MrCrowley
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Fallout Atmosphere Tutorial
Whether your map is a Nuclear Aftermath, Atomic Armageddon, or a Zombie Apocalypse this guide will show you had to make a dark, desolate, and creepy atmosphere. For other reasons, we will be influencing our map off Fallout 3 (it seems like a popular theme now)
Step 1 - Get a feel
Fallout 3's creator, Bethesda, have a massive reputation for their attention to detail. Their games, whether its fallout or oblivion, were pretty much hand-made. Even if it was a big city, or just some wide open plane to fill out the map, it was all unique and individual (even fallout was based off DC). This takes time, effort, an eye for detail, and
custom models.Check these screenshots. Dont focus on the fact that this game will never look that sexy on your comp. Remember, let it help inspire you, but dont copy! Originality and Creativity is vital in map making.
Examples: 1 2 3 4
Notice how nothing in these pictures are happy. The buildings are burnt and ruined. Everything has seemed to have fallen into a eerie state of disrepair, even the sky looks weird for some reason. But more importantly, there are NO trees. Look at it, these pictures are entirely devoid of green. What little trees there are arnt really trees...their just scotched, shriveled up sticks. And yes, there's grass, but its not green grass, its this weird tanish, yellow grossness that you see in the front lawns of homes in California. We will model our map as such.
Step 2 - Outlining the terrain
The tilleset we will be using today is the Village fall one, and some varieties of dirt and rough dirt from other themse as seen here. This is, in my opinion, is the most similar tileset to the fallout terrain.
Remember, the world isnt flat, and neither should your map. Feel free to sculpt some rolling hills. Hills were pretty much everywhere in Fallout 3.
Step 2 - The Focus of Attention
Fallout 3 was structured around "locations". It couldve been a broken building, a metro station, a city, or an old outdoor movie theater. The rest of the game, reall just "filler", or stuff you had to walk through in order to get to other locations. For our map, were going to make our focus point a broken down house.
We will be using Illidan(Evil)X and xXm0rpH3usXx's Urban Environment Pack which is perfect for this. So download some custom models (1st picture) and construct a house (2nd picture). I like to have a peasant to help me get the scale right.
Step 3 - Fit in some doodads.
The reason I say "fit" is because many maps have doodads that are out of place. Sometimes spareness is better than abundance. Add things where you might find them in a real situation. Dead scorched bodies = bonus points!
Step 4 - Terrain
This step is a litte out of place, terrain is usually constructed before doodads. However, having the doodads there gives you a sense of how to structure your terrain. As you can see, ive added trees and rocks. I even threw in some telephone wires and that weird ugly green radioactive pools of water you find in fallout.
Be sure to place grass and rock logistically. Remember, its the apocalypse, so don't put too much grass.
Step 5 - Polish it off.
To give the map some flare, i continued to add grass and rocks. To give the map some depth, i added mountains and more rolling hills. Later, i put in those highway bridges that you find along the wasteland and another house. My last step was the terrain fog with a slight bluish/grayish hue to match that of in the game. Check out the final screenshot!
Well i bet you could do better, but thats still not too bad.
