Sonic Adventure 2 Battlefront

[CressAlbane]

Hello, everyone. Sonic Adventure 2 Battlefront is a map pack inspired by the game Sonic Adventure 2. I thought I would create this topic to share information and pictures about the mod as I work on it.

THE MAPS:
- Central City
- Eggman's Base
- Prison Island

More to come!


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CENTRAL CITY: CITY ESCAPE
City Escape is the first level in Sonic Adventure 2, and it takes place in a hilly city that Sonic must escape from. I've attempted to duplicate that environment with this map.
Images:

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The map is rather small and tight, with cars, trees, and other urban objects blocking the path. The team that captures the elevated center point will likely seize victory as well. Featuring Conquest and 2-Flag CTF, Central City aims to provide an interesting city arena.

Credits:

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- Pandemic
- Dann_Boeing for camry model
- Fusion for camry model (?)
- SEGA and SONIC TEAM for poster textures
- SEGA and SONIC TEAM for creating such a great game!

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EGGMAN'S BASE: SAND OCEAN
Sand Ocean features the player jumping from platform to platform in Doctor Eggman's mech. I've attempted to create a similar environment with this map.

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This map, while larger than Central City, hosts an open visual scene with tighter gameplay. Smoke, fire, pillars, and other obstacles block long-range engagement, so the player will need to be on guard! Featuring the Conquest gamemode, Eggman's Base looks to provide a battlefield with the same ambiance and risk of the original level.

Credits:

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- Pandemic
- Creator of the GIMP Hieroglyphs Brush set.  I don't know who it is.  Found on the Obsidian Dawn website.
- SEGA and SONIC TEAM for creating such a great game!

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PRISON ISLAND: WHITE JUNGLE
In the White Jungle level, the player takes control of Shadow the Hedgehog as he blitzes through the lush jungle of Prison Island against the clock! I've attempted to create a battling environment similar to the platforms of that level with this map.

Here are some overview images:

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Closeup shots of some action!

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Lastly, a picture of one of my favorite tactics:

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Although the map takes place on an isolated platform, the battle weaves through tunnels into the tree and trenchlike surroundings. Gameplay feels a bit more open due to the vantage points, although cover is all around. Will you attack through the tunnels, or flank the enemy across the network of obstacles? With both Conquest and 2-flag CTF, Prison Island aims to provide a misty jungle arena for the player to show off his strategies.

Credits:

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- Pandemic and LucasArts
- Gandalf / SirParsifal: Helpful comments and ideas during development.
- Gametoast.com: Support and motivation!
- SEGA and SONIC TEAM for making such a great game!

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So, I hope everyone will be as excited about this project as I am. What does everyone think?

What will be the next map to be posted? Here's a hint:

I hope you don't harbor any dislike for my favorite Sonic level in the game!

[AQT]

The design of the map looks great so far. I haven't played the original game, but are the trees supposed to be growing out of the sidewalk like that?

[CressAlbane]

It looks like there are actually small strips of grass beneath the trees in the original. Good eye; I'll be adding that in soon.

[Nedarb7]

Wow, interesting! I haven't seen any mods like it (will you be adding sonic player models? )

[Zapattack1234]

Yeah this does look pretty cool so far, is the sky all one color or are there clouds?

[THEWULFMAN]

It's looking pretty interesting, been meaning to make an urban map like this for some time now.

Big problem though, it doesn't look like there's a directional light. I see no shadows or specular. This is a big issue for Marth and I, we demand directional lights before something can be called good. :p

forums/viewtopic.php?p=494706#p494706

[CressAlbane]

Thanks for the tip, WULFMAN, but there already is a directional light that casts shadows. I think that you are noticing a lack of shadowvolumes on the models. Not really sure what to do about the shadows. Good idea with setting the light to cast specular, though - I will certainly do that!
EDIT: Haha, just kidding about Sonic being the only thing with a shadow


Good to see all the feedback! Zapattack1234, the sky does have some clouds, which can be seen in pictures one and three. I went easy on the clouds, though, since the sky in the original game is all blue.

Nedarb, I'm glad you are interested! As for Sonic player models, we'll have to wait and see...

I've been working on some more props as well as the next map. Looks like there could be an update late today or tomorrow!

[THEWULFMAN]

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If that's true, then these screenshots aren't taken with lighting and shadows on High. The unit models should be casting shadows, they're not.

And your buildings should be given shadow volumes(it's not hard). It would make it look better three times over. The city looks fine, but it doesn't feel alive/real. Shadows would help with this greatly.

[Marth8880]

Try setting the ambient color in all of your models' materials to 0,0,0 - it really helps to bring out the shading in Zero Engine. (Also give everything a bump or normal map!, and preferably a specular map as well with the respective material's specular color set to something pretty dark compared to the overall color of the diffuse texture.)

Also, you may wanna adjust the horizontal curvature of your roads; real-life roads are like, never completely flat like that - not asphalt/concrete roads anyway. The solid yellow lane markings should probably also be made substantially thinner.

[CressAlbane]

Well, after having an interesting bug where the only object to cast shadows was the Wookiee's dreadlocks, I got the shadows working after removing and replacing my light, then doing a manual clean and remunge. Whew!

Marth: Not sure about that ambient color option in Blender - I tried changing two things but the only noticeable result was that the model became invisible in ZeroEditor! I've got a bit more poking around to do, though.
Also, do you have any good methods for creating bump maps? It's something I haven't tried before. I was thinking of just using a grayscale version of the image for most of my paint/road textures, to be honest.

[THEWULFMAN]

*Oh* you're just going directly from Blender to MSH Viewer. I highly suggest you never do that again. Create the models in Blender, export to XSI, add shadow volumes, low rez meshes, and collision meshes there, export to msh. Thanks to ANDE's ZETools, you can do all that with the free versions of XSI. Forget about XSI 5.1 or 5.11, those are a thing to be forgotten.

[CressAlbane]

Well, I would do that, if I wasn't for this.

[BF2-Master]

Off to a good start so far - looking forward to more!

[yuke5]

Looking good, Cress.

[CressAlbane]

Here's a small update to Central City:

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Here's a list of additions.
- Added grass patches
- Added posters
- Removed Explorer model due to bad collision
- Now in full Technicolor! (Directional light fixed)
- Added minimap and map boundary

[Marth8880]

It's looking freakin' great!


One thing that comes to mind, however:

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You might want to add some sort of backdrop to the sky file - something like grassy mountains or the like should do - heck, I'm pretty sure you could even simulate the multiple layers of backdrop that each scroll differently depending on the player's position.

[CressAlbane]

Good idea! That's something I've been considering - I even started working on a texture - but I dismissed since I don't know how to do it! Do you recommend simply making a large object and placing in the world? Or is there an easy way to make a sky file msh?

[Marth8880]

Import the stock Hoth mountains into XSI with the ZETools or into Blender with meshtool and take a look at how it's done there. The size of the mesh doesn't matter when working with skydomes/skyboxes and sky objects (excluding things like flyers) - they're all automatically scaled to a hard-coded region and are completely static parts of the scene, though they do have the option to rotate.

[CressAlbane]

Here's the next map!

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EGGMAN'S BASE: SAND OCEAN
The original Sand Ocean features the player jumping from platform to platform in Doctor Eggman's mech. I've attempted to create a similar environment with this map.

Hidden/Spoiler:

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This map, while larger than Central City, hosts an open visual scene with tighter gameplay. Smoke, fire, pillars, and other obstacles block long-range engagement, so the player will need to be on guard! Also, be careful not to fall into the eponymous ocean! Featuring the Conquest gamemode, Eggman's Base looks to provide a battlefield with the same ambiance and risk of the original level.

I still have a bit left to do on this map - mostly additional cover like boxes. Also, AI hintnodes have not been placed yet.

What will be the next map to be posted? Here's a hint:

The foliage on this island really is captivating.

[EraOfDesann]

Sonic Adventures 2 was one of my favorite games back in the day. Looks like you're replicating the look of it fairly well -- I'll be keeping an eye on this.