Inspired - The Story of a Custom Map

Last Friday Night was the most fun I have had playing Battlefield in a long, long time. It was great, especially 304's Fields of the Fallen. If you read my reviews, you probably knew that already. :-)

For the longest time, I have wanted to put together a custom map. In my mind, I had an idea of what this map should be. I've seen a few other people use this similar idea, but none of them were that great and they don't work with the recent patches anyway.

Before I go much further, I should tell you a little about myself. I consider myself a creative person, but I am one of those people that has a hard time implementing my ideas. What goes in my head, stays in my head for a lack of artistic ability. Because of this, I have never thought seriously about putting my idea into a map. Well, after Friday Night, I decided, what the hell. I'm sure there are enough talented people around here to help keep me in line and make my idea a reality.

Most of you may not know it, but I work with Raze. Probably fewer of you know that Raze is a very talented artist. The icon he uses on the forums was actually drawn by him. He has the ability I lack; to put his ideas into form. We were talking today and he had already started working on a custom Pacific map. I told him about my idea, and drew a rough sketch of what I wanted to do. Well, that was enough to get his creative juices flowing. With my creative direction (and maybe even some Battlecraft designing), Raze and I are going to bring you my idea for a custom map. It may suck, but at least I can say I tried. :-)

Who knows, I might even be able to help him with his own map. Once we have something to check out, I would like to get all the GRB's to help us work through the maps and make them something worth playing. If anyone else would like to help, just post here. I know with everyone's help, we can make something memorable.

Now for the details, or at least, what I can give you. The name of the map will be The Ghost Front. It is a nickname for the Battle fought in the Ardennes Forest, outside Belgium and Germany. Some of you may know it as the Battle of the Bulge. In this case, we will be focusing on the feel from the Ardennes forest based on my memory of the Band of Brothers episode and research I am doing on the web. This should be a winter map.

The map will be a soldier's battle, with the German side having stationary artillery and the American side having a few tanks to protect the supply route into the forest. The goal of the map is to create a battle that is a tug of war between the Germans and the Americans. The forest will be so dense, that it will be difficult to fight in, but not impossible. In the center of the forest will be a bunker, similar to a scaled down version of the bunker in the center of the Battle Mountain map. There will be a river on the German side of the forest. The Allies will have a larger town. We are not sure if the Axis side is going to have a town or more of a encampment. The thing we are going to try to accomplish, but we don't know if it is possible yet, is to make this a push map, where all flags must be taken in order. I've seen other mods do it, so I know it can be done. If we can accomplish this, then all flags will be capturable, in order. If we can't then the towns will probably not be capturable.

I am not sure how long this is going to take, but Raze and I discussed having some sort of working prototype by the end of the month and a finished map some time after that. My goal is to create a map that is fun to play, but as complete as possible. If we can do that, then who knows, it might even make a FNF - CMN. :-)

Sounds good... Would like to see where you need help though

Count me in. I will help however I can.

I think the biggest thing will be helping us get a feel for the design. Is it worthwhile? Is it playable? Are there problems or bugs, stuff like that. Too much of something here, not enough of something there. That kind of stuff.

This will be down the road a bit, but I was excited and wanted to get the word out. If nothing else, I think it is cool for us to give something to the community. I just hope it's good enough. :-)

Ok... Well... Thinking... Ok... Yeah... I will get back to you on this... 🙂

:twisted:
Hey Guys, just thought i would help keep this post rolling along by sharing my thoughts about The Ghost Front, give some intel about the ccustom map i'm working on, and to ask for some advice on it.

The Ghost Front:
Battle of the Bulge is one of my favorite vanilla Battlefield maps, so i can't wait to play this map. I've always felt that Battlefield was kinda unbalanced when it came to the theatres being represented and that EA/DICE should have included more winter maps in the mix. As for making this a "Push" Map, where all flags must be taken in order: I think it's a great idea, although i expect it will take a great deal of research and hoards of notepad editing to see it through. Another way you could sort of accompish this is by just making it plain impossible to get to base #2 without going through base #1 first. AKA you can't sneak around to the very back base like i enjoy doing on Tobruk and BotB. This could be done using fences, hills, forest, out of bounds, etc... Any help you need, i'd be glad to give. I'm not an expert or anything, but i know a few tricks.


My Latest Custom Map:
304-Infiltration
This is a small, tight, city map that doesn't really feel all that small. There is a canal running from west to east directly across the center of the map and only one small bridge in the center for tanks to cross (infantry and scoutcars have some different options for crossing the canal) The center of the map surrounding the main bridge is all bombed out buildings and rubble. Further away from the bridge the buildings are less damaged and 95% are enterable. Around the outside of the town is more of the industrial district (factory, lumbermill, trainyard, etc...) Now i am trying some new stuff in this map that i've never seen done before, and it's kinda hard to test a map designed for 30+ people with only 2, so it might end up being the most unbalanced map ever. If so i can always change it up really easy. Here's the lowdown on the armies and some more intel:

Allied-Americans: The recent bombing campaign has weakened the german forces in the area and made it possible for a small group of american soldiers to set up camp and collect intel around the strategic bridge in the center of the town. (you might spawn here) This has allowed for more troops to be paradropped in directly above the bridge (you might also spawn with a chute). Either way you're only gonna start off with the pack on your back and your witts to keep you alive. And believe me you're gonna be surrounded. But it seems the germans have fled the heart of the city so fast they have left guns and ammo (spawnable kits) and scoutcars scattered throughout. Our boys on the ground have heard reports of a train shipment containing 2 tiger tanks set to arrive in 5 minutes on it's way to the trainyard in the northeast. This should be your first goal. If you can capture the trainyard in less than 5 minutes you will intercept the shipment and hijack the two tigers for your own use. (This was done by giving the Tigers a 600 second spawn delay at game start) These 2 Tigers will be very important to winning the map because the germans will have 4 light tanks rolling out of their tank factory directly to the east of the railyard at the north of the map. Also to the south of the trainyard, at the southeast of the map, there is a windmill high atop a hill and once captured the Canadians have promised to reinforce the Americans by supplying them with a couple of Sextons.

Axis-Germans: The Americans have invaded the heart of the city. The Germans should protect their tanks at all cost because of their long resupply times. The germans will also be without airsupport for the first 10 minutes of this map. After that 2 stukas will be available. All six german flags are in close range to the parachuters, so every flag is a potential target, but top priority should be given to defending the trainyard until the shipment of Tigers arrives. However giving too much defense here and leaving the factory, windmill, and airfield unmanned will surely lead to a defeat.


The Allied Flag:
I need some input on this, because i'm not quite sure how to do it. Originally i had it uncapturable, but i thought it might be interesting to make it a massive serious flag. A flag with the radius of about 150 (default is 20) and a time to lose control (time it takes for the enemy to turn it white) of about 5-10 minutes (default is 10 seconds) Any suggestions on this idea or my vehicle loadouts or general comments is welcome of course. It's hard to beta test crazy ideas like this with only 2 people.

Other Stuff:
Onewaystreets - Some streets are blocked from one direction but from the other direction you can hit a ramp to jump the obstacles.
Different Entrances - Some of the flags are fenced in with different ways to get in: Tanks can take the main entrance, Infantry can climb parts of the fence, Scoutcars can take the extreme way and ramp over the fence.
Trainbridge - I pieced together some pieces to make a little train bridge. It's only wide enough for infantry and scout cars and it looks pretty cool.

I also want to change the locations of 4 of the spawnable flags to the center of my map for CTF, just to change it up a bit but i've ran across some problems. Seems like since BFVietnam is going to drop CTF completely, Battlecraft doesn't support setting up CTF games for BF1942 very well. I guess they have been working more on getting Battlecraft Vietnam ready than on fixing this. Either that or i'm just trying the impossible and you can't have flags in different places for different game modes. Although i'm pretty sure you can.

And since there are so many ramps in the map: i might make team deathmatch have only scoutcars and gokarts for stuntin fun.

Once we get our site up you'll be able to see some screenshots of the maps we are workin on. Until then let me know what you think about my crazy map ideas and good luck on The Ghost Front.

I like the sound of that map. It's kind of hard to visualize, but I think I get the idea. I love the Tiger Spawn set up. It adds a lot of character to the map. I'm not sure about the flag taking 10 minutes. I think it's designed to meet a specific goal, but I have a feeling it will be lost on the average BF player. I'll think on it.

As for the push map, I was going to disect the other maps already doing this and see what I can come up with. Reverse engineering is always more fun anyway. :-)

If you ever need more people to help test a map, just holler. We can put the word out to HSC, ATF and PDX and run it one Friday night for a few hours. I just need a little lead time and a chance to make sure all of our guys are ok with doing that.

I might as well give a little low down, pretty simple really. My basic idea was a shipwrecked allied carrier, still able to produce planes. Just on the island, near the carrier, the allies set up a base. Unknowing the axis, has control of this island, complete with their own airbase. Their base just happens to be on the other side of the island obstructed be a mountain range and a dense, foggy, swampy area that is hard to pinpoint targets from the air and can't drive into due to the water.. For the allied survival, they must take this island. Axis comes with one flag already captured. Their is only one road that circles the island.

What I have now.... could change rather quickly.
Allied base comes with 2 jeeps 3 shermans and 2 planes (default carrier planes).

Axis comes with 1 jeep, 2 chi ha's and 1 tiger. 1 Zero and 2 bombers.

Off-island capture - has a spawn point. Careful! You could be a sitting target on this one.

Swamp captue - has spawn point, could be easier to get away from here.

Mountain capture, this is the one already captured by axis. No spawn. This is near the axis base and remember this is their island. They can recapture easily.

Off road capture, this one could be an important capture. This one is half way between the axis and allied bases and will spawn 2 tanks. The team that captures this base could gain ground dominance.

Well that is all I have for right now. I'm having a little trouble at the moment due to my over-eagerness of a dense swamp that I included too many objects causing my carrier and bases to disappear. I think I got it thined enough but not too much to work my Idea.

Hey Scott,

What tools are you guys using to make your maps?

Battlecraft 2.0, WinRFA, Photoshop 7, Irfanview, and Notepad

Thought I should add the programs for Loading Screens, Thumbnails, and the Avatars I made. Corel Draw, Photostudio 2000, Photo Rap, Ifranview, and last but not least Windows Paint.

Thanks for the info guys.

Here is a quick update on Ghost Front. The loadscreen is almost complete. It looks really cool. We used actual images from the Army Archives during the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes.

The map outline has been completed and Raze has already put together the basic layout of the map. I'm going to run through it and see what we need to do to make it more playable. Right now, I think it's a little to spread out to be a good infantry map. We will work on that, and continued development of the layout before asking anyone else to take a look at it.

A quick note: I was telling Raze how cool the Merciless Creations textures were for winter maps. He pulled the MC BoB textures out and imported them into our map. The Sherman looks awesome! All of the soldiers are now wearing gloves. I haven't seen the Panzers yet, but I bet they look cool too. Very Cool Stuff!

Once again, I couldn't have done any of this without Raze. Hell, I haven't done a single thing to actually build the map or load screen, other than provide creative direction. Just wanted to say thanks....

I can't wait to let you guys see it.... I hope you like it....

Yeah, i'm having a ball with ghost_front. I agree with atomm about the spread out stuff. I've placed Shipwrecked on the back burner for now. GF posses more challenge and is pretty exciting to do for now. 😛

So fare I've played around with importing the Pak40 from LoC and the snow from MC Bob.

I can't wait to get to a point to show everyone else so they can tear me down... hehehe :twisted:

We're getting close. We'd like to make it a "push" map as described. Lot's of kinks to work out. Plus a new BC in the middle. I inserted the Mercilles Creations textures from BoB which would make the old bc crash on occasion. I think I got things figured out. Now I'm trying to insert the Flagboxes and boxkills from DC to get that "push" ability. Then we go into Release Candidates for your pleasure.

BTW, I ditched the Shipwrecked map for now. 42 is kind of a mute point for now until BFV gets old. I do have a BFV custom map Idea for all you helo pilots.... =) More on that when Ghost_Front makes RC1.

It would be nice if we could throw it up on the server and have a few of you drop by to run through it. I'll put the link up in our private forums. Don't want to leak it just yet....

I can sneakernet it to you monday. I'll get in a few more tweaks this weekend sometime.

Lou, How do you get away with having 304 in your map name? I think i have another grunt about the new battlecraft. It won't allow numbers in the name, but the older one did? Go figure. Guess I can uninstall the new BC and put the old back on.

[shhh]We are working on converting him to where he puts GRB in the map name. esp as they dont allow numbers from now on in the name 🙂 [/shhh]

Hahah. If I could change the names I would, but once you name a map, you can't change it. This realllly makes me mad on servral differant levels. As for BCV you cant have numbers in the name, but you also can't have creativity in the maps either. I am racking my brain to come up with something worth playing. Im prolly gonna make that "Battle of Two Mountains", and put some effort into it. For those of you that dont know about this map, refer to the post: Caution: This map contains nudity: I'd like to know if people would want to play it. lol :twisted:

I'm sure you will work something out. How about a deep jungle battle. I haven't seen one yet that made me feel that I was "in" the jungle.

Atomm wrote:I'm sure you will work something out. How about a deep jungle battle. I haven't seen one yet that made me feel that I was \"in\" the jungle.

Agreed!

I want a map that is difficult to see through [with a few patches here and there for small villages and rice fields]...

I will play the "battle of the two mountains" only if they are really big and have spawn points on top.

LOL

That sounds like the BFV map Raze started working on. At first he had one big mountain, but I said, "What are you thinking? You gotta have 2 big mountains!"

Atomm wrote:That sounds like the BFV map Raze started working on. At first he had one big mountain, but I said, \"What are you thinking? You gotta have 2 big mountains!\"

Perhaps a map with only one starting spawn point for each team atop seperate mountains, with steep sides so the only way down is to parachute. Then have neutral flags below. Make it more of a challange and make the two mountains in visual range of each other. 🙂

Lou! You can change the name of a map in a round about way. In BC go to file-copy map. I'm not home right now but from there you can get the Idea. I've changed the name of our map 3 times.

On a different note, back to the original thread. I sneakernetted Ghost Front (alpha) to Atomm on Monday, since then we have inserted a description (story). Since the comments section appears to be uneditable, it was placed in the objectives. (That is what people are doing according to the PB42 forums) I'm going to call this Version 1. It will be denoted with a _I at the end of the name.

Keep in mind, due to the densisty of the forest in this map (if it gets up up to test) there are still some floater trees I find now and then. These will be fixed and a version 1.1 will be released soon. It will be denoted with a _Ii at the end of the name. I'm thinking about just raising the ground up to the trees instead of trying to find "EVERY" tree that floats. We have nearly 1500 trees in a 3 square area.

More to come.

Durh... comments section is for the Server to provide information.

I've got a newer version and I will make it available to everyone tonight. Hopefully, we can all get on it together test it out.

Sounds like a plan!

The day of reckoning is here. I have submitted Ghost Front to fileplanet. Now we wait for them to review it and hopefully, it will be available to download in the next few days.

Once it's up, I'll submit screenshots and info to PlanetBattlefield.

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cool...