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Ismantorp and Swedish archipelago

5/22/2014

22 Comments

 
It's been too long since the last update so here's a double one. 
First off we go to the southeastern parts of the map. As mentioned in earlier posts the map is a compressed miniature-version of Iron Age Sweden with geographical liberties taken to fit in certain key locations.

Strolling from Uppsala to Ismantorp is probably the most offensive geographical distortion that I will make in the Iron Age project as it is in reality 200+ km from Uppsala. In my defense I think it's worth including very interesting locations in one manageable open-world map because I don't want to juggle several maps and I don't want to omit these awesome ring forts… They're just too good to leave out.

My reasoning is that this distance can be covered by foot (and boat) in a few days and that is well within what I think is reachable territory. In the game world distances feel more expansive which gives me a bit more freedom to compress areas. 
Picture
Looking northwest over my version of Iron Age Ismantorp, beyond which you can actually make out the great hall of Uppsala and the mounds in the distance. I based the crenelated design on Eketorp (see below reconstruction) but used a google map top view of the Ismantorp ruins to block out the fort and the buildings within. I am not certain what Ismantorp looked like, but some of the better preserved masonry match Eketorp's and the forts coexisted. Ismantorp is about 50 percent larger than Eketorp. 
Picture
The reconstruction of Eketorp was built in the 1970s on top of the ancient ruins, using stones from the ruins as the bottom layers of the wall. It is built according to the second phase (400-650AD) but has some houses reconstructed from the third phase (1170-1240AD) - wooden houses on the right above. More info on Eketorp can be seen in this neat video by BirkaViking -  

Picture
Some pyre burning in the sunset. 
Picture
I'm calling this Ismantorp, but it is really more of an unnamed fort similar to it. The real Ismantorp had nine gates which would have been a defensive weakness and it may have been a more open marketplace than a fortress. 
These fortified walls surround the quaint peasant town and protect the denizens from raiders. In the late 6th century this town already has at least 300 years of history and is a well-established landmark. There are new houses being built and lingering remnants of old foundations. I currently have only four houses but ideally I'd like most houses to be unique. 
Picture
I had a very specific pattern I wanted for the dry stone wall and I found it difficult to get those very fine deep cracks right with displacement maps. Having grout filling in the cavities would require less tessellation but unfortunately they didn't use grout. The wall pieces ended up being pretty tessellated but it does make some nice silhouettes up close and LODs well at a distance. 
I'm impressed with how CryEngine renders an entire fort filled with individual assets as well as the surrounding forests and some 6 km viewing distance beyond at 25-30 fps… And that's on a pretty slow PC. I haven't even done any optimization work yet.

Picture
To the east of Uppsala is the Stockholm archipelago, in real-life about 50 km distant - in my map about 2 km. 
Eventually there should be more islands and variation and the flora should be a bit more subdued with trees twisted by the elements.  
Picture
Above is a small outpost manning one of the beacons in the signal system that warns about impending attacks from ocean raiders. 

Well, that's it for now. As usual, these images are WIP. Pretty much everything needs polishing and there's a lot more work to get the right feel of these places. Keep a lookout for more updates..

Hope you like and thanks for stopping by!
Feel free to drop me a line if you have any questions or comments.
22 Comments
Maestro link
5/22/2014 09:11:59 pm

Hi,
I would like to see full ingame map compared to real map.

Reply
Daniel Westergren
5/23/2014 07:33:05 am

Nice, I'd like to show the layout and the real places as well as design of the in-game maps. It will be a good post once everything is decided.

Reply
Linus Borgström link
5/25/2014 01:22:35 pm

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/5xud1jdjjn74qu8/AAAh--g993xYoWRc7Q1b73h3a
I took the liberty of pointing out the placement of the sites on an image from Google Earth. I also included some close up satellite images of the sites.
Perhaps the archipelago part is not supposed to be Birka, but that's the one i put in there. Do you have a specific real-world counterpart in mind for that?

Reply
Daniel Westergren
5/25/2014 05:09:10 pm

Hey thanks Linus! That's exactly right.

Reply
Maestro
5/27/2014 07:39:24 am

Can you make walkthrough video?

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Daniel Westergren
5/28/2014 03:19:47 am

Yes! There will definitely be walkthroughs once the map is more interesting.

Reply
BirkaViking link
6/5/2014 08:38:26 am

This looks amazing :-)
If you want more info about Wolf and Bear warriors fought you can contact me. It would be epic also if the Wild boar warriors worshiped Frej and Freja in special temples like this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnuK5HiUtSY
So centern warrior styles worshiped different gods connected to their warrior styles. Becuase thats atleast how I think it was back then.

Reply
Daniel Westergren
6/5/2014 10:56:50 am

Thanks! Another great video, I need to make some of those armor types for the characters. Have not seen much about boar fighters before, interesting stuff indeed. Vänliga hälsningar :)

Reply
BirkaViking
6/7/2014 05:13:26 pm

Well I dont think many knows much about these Wild boar fighters findings at all.
Will you try also to recreate all the warrior styles of this age or will you only focus ont the enviroment?
Is it possible in this engine to get for an example the Wild boar warriors to fight in the famous Svinfylking style at the battlefield.
Like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svinfylking

Reply
BirkaViking
6/7/2014 05:13:37 pm

Well I dont think many knows much about these Wild boar fighters findings at all.
Will you try also to recreate all the warrior styles of this age or will you only focus ont the enviroment?
Is it possible in this engine to get for an example the Wild boar warriors to fight in the famous Svinfylking style at the battlefield.
Like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svinfylking

Reply
BirkaViking
6/7/2014 05:14:04 pm

Well I dont think many knows much about these Wild boar fighters findings at all.
Will you try also to recreate all the warrior styles of this age or will you only focus ont the enviroment?
Is it possible in this engine to get for an example the Wild boar warriors to fight in the famous Svinfylking style at the battlefield.
Like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svinfylking

Reply
BirkaViking
6/7/2014 05:16:42 pm

Sorry for 3 post of the same messages, but it said that it was an error every time I pressed the submit button plus that the messages dident first show up :-)

Reply
Daniel Westergren
6/10/2014 06:52:11 am

Hey great stuff! My main focus is on the environment at the moment and I'm barely getting familiar with coding. I'm first and foremost an artist so I would be struggling to say the least with AI and battlefield formations for a while.. Cant really say that my game would be a war game, but I'm convinced that those systems you mention are possible with a reasonable number of characters.

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BirkaViking link
6/15/2014 09:10:24 pm

Well I think if you manage to complete this fantastic game it would be the game of all time for me :-)
A tip from me is maby that you can make this fantastic game a sub mod to Kingdom Come: Deliverance.
They seems to focus very much on the AI behavior. You can see a video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsXvodDn5JM
If you made a sub mod to that great game I think it would save you really much time. But it was just a suggestion from me since it would save you much of the time and it would mean that you could focus even more on the enviroments :-)
But keep up your awesome work man and I really hope that I and many more get the chance to play this fantastic game :-)
Cheers from Södermanland :-)

Reply
Maestro
6/16/2014 12:15:06 am

I agree with BirkaViking´s last post, + you should enable 3rd person view

Daniel Westergren
6/17/2014 05:51:31 am

These kind comments made my day :) Thanks for supporting my work, it is very much appreciated!!!

Reply
Sneil
7/1/2014 07:27:40 am

Spectacular. I'm happy to hear you are planning on making an actual game out of this. I was wondering (hoping) if this was ever going to be released to the public or not at some point or if it was just going to be a demo reel to show off your taken. Absolutely breathtaking. I would love to do a walk through live at some point just to experience the world. Truly fantastic stuff.

I'm an aspiring graphics artist (hobbyist) and can only dream of creating something like this. Well done sir. :)

Reply
Sneil
7/1/2014 07:29:54 am

//sorry I meant "talent," not "taken." Darn phone. :P

Maestro
9/17/2014 10:37:31 pm

Next update?

Reply
Daniel Westergren
9/19/2014 07:20:08 am

Hey, finally I can say the next update is in the works!
I've begun migrating the project from Cryengine 3.4 to the 3.6 build which uses physically based rendering. This means loads of textures have to be reworked and should eventually come out looking much better. There was some initial confusion, then relief and then joy.. I'll probably share some before and after shots in the next update.

Glad to see you're still around :)

Sneil, thanks for your comment!

Reply
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