[added] Befallen: Cavern of the Afflicted

[SaintPeter]

This one was another favor for my sister. It's likely to be my last map for a while, unless she starts learning how to collect /locs for me.

One note: The displayname may be a bit too long for the drop-down on the in-game maps interface. Not much that can be done about it, unless you call it 1 and 2, or modify the interface.

<ImageStyle Name="exp05_dun_befallen_cavern_0" displayname="Befallen: Cavern of the Afflicted, Upper" menugroup="DLere" zonerect="-83, -83.5, 15, 15" heightmin="-5">
<ImageFrame Source="images/maps/map_exp05_dun_befallen_cavern_0.dds" SourceRect="0,0,512,512" />
</ImageStyle>
<ImageStyle Name="exp05_dun_befallen_cavern_1" displayname="Befallen: Cavern of the Afflicted, Lower" menugroup="DLere" zonerect="-175, -194, -14, 10" heightmax="-5">
<ImageFrame Source="images/maps/map_exp05_dun_befallen_cavern_1.dds" SourceRect="0,0,512,650" />
</ImageStyle>

[lordebon]

Looking good =)

We should be able to use those for the epic version as well (Tomb of the Mad Crusader).

[SaintPeter]

I've made up a "Making Of" videos for these.

Upper Floor:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xpc-ZsoFLiY

Lower Floor:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o1DDN9KwSM

[SaintPeter]

Just making sure this was seen.

[lordebon]

Interesting videos. When you made them, did you go back and basically play the lines one by one? (Since some lines go fast but others go slow).

Also, when you do the stuff like the broken floors... do you /loc out all the individual angles or do you kind of rough it out and then angle it up later?

[SaintPeter]

I modified my mapper2 script to output a complete svg after each point was placed and then run Inkscape on it to output a png file. I then used Adobe After Effects to import an image sequence. The first Top floor had about 800 images/points, the bottom floor had around 900.

The reason why some lines appear to go much faster than others is that there is a much greater straight line distance between points. I'm not actually "drawing" the lines, as much as I am connecting the points. Thus, a line between two points that are close together takes the exact same time to draw as one between points that are very far apart.

I actually considered writing an interpolation function that would only go a certain distance before it placed another (synthetic) point, so long lines would take the same relative time as shorter points. Similarly, I could also only export a "Frame" after a certain distance of line was drawn, so tiny complex details would draw faster.

Really, though, it was just a 30 minute knock-off of a program and I was pleased with the output it produced as a first pass. If I was doing a lot more of these, or needed the detail, I'd probably go back and muck something up. Also, it involves math, and math is hard!

RE: Broken Floors
Whenever possible I stayed as close to the in-game geometry as I could. In fact, I was so close in some cases that I was able to cut, paste, and scale the image of one of the cracks that I had from a screen shot and have it fit right into the lines I'd captured.

I debated if I wanted to spend the time doing the cracks, but they seemed like such a big part of the character of the map that I was loath to skip them. I almost never add anything to the map in Inkscape.

The only exception is when I take some in-game feature which is a regular geometric shape, like a circle, and actually draw a vector circle on it. This gives me a much cleaner line than just following the in-game verticies. I did this extensively in Poet's Palace. I also add all stairs in Inkscape, and rarely match the number of steps 1:1. The main thing is readability.

[gm9]

Beautiful map, now live. Ended up calling it Befallen: Cavern of Afflicted 1|2.