Latest update:
A Dozen final screenshots


/Edit: Update to first post now that the map is further along:

Premise:
You are a special ops soldier on your way to North Korea when your plane is shot down over an unknown island. You are the only survivor, your new mission unfolds as you play.

Features:
-Large map based on a real-world location, 1-to-1 scale
-Completely new missions.
-Over a dozen separate objectives and goals.
-One to three hours of estimated gameplay
-Several optional objectives that change gameplay
-Large complex cinematics with voice acting.
-Large variation of playable areas: Beach, caverns, towns, camps, underground facilities, mine, mountain tops.
-Map design allows for stealth or brute force approach
-Many custom particles and textures

Goals:
-Map built with the goal matching or exceeding the Crytek puts into their own maps. (Sounds, details, cinematics)
-Build an engrossing story that keeps the player going
-Challenging AI and weapon placement (I don't want this to be easy)

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/Old first post:

I am attempting to duplicate the island used in Castaway as a challenge to get me started in map making.

Here is a link to the island:
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=-17.609607,177.03504&z=16&t=h&hl=en

I have found tons of reference photos online, and of course the movie will also be a reference for the details, caves and such.

I have no idea how far I will get on this project but I thought I would post it up for feedback.

So far I have manually made very rough height-map in Gimp, and made a nearly perfect scale map in Sandbox2 with the texture of the island laid over it.

/Edit update:
This will be a 16 chapter/objective single player map with a full story line.

/Edit: Jan 7th
HUGE: See the beta introduction cinematic in high-def!
[WIP] Castaway island -Jan 3rd -New screenshots

make a good looking map! <3

good luck ^___^

Just out of curiosity: is that on the map the actual island they filmed on or is that the island shown on the map near the end of the movie?

The actual island they filmed on.

thats cool, i had no idea it was by fiji

Well here is where I am after a few hours, note this is my first time using Sandbox.



http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2366/1957388569_4fca65db0b_o.jpg

The texture is captured from Google Earth.
Everything is very rough without detail so far.

The hard part is that the island is relatively small compared to the huge sandbar.

how did you import the texture / heightmap?

Well the height map in gimp didn't work out well.

What worked better was to just import the texture and then edit from there.
I set my plane just at sea level and then lowered the surround areas as needed, and then raised the inside areas as needed.

The import texture function is a bit broken it seems.
You have to first export the terrain texture to a BMP file.
Then edit this file (replacing the blank texture with a 1024x1024 image of the island)
Then press the import button.

You have to re-import after doing a "Generate textures"
But it works great as a reference for shapes, beaches, etc,...

dude....if i had known that i would have probably finished my australia map by now. lol ARGHHHHH!

Eh, well all that work was for waste... the map was about twice the scale it should have been.

Apparently the only way to scale a map is when you first make it, and only by the actual map size. (needed to be 512x512)
The crappy part is that now my reference texture is horrible low res.

The "Unit scale" seems useless

/Edit

So I figured the resolution thing out, too forever to find.
Basically I made a 512x512map, then went to the vegetation brush tool. There at the very bottom is a "change tile resolution" button. That let me change all the tiles to high-resolution so I could have a better reference. The final result works great for distance textures.

Well it's 2am time to stop.

Here is where I am at so far:



http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2047/1961992160_8b038bb68e_o.jpg

are those reference pics from google earth or from another source?

The satellite image used as a texture is from Google earth.
I made a large version by zooming in till it looked like I reached google resolution limit.
I then exported 12 tiles of images and then manually stitched them into one large 2048x2048 image (Texture size of my map)

The reference images shown above so far is someones vacation photos I found on the internet. I found over 30 reference images that are usable so far.

Can you give a better discription on how to do this. I'm trying to do a map using google earth and the only thing I have right now is to hit the "Print Scr" button, past it to MS Paint, edit it there and then save it as a .bmp. I want to know how to transfer the .bmp picture to the map and then edit the terrain around the picture.

Does any of that make sense?

Google earth has a "Save as image" function that captures what you are currently seeing to a JPEG. What I did was start at a set zoom level, capture an image, save it as 1, move the view to another part of the island, and save that as 2. And so-on until I have the entire thing.
Make sure you have enough overlap to cover up the google logo, and to align the images.

I then open up GIMP2 and make a new document that is pretty large in size.
I drag and drop the images one after another, each is a separate layer that i can move around like photos on a desk.

I roughly align them and then do a function called "Scale to layers" This increases the page size enough to see all the layers laid out. I lock the first lay in place, and then move to the second. On the second layer I set the transparency to 50%. I move the image around slowly using the keyboard until it lines up perfectly. I set the transparency back to 100% making sure none of the overlapped areas look as if they moved. Once that is good I lock that layer down. Rinse and then repeat.

Once complete I cut and pasted a section of ocean to fill in any gaps, and then resized the image to 2048x2048 (The texture size that Sandbox2 exported of my map)
You have to do an initial export to a file name in Sandbox2 and replace it with your own.

Now I make a new map, export the texture, replace it with my new file, and re-import.
I then edited the terrain using the map as a reference.
If you paint and area with say sand, and want to re-color it, paint it with sand, re-import the texture, generate the texture again, and then re-export. Doing this allowed me to keep the beautiful reef colors in the image. But nearly everything else was eventually replaced
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I now have a premise for the story, I have a lot of detail written but I am not post it as of yet as I would rather work on the map then the story currently.
But basically since there are North Koreans in the game, nukes, etc... you get the idea.
I have some cool twists though. The hard part however is steering the character on such an open map.

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/Edit:

Lots more photos online here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/zapwizard/sets/72157603074021169/