Japan Content Pack 1.1

[Fantaboi]

I made a massive reference image folder of Shiro and Suijin to help prepare me for the 72hr contest, and even some other reference photos. I encourage anyone to look through it if they get stuck or plan making a japan themed map. ESPECIALLY the analysis pictures are worth a read, speds up a lot of the work for me:

Download it here!

Analysis:

(I probably wont update as these were for personal use, but if the demand is high enough I will)

 

[Zee]

Is it just me, or is the download corrupted?

 

[Fruity Snacks]

Since the site's been moved around, things have been breaking. We'll toss this on the list of things to look into.

 

[Fantaboi]

Since the site's been moved around, things have been breaking. We'll toss this on the list of things to look into.

I think my sandstone upload got corrupted as well (but I have since re-uploaded it)

 

[Sergis]

wait why is one of the reference pics pinkcheckered

 

[Freyja]

he used shrio, I had to convert a bunch of brushwork in shiro into model form to bypass tjuncts, and he appears to have only extracted the model and not the .vmt of the material.

 

[Fantaboi]

wait why is one of the reference pics pinkcheckered

In the material viewer (in tf2) you can "flash" all of the texture selected, this allowed me to view where the texture was placed.

 

[Dr. Sasha]

I'm having trouble packing the custom content in this pack into a map I'm making. I tried using multiple programs, they all detect the custom content, but when I try to pack it to the bsp, all it packs are a few water_well vmt's. Help.

 

[Freyja]

You may need to extract all the stuff from the vpk download into your folders under normal structure for packing programs to work correctly. I haven't tried packing from a vpk, so I'm not sure how that works.

 

[obsidiian]

Packing doesn't work for me even in regular folder locations...

 

[Fruity Snacks]

What packing program are you using?

 

[obsidiian]

VIDE, latest version. Tried downloading and redownloading several times. I'm 100% sure that I'm doing the steps correctly. I used it often before so I'm familiar with it but just in case I went and found a tutorial and followed the steps. Still, it refuses to pack models. It seems I can pack the textures, but any model just won't work.

 

[Fruity Snacks]

PakRat's really simple.

You click "Auto" it finds all the model files for you. Then you just have to manually add the texture files... which is a little bit of work, but better in the long run for easy filesize optimization... and getting those weird flat_normal_map things in.

 

[Dr. Sasha]

That and a few other things got me working, thank you so much!
What I did was that I found out there was a materials folder inside the japan content folder, and it had specific info about my map. I delted that and everything else that mentioned my map name. I used bspzipgui and embed the entire pack (not the most effecient way but good enough for a1) and extracted.

P.S. You are the one of the best map makers ever

 

[obsidiian]

Alright, I'll give PakRat a shot.

 

[Fantaboi]

Here are some suggestions I had thanks to problems I ran into making uplift, I linked it before but might as well do it again: https://www.dropbox.com/s/prahkj8yrbwbs94/Japan_Suggestions.docx?dl=0

 

[Dr. Sasha]

Just to put it out there, I find this content pack, or the overall theme, too, whats the word for it, limited. For example, I attempted making a koth japanese map. I had a nice idea, then when I started constructing it, I found that the props or the overall theme was too limiting to how to fill detail, and in the end started to echo suijin.

Luckily, I almost completely redone the layout and switched over to a harvest-like theme for it, which allowed to me to create kind of buildings that could have slanted roofs, that didn't have to follow the limited building perimeter limited by the sizes of the roofs.

Or maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm just horrible at making layouts (which I am.)

No hard feelings, I love the theme, idea, and the colors of the pack, but I think it benefit from more different sized roofs, and much more.

The only thing I had to model after (for the theme execution) was Suijin, so maybe that is the culprit of the similarities.

I heard there was a part 2 coming out, so I'm excited. I still love this pack.

 

[Freyja]

I managed to detail a whole 5cp map with it. It was hard, as I was actually building around an existing layout. It's definitely possible! Try to get Suijin out of your mind when doing it

 

[phi]

Are there no skybox models for any of these props? Especially the trees? Reckoner's being given a 3d skybox and I'm tremendously disappointed I can't use the trees in it.

 

[EArkham]

I'd meant to release a Japan pack expansion for awhile now, including new roof types and skycards, but other projects have been taking priority. I'll include some skybox versions of the sakura trees as well as the new trees in the expansion and try to get that out this weekend.