff.
Map is horrible. Everyone on the team will generally stay in the north…
I can see why it only took a week. The level of detail in this isn’t even close to a WG map, and the scale seems all wrong too. It’s exactly what I would expect from a player produced map that only took a week.
Now to find that editor, export existing maps and make them viewable outside wot … make opensource map viewer … make opensource replay renderer (OpenGL, output straight to file, no dispaly required) … replay -> youtube (or any video sharing website) possible!
It’s funny that the streets are lit up but nothing emits light from the buildings. :)
BTW good start but i would add tank corpses near to the red base or move the base to the southwest part.
not bad for an armature, but its far from feeling as a great map
I am not a big fan of this to be honest, at first it looked interesting. But after watching the video and looking at the screenshots.. The map feels very very veeeerryyy empty.
But i often encounter this problem when making maps for games, what to put in all these open areas?
It’s a problem i always get when mapping, and if you are not certain about what you wanna do, you often have to think hard to figure out what to put everywhere.
I want more desert maps. Right now there are too few of them.
That being said, they will be fun to play if based on historical battle locations.