Official Development Blog
 Behind the Scenes of one of our Elven NPC Towns And I heard a little about the story of when you met and hired Eric Zimmer, another big name in the mapping department. Care to elaborate? Joseph: Haha, sure. Well before I really knew Eric, and right after I joined Reverie, I entered a Command and Conquer 3 mapping contest, sponsored by Electronic Arts. I was designing under the name “JBV3737.” And Eric, who I had heard of, but didn’t know very well, entered as “King Base.” Long story short, this contest soon turned into a “Battle of the Titans,” and, come the results, we were neck-in-neck. I managed to come in first out of 29 people, and Eric was right there behind me, in second place. So that’s how I met Eric, and shortly after seeing his talent, I invited him to join Reverie. A little ironic. Two big titans clash together, only for the victor to invite the loser into a real industry. Though I don’t think I would call 2nd place much of a loser. ;) After Kon's draft is complete, about how many hours does it take to design the average stronghold and its surrounding terrain? Not including any of the scripting. Joseph: It depends on the environment you are creating. We have map templates for each type of environment, which can easily be copy-pasted to create groups of objects and terrain, allowing an experienced designer to create a new map in mere hours. With the increasing amount of environments and maps we create the easier it is to create a new map and environments. If you plan on creating completely new and unique terrain without any templates, it can take much, much longer depending on your skill level and speed. For me, probably around 7 hours per map, depending on the size and uniqueness of the stronghold. But this is after working out, through trial and error, a stable design process after designing 25-30 strongholds. My first map, a mountainous region for a human base in the MMORTS campaign, took around 60 hours to complete. It had hundreds of thousands of objects that I placed by hand, including tiny sticks and stones and other detail objects. I also created the first Dawn of Fantasy waterfall on this map, which was an experiment with our particle effects system. With that said, I could complete a similar map in five hours, making use of my acquired experience and the region terrain library. Wow! 60 hours cut down to five? I take it you found a pretty big learning curve in the editor? How many maps did you design before you felt like you were using your time practically - not as efficient as today, but enough to know what all the functions did, and the theory behind designing what you or Kon previsualized? Joseph: Not really. My first map was to learn all the various functions of the editor mapping-wise, which I did with little trouble in only a few hours. On my second map, I began to script with LUA making a cinematic and actually a small mission map with your hero. I also created some new eyecandy techniques and approaches, including the fallen Great Elven Tree, which you’ll see used as a bridge between cliffs in many of our maps. The functionality learning curve is very little, you will jump in, and in a few minutes you will know what each tool does. However, the tools are more powerful than simple; your overall potential is based upon your talent and skill in mapping over than your knowledge of the editor. Over the years of working with Reverie in mapping I have become a lot better now than when I finished my second map with Dawn of Fantasy, but it wasn’t an improvement with knowledge of the editor or editor functionality, but rather a improvement of myself and my artistic mind in creating environments and levels, which is not a part of any “learning curve”. Very nice. So you got past the learning curve, more or less, within your first three maps? Joseph: The first map. Not even the first map, I never finished it because I wanted to move on and explore the scripting in the second map. Over the years, we've come up with a pretty standard process for approaching level designs, starting with meetings between our Producer and Writers to articulate the basic geography, historical, and political key points of each region or stronghold, at which point our Producer would come up with a few drafts and pass them on to yourself on behalf of the mapping department. Through your experiences, have you come up with a personal standardized order to speed up your design process?  Ral Nistro through the Development Process Joseph: Map Design is always first, you must know what you are creating, and you must envision it. If you have to, even sketch a design of it on a napkin, showcasing all the major elements of your map including mountains, roads, bridges, water, rivers, strongholds, etc. After the basic map design is laid out in the editor, you begin on ground elevation for your mountains, river beds, stronghold locations, and what not. You should also do the basic water level elevations in the map for lakes, rivers, and swamps as these closely tie in with ground elevations. Most maps have major eyecandy and leading game elements that need to effect the map rather than the map effecting them. These elements should be added early in the level design process, so that the map gets created around it instead of trying to make room in the map for it after. These would include bridges, waterfalls, stronghold walls, Great Elven Trees, and important buildings. Next would be game-affecting objects such as resources, mines, mills, wheat fields, and most of your trees and forests. I normally try to add as much eyecandy around these areas as possible as the player will be viewing these areas the most. Instead of having a gold mine in a meadow standing out in a pile of grass, I could slam it against a mountain and make a small open mine pit with scaffolding and mining equipment. Next, I start adding various objects depending on their size and importance to the environment and areas, but still try to keep them in clusters of major eyecandy that I want the player to see. At this point the map’s elevations are done, stronghold walls, water, bridges, large objects and eyecandy, villages, major buildings, and all major trees and forest areas. But still blank in some ‘generic’ areas. I texture the ground with terrain paints, adding forest undergrowth textures under trees and rocks, and cliff textures on cliffs and steep elevations, etc. I also polish the texture of the roads, which should be added onto the concept design. After the entire map is textured, I start going from area-to-area, adding small vegetation such as bushes, cattails, small rocks, sticks, logs, stumps, mushrooms in forest and meadow areas depending on the map’s environment and what it needs; underground caves don’t have bushes or cattails but still has mushrooms and rocks. I mostly use generic group object templates for logs, bushes, swamp cattails, etc., that I made a year ago for this very purpose. And finally, I polish all corners of the map. In this stage, you finish the strongholds villages, add the last props, and check the map and add any eyecandy you missed or want to add. Then, you start adding animated grass to make meadows and what not. After all the visible objects, you add invisible walls which prevent units from going up or down cliffs or into impassible or forbidden areas.  Expect to be immersed in a beautiful 3D fantasy setting as you travel throughout every inch of Mythador. Have you found that you're able to design the strongholds just as well as you previsualized them or do you run into some roadblocks? I know this is no problem for you, Joe, as you just model new props. ;) Answer to all of these is quite simple: If you want to be creative, you have to be creative and improvise in a professional standard; with the power of the editor and our engine one of the easiest things to do is to improvise, if you’re… creative that is. For example, I’ve always been meaning to model 60º and a 90º wall turns, thanks for the idea to eradicate the last of my stronghold design problems. Whenever I need a new prop, such as a drain pipe, I just model it and put it in the map. Other times, I get by with creating “new” objects from a collection of old items. This was the case with Makkada’s Execution Pit. All I did was place a few wall pieces, a couple Orc palisade towers, a wooden board, some spikes, and some corpses in red colored water. Nothing modeled, nothing coding, just improvised the editor functions and existing objects to create something new with something old, which actually did end up fooling a couple people. Thanks for your time, and keep it up! Joseph: Thanks!
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gamer/columnist, recently turned publicist.
been adding to my homeland bit-by-bit, rather than establishing a mighty stronghold within the first hour and neglecting it after that. Due to the persistent environment, the action will keep rolling even after the player signs off. Shortly before logging off, I ordered the construction of a new war lodge and a couple dwellings, and grouped a caravan and some guards to head to the elven city of Illas Tiltos, the capital city of the elven realm, to purchase some food from the markets. When I signed back in the following morning, my buildings were constructed, my units had reached Illas Tiltos, and I was welcomed back with an accumulation of new resources that had trickled in overnight from my economy. The only aspect that isn’t persistent is in regard to war – offline players cannot attack or be attacked.
win, battles with others player of equivalent rank in a specified region. As I progressed, the dark secrets of Mythador began to unravel and the quests became more obscure as I traveled throughout the land, which lies in ruin following the recent, devastating War Without Kings and trembles once more. A new conflict was in the wind, and the wind was building.