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Styleguide Vol.I: Bunkers
04.11.2002 von Manstein[MLD]

Let me give you an advice on how to design good looking bunkers for your MOHAA maps. The best looking bunkers in MOHAA are nearly authentic bunkers. Thatīs the clue!

Is it diffcult to design an authentic bunker? No, it isnīt mate! Because people was always short at time (especially the Germans during 2nd Worldwar) all bunkers were predesigned and categorized by their purposes. For example, if German pioneers wanted to build a machinegun emplacement, they didnīt start to build at once some structure. They first watched at the predesigns and than decided what kind of bunker would suited best in the given requierments of that location.
The amount of different predesigned bunker types is large. But we can categorize them:

1. Machinegun emplacements
2. Artillery shelters
3. Troop shelters
4. Commandposts

I think, this four categories will cover a huge part of all types.
That comes in very handy for us poor MOHAA mappers. We just have to find that construction paintings and rebuild them. Huh, bad luck! There are only a few construction plans out in the webhinterhältig!

What I will try to do is to give you some tips on how to design an nearly authentic bunker. In this first volume I will cover the first category mentioned above: The machinegun emplacement. I chosed a small one:


Ok, gentlemen start your MOHRADs, we are ready to gotongue!
Let me first have a word on the used textures: First of all, use the caulk texture whereever a face is not visible in the game! That will shorten the time during the vis-compile and will speed up the fps a bit.

1. Step: Build the outer walls:
Make them 64 units wide and 128 units tall. That will give a good result later on in the game and makes the player believe, that he really stands inside a bunker. Build the outer walls like on the image below:

Do you see how I build them to save some faces? Do it the same!

2. Step: The inner walls:
Make them 32 units wide and place them like on the image below:


3. Step: Place the floor:
Place it right below the walls. Shape the floor exactly like the outer border of the outer wall.

4. Step: The ceiling:
Now the ceiling gets a little more complicated. Same as the floor, it should follow the shape of the outer walls except one part: At the entrance. There it will cover a small part of the entrance area to protect the entrance from getting blocked with dirt by mortar hits (the red brushes are the ceiling):


Now letīs tune the ceiling. The Germans cut the edges of the bunkers to save concrete. So we will do it toogrosses Lachen.
Use the clipping tool to cut some parts of the ceiling off. When itīs done it should look like this:

So much for the ceiling. Now itīs time for the real complicated partlachend!

5. Step: The machingun hole:
Remember the hole on the left of the first image? That is the place for our MG42! At the moment the gunner would be gun fodder for everyone and the bunker would be useless. Now, we will give this poor guy some defense:

Do the same with the upper corner on the right of our bunker.

Next, we need to reduce the mg hole itself:

Last but not least, we will add one really characteristical feature of German bunkers: \"Stairs\":


Ok, so much for the machinegun hole. Now let us continue with the entrance defense.

6. Step: The entrance defense:
To defend the entrance against enemies trying to get inside the bunker, a guard was place beside the entrance itself. Now lets make it! Select this brush:


Cut a hole in it like this:


Reduce the hole like you did before at step 5 and build another pair of stairs (surprise! like at step 5wink )
At the end it should look like this:


Ok, now itīs time for tuning the inner part of the bunker, yes we are near the endgrosses Lachen !

7.Step: The interior:
The doors would be to high! Fix it by placing a 8 units tall brush just below the ceiling inside the doorway.
Before we continue, letīs texture the bunker. I recommend this textures for the bunker:
Outer walls: blasted/dday_bunker_wall1bsml

Ahh, looks good! Notice, that I left the horizontal parts in caulk!

Inner walls: normandy/bunker_conc2

Better! Notice, that I reduced the vertical scale of the inner walls texture to 0.5

Floor, inner ceiling and outer parts at the bottom: algiers/whsflrset1_1b


Outer ceiling and outer parts: algiers/whsflrset1_1a

Ok, now letīs go on with adding furniture to our bunker:
We will need this:
2x static/furniture/bunkbed
1x static/furniture/filter-thing

Place them like this:


Tata, thatīs it. You can add many more details to your bunker, like lights, etc..., but for that the bunker itself is done and itīs nearly authentical as possible (I found one of this bunkers near my hometownverwirrt ).

Have fun!

Manstein

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