Mapping Project: Fort Maddalena

(Tardis) #1

Background -

In Egypt, June 1940 saw the armoured cars of the 11th Hussars (Prince Albert’s Own) under Lt Col John Combe close to the frontier. With instructions to ‘raise hell’ they conducted a series of hit-and-run raids, attacked forts and shooting up supply columns. By 12 June, all their patrols had returned without suffering a single casualty, as well as bringing back some seventy prisoners, most of who were still in the dark about Mussolini’s declaration of war. Encouraged by this, plans were laid to assault the Forts Maddalena and Capuzzo and the attacks were launched on 14 June. The Hussars were joined by elements from the 4th Armoured Brigade (led by Brigadier J R L ‘Blood’ Caunter – so-called due to his favourite exhortation ‘Buckets of blood!’) and 1st Battalion, Kings Royal Rifle Corps. Fort Maddalena fell without a shot, as the vast majority of the garrison had already abandoned it, and while some resistance was encountered at Fort Capuzzo, the fort fell without bloodshed. Six Italian Fiat-Ansaldo L3 Tankettes appeared, one of which was engaged and knocked out by a Boyes anti-tank rifle, the others withdrawing rather quickly.

The Map Idea

Get 3 Trucks, 2 Trucks will be escorted to 2 differant strategic possitions and build Artirily ranges
the 3rd Truck will have the Ammo and Mobile Command Post.

Escort Tank into strategic possition gettting though barries ect to blow main gate to Fort Maddalena.

There will be 5 crates of ammo/gunpowder to get from the ammo/gunpowder depo (inside of the Fort) for each artillery range and the tank.

Destroy the axis radio tower to stop them calling in air support.

Build Mobile Command Post to fire all artillery ranges and tank.

Sneek Preview

…

I have made a short fim showing what I have done so far.

Sorry Quality is low but Watchable.

(KeMoN) #2

Hey Tardis

Nice to see another mapping project for Enemy Territory coming up. I like the scenario you have planned for the map.
I also appreciate the basic idea of it, but you should definitely be concerned about the large open space between the structures. ET isn’t Battlefield and in ET the players need to walk those long distances. ET maps rather consist of pre-defined routes which lead to different battlezones.
Imagine you spawn in that village. You have to walk 1 minute to the battlefield just to get shot by a sniper and then spawn again one minute away. Not a pretty good idea I think.

You should also do some texture work on the terrain because currently everything looks the same. Destroy666 posted a nice collection of texture-resource-pages some days ago. Try to use those. I can also add one to that collection: CGTextures

What I can recommend you is to reconsider the terrain. Large open spaces aren’t really good.
What you might want to do is converting that into trench warfare. You have one main route for tanks/trucks etc. and left/right of it are minefields/barbed-wire and trenches. That way you have a large area but can still control where players are walking and the players are rather covered from snipers. I attached some screenshots from a Battlefield 2 mod for you.

You see there is a main route pointing to the village/fort in the backgroud and left and right is “nothing”. You could easily add some trenches or bunkers like in the other pictures and then close it with barbed-wire and minefields. Shouldn’t be that hard because you already have the terrain.

Have fun with your project, Tardis
Regards
KeMoN

(Tardis) #3

That is a lot of textures to go though thanks :slight_smile:

Trenches will be going in the map.

What I have in the video and photos are only what I have dones so far it is a long way off from 100%
and as a new mapper will probaly take a long time to do.

(Mateos) #4

You should give more up to date shots, with the houses and bunker :slight_smile:

A village for base start should solve the sniper issue as you are currently doing if I’m not wrong?

(Tardis) #5

[QUOTE=Mateos;362018]You should give more up to date shots, with the houses and bunker :slight_smile:

A village for base start should solve the sniper issue as you are currently doing if I’m not wrong?[/QUOTE]

I will try a get some more up date shots. Though I have a lot to rework and fix.
A village for base start - yes that is the idea with tences to solve the sniper problems.
will be making the map a little smaller and will add more textures to the ground terrain.

:eek: a lot of work to do :wink:

(Pegazus) #6

When we were making a sequal to Capuzzo Airport named Fort Capuzzo we came across similar problems with the layout. The sequal was going to solve the unanswered question of what kind of a “secret plane” Allies stole blueprints for from the airport. The basic concept was that before Allies started the invasion on Capuzzo Airport the Axis had moved all project parts for the plane hours before the attack. This can be seen in the SP version of Capuzzo on one of the Axis notes. In reality Fort Capuzzo was situated on open ground with no real hills for cover. That way we obviously had to change the plan of how the layout should look like but still keeping the original Fort look.

First thing was made clear was that it should not play out like Siwa Oasis. That meant no cave systems or a Fort covered with mountains. This however made planning very complex because each proposed layout caused problems with vis block and even more importantly gameplay. As hard as it is for me to say this but the current layout will not provide a happy player. Try to adopt Siwa Oasis method but mix it up a bit. Make it new and interesting. Perhaps try to adopt a big city before the fort because forts were mainly used to protect people from an oncoming attack. Real life took place outside the fort. That is also one of the reasons why Fort Capuzzo never made it to the public. We went too ambitious with our way of doing something new and ended up with something completely different.

Hopefully my writing helps you out a bit, take care with your project.

(KeMoN) #7

Offtopic-post
Hey Pegazus
I have to admit that I heard much about Capuzzo Airport and also followed the thread for the RtCW-SP version but I’ve never ever played it. Shame on me!
I just tested it and I really think that it is a great map. You and Sage did a very good job with that map. The thing is that the community somehow doesn’t want to play large maps, what I don’t understand. Same thing with Adlerhorst, in my opinion a really great map! It isn’t played much because it is “too” large for the community.
Anyway, I don’t want to demotivate Tardis! Sorry for posting offtopic, I just felt like it :wink:

Regards
KeMoN

(Tardis) #8

I have Droped this Map as due to the facts:

1: It is two big to do for a New mapper :wink:
2: The community somehow doesn’t want to play large maps
3: Need lots of Time and I dont have it :frowning:
4: It is to close to the Capuzzo Airport range

I Seam to be good at converting maps and re editing them for ET at the moment and quit happy doing that :smiley:

(Mateos) #9

For a new mapper, so will you keep it for later? :smiley:

About the point 2, maybe MML Minas Tirith is a counter-exemple, maybe because it helps to have a lot of frags… You still can reduce the size in EasyGen, re-export the map, and re-import the buildings, and place them :slight_smile: This when you’ll have more time :slight_smile:

(KeMoN) #10

[QUOTE=Mateos;384680]
About the point 2, maybe MML Minas Tirith is a counter-exemple, maybe because it helps to have a lot of frags…[/QUOTE]

Minas Tirith isn’t a large map in the sense he ment. It is true that huge maps aren’t played very often by the community. Examples therefore are Adlerhorst, Wacht am Rhein or Wolfschanze. All those maps are indeed astonishing and I bet half of the community doesn’t even know about their existence.
Minas Tirith isn’t really large in that sense. The main part of the map is divided into lot’s of smaller sections which aren’t large because they are bordered by walls. Test those three maps and you’ll see the meaning of open/large/wide maps.

It is totally understandable that Tardis droped this project and it isn’t explicitly because of being a new mapper in my opinion. It is simply because your map where you put lot’s of work into won’t be played frequently by the community and that is quite dissatisfying.

(Mateos) #11

Thanks, I’ll test the third one because I’ve already played the other 2 :wink: Adlerhorst requires a minimum amount of players though, but Wacht Am Rhein simply fits. A great map, with Axis attacking, and some cool features (The tree barrier, the Tank removed, the interiors/exteriors design).