Just thought I would drop my two cents in. The best program for map-making for Meat & Potatoes is Adobe Fireworks, hands down. Although Jer uses Illustrator too.

I especially like Fireworks because it can handle tens of thousands of vectors, as any of our maps easily gets up into that number of vectors. I also like the way it allows me to hand pick the color palette, which is great for WA.

Glad you enjoyed it spleen. And no I never got around to Boardwalk Empire.

Raffie, this is the kind of stuff we can feed off of to sculpt the level. That wiring method will come in handy. Definitely going into the level in some way.

Just wanted to update this thread with the next work-in-progress screenshot.



Also, an update to the design process:

The Italian restaurant side is coming along nicely. I have decided that the only thing better than a dark street in the 1930s is a dark street in the 1930s in the middle of winter. So snow it is...

The Irish Mob's side, however, is probably not going to be a book store. In MnP style, we have decided that the Irish side will be represented by a Fish n Chips shop as a front, with a counterfit operation in the back. Except, that instead of a Fish n Chips shop, it will actually be called "O' Tulipyyy's Just Chips" because Jer is a vegetarian, hence the Potatoes part of Meat & Potatoes.

Easter egg alert... does anyone here actually know why we are naming it "Tulipyyy's"?

Done. Thanks for the reminder.

yo pizza.

Well, this post http://www.mnpp.net/wp/?cat=10 pretty much sorts most of those questions out. But I will just give you the gist.

We use Windows PCs. Jeremy uses Adobe Illustrator and I use Adobe Fireworks. Since I pretty much function as the publisher, the stuff he sends me in Illustrator ends up going into the "master" file in Fireworks. It's relatively easy to convert and touch things up from an Illustrator source.

Everything is hand drawn, but not in the traditional sense of pencil to paper and then scanned in. All of our maps start with a sketch on paper, but that is usually to determine the overall shape of the map. I usually sketch out where certain buildings will be, or objects and I do it with an effort to find a shape that is fun to navigate and play around. Or if I am doing a forts map, I will sketch out both sides in an effort to find a balance while still allowing for a bit of variety so that both sides don't just look like exact mirror copies of one another.

Then we hop on the PC and start working. All artwork (or at least darn close to 99.99% of all artwork) is done in vector. We used to do everything (waaayyyy back in the day) with what is now called Corel Painter. Our levels were basically multiple layers of rastered paint strokes. But when the Worms Armageddon beta patches came out, and we now had the ability to make a map any size we wanted, we realized that our old classic maps, like Titanic and Af1, could be way cooler if they were, well, way bigger. Of course just blowing up a rastered image was not going to cut it. Blurry nastiness. So that was when the ingenious plan was hatched by Jer to just redesign everything from scratch. At the time we had plans to do that with all five of our color maps, but only ended up doing it to 3 of them... And from that point on we got back into making new content, all vectored and fully scalable.

That's when the maps got big, not just in their dimensions, but also their file size. Global Warming's master file still holds the title at being the heaviest hitter weighing in at 11.3 megs, but Derelict has hit a new record of how many polygons used in a map, with well over 10,000.

As far the way the styles mesh it's actually a question that comes up often with Jer and I. He and I actually do have very different styles. To see this obvious difference, compare Scurvy or Tycoon to Air Force 1. He designed Air Force 1 completely on his own and I did those other two on my own. The style differences are obvious.

But when we collaborate on a level, what usually ends up happening is that (mainly due to time constraints on our real life schedules) I will be the one who lays out the whole level, and Jer will end up sending me "stuff" to go in the level (furniture, bits and pieces, like that). When the finished pieces get to me to incorporate into the level, I add my own touches to the objects, integrating them into the current lighting scheme, adjusting colors and lines, until they look basically like one person did the whole thing. On top of that, when we really need to, we can adapt to each others' styles to keep it as uniform as possible.

Sometimes Jer will actually be the map maker, and I will be the one who comes in later to work on the bits and pieces. Squatters is a perfect example of that. That map was his baby from the beginning. The concept, the art, the flow, everything. Then he sent it to me and I went in and tweaked out all the ices textures and stuff to really add to the coldness of the map. We really love the finished product.

Finally, one of our older projects, Global Warming, was especially interesting to work on, because it wasn't just me and Jer, but we also had a third artist, Josh, who was working with us. That map was 3 distinct styles rolled into one. It turned out pretty cool.

Hhc,

Which maps are you talking about specifically. I'm not sure I understand what you are asking... 

Thanks guys,

hundreds from MNP here. Glad you all enjoy it.

Greetings everyone,

With the completion of Derelict just around the corner, I am happy to announce that MnP has begun the preliminary work on our next WA and WR map release!

This part of the design process involves research into the subject matter we will attempt to emulate. We hope that the community can provide us with constructive feedback throughout the design process and that is why I typically maintain these "development and release" threads.

When the map is finished, this thread will be updated to reflect that. Meanwhile, we can all be involved as it evolves from just an idea, to a nice, quite place to blow up our friends on.

With that forward out of the way, please allow me to present our next map:

=======MNP - PROHIBITION=======

This map will take MnP back to the stylized era of conflicting mobs in the mid 1920s of America. Set during the time of the Prohibition, and with an overall objective of being designed as a Forts-style map, the landscape will feature an empty city street, with two opposing "forts" on either side.

On the left will sit a quiet Irish bookstore, closed for the evening, with apartments windows upstairs overlooking a few cars parallel parked in the road. On the right will sit a quaint Italian restaurant, complete with checkered table cloths.

But behind the facade of each establishment sits a darker world. Prohibition has led to the installment of speakeasies and hidden stashes of the illegal Worms Brew, its variety of styles; red, white, and scotch. There will be three floors as a part of each building, with secret compartments, back alleys, and false fronts galore.

The middle of the street will be quiet traversible, but will be very thin. Even the smallest fire arm would make walking across that no-worms land a formidable task. But if infiltrating the enemy fort is your strategy, perhaps a journey UNDER the street is in order. Each fort will feature a drop shaft that leads down a short ladder to an underground subway line. An old subway train will extend the entire length of the landscape, but there is one major challenge of crossing via that path: Someone left the water running. The entire subway line has been flooded and only bits and pieces of the train are peaking out of the lapping waves. You might get better cover down there from your enemies on the street levels and above, but one false jump and it's sleeping with the fishes for you. See what I did, there?

This map has been brewing for a while and it's time we did something about it. In fact, and I don't want to make any promises I can't keep, but this map, along with 2 others are on our target list for the next few months. Coney Island and Western Boom Town would be the ones after this. We're really excited about this and will keep you updated.