Hello everyone! As promised here is todays super duper ultra special extra blog post for the month! Todays post is all about my past maps and my future map experiences! I am very happy to showcase all of the fantastic progress I have been making thought my adventure throughout Neos. This post however does come with unfortunate news. As I am always trying to keep myself busy, I am always looking for new things to devote my spare time to. As a result I have split myself too thinly to actually have a meaningful impact in any area or any project. To put it simply, I have bit off more than I can chew. As of this week I will be devoting 100% of my free time to a single project per week to ensure that the primary goals of each project get finished. My schedule is not set in stone at all, but I may set one up as soon as I finish writing up this post. All of my projects have a high setup time but low-ish maintenance, so once they are set up I can largely devote any remaining time elsewhere on other projects. This effectively means a complete hold on everything NeosVR, Overte, Odysee, Neos.Nexus, and every other of my public and private projects until I can regroup and come out on top. With all of that off of my chest, lets dive in to our dishes!
⮺ Nuked
This was one of my favorite maps to work on. This map is more of an art and atmospheric piece. This map is set in the outskirts of a densely populated area that got hit by a massive nuclear bomb. I originally started this map wanting to make it inside of an actual city with the mushroom-cloud being right up on you. So close to you that you would hurt your neck looking towards the top of it! As the map evolved I found it more relaxing to have the nuclear detonation further away and having all of the users in the map have a chill and cozy bunker safe from the effects from the fallout. As a side note because of how NeosVR handles alpha, the mushroom cloud does not appear in the above render, please see this post's thumbnail to see the mushroom cloud. Sorry!
Another fun fact about this map is that this map was a product of cooperation between me and another one of my friends who knows the game a hell of a lot better than I do. They helped me set up a visual-clipping system that, in effect, makes a hole in solid mesh. This effect is purely visual and doesn't actually change the mesh for better or for worse, but it pretty much allows the whole map to function as intended. Without that clip tech, this map surly would have been much different.
I am very happy with how this map turned out! As soon as I launched this map I saw a lot of people hop in and experience the fallout!
⮺ Bunker Prototype A
This map is in a kind of limbo state at this moment. I began working on this map after I decided I wasn't happy with my first bunker map. It was to largely take place in a storage area with an implied bigger bunker hidden behind a large door, visible the first image. I ended up slowing down development to a stop after having difficulties with the tool I was using to build the actual map. The tool I was using was created to help with building but I ended up having difficulties using it. I stubbornly continued to work on it using the same tool and I did end up paying the price. Working on this map has been a pain since it's start. It has cost me so much time and energy to work on that could have been spent decorating the map. As you can see by the images the actual map part of the map still isn't even done, and I barely blocked out stuff I want in one room. After doing a fly though to get these pictures this week I saw how much potential was still there in this design, but I concede that at this point it would be better to start fresh and remake the map entirely using regular NeosVR procedurals.
⮺ Oil Rig
This project is a funny one. This map originally started as a fun artistic map similar to Nuked. What resulted was a incomprehensible mess of an oil rig. As you can see it just doesn't make sense why anything is where it is. It's mostly just floating platforms connected with walkways. I attribute this mess to my lack of knowledge on oil rigs. With all of that said, I do still have plans on creating a proper oil rig art map, but for now it sits in limbo.
⮺ Bar Prototype A
Yet another project in limbo. This started as a bar at an intersection in a big city. While I still have plans to finish it, for now it is just sitting in my inventory taking up precious space. One week once I have time I'll build max and finish this map.
⮺ Air Raid
This map is another artsy map I have created. This map is largely done, except for one key part: The part of the map the player will actually be. This map places you in the body of a bomber in formation with other bombers. There are also flying support aircraft flying along side of the players occupied bomber. There are lots of little things in this map like the clouds moving instead of the aircraft to give the illusion of movement. There is also the slight shake each aircraft has that really makes it look like they are actually suspended in air instead of static map objects.
You can see in a few of these pictures there is a lot of floating geometry around the map. These floating pieces are actually WIP aircraft body parts I was working on before suspending work on this map. I got pretty far with designing the airframes and body parts. I even used the same tech I used with Nuked where I use clipping to make it look like there are holes in the mesh. However because of where the body is position and how the user moves around the clipping area, this solution was not acceptable for what I wanted.
Fun fact; you can see the first prototype of my mounted MG in a few of these images. This was the reason why I had started working on mounted MGs! I wanted to have guns on top of the aircraft to allow people to shoot.
⮺ Berlin Bar
Wow I have tried to make so many bar worlds, I promise I am not an alcoholic. This world was, keyword: was, going to be a bar map set in the end of World War 2 in a totally unnamed city that held no relevance. I got pretty far in this map and I maybe was 33% done. I stopped working on it because I was confused about the policy on "hate symbols" on Neos. Only recently have I been made aware of the policy on Neos so only at this point do I feel comfortable continuing work on this now that I know what Neos is considering acceptable and not.
After a single email from Neos moderation I have decided against continuing work on this map because of how the response I received was worded. While what may commonly be considered "hate symbols" are considered "exempt when using in a historical context" (their words) and thus wouldn't get me in a whole lot of trouble, I just don't want to build a fire beneath me. I would rather not risk problems over something so trivial. There are also some cases of "hate symbols" attracting a certain type of individual and I don't want to encourage that to come to Neos or attract that kind of person to myself. As fun as an idea I still think this would be, I just don't think it's a good idea to finish and publish this.
⮺ Workshop
This is my first map I have ever officially published for Neos! This is a very small map that has a single large room that is spawn, an outside with a vew buildings in view, and a very small basement hallway. Up until I created Neos.Nexus, this was also the only map to have my public folder. This was also before I learned about the character parenter, so the elevator has to move at a small rate to make sure players didn't clip though at all.
⮺ [REDACTED]
Here's a sneak speak of my biggest map yet! Dare I say it may be the biggest map Neos has seen yet. As of now I only have two things to share: Title creation and Closed Captions.
The title creation dynamically creates 3D floating titles at a given point from a list of models. Closed captions do what the name suggest. The goal is to have easily implementable closed captions that any dev can just add to their map with minimal effort. It took a good day and a half to get things just right, It also took the help of a dark friend and another car friend, but I am very happy with how it turned out.
⮺ Fun extra images
This was taken at Ruler's 16th birthday party. I like to think that whenever Ruler gets happy he emits an insane amount of radiation, which explains why the photo is so blurry.