I challenge you all to get to round 30 on all three of the amazing Ballbags trio of maps - the toilet of doom, ballbags 2, and of course the treehouse of terrorism. Good luck 8)

I recently decided to take the time to write up a small guide, which will hopefully aid new mappers and bolster the knowledge of some experienced ones too. There are four basic concepts outlined in the document which I feel are helpful for creating realistic, detailed maps.

Anyone who's interested in reading this can download it in PDF form by clicking here, or the main link at the top of this post.

Enjoy

Since I've completed a Breaking Bad poster and even got it printed off, I thought I'd try my hand at drawing something up for the Walking Dead next - this is the result of a couple of hours of solid digital sketching and Photoshop work which I thought would be nice to share.


I'll likely get this printed off soon too, and will add photos of it hanging on my wall when I do so.

I drew up a stylized image of Walter White (from the TV show Breaking Bad) using my Wacom tablet a while ago, and today I decided I'd finish it in a landscape poster format and get it printed to put on my wall.

Here's a close-up image of the finished product, printed and looking fairly win:


Another picture showing it in the lounge setting above my TV:


And finally, the actual image (downsized version obviously) I created:


Just a quick note that the first 2 images were taken on my phone and the contrast is pretty bad, the poster does look better and more colourful/contrasted in real life.

This is my new personal project for World at War zombies, and I intend to spend a lot of time making it truly epic. The map will be set in an overrun, abandoned hospital building which naturally will offer a lot of close-quarters gameplay. Tight corridors and clutterred rooms won't be the only playable spaces though, since you'll also be able to enjoy roaming around the building in a large parking lot, as well as under a bridge near a crashed train and even on the rooftop of the building!

I am currently planning to include the UGX Standalone Mod in Infection Ward, and in addition to the unique map with custom models and textures, will create an awesome zombie survival experience. The addition of modern weapons, as well as various assets, will take this map well out of World at War's typical WWII-based setting and throw players into the modern world, full of infected zombie hordes!




As you can see there are already custom textures for the map, including the hospital sign above - I'll be making a lot of assets like this in order to create an immersive and unique environment. For this map I would also like to pay very close attention to detail, and will be spending a fair amount of time simply poring over reference images from the internet (as well as real-life buildings I see on a daily basis). For example, the hospital sign texture I created was strongly based on the NHS signs for English public hospitals, and is stylised in a very similar way:


Unfortunately for now those are the only screenshots I can offer as progress on the actual .map is fairly minimal, but I have a decent idea of the layout and atmosphere which I want to achieve and hope to release the map at some stage in 2013. I will be updating this post with new screenshots and information as frequently as I can, but since this is a personal project in my spare time, there will most likely be periods of inactivity

Please, as always, post ideas and feedback in your replies, it's great to hear what the community thinks and it's very helpful for mapping too.

As a bit of a Christmas gift to all you wonderful stick insects, Return to Kneipe der Untoten has been released as a 1.4-style map! This means that it is basically a stock Der Riese styled map, with the four standard perk machines, a roving random weapons box, power switch and of course the Pack-a-Punch machine.

However, this doesn't mean it's totally devoid of customisation. There's an awesome new jukebox, which is an epic new way to play music while slaying the undead - complete with a custom model, animations, FX, and a win new menu system, with eight songs to choose from. What's more is that I've managed to make the map compatible with Realism 2.2! Included in the Bar mod folder is a subfolder with all the necessary setup instructions and files needed to include Return to Kneipe der Untoten in the Realism mod.

This map is surprisingly fun to play solo, and even more so with a group of friends. There are a multitude of different ways you can play by opening different doors and areas in the map, which offers a lot of replay value - plus if you add the map into Realism 2.2, you can spend hours ranking up and using custom classes too!

I'd like to point out and clarify that this is not UGX Bar. The UGX version is coming out in 2013 which will be the version to feature the UGX Mod with its modern weapons and an objective system, so in a way this 1.4-style release is a little bit of a teaser for what's to come.


Credits:
Map design & creation: W1NG3D
Jukebox script & Easy-FX script: treminaor
Custom models (jukebox, pool table and cue rack): Justin Strawn
COD4 model mover app and menu files from Bar 1.1: Tom_BMX

Note: This process requires that you have access to files from Call of Duty 4 and its modtools. You should also have WinRAR installed.


If you're making a map set in a modern setting, or simply want to freshen up the user interface and change its appearance, you can do this by replacing the World at War font files with those from Call of Duty 4. I spent a few hours the other night searching for files and testing different methods out to see if I could replace the in-game font, and after a fair bit of trial and error, I've managed to come up with an easy method of replacing the font to give World at War a COD4-esque appearance. This could be a really nice finishing touch for a new map or mod.

Steps for replacing the font files and including them in your mod:
There are several font files located in "Call of Duty - World at War/raw/english/fonts." Here's a screenshot of that folder:



These need to be replaced by the files from Call of Duty 4. Make sure you make a backup of the World at War originals first, then navigate to the same files in the Call of Duty 4 folder (this will be the same folder path as the one from World at War, raw/english/fonts) Copy these over to the World at War fonts folder, and click "yes" to overwrite files. Now the files should be the COD4 ones.

The next thing to do is to include these files in your mod, so that they are used in-game when the mod is launched. To do this, open up Launcher and go to the Mod Builder tab.Select your mod from the drop-down list, thenn the "Fastfile mod.csv" box, insert the following lines:

font,fonts/consolefont
font,fonts/bigfont
font,fonts/smallfont
font,fonts/boldfont
font,fonts/normalfont
font,fonts/extrabigfont
font,fonts/objectivefont

You can build your mod.ff at this point if you wish, but I will leave that step until the end because we must also include an image in the IWD file, and it's more straightforward build the whole mod at the same time.

Now there's one more thing to do - we need to extract an image file from Call of Duty 4, and include it in the mod's IWD file. The image is called "gamefonts_pc.iwi" and is located in "CoD4 root/main/localized_english_iw00.iwd". Open the IWD file with WinRAR, go into the "images" folder, and you should see this:



Drag the file onto your desktop, then copy it into "WAW root/mods/your_mod_name_here/images".
Now open up Launcher again and go back to the Mod Builder tab. After re-selecting your mod from the list, you should now see this (if not, try restarting Launcher):



Check the box for "gamefonts_pc.iwi" on the right-hand side, then also check the boxes for Build mod.ff Fastfile and Build IWD file. Now you can click Build Mod, and you're done! The font should now appear totally different when you launch your mod in-game.

Here are a couple of screenshots of the finished result in-game:

To avoid spam and make this board a better place for all mappers, we've got a few basic minimum requirements for a WIP topic about your project:

• You need to have started working on the map prior to making the thread. There has to be at least some feasible progress to show that this is actually a work in progress, and not just a map idea!
• At least one screenshot and/or video must be included in the post. Pictures speak a thousand words, but in the case of mapping, they speak a million!
• There should be a description of the map, demonstrating a brief outline of what the map will be like. A list of features is a good starting point, but a simple list of five very short sentences won't cut it. People want to know about your map and a few very basic words or sentences don't tell us anything.
  

To help give you an idea of what a good work-in-progress thread looks like, here is an example:
http://ugx-mods.com/forum/index.php?topic=14.0

We've just updated the UGX Mod official work-in-progress topic at http://ugx-mods.com/forum/index.php?topic=35.0 with new details and descriptions of the mod including explanations of all the new features in the mod, plus we've organised some YouTube videos into a media section for easy viewing! Stay tuned for further updates