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Making of Black April...

Trailer Video

I've made a trailer video explaining the history of Black April event and showcasing the amount of detail of it implemented in the actual map.

From crowded streets around US Embassy to the accurate look of Saigon landmarks, every single peace is there for a reason to create or should I say recreate Saigon in all it's glory.

 

 

History

The Fall of Saigon was the capture of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, by the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN)
and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (also known as the Viet Cong) on 30 April 1975.

On April 9, PAVN forces reached Xuân Luc, the last line of defense before Saigon,
On April 20 despite heavy losses, PAVN finally overran Xuân Luc leaving North Vietnamese front line just 26 miles (42 km) from downtown Saigon.

On the American side, reports came in from the outskirts of the city that the PAVN were closing in.
At 10:48 a.m., US Ambassador Graham Martin relayed to Kissinger his desire to activate 'the FREQUENT WIND' evacuation plan; 
Kissinger gave the order three minutes later. 
The American radio station began regular play of Irving Berlin's 'White Christmas,' the signal for American personnel to move immediately to the evacuation points.
Under this plan, CH-53 and CH-46 helicopters were used to evacuate Americans and friendly Vietnamese to ships, including the Seventh Fleet, in the South China Sea.

PAVN had occupied the important points of the city and raised their flag over the South Vietnamese presidential palace.
The event marked the end of the Vietnam War and the start of a transition period to the formal reunification of Vietnam under the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

The Landmarks of Saigon

When a decision was made to make Saigon I needed to find the main landmarks that left a historical mark in that city which would make my map instantly recognizable.

Lucky for me most of the pictures of Vietnam war were from Black April so choosing the landmarks was really easy...tho making them is another story.

The Presidential Palace

The most important landmark of Saigon for the Vietnam war.

Since I couldn't find any models that would let me make something similar I decided to make my own models for it.

This ofc took a lot of time studying reference photos to get it as close to original as possible.

I managed to make the whole thing "Outside/Inside 6 floors" in about 2-3 weeks.

The Notre Dame Cathedral

 

The beacon of Saigon, standing tall above the houses.

The first version of the Cathedral was built with SDK models, but since players requested they wanna play on the inside of it,

I decided to fulfill that request. 

To do that I needed to model it from scratch, same as the Palace.

Modeling also took about 2-3 weeks and I think I got the outside inside look to around 80-90% accuracy to the real thing.

 

The Pittman Apartments

 

One of the most famous photographs of Black April was of the last chopper evacuating Saigon before the fall.

 

I managed to find the building in the official SDK that had the same shape as the building I needed.

However, I needed to build my own collision for it since the upper floors were unreachable.

And with some added props I got the look I was looking for.

 

The American Embassy

 

While making the 1st objective, I wanted it to be simple 1-floor building that players need to capture and move on...

At the time the deadline to submit the maps to the contest was a week away and I didn't have time to model out the whole building from scratch so I made it in SDK using the official models.

 

The City ​

Since Saigon wasn't destroyed during the Vietnam war I could have used the google earth to get a very accurate layout of the city streets, landmarks etc.

The first, unpublished version was built on that accurate layout but I decided I needed to move the landmarks closer to each other in order to gain better gameplay.

 

The rest of the city was built using the official RS2 models

 

Becoming Official map of Rising Storm 2

Making the map took 989 hours of SDK work, around 1 and a half months of modeling and 14 hour light building each time I needed to build lighting.

I note light building separately because I had to build lighting on my friend's PC.

My PC only has 8GB ram and is way too weak to build lighting for this enormous map.

I would like to thank my dear friend Tina Edge for letting me use her 32GB PC because without her this map wouldn't have seen the light of day!

 

This map was originally made for the Tripwire mapping competition, and altho it wasn't quite noticed there

several months later I was contacted by publishers of Rising Storm 2 that wanted to put the map in the official lineup! A deal was made and now you can find this map named "Saigon" in Rising Storm 2.

I wanted to thank the awesome Rising Storm 2 community for all the support I received for Black April,

so I made this little video for you all!

RICE = SAFE 

 

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