This is a sound design project that I have built to improve my understanding of creating audio for games - unfortunately, this is not a game.

Post news Report RSS Two steps, and now a leap...

Not so much a 'leap' as a 'large stride', technically...

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Okay, so this is a huge news update that I've been itching to post for the last couple of days – only that everything wasn't quite ready... I suppose this isn't really any major announcement, only a progress report. However, a great deal of progress has been made!

Firstly, the Minster is approaching completion – on the outside, at least. I went down to the building around which I'm basing this model (Beverley Minster) to take about 50 more reference photographs on Friday (10.02.12), and have been using these to fine-tune details on the exterior of the model. I am attempting to give it enough detail to look good, whilst compromising where appropriate to make the model more efficient. At present the Google SketchUp (GSU) model contains about 85,000 edges, which equates to about 120,000 polygons. With the Sandbox graphics preset on “Ultra” I'm averaging about 50 fps, which is great, considering that the engine is constantly rendering the entire model – i.e. the side you cannot physically see is still being drawn.

Next, I went to the local library and archive building yesterday (13.02.12), and photocopied a few maps and photographs of Beverley (my hometown in East Yorkshire, UK - around which I will be modelling “Kingstown” for this project) from the 18th to 20th centuries, selecting a map drawn in 1852 as my base (it is substantially more accurate), and two more from 1747 and 1811 to help decide where to place buildings. I pasted the 1852 map into GSU and resized it to match the Minster (which has been modelled at 1:1 scale, and drew in streets and buildings, making modifications to fit in a ditch around the town and a river to the south.

I then placed each block of buildings into a separate component, set the component axis to be at the centre of the Minster, and saved them as external GSU files. I can now work on each of the 26 sub-sections independently, and simply re-load them into a larger model of the entire town, or export them for use in the Crysis 3 Sandbox. And as I ensured that every single one of these 26 sub-sections has its axis set at the centre of the Minster, I can ensure that they will always be correctly aligned in the Crysis 2 map.

Jolly good!

As a test, I exported all of the sections, and the Minster, and threw it all into a blank map... Things are starting to take shape! Check out the "workflow diagram" I've added to the gallery ;)

I have also set up a forum on here, written a little more of the plot for this thing, and started writing a little music... Though you won't be hearing any of that for at least a month!
Love,
Mark.

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