WATER TOWER 01

here's that large Water Tower I was working on when my beloved PC took a nose dive.

It's inspired by the now iconic Water Tower at Vukovar in Croatia that sustained extensive damage during the siege:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vukovar

I chose it as it has a distinctly Eastern European feel to it and it's a very interesting shape and has a strong silhouette. The eight huge concrete supports also lend themselves to some cat and mouse game play hopefully so I've tried to cut a few blocks out of them to break up the outline and allow for stray bullets and shells to go through.

To get to the top, the player will first ascend a spiral staircase, then climb two tall internal ladders. There's two external floors- the viewing or maintenance level (Complete with faded wavy water themed wall paper!) with eight connected rooms and the very top from were the player will get a 45 meter high 360 degrees view point of the surrounding Zone.

Anyway, hope you like it guys, it threw up a few problems along the way lol...

HOUSE 05

Hello again..! 

I've wanted to do a really bleaky creaky freaky looking cabin in true STALKER style for awhile now, but have waited until I found some good photo ref and then got all the pictures together and just took cues from the best bits of them all. 

I really like these type of metal plate roofs, which are also used in the STALKER games on some buildings I think, as they allow for a cheap way to do the collision LODs, as they're in effect made up of simple cube geometry- easy to translate to the LODs as I say. They also look really oppressive, and really spooky at night when picking your way through the Zone at night and your flash light glints off them.

I've also noticed on a lot of these kind of houses in Ukraine (Where I'm taking my cues from visually as a guide at least!) they sometimes have a little white metal plate on one of the top corners, I think for house number- so I've added that but put some Ukrainian with the house number, but also a "Sector 7" or other number, so as to give the island a feeling that all the inhabitants were under some sort of registration, militarily or experimentally even before the "Incident" / "інцидент"that created NOVA ZONA... 

I'm hoping to expand on that theme very subtly as this goes on, and hopefully it'll come together to create a feeling of oppression across the map as you start putting all these little visual clues together and you can form your own stories from it...

I added the little porch as it'll obviously add to game play, creating more angles etc and because I've always wanted a house in the woods with a porch where I can watch the sunset from, whilst supping from a bottle of Jack and puffing on a pipe. 

Trying to add to the decayed look of it, I've kept the wood texture the same on the inside as the outside with this one, as I really want to make it so there's so many holes and gaps (Many of which you just can't see with this shot) that no corner of this house feels totally safe from possible sniper fire or the weather of NOVA ZONA. 

RADIO MAST 05

Damn, I nearly forgot to post about this here!

I'll keep it brief as I've already got it in game and dancing as you can see in the other post, so here it is:

RADIO MAST 05 INGAME

Well, in-between doing other jobs and real world (!) things, I finally got this Radio Mast 05 into the game and working. 

I placed 4 in a row here and set up a little skirmish between two opposing forces to get some action out of it. It's really satisfying to see all the little iddy biddy tiny AI peeps utilising the structures I've made- it never gets old! One dude got shot from the top of the Radio Mast and fell rag doll style down the side, bless him...

Also, I'd like to mention and thank both Mikero and [EvG] Kiory for their massive help with this one, and many others in the ARMA community- I had a few problems with this in regards things like collisions (Don't ask...) and even basic things like getting a bloody ALPHA channel to work (Don't ask...)!

I should mention, the only retouching is the very top of the lightning bolt as I missed the strike with ARMA3's Splendid Cam, and there's a slight vignette around the outside to focus the attention, that's all though- it's basically all in game goodness.

RADIO MAST 01

I'm planning to do a few of these kind of radio masts/antenna, as they're quite quick to do and will lend a lot of atmosphere to a scene, especially at night, when their silhouettes break up the skyline and with little lights flashing on and off etc...

This one is a striaght forward tall thin mast, but some of the others will be more sinister in shape, taking cues from old Soviet forms and the Brain Scorcher.

I've tried to keep the metal structure rusty and worn, and also added a few metal "plates" and grills at various heights to break up the form and add variety.

For me, little touches like radio masts and old disused radars dotted around really put a location into the Stalker mindset.

BRICK WAREHOUSE 01

Hi all, here's the latest addition to my object/building library, a large generic Brick Warehouse that'll be used to populate the Zone with old derelict structures as it's been constructed in such a way as I will probably put together about 6-7 more buildings using this style.

It's a take on the plain brick buildings used across the STALKER games, and I wanted to elaborate a bit more on the theme, so have added little things like the brick edging and ledges to give it more colour and catch the light.

Anyway, here's some shots with the last one being an internal shot:

HOUSE 04

By jingo it's been a while..!!!

Good to be back from a fantastic holiday back home to visit family and friends, but at long last here's an update to my Stalker project!

This one is a log cabin with an added attic area accessible via a crappy wooden ladder on the outside of the building. It's taken a bit longer than most of the other structures as it's essentially made of cylinders, and each one had to be an exact size so as to allow for both modularity and ease of player animations like vaulting etc.

I more or less spent two days figuring out a happy medium.

Also, as there's a fair bit of surface area it took a little longer to texture too..! All those round logs and planks..!!!

Anyway, here's a couple of shots, one of the entire outside and another of the detailing and a section of the rooms inside the building where you could spend an entire evening, fire crackling, smoking fine cigars, drinking good wine and generally having cordial conversation with the other gentlemanly Stalkers of the Zone: