[Gaia Alpha 3 "A New Beginning"]

13 hours ago, Ciber Ninja said:

Such speed!

Much awe.

Haha thank you. I'm trying to get the bulk of the building placement done as quickly as possible so that I can have the Western area before reaching the "Land bridges" in a playable state and ready for testing. The eastern portion however is going to take a bit as I have to either find someone that can make multistory buildings and houses that would fit a metropolitan cityscape and also another pack of buildings for a university town. 

On a side note, later today I plan on releasing the whole map (unfinished of course) for everyone to freely explore the landscape. full on game play is not suggested as those files will be regularly updated. I'm hoping it will contain a second town/city but no promises there.

[Gaia Alpha 3 "A New Beginning"]

A playable Alpha has been released. Check out the main post for the files and instructions.

For those of you who have patiently been following my progress and supporting me through this I'd like to show you Alpha 1. The current state of the map, which is just Anabasis currently, is good enough for a test run by you all. Any bugs, glitches or things you think are odd send my way. A few known things are sinks on the floors of bathrooms, black tiles on some sidewalks and seeds spawning a lot (not sure if that's my fault yet). There are three POI's. there are spawn points near them but in which direction of them you'll have to find out on your own.  The story is still not implemented so they're actually just points of interests you may want to check out. Another thing is that you may want to turn up the zombie count so that it's a good pace. Aside from that and as always send your suggestions and questions my way and ill try to get back to you as quickly as I can. 

[Gaia Alpha 3 "A New Beginning"]

Small update on progress, I've started filling in Anabasis with bot semi-"cleaned" buildings and fully "cleaned" buildings. By cleaned I mean that I've gone into the file and removed the red question marks and made the buildings fit what I need. This will then allow me to release a working version of the map and then go back and make changes as necessary and continue the cleaning. 
On another note I have here a POI. My question to you all is whether or not to make it a POI or if I should make a spawnpoint for players nearby. In its current location zombies are not that big of a threat and could very well make a nice base out of it. However the downside to a POI is many people may never come across (though no one will probably ever come across everything in-game). As a spawnpoint the downside is it'd make the beginning a bit to easy and also might cause spawn camping from griefers. One thing that will be happening though regardless of which way we choose is that it will tie into the lore. Its actually going to be one of several pieces in the beginning so you better hope you have a radio early on.

[Gaia Alpha 3 "A New Beginning"]

Updates are going to be less frequent over the next week as I'm currently fixing up buildings by replacing or deleting items with missing textures and also making the buildings fit in the current constraints. Of the towns. One other thing of mention is that camps are not going to be really camps in the way I pictured it but rather small collections of trailers or cabins. If you plan on building at them you'll need to bring up your own tools. Many may need to be cleared of zombies and a few will be there for just a night's rest as the surrounding woods may still have large amounts of zombies.

 

[Gaia Alpha 3 "A New Beginning"]

For the southern land bridge I had something in mind already. But its a  bit spoilerish in the story I want to create with Wordzed. Let's just say it's a rural community turned military checkpoint. 

[Gaia Alpha 3 "A New Beginning"]

51 minutes ago, Ciber Ninja said:

Have you considered a more structured approach to buildings?

 

Thats a really good idea. I'll definitely start that once I finish Anabasis. I already started placing stuff there @~@

[Gaia Alpha 3 "A New Beginning"]

So another update (I feel like I make these too frequently...)
I've gotten the map into  WorldZed without an issue and am now in the process of populating the world with buildings some my own and others from the many skilled creators in the forum. If you have a cool building you've been working on and would like to see it shine in the map throw it my way and I'll fit it in somewhere. 

This first image is of Anabasis. It will be the starter town of the map for players to meet up with one another. It may be the ideal place for player based communities as it is at the start of the Main Road and Railway. It will likely be the first done and will have a school, police station, motel and many storefronts. 

Bridgewater is the next town and is not that far from Anabasis (going to check in game shortly how long it'd take to run from one to the other). As the name suggests there is a bridge and it connects both parts of town. this is going to be slightly more of a warehouse and industrial type place. There isnt going to be a school but there will be a doctors office along with the mentioned warehouses and maybe a power plant or something like it where the population of the two towns usually work. 

Finally im throwing in an image for one of the camp locations just so you all have an idea of what the size of the room will be for you all to create your own communities on larger servers. 

The map will definitely be taking a while to populate with buildings and spawnpoints. As always, suggestions, questions and comments are always welcome. 

[The One Stop TileZed Mapping Shop]

1 hour ago, Queen Glory said:

hey is there anyway to get an exact amount of pixels in paint.net because I don't want to count the pixels

Are you trying to make a new file or trying to get 300x300 within an already started one?
If a new file you can go to the top left and hit File then New and you can put your dimensions there.
If its already an existing file you can use the Shapes tool and at the bottom it should tell you the dimensions of your shape. 

[Gaia Alpha 3 "A New Beginning"]

Quite the late update that I have but an update no less.
Something for everyone to remember, save frequently and have up to date backups. I forgot that last night and lost about 8 hours of work along with the rest of the psb file later corrupting. Not fun. 

Anyways on to the update
The following image is basically me redoing everything and some changes in the size of the landmasses and their coloring. There's a lot less blue now and that's because I wanted it to be a bit more difficult. I may add some more bodies of water later for balancing or for areas of interest like the

Red Fortress or some islands in land surrounded by water

One thing that i did advance on that I had not shown you yet was the towns. They have all gotten their main road layouts already and now I just need to mark the building layouts and minor roads. Another thing is there will be several farms (not all will have food to harvest) for players to hole up in for the night when travelling.  You might be thinking it'll make players stay there but not necessarily when other players are a threat and I add large clumps of zombies to the region.

The yellow is meant to allow you to see the overall layout of the road and main roads of the towns.

  
A major point i'd like to make early on is that the main road is by no means the "most optimal route" considering that the roads will likely be infested with zombies but will have their fair share of loot in moderation. Thus travelling along the dirt paths is probably better, assuming you go along the right path and dont hit any large zombie groups there. 
A portion of the map that i'd like to bring attention to is in the southeastern portion of the map. There's a rather large city there which I plan on filling with tall buildings for some fun with verticality (I don't think this is a word actually). There will be a train system there (just more buildings) that will be about 2 stories high which you'll be able to maneuver the dangerous city through, assuming you can make it up there before dying. This will be the more modern of the towns and will likely have access to all sorts of amenities for your pleasure, or failed attempts to retrieve. 
and thats about it for the map, i'll likely make some map items with the help of the cartozed to show where some secret locations are and also outlying camps, which again will have some of the tools to start building your own towns. Another thing is I'll probably also learn how to use the WordZed so that you can find out locations through there as well along with a few stories for the players to unravel. Which reminds me, i wonder where the most optimal locations will be for the ham radios so that different groups can stay in contact. 
As always, leave a post with any suggestions or questions you have. If you have some good ideas for hidden locations post them here too. 

[Gaia Alpha 3 "A New Beginning"]

On 1/31/2017 at 2:30 PM, zoeyflower said:

Also just throwing this out here, for my project to get the 1000 pixel maps to 9000 pixel size while maintaining a cool smooth look I resized the original maps to 8x size and then indexed the colors to 2-4 colors, this way you wont have blur and instead get a smooth vector-like look with the pixels 

Not really sure what blur you're talking about. If its the one in the images where things look blurry as you zoom in then thats just cause of imgurs low quality. However if its a different one do let me know so I can fix it.

 

 

On 1/31/2017 at 2:30 PM, zoeyflower said:

I also used that technique to get a mountain like look on another maps terrain 

I tried it and it didnt look right to me so I'm back to what I originally planned. Thank you for the suggestion though.  

Now here is an update on what I've got so far after much trial and error (read as forgot to save and quit):

First off this is one of the two "starter" towns, but the only one finished.

(Please leave suggestions for names cause im horrible at making up names D:)

 

 

Anabasis

 

Dont mind the road connections at the bottom, have to fix it.

 

Next is an image that shows off the scale a bit better. Been a while since I played so I doubt that it'll take 2-3 days to get from one city to the next based off these dimensions. Maybe if it was about twice the size that 'd be the case but we'll see once i get it into the editor. 

Next here is a look at the terrain, ponds/lakes, railways and roads as whole. I made it horizontal to get the whole image in. 

This next image is the same as the last except for showing off the planned locations of towns, cities and camps. 

Cities are red, Towns are yellow and Camps are blue. 

Towns will average out to 180x180, cities to no more than 400x400, and camps aren't going to have roads but will have dirt paths leading to them and will only be anywhere from 1 -10 structures.
I've also hidden the locations of POI's which will be things like bunkers, labs, cabins, outposts and old forts along with some other interesting things that wont have much use at the moment. 
 

So overall i've added a lot of the busy work (most of which is randomly generated) and I'm now focusing in on the ground work, literally. So the next update will probably have the town layouts complete and quite possibly start on the veg map (which will likely also be randomly generated). 

[Gaia Alpha 3 "A New Beginning"]

So I've just about finished the railway paths. As Lumbo and Zoeyflower suggested, the very beginning of the railway in the bottom left will have a major city and the few settlements outside of it will be the "easier" spawnpoints. You may also notice that the rail ways only go so far north before the north is just blank; This is intentional as the north will be harsher, whether it'd be the harsh environment (lack of sources of infinite water and food) or a higher concentration of zombies along with the roads having a larger amount of zombies than those in the south. 

Again all suggestions and questions are welcome.

[Gaia Alpha 3 "A New Beginning"]

7 hours ago, Lumbo said:

I can't really estimate the size of the map because there is no reference, but if it is really huge what about this: make one town at the coast the spawntown where people can group up and start their expeditions from?

The dimensions are 15k by 10.2k. As for a "spawntown" I could definitely create something like that I would just have to figure out where along the coast and which town to transform into it.

 

4 hours ago, zoeyflower said:

10000x15000? Figure thats it since its that image size, if so mind telling me if you can work on it without major lag and freezing cause my maps like 9000x7000 and its almost impossible to do anything with it (i use gimp btw)
Other than that, did you draw the land yourself or did you use some kinda generator for landscapes cause it looks extremely awesome like jaw dropping, this map is gonna be something special great work!

 

Also lumbo has a good idea you could make the north some kinda end game territory for those that make it all across the map to it, then make like 3 starting coastal towns for spawning

10k by 15k was correct off the image I have posted but thanks to your post i will be saved some headache later down the road. Now the map is 9.9k by 15k.
As for being able to work on it I will be able to get it done so long as i have the motivation and time to do it. I've edited my main post with the map I based this map off of and that one started getting laggy due to already being above a 15g file. To get the other details in with ease i simply saved that file as jpeg and then opened it and continued working from there. So what I might suggest for you to do with gimp would be, get one layer done save it as a jpeg and then continue your next layer on said jpeg. The lag wont be too great if at all because gimp wont be processing too many layers. 
The original map was partially hand drawn and partially generated (more generated than hand drawn though). For the land masses I used a cloud filter and then threshold adjustment and just took out land pieces I didn't want and made water ways where I wanted them.  I can link you a tutorial on how to use gimp for landmasses and waterways and then you can use the PZ palette from there. 
Now for your idea for end game territory and multiple spawntowns. For the spawntowns would have to see which small towns to use for that but they'd have to be somewhat equidistant from the end territory. If you look through the original map and see some areas you think would be good and i find appropriate i can start working on the layouts.  as for endgame, the original map actualy allows for this as the desert region only has 2 main cities with their settlements that aren't connected in anyway to the the other main cities. likewise on the other side of the large body of water there are more spread out towns and will be progressively be getting harder and harder to get through but will be more rewarding and have cooler places to fortify (maybe forts or military installments)
Hopefully later today i can show you all an update of the rail ways and where i intend on them to cross through and then soon after the roads. 

[Gaia Alpha 3 "A New Beginning"]

Bunjil

Red is the main road. Yellow is the train tracks. Blue is the towns. 

Description
Have you guys ever found the map to be rather small in its current state? That the difficulty was static regardless of which town you were in? An overarching story that most of you will never hear all of?  Or maybe none of that and are just seeing a failed pitch?

Look no further as

• This map will be  quadruple (I don't even know anymore) the size of the original map.
• Cities are filled with locations to loot but have plenty of zombies to kill you
• A story will be accompanying the map that will begin a few minutes after the game starts.
• The pitch has not failed if you've read this far
   

Map Size
As I said its planned to be four times the size of the original map. So bear with me on trying to get it finished, because there is no one else who wants to finish this more than I do.  The map is currently at 77 cells by 42 cells and about a third of that is covered in water. You're probably wondering why so big. Well a large reason is to cater to several groups and to make this one of the maps for multiplayer.  Now right now yes the map might be a bit too large to traverse by foot but I'm planning around vehicles so that my map doesn't gather dust once they're released. 

Background

This map is entirely based off of a map I made. The idea was to base it off my writings and I will be using some portions in there. However the narrative will always be changing and will be revolving around many of the POI's I'll be adding in; one of which is already added in the map. There are several landmasses with the three being connected by bridges, for now. There are many more islands that are not connected and will be hard to reach but will be populated nonetheless.  

Travelling
One thing I wanted to do was make players feel challenged. By this I don't mean create artificial challenges that the player should aim for but rather create rewards for players who are willing to go the extra mile to get valuable loot in dangerous areas. The story will revolve around going to key places over time until you reach the end which will, hopefully, give you some satisfaction and a cool place to call home. 

The Story
You like the many before you are people that have found this new land in the midst of disaster. Survival is your goal in this new world where an unknown force seems keen on pressing your luck. Zombies won't be making your life any easier so you better reach the Red Fortress quick. 

Conclusion
With all that wrapped up I'd like to thank you all for taking the time to read what I have. The overall scope of the map is large and i've seen mods of a higher caliber and smaller scopes fail and come to a standstill so lets hope that does not happen and that I can make the same amount of progress regularly.  Any questions or suggestions do send them my way whether by posting in this thread, a PM or add me on steam. 

Download:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=874911668

Nonsteam
https://mega.nz/#F!gZoDRR5Z!aMYYyM9AIt8LSoITgg8zcw
 

 

Alpha 1: Anabasis and 3 POI's are added
Alpha 2: Bridgewater and 3 Poi's are added. 
Major Overhaul 1: Map has grown significantly. 
Alpha 3: Anabasis and Ship Added

Special Thanks

 

Blackbeard for his great tutorial on how to get started.

Atoxwarrior
Queen Glory
Srandiny
texas
Z3759xy
The Googlator

Eudoxio who graciously offered me the compilation of buildings he had
Everyone that's offered suggestions 

 

if you use my map in any map packs or content packs please ask first! Likely I will not say no but I'll probably discourage you from using it as this map is intended to be standalone. Any updates I make could cause problems for your map pack because of the sheer size of the map that I am aiming for and I don't want people hounding me for problems that could be caused by your map pack.