Snowy field of experiments, AKA Snowburgh's dev history + SB Devlog #3 (and the last one)

Owaz · July 29, 2025, 8:46pm

WARNING!!! THIS POST CONTAINS PRETTY BIG AMOUNT OF SWEAR WORDS (AND RUSSIAN AS WELL)

So

this forum will close in like 2 weeks days [idk when i’ll post it] so i want to make sort of an endpoint/conclusion for all of my SB posts here

Here, in this post, i want to tell about the entire development history of “Snowburgh” map project

I intentionally called it “project” because for me personally it’s something bigger and more significant than just a simple map. Although it is on a physical level. I actually don’t consider SB and its content the most unique thing in this game.

How it all started

The timeline i wrote in 2023. I will deviate from it a bit

I might make mistakes while writing all the past memories stuff, 4 years passed since then after all.

I think the first time i thought of making my own map for this game was the first months after the Elver release. Before Elver i wasn’t even interested in most of curated maps

*(I remember my belgium gameplay experience on my shit ass old pc, i was just constantly getting infinite loading screen, probably because of broken speedtrees on the map back then idk, i was playing on max settings in 3 fps for some reason. Maybe this incident ruined all my curated maps experience before 2020 then)*

Ironically, when i loaded in elver first time i just rejected it in like 30 seconds because i thought “ok it’s probably some cool looking map with absolute shit non vanilla gameplay and cool look was made to just compensate it”. And only when i watched some videos about it i was very excited and actually played on it and was enjoyed and inspired.

But i’m not gonna tell about all of my elver experience here. It’s still far from start of SB’s history from here tho. Just gonna say that bruh is not my first global map idea. There were 3 significant ones: desert map (technical name: Dustyard), tunnels one (technical name: The tunnels) - transition from jungle biome to Dustyard, based entirely on my dreams actually lol, and the Southern/Sochi one (technical name: Candibobber (ХОРОШЕЕ ИМЯ - АЛАКХАКБАР… РОФЛ ЕБАНЫЙ НО ЭТО ПРАВДА)) - was the most deep and significant of them in my mind, based on some of actual elver ideas and my home city’s (Sochi, Krasnodarskiy kray, Russia) setting. All of this projects were lorewise connected as so-called “Regional”, and i added SB to it after as well, but the only one that got some “physical” form and was released is The Tunnels, but just in form of “concept”.

Candibobber art i made in January 2022. Yeah, those fucked up proportions…

Also interesting fact: some of those maps (significant ones) had their regional-name as a second one, according to their geographical position. For example - CB = Southern Regional, Dustyard = Western Regional (although it’s not geographically correct actually). SB also has its regional equivalent - Northern Regional. It’s now unused tho (like all this stuff to be honest).

SB’s first appearance

Year: 2021. February, ~10th. Just a regular winter day in Sochi (no snow, just cloudy). But in some mountains of central district it suddenly started snowing. Pretty unique event for our climate, at least now.

And i got to those mountains on a car, as a passenger of course. Typical North Caucasian landscape: mountainous, with a very steep slopes, and the woods, mostly consists of tall beeches, i guess. I walked here for a while, and for some reason, this particular hike was soooo exciting for me…

Same woods, the spring look of course (their usual winter one is pretty similar to that tho)

Snowy woods. A police car on a dirt road that runs along the cliff. Its siren lights flashes. I don't know why

The thing that suddenly appeared in my head for some reason, and i heavily associate it with this track (i originally found it in winter of 2019 as an Operation: Black Mesa (independent HL:OpFor remake) OST):

Completely dark brown lake that consists of unknown corrosive substance. There's a field research camp of [SOME FOUNDATION] in front of it

It definitely requires some commentary.

So, the “foundation research camp” part clearly refers to SCP foundation, as well as the lake itself (it particularly refers the SCP-354 - the blood lake, not 100% accurate tho; also if you look at some images of it you’ll notice that it is set in snowy woods as well)

The thing is that i was really interested in SCP universe back then. And actually, the name of foundation i mentioned wasn’t SecureContainProtect. I actually came up with alternative names, such as PCP (PrepareContainProtect i guess), or later - ACP (AdvancedConatinmentProcedures, more like scp’s original name - special containment procedures/protocols i don’t remember)

Interesting fact about the lore’s “development”: from the start of that year i was actively playing Elver in a sort of “creative mode”. I hosted a server on my PC (so i could play with friends and also use rocketmod commands) and instead of regular gameplay i (sometimes with friends) was building many things everywhere, from just woods to a bunkers and subway (using F6 freecam). And most of them were related to the same lore, mostly the Foundation one. Also we recorded several sort of machinimas here (IT WAS SO FUCKING PAINFUL TO RECORD THEM WITH OUR ORGANISATION LEVEL).

The room. I sit right in front of monitor. Decided to go to the balcony. Here i see the yard: ground covered in snow, a few cars. According to height, i'm on second or third floor of the building...

Later i wanted to make this the ending of the map. Also i wanted to add here a room with me as a developer, similar to old Elver’s Nelson. Back then it was just thing in my head.

"Welcome to |||||||||! Here we have snow, a lot of snow! And also we have even more snow!..."

The part i’m not entirely sure about, whether i thought of it back then or later and whether the “Snowburgh” name was already chosen for the map.

Speaking of map, it didn’t exist at all. It was just a bunch of assorted ideas, not even a map’s lore.

Expanding the base further, first implementations to the game

At this point i only had some attempts at mapping and obviously absolutely no modding experience. To be honest, i tried some blender modeling before (since 2019), but it’s hard to call them somehow successfull at all.

So, on February ~19th (i’m pretty sure i created it even earlier, i took this 19 from the last changed date) i started up blender, probably imported unturned character model from extras and tried to make this thing:

It’s the first actual content made for SB. Although i didn’t even use it because of obvious technical problems.

After that i completely abandoned any content development until May of the same year for some reason…

However, i continued “making” lore of the map in my head. By lore i mean both story and quests part.

The next few months i mostly came up with more ideas (such as foundation facility, infinite staircase, “xen portal” - endgame, bunker in mountains, Elver’s “E” bunker based foundation object, lore-related forester’s house and many other assorted shit with ton of context required). Some of them were actually at least somehow gameplay focused, but none of them represented any actual gameplay or at least level design.

You have probably noticed that most of the things for the map i thought about were mostly related not to the map itself, but either to foundation or some assorted things. It was an insane problem when it came to the map development.

Also, it turns out that the original map was based on my minds only and its layout was like “uhm okay it’s like mm huh kavkaz khrebet and of course some city on it and also some city in front of that mountain huh of course some panel apartments (I DIDN’T KNOW PANEL APARTMENTS BACK THEN SO IT’S ALL IS SUBCONSCIOUS) yeahhh oh also i had an idea of destroyed city, it flashed in my mind for like a second probably because of scrap mechanic game’s ruins structure, so i add it and yeah the swamp i thought of 3 months ago and some exclusive to sochi (I DIDN’T KNOW THAT AS WELL) 12-storey apartments because why not and also this sort of building and landscape is native for me oh and of course military base yeah mm gonna call it like “DELTA” because of elver’s alpha-bravo outposts and because yeah it sounds cool hmm the map is ready.”

Speaking of layout. It’s the exact fucking way i made it. It’s not even a joke.

Of course i had to mess with all this later, but for now (2025) base layout remained basically the same, although i obviously tweaked many things towards real-life-based.

And it is actually funny for me now to look at some old messages where people said that this map was based on Murmansk and Noril’sk. It wasn’t. It was closer to fucking sochi than murmansk. But of course there was no way for them to know that. (hello atrau :3)

First attempts in modding (May 2021)

As i said earlier in this post, i had no experience in modding before. So the SB development history is also almost my entire modding history.

3 months had passed since my first unturned modding attempts and i was back. This time i got to the point when the actual modding starts, and also i tried something easier than making a gun model. At this point i hadn’t even watched any unturned related modding tutorials and barely watched any blender ones.

So, it’s May 13th, Thursday. I opened up character model from extras again and started drawing on it using blender’s texture paint tool. It turned out like this:

Recreation, because i lost the original model file

And then i tried importing it to the game. I actually watched some basic modding guides at this point. I don’t remember the entire process of me trying to make it work, but the main reason why it didn’t was ID i gave the item (it was like 100000, and as far as unt’s item ID is unsigned short integer value, the max is 65535). Of course i didn’t know that and tried many things to solve this, until a month later i suddenly tried changing its ID to 60000 and it did work (fun fact: the map still uses the ID range from 60000 to 61000).

Despite the first item didn’t work in the game, i continued adding others. I even added some modelled ones:

I added tankman’s outfit as a reference to FNF particularly (not newgrounds), it was popular back then and i did like this character probably because of mil stuff xd

funny shit: i tried applying tankman’s texture (probably his shirt) on the vanilla beret

Also during this time i drew that map of sb i have shown above, so i can officially call May 2021 the start of Snowburgh development.

The start of an actual development (Summer 2021)

BUT on June i suddenly started making “The Tunnels” map. I called it “concept” because i wanted to make its “full” version with many of its own objects in future (once i learn modding/mdling enough). Although i made some objects for this version. This also was a sort of object making, mapping, NPC and flag logic practice for me because it was the first time i made a full-scale map (up to its release) and objects+NPCs for it.

my first object in unt

all the models for the first tunnels (you can see the inverted normals on the speakers, i didn’t know how to fix that back then)

On the one hand: of course the map turned out being not so similar to concept i originally came up with (because it was based on my fucking dream like almost any other thing i make, it’s a real problem for me :tosk:). But on the other it really extended my general lore conception and introduced many lore stuff (such as “ACP-001” mr green guy from elver type shit i probably came up with even before sb’s FAp (first appearance) and also the sb itself, as well as some secondary chars like felina i guess)

the funny thing that i used those targets’ ropes from elver’s metro as a cable, even before arid’s release

i used this box to listen kuwait music (the kwt music’s object is invisible so it’s easy to lose it)

ṣ̶̛̭͎͍͉̼͙̗̭͔̼͉̠̮̖̣̦͓̖̰̼͎̘̋̾̿͑̒͛̀̈̌̈̇b̷̧̡̡̨̛̛̺̟͚̖̙̺͉͕̘͓̤̯̹̮̦͇͙͍͚͇̱̳͚̥̝̜̝̄̂͛̒́͂́̓̇̏͑̒̽̈́̿͌͆͛̔͆̐̈́̎͑̾̀̉̒̍̑͐͌͒͂̑͂̌̋̕͝͝͝͝͠͝͠

and also its trailer, reupload of course

I released it in end of June (the same 2021 year)* and continued its dev in August. The map got polished a bit (i upgraded its landscape and foliage from legacy to devkit one, remember old times) and also i extended its lore/walkthrough a bit (added a helicopter ending that directly connects SB and TT - the heli got crashed in sb region).

sb 2

heli crash

Last update was released on August 31th of 2021, and it’s the end of this “branch” of the map.

Anyway, i wouldn’t recommend playing this map now. It’s rather unclear what to do most of the time, especially the endings part. Also its level design is kinda broken. But it’s still in workshop tho.

So, we’re back to SB’s dev era (starting July). It was still rather a time of experiments, but during this time map (or rather concept) started getting actual content, gameplay ideas and implementations (including TT’s bruhg mentioned above).

BUT let’s go back to June first. I was actually thinking of some of SB’s ideas in parallel with TT’s development. Fun fact: many ideas came to my mind during me walking outside (the best source of ideas tho, right after taking a shower).

I already came up with the map’s endings (each based on the Foundation’s facility and ACP-001) in early June, before even thinking of basic progression of it lol. There were 6 of them, based on player’s interaction on Warhead (reference to alpha from scpsl) and relationship to Felina (important secondary character i mentioned above). And the true one would appear if warhead is on and relationship is positive. To be honest i paid too much attention to the endgame lore at this point, because after that i started to extend it with more and more side things and easter eggs. Anyway, don’t think it’s neccessary to tell that in detail now…

Twelve-storey Sochi-type apartment. You enter it. Staircase on the left, corridor in front. You walk through. In the end there's a big room with an exit door, some power transformers and stairs (the room's floor is a bit lower than corridor's). And you see the cat on the top stair. As you approach, it runs away down the stairs.

Based on my own experience. Later i extended it a bit with hole in the big room (it actually is in those apartments) that you decide to enter while searching for this cat but then you find yourself in some “hell”-type room and there’s the green guy 001 and he says you something. Honestly speaking, pure mystification. ACP-001 elver green guy is a metacreature of the map tho.

Anyway, i guess all of us already tired of all this LoRe stuff. So, let’s move on some more important material stuff.

July. Map actually started getting some content (could’ve happened earlier if only there were no problems with making things work in game). First items i added were military clothes and snowcannon - that first model (its remake actually).

fucking kazakhstan helmet bruh; glasses i liked very hard tho

this unused shit

обязательно написать про ёбаного дебила который придумал брызги малафьи от снега]

A little bit later and here’s the first supply item.

There’s one interesting thing about this model. Once i came up with idea of crafting this pile of metal details, instead of just splitting each part from this pile in the original model i started creating separate projects for each model and trying to make 1:1 replica of detail i need. It’s the problem that pursued me until June 2022 i guess, when i started using a single project not only for a single model and maybe its LODs (jk i didn’t make lods back then). I honestly don’t know why i did so…

It’s not the only issue of my early models. You can see that i didn’t use shadesmooth (models look sharp), didn’t turn the smooth/specular on the material off. As well as using extrude from the model where it’s not required, using geometry instead of texture and leaving excessive faces that was made with loopcuts. If you aren’t that familliar to modding/modeling, just look at this:

It’s horrible. (also it’s the next supply item i made, luckily i just copied its project and deleted wire and cable from the model instead of making new circuit board from scratch)

Actually, some of those issues are pretty common among many inexperienced mod/model makers, so ||i’m not that dumb probably…||.

Speaking of items,

Also there was this pile of melted NPP debris. It was unused.

And that’s the point where i actually started thinking of gameplay and progression. I finally came up with building materials (wood → bricks → concrete → scrap metal → high tier metal, it was like this back then), started thinking of houses’ interiors more in depth i guess…

some drawing i made back then

Speaking of interiors. I wanted to add a quest which requires you to fix the broken power line. And after completing it, power devices in the city (such as lightbulbs and screens) would turn on.

You would get this quest from Forester - another important character in the storyline.

Also i remember that i wanted to make sort of an official map guide that would explain the gameplay step by step according to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (because it sounds funny, like, “physiological” level is like “loot shop get food” type shit, “safety” is building and weaponry, “belonging” is “how to find a friend” (it’s impossible) and so on)

Someday in July i woke up with this in my mind:

I need to make 600 items (elver's number, although like half of them are override vanilla) until December, if i make 4 or more of them per day i'll manage to complete them in time...

Heh, so naive and ambitious… Also it was the time when i still thought that sb would be intermediate map which will be followed by [a bigger one]

Speaking of release date, i was struggling with it for a long time. But i’ll tell all this story later.

I wasn’t sure where to write this part, but…

The brick game concept

Sometime in June-July, i wanted to make sort of an arena map in russian yard/garages setting, where you use throwable bricks instead of any weapon. I don’t remember whether i wanted every player to be brickthrower/seeker, or a single. It was based on the joke that sounds like “Catch me brick” (догони меня кирпич in russian). Nothing special, just a funny part.

I even made the brick model back then:

On early August i discovered this track:

which i would consider (rather associate with) the map theme.

I was making some assorted bullshit at this point.

ugly ass 001 green guy

Not so much tho, as i returned to TT’s development. Speaking of which, there was also a bit of sb stuff.

And that’s it. Summer ends along with the most loreful and water-spilling part of map’s dev. Later i’ll mostly make content and invent gameplay on the run. And here comes the…

…32k symbols limit…
so, watch my reply below

Owaz · July 29, 2025, 8:48pm

Active development and first confront (Autumn and Winter 2021)

In early Autumn i was just experimenting with some unity stuff. Nothing special, except for this explosive barrel i made that became my most liked showcase post in UO. And it is still for now.

Also i came up with some insane ideas for the map, such as underground tunnels system (subway) that would connect the entire map (based on rust’s transit mostly), some bandits’ camp on the roof of 12-storey apartment’s construct and underground communications (inspired by some ukrainian diggers’ videos)

I actually added comms in February 2022 and already remade them.

And then i started drawing some concepts right on my school lessons. There were mostly just weapon drafts (just poorly copied images of random guns i know from internet, with broken proportions, but at least categorized well enough), and later i started drawing medicine, food, clothing and barricades concepts (in “list of all of them” format)

Just some of them

At home, i started making structures. They still had a piece-of-shit topology, pretty bad colors (except hqm i guess) and basic options to make them basically better unused. But it was the fist bunch of content i made for the map.

Also i experimented with weathers (i did experiment with them even earlier, on May of the same year, even before i started making content for the game). It’s important because then i made the snowy weather that i used on sb later.

First interactions to community (November 2021)

Someday, [one] guy invited me to [one] discord server. It was entirely russian-speaking, most of people here were modders or other content makers, some of them were not.

The thing is when they saw my models, they gave me pretty obvious critique (like “use the shadesmooth and turn the material smooth (“specular” so i didn’t correctly understand that) off”). And sometimes (much more frequently than it sounds) i offensively reacted to that and this led to some conflicts here because i interpreted their words as a pure offense.

It was a big problem of my behavior back then: i could react too offensively and serious to some “minor insult” even if it’s absolutely not an insult in a context, and because of that i was practically “immune to criticism at the moment”, even obvious and constructive one. (fuck i remember i offensively argued to a guy who said that MAC address can be changed because i heard that it cannot be (it was true but only for “hardware” one, which has lower priority than “software” one))

During this time i started actively posting stuff i made in showcase. First thing i posted was the showcase video of structures i made. Some people got already interested in the map (although at this point structures were like the biggest part of the map’s content that were done).

I continued making items, and the next bunch of content consisted of medicine and throwables (???, strange choice, i decided to make them because i already had a concept of them drawn on a paper)
Fortunately there isn’t so much screenshots.

реально я ебал кстати, there’s no spaces because i drew all this stuff using loopcuts and not the texture.

Also i ~~forced~~ asked my friend (Flip, very cool guy tho) to help me with gun models. His models were… uhh…

pretty rough. It’s all my fault tho, because it’s the result of me having very bad modeling skill back then and my poor teaching skill.

He still make some guns for the map sometimes, and his skill got actually improved. Although the modeling is far from his main activity.

I came up with one interesting idea - sort of an SCP-914. The machine (located in ucomms) that uses some “spectral” material to upgrade items: buildings from lower to higher level material (hqm ones to “charged” hqm), ammo to “charged” ammo, and the weapons to their corresponding better analog (for example, MP-5 → MP-7). Later, in January 2022, i came up with a similar idea of item recycler.

We walk on the street under the street lights. The time is around 6 PM, and it's already completely dark. Weather is cloudy, dry and not snowy at all. Panel apartments are on every side. We walk in some yard and i split from the group, my home is in other direction. Now i walk under the yellow street lights alone...

I gonna write the stories like here in a chronological order to set the tone.

In the next bunch i made were the ~~fucking~~ vehicles… And it’s the complete пиздец (untranslatable russian swearing).

So, i made 4 “vehicles”: “Volga”, “Kopeika” (based on lada vaz-2101), “Niva” and “GAZ-69 military”

Vehicle modeling is pretty hard thing (at least in my opinion) that especially requires some experience, detail and proportion understanding to make a decent model. And that’s not about those ones…

shocking content below

And i posted this shit in showcase and received obvious negative feedback. And the most fucking ridiculous thing that i didn’t understand why and victimized myself and some guy even protected me… what a fucking mess…

However, the next part is more positive for me.

Also want to mention that this is the time when Arid came out. Same as elver, i declined it for the first time. But later i played on it more, and i liked it. It became sort of a new standard of quality not only for me, but for the other map makers as well. Not all of them tho. And it’s really sad that SDG stopped contributing to its creator - Renaxon. Although the map actually doesn’t require that much highlight for now, as it became legendary.

So, on December 25th i finally started making large objects for a map. I started with classic soviet panel apartment. Like the modern ones i made, it was initially based on some real plan. Unlike my modern ones, the plan was random and i stopped following it when i made the first room. I just duplicated and mirrored it. Also, i made it with completely random sizes (so i had to resize it then).

As you can see, it doesn’t even look like a house made out of panels. Because i didn’t know about panels back then (most of the PAs’ facades i saw in my life were covered in mineral wool, coating and paint because i live in sochi).

Also i made 9-storey, shops, and 2 basement versions of it a bit later.

Also i tried to make a tree but i didn’t use this model on the map

[дерево мудрый дуб нахуй]

Before 2021 ended, i made a few other objects. The Nuclear Power Plant in 3 forms: regular, building, destroyed. (yeah, back then there were 2 NPPs on the map: building and destroyed, idk why the fuck this region requires that much energy), garages, kiosk (which model i also used for checkpoint). Few hours before the end of the year i started making 12-storey sochi-type apartment. I’m actually amazed how fast i was making those models back then. Although the models’ quality was very far from ideal.

The map and its iterations (0-4) (2022, january-may)

As the year started, i made another few objects for the map, including city’s entrance sign for some reason (?). Also i drew a bunch of graffitis, which don’t have anything interesting.

But the main thing is that i finally created a map with a landscape similar to “final” layout. And as this map was made just for a test (basically it was called Test3) and wasn’t supposed to be released, i called this dev period The Iteration-0 (IT0).

During IT0, i made clothing, melee and tools, as well as many mapping-related stuff, such as medium objects (sad fact: i somehow lost one of the models (old monitor) right after i made it, RIP monik (feb 05 2022-feb 05 2022) >_<),

and ground textures. Also i made other colors for glowstick, for some reason i had only purple one back then.

this mega’s armor had colliders, so you couldn’t damage him through the vest or helmet

some test stuff

my first anim, also i turned normals on peroxide off for some reason

uh oh

The weather is cloudy again. The time is around 4 PM. This time i decide to walk a bit further through the same yards. I walk up and see the old and unchanged panel apartments. There's definitely something unusual with their original look...

Also i found out about Kino’s music during this time. Of couse i knew Tsoi before, but for some reason i haven’t heard it enough to like it before. It just emphasizes the doomer look of the map then, as the map development was directly related to my personal life.

And at this point i considered that there’s enough content to start making the full-sized map. On February ~14th i created the large-sized map called Snowburgh. And it’s the moment where Iteration-1 comes in.

Now the dev process became a bit easier as i could add more assorted thing because the base for the map was already made. And so i added the Forester (as a trader for now) and his hut and underground comms. Also i made even more objects and added food (in very limited amount tho, because i just tired i guess).

the same ubludok i made in the end of 2024

And here’s the February 24th. Ironically, i had been making military-related stuff for a last 3 days.

i don’t have any other screenshots so…

Just gonna beg you the same thing as dizzury - not to associate sb with any ongoing or past political stuff related to russian theme, the map is not about that.

It's rainy now. Classic early spring weather in sochi. "Zvezda po imeni Solntse" is playing in my head...

On March, i started making barricades and furniture items. And i already made most of them in like a week. (I’m still fucking amazed how fast i was making content back then). So i started making some even more assorted stuff for the map again. It’s the dev period i marked as Iteration-2, and i’m not sure if barricades’ development is included in this.

The stuff i was initially making was really random. I made key rooms (like on elver),
[don’t have any screenshots]
computer parts (RAM, GPU, etc.),

i added A FUCKING SERVERS RIGHT TO THE DESTROYED NPP’S CONTROL ROOM just for the sake of adding some very cool loot to the deadzone.

Also i added vases with MALE cHICKENs.

I walk on the street (OH GOD EVERY SINGLE FUCKING STORY HERE STARTS WITH "I WALK"). Recently fallen snow still melts under the light of a bright spring sun.

Although it’s actually pretty hard for me now to remember what was the order of all of this stuff as the early development was… disordered.

Also i started making interiors for the apartments, including the destroyed ones. And that’s what makes this iteration significant.

I walk on the street surrounded by gray concrete apartments. The sky is covered with heavy dark clouds. I enter one of the apartments and find myself in a dusty basement... it was just a dream tho, it's just cool because it's actually based on the map

I forgot to mention that sometimes i played the map with friends on a server. I called it “playtest”, although it’s definitely wasn’t.

Also the funny thing about making an interiors. I made sort of an example of an interior for a single block so i can copy it to other, like, 27 ones. It was out of bounds under the ground, but you could actually even teleport to it.

During this time i even tried to survive on my own map. Don’t remember what i felt like back then, but i tried to play similar version of the map a year later and it was so fucking boring and literally almost unplayable.

those clouds make the map more depressing for some reason

And here comes the Iteration-3.

I made another vehicle - Ural (-4320). I think it looks pretty decent, especially compared to the old vehicles i made in December.

yeah i don’t have better screenshots

Although it’s still nothing compared to the kaktus’ model which i use on the map now thank you kaktie UwU.

SOME GUY COMPLAINED THAT DELTA IS UKRAINIAN MILITARY SYMBOL BUT IT’S ACTUALLY NOT IN THIS CONTEXT. I DIDN’T KNOW THAT THIS TRIANGLE IS DRAWN ON SOME UKR VEHICLES. IT’S THE LORE THING. DON’T FUCKING ASSOCIATE MY MAP WITH ONGOING MILITARY CONFLICTS

This iteration was even more assorted. It introduced some lore notes,

gun attachments,

some objects with a cool visual part (especially the projector and pharmacy sign),

dragon_beast_leZt_v_kadr
(sorry for the shitty quality of this footage, we played with dragonbreast i mean he was amazed yeah (also i’m too lazy to open the old project with this model inside of it))

ground textures transition patterns.

old snow

same old snow but the dirt material has the transition now yeah i just wanted to show the outpost

And the most significant one - remade apartments’ facade.

БЛЯТЬ КАК ЖЕ ЭТО АХУЕННО АХАХАХАХАХАХХАХА

As you can see, most of the changes were mostly cosmetic and visual. And even the main (in my opinion) feature was just an old model remake.

That’s why i connected these two iterations on the timeline.

So, it’s the end of April. And the start point for Iteration-4.

The first thing i added were the military corpse… of course as a gameplay element. They were lootable. Also here i misspelled the hint for some reason.

spoiler just in case

I didn’t know if such thing is allowed in unturned, but now, after the b-map’s half-dead zombies’ elimination quest with almost obvious gore, i guess it’s okay… So wait for the corpse comeback on a new SB!

I got heavily inspired by garry’s mod map called gm_russia at this point and started making some objects for the city. As a direct reference to gmr, i made the water treatment plant. The layout differed pretty hard from original plant tho.

Also i added a bunch of objects that made city feel more interesting i guess.

not city of course

(i didn’t had my own fences back then so i used vanilla ones)
The interesting thing is that i started using noisy textures instead of classic solid ones for some reason.

And what about the technical state of the map/models. It was fucking horrible. It looks like my understanding of modeling didn’t change that much since structures: i still used extrude in parts where it’s better to add a separate shape, still left excessive loopcuts, still used excessive amounts of vertices to make a detail that you couldn’t even see in the game. I still didn’t make any LODs. Fortunately, i at least used textures instead of palette and extra faces.

Speaking of textures, for some reason i used multiple textures that meant to be repeated for one object on a single image. In this case normal modellers usually make separate objects/materials for each texture. And that’s the way i made trees for example, so i don’t know why i didn’t came up with this for other models.

And a little bit about the map’s technical state: the optimisation, especially in the city, was fucking horrible. Mostly because of amount of objects, their polycount and lack of LOD meshes.

remember this fucking lag machine (covered with apartment)

And i started using methods i used to make WTP texture everywhere: on other buildings, ground textures, etc. It definitely changed the general look of the map, not making it much better than it was, but rather making it a bit unique.

idk if using nato symbols is legally ok tho

Also i started actually using ground materials other than snow everywhere.

Then i decided to make my own models for the trees (i used vanilla speedree ones before). And they looked decent enough, especially for the first time. A bit strange, but okay. Also i made some foliage.

their first version

their last version + foliage
Also it looks like it’s (a bit earlier actually, WTC) the point where i started actually making LODs, not just skybox models for buildings.

I tried to experiment with trees’ skybox a bit. I tried making it as a “billboard” (sprite that looks in your direction):

It didn’t turn out very well, so i tried to just make two faces with tree render placed in the shape of cross.

Fine.

A few screenshot of how the map looked after i added the foliage:

also i forgot to mention one interesting idea i had. you see this snow tank? i wanted it to drop tank shell made out of snow that ACTUALLY works. Probably inspired by elver’s town T34

I walk on the street... again... The weather is cloudy, but the temperature is pretty warm already. It's May. The school lessons are almost over, and i decide to go in other direction than i usually go. Here are many pine trees, i think of them much now, as i made one for the map. The kino's "kukushka" plays in my head now... (THE WHITE ALBUM/DRAFT VERSION SOUND COOLER THO)

Almost immediately i started making a cargo dropship model. It was based on russian plane the name of which i forgot.

“Cargo” refers to the shipment company i came up with for the map. It actually came to my mind because of cargo pants from vanilla unturned (i was a big fan of this clothing yeah it sounds fucking ridiculous), you can actually see the color similarity between the pants and cargo logo. Also the map had its own cargo clothing, because i thought that vanilla one is some real cargo outfit and not their style name.

And that’s how the model look.

look, i even had separate models for object one and airdrop one. That was a big progress for me (especially compared to missing LODs and 40k verts cement bag)

Well? I guess. Especially compared to my first air vehicle.

Forgot to mention that i ported it from TT to SB with some minor changes in IT1.

Of course i made an airdrop model as well, with the noisy texture, unlike the plane.

made the mesh transparent so you can see the boxes inside of AD

If you are interested, the loot in airdrop consisted of deadzone stuff, high tier weapon (mostly the NATO ones) and some loot from ~~horde~~ invoke beacon in general.

Speaking of cargo. I remembered one interesting fact. In IT0 i added the hangar with shelves and crates. It was meant to be a cargo’s warehouse. And here i wanted to add one shelf that you could break to parkour on the crates further.

I made my first custom weapon animation with details animated for the flip’s asval, even with the jam anim.

here you can see the new equip anim idk i don’t have any other materials with it
it didn’t have jam tho

All IT4 things i described above take place in time period from May ~5th to 20th. Then i did only mapping stuff and added some bonus stuff.

Alex Rehberg - Rust OST Vol.1 - Safe Zone

I made a new heli model. Based on both the old TT heli and Mi-8 i guess, and as you can see the TT one was used as a reference most of the time.

However, the new model looks a bit better.

looks like i even made the base for its tunnels version, with animated door

turns out that i even made a “tropical” color for it

Also i made some quests for the forester npc (the most generic ones, like “give me a cassette” and “kill the horde”, just for the test) and added new ones as well (Felina, as a survival stuff trader; military guy and the ~~torgash~~ duneman trader guy in a one “settlement” (basement of 12-storey))

and it looks like i fucking lost the build in which i added all the new npcs
so i tried to find the build where i have all this new npcs, but instead i found this

this folder contains 30 objects, and all of them are

this book
the only difference between them is the number (from 1 to 30)
it’s the direct reference to “Big Soviet encyclopedia (third release)”

Not so important, but historically worth mentioning. In this period i changed SB’s masterbundle name from mbtest to snowbugh and added the Snowburgh_ prefix to every asset folder inside of it. Previous name was given to bundle because when i tried the masterbundle tool it rejected snowburgh string for some reason.

On May 31st i wrote Nelson asking for my map to be curated. He obviously rejected it.

Not SB-related, but i made some stuff for TT during this time:

I probably wanted to make sort of a remake of the map, as i got enough skill to do that. But somehow i just abandoned it.

As well as Dustyard’s concepts. Can’t even call it a map, because it was actually nothing more than custom sand material and some other small features (like phys material and reverb) test.

and some random stuff

basically (almost) ps1 game

I guess it’s finally the time when i should explain one thing - why i separated the dev to iterations. Of course i made all this system later. And the main reasons is:

i think it’s cool, and
they precisely represent each dev period, their particular features, look and feel overall. And now i gonna tell you about the biggest one of them. It’s even bigger than all previous history of the map: from Caucasian woods to IT4.

Owaz · July 29, 2025, 8:49pm

One early summer night i was dreaming about SB - i wanted to make new panel apartments: 4-storey ones (like on gmr), more detailed and actually PANEL ones...

Iteration-5 – “Endless run for change”, or “The eternal dev in a room of a panel apartment.” (ПОЧТИ ВЕЧНАЯ ВЕСНА В ОДИНОЧНОЙ КАМЕРЕ) (June 2022 and to this day)

Part-0 (IT5-0/IT5E)

Geneburn - Desolated

So, it’s middle of June, and now i finally decided to make the new, better and more detailed apartment. Like the first one, i decided to make it based on a real apartment’s plan (the apartment’s serie was 1-335/I-335 idk)

From the very start i was making it 1:1 to plan and with (ALMOST, ROOMS WERE TOO WIDE FOR KHRUSCH) correct sizes (they still were incorrect in fact, because i used something like 1 m for the walls and 2,65 w 2,8 h for them because of some shitass door’s size, such a funny fucking butterfly effect)

I wanted to make the texture for it noisy as well. And i made it like the first (WTP’s) one - single image with multiple patterns. It made texturing pretty hard. (at least i made the paint separate, accidentaly. what a fucking comedy)

the paint (separate object)

and everything fucking else (except for frames)

I planned to make like 6 FUCKING VARIANTS of this single house (4 of them were left end and right end variants of them tho), as there were all of them on the reference plan. And it doesn’t include the other types (3-rooms-per-floor (1-335A that is now on sb), 4-storey one, dorm one, etc.)

the original plan

I looked in the original model file, there are actually 6 variants of each end’s model (with solid wall butt, windowed butt and “balconed” butt, each one also had the “replanned” version) and 2 of the middle section (balconies/lodges (balcony outside/balcony inside)). 14 in total. I can barely navigate in the file’s object hierarchy, and i’m sure that it wasn’t easier for me back then.

It also had multiple variants of roof.

sochi style roof thp

So i’ve been making it for like one and a half month (until end of July) because like 3 days after i started i really got slowed down because of other stuff i want and need to do in my life (in other words, i just bored). I didn’t make anything in parallel. And it’s the first time in my entire modding history when i encountered a problem of big projects - you are getting tired before the task gets completed and then you do it slower and slower. My personal solution for this is to make something (not too big) in parallel.

Although i came up with even more apartment (and other) ideas during this time. I wanted to make apartment’s metal roof explorable (like i finally made on one of my new PAs). Also i remember i wanted to add some indoor plants, as well as some special shower gel that does positive effect on your health. And also i wanted to make new farming system where they grow much longer, they give some biological trash along with the fruit/vegetable itself and the only way you can use fertilizer on them is by combining them through crafting (that just makes plant grow a bit faster). Pretty random stuff in general.

Also i started listening to geneburn’s (tarkov) music.

pug

After this model, i abandoned the idea of other apartments for the map for a while. Besides, the summer mapjam 2022 began, so i started making my own map. I decided to make such a Autumn 2001 map port from garry’s mod because theme for this mapjam was “custom gamemodes” and also i like the original map. I started precisely remaking the map’s panel apartment, and the same fucking problem had repeated. I got bored. And here’s the model tho.

sb+nitw reference

So i decided to start making a new nuclear power plant for SB as i wanted this earlier. Initially i was making it in parallel with A’01, but then i abandoned mapjam.

Geneburn - Edge of Darkness

I got bored of making NPP as well (what a fucking disappointment), so i started making some other stuff in parallel with it. Fortunately, the other stuff was pretty small (more variants of trees, i started listening the kukushka again tho, and KARs (AKs-sb2022-sep)).

very stylized aks

And i finally (almost) made the powerplant on the second half of September. It was only the base, and only for the building one. But i made it.

And that’s the point when i got heavily disappointed in the stuff i made during this time.

100% труе неиронично
It felt like the main idea got outdated and lost during the development of all this stuff. So i changed the vector again…

Part-1 (IT5-1)

Geneburn - Dark Horizon

This period overlaps a bit with the previous one - i started making first content related to it on a second half of September before completing an NPP.

The main thing that got changed was obviously the models and textures style. It looks like i suddenly started making REAL unturned style models. And in general, models started looking decent not only for unturned. Also i started using shadesmooth right in blender…

First items were crafting components - basically a remake of the old component system. I got rid of some redundant items and added a new ones. Also there’s now cinderblock instead of random tan kuwait-ass brick, buckets for making some compounds (like concrete with cement and water or the tree glue thing) and the old supply models were remade in general. (I still didn’t complete all this system in 2025 tho)

And that’s the moment where samsara’s wheel started its turnover. I mean… on early October, i started making structures (again, with the new materials and model quality).

As i mentioned before, i changed some random sand brick to cinderblock. But also i used wooden panels instead of regular planks for wooden structures, changed the hqm to a so-called armide (special material instead of just high tier metal) and scrap structures became clean. Unlike the old models, i decided to make new ones without any holes (solid in other words).

scrap

armide

wood of course

cinderblock (higher contrast because you can barely see the pattern with original mat at least in blender)

concrete

I experimented with the wooden structures. I added the transparent “tree glue” layout and some hay to it.

But i didn’t like how it looks. So i abandoned this idea.

On the end of October i met Osad0k (on the same russian discord server i mentioned above). Back then he was new to modding, so we made friends easily. Suddenly he started getting very successful in modding. And i didn’t like it because i was envious about it, although i denied that and instead said some bad stuff about him of which i’m really ashamed now (although osad actually said some questionable stuff sometimes, nothing more than just a jokes tho). On the one hand, this motivated me to improve, especially in the end of all this stuff. On the other, it led to some conflicts on this server in which i of course was wrong and felt the consequences myself. Fortunately, once all this stuff faded away (after one incident) and i had changed. And we still are friends (привет диззури кстати :3).

During this time i started playing tarkov and also got an access to A6 playtest (don’t think that it’s some sort of a classified data thing, especially since danaby ~~got 1984’d out of unturned~~ left). And they also impacted my view of the map.

Although the polaris’ gameplay… wasn’t ideal at all, in my opinion it actually had its unique feeling. I think it’s the thing at which danaby is really good, because elver also has its own atmosphere.

I came up with an idea to change the Delta Military Base (that looked like the most generic unturned military base and even used reskinned vanilla barracks) to Delta Outpost - buildings complex used for mining armide. Also it had an underground facility, which i imagined similar to polaris’ sewers and probably the elver’s metro. Later i also added an element from EFT Reserve’s underground complex (D2) - “Убежище” arrow sign.

So, i started making one building for the outpost complex and abandoned this concept completely. At least it sounded cool tho.

Also i made some tunnels in like 3 hours :3.

I completed the structures on November ~17th (almost the same day as the previous time i made them), and then almost immediately i started making medicine.

A few days and here it is.

And a week later and here are the throwables

This is the 1:1 the order i made those items for the map a year ago.

Then i added these items to the map.

Alex Rehberg - Rust OST Vol.1 - Wastes

For some reason i decided to make some logistic objects. I made them…

Yeah and also i use the same test map for objects that i used for the original TT.

And then (according to previous dev chronology) i tried to make the volga again. And again it turned out not so well.

at least now it just looks hilarious…

comparison

смотрите она популярна, даже мемы с ней делают

Alex Rehberg - Rust OST Vol.1 - Excavator Theme

On December 25th, in one day i made my old dream come true - the 4-storey apartment like on gm_russia.

tried to make screenshots similar to old sb’s one

remember?
Its plan is actually a 1:1 as in gmr.

Also i already showed it in SBDB#0.

During those few days before the new year i usually feel the most freedom in modding, mapping and modeling. Probably because of winter holidays (in russian schools they usually start on the first day of week that was "cut" by the new year)

I made another apartments. There were 2 variants of them: first one was “precisely recreated” (visually, exterior) from the panel apartments of my city, and the other one was based on the old ones’ (IT3) look. The interior was took from K-7’s plan i guess (although the sochi’s ones i used as a reference were I-335AS)

don’t have a good screenshot of it now

Also as i usually do in the very end of the year i started ~~fucking around with my map because i can~~ making/adding assorted things on/to the map.

And so i added flip’s AR model and the base for the new location (part of the city)

On the very start of January 2023 i made more logistic objects (i also shown in SBDB#0) - barrels, shelves, more crates.

And another abandoned thing (and the only ACP-related i made during IT5) - Snowburgh_Bunker_0.

I wanted it to be placed next to the toxic swamp.

And that’s where the this productive, but still pretty experimental and unstable period ends. The next one is still IT5-1 tho - they are stylistically too similar, and it’s just more stable and slow.

I’m not gonna describe every single part in detail here as i already shown many things in previous devlogs ([ссылка на сбдб0]). Just gonna show all the stuff in a chronological order and do a little commentary on it.

End of January: new military base concept.

Now it was inspired by tarkov’s reserve (main administrative brick building + garages), but still had many differences (barracks based on vanilla ones, “airfield”).

don’t look at those billboard towers it’s a placeholder

And also i still wanted to add underground facility (D2) to it.

Early February: furniture objects.

Nothing really special.

End of February - Early March: new KRs; first version.

Looks like the animations were more dynamic before.

also it’s aim was broken because of that gangsta ass 45 degree aimdown

jam

Middle of March - Early April: barricades.

No-build setup, made out of very cool sysadmin stuff

metal stuff

wood stuff

lore stuff

and some cancelled stuff

During this time, specific events had started in the community tho.

Middle of April: rural houses.

Remake of the Forester’s log house. Also i added other ones.

partially inspired by tarkov

End of April - Very start of May: GTS/UComms + Bakelite Screwdriver (As a key for it)

Also remake of the old one. I used one Luhansk blogger’s video in which they (he and other, ukrainian ones) walk in Kyiv’s GTS/City Telephone Network.

here he took a screwdriver with a bakelite handle and opened the hatch (also he said that he found it on some factory recently)

so i took this as a reference

very epic render i guess

in game

some random bullshit

May: apartments extension.

I tweaked 5-storey apartments a bit and also made shop/basement/cap variants for them.

June: military clothing.

Almost all this clothing is based on real russian gear.

Also i made iskra and galettes from tarkov. Not for sb.

End of June: some custom stuff + new KRs; edit

I tweaked the KR models a bit.

Also i added a molotov cocktail with new effects.

July: military base extension.

I made the military tower (from tarkov), extended the admin (made it more similar to eft), added med block and the most important - underground facility (D2).

The two main things why it took so long to make is:

it’s pretty big project i didn’t make any concept for, so i had to make it up on the fly.
the detail and quality of the model had grown up

Early August: foliage remake

I remade the old (May 2022) pines and bushes and added many new ones (birches, aspens, grass, etc.)

As you can see below, i suddenly changed the models’ style, in a good way. Idk why. Anyway, i gonna call the following part a:

Part-2 (IT5-2) - infdev

August - End of October: misc objects

I made an insane amount of misc medium objects (> 200 i guess) during this period.

gonna add it as a single image because it looks like the forum rejected my uploads because it considered them a spam

November: foliage remake (attempt 2)

I didn’t like the look of foliage i made in aug, so i remade it with my new style.

Also during this specific time i started taking references from real cities that are not Sochi (and what’s more important - northern ones)

I looked at some Arkhangelsk’s foliage on google maps’ street views.

December - January 2024: SB_PA_0

I guess it doesn’t require any commentary. Just gonna place the early screenshots of its development here.

Also i think that the entire 2024 development cycle is documented well enough in SBDB#1 and SBDB#2.

So, what we can see now?

Initially, IT5 was planned to be sort of a big improvement for what the map looked like before. But it became rather an infinite remake of what the map looked like. Later, need of remaking content that was already made in IT-5 had appeared. Fortunately, now i feel like it all got stabilized.

Sometimes i feel like SB is just a modding sandbox for me

Also want to talk about things i already made in 2025 and plan to make now. So…

SB Devlog #3

Инструкция по выживанию - северная страна (Survival guide - my northern country)

To be honest, i didn’t make anything (big) for the map since this year started until May. Because of some personal stuff (i was too busy until March) and the last events in the community.

Actually, i made a few furniture objects (just continued what i started in 2024) and started making SB_PA_2 (panel apartment based on arkha’s I-335AK). And yeah. I was in Arkhangelsk at the very beginning of the year.

(also during this time i made some unrelated to sb or unturned stuff)

So, in May i officially came back to dev. I started making some industrial+railway stuff. Why? Just for fun. I like railways.

i also have the video with the motor’s modeling process, but youtube has restricted me from posting for next 24hs because of hosudarstvo panelka modeling situation

Next, i imported everything i’ve done since December 2024 (yeah just furniture and that industrial stuff) and started thinking of what i should do next.

I decided to make that SB_PA_2 model. Here’s its reference tho:

(yeah, i was in arkha again, in June)

But before that, i wanted to remake the buildings’ proportions a bit. I felt like the previous PAs were too big. So i decided to “shrink” the SB_PA_1 (that destructible apartment’s source model) a bit. As well as modernize it (i wanted to do that for a while).

…

yeah of course it looks better now… and now it has pipes system as well…

that’s what i meant when i said like “sb is a sort of dev sandbox”

look, even the abbreviations match: SB - SandBox, SnowBurgh

Finally, i made some garages. And that’s it for now.

Also i want to update foliage… again…

To be serious, i want to update the foliage for the sake of realism and what i really want the map to look like now. Here’s the “WIP” variant of some previously “leafy” stuff:

And also kaktus made this cool mtlb for me :3

And now that’s actually it. Finally. 55k symbols of raw text + markdown behind.

In conclusion, want to quote what i once said: Snowbruh is a map with development lore much bigger that the map’s one. I intentionally wrote Snowbruh instead of Snowburgh.

I think that this map’s development history is more personal thing for me than the map itself.

I probably gonna lost almost all the communication to this community after this forum’s closure. But remember one thing: i will work on SB until this game completely dies/i lose physical possibility to continue making it. Maybe it will be released sometime.

Wanted to place some additional stuff here.

2024

And finally
Just look at this cool photo :3 (from second chechen campaign)

Some contacts (if the forum already archived and you want to tell me something):

Our dev discord - DelTauDev

My discord (DM) - owaz

My steam - Steam Community :: 0L3G

SDGNelson · July 30, 2025, 5:21pm

Congratulations on making so much progress in your modding/gamedev journey! It’s really apparent how much your talents have improved over the years of progress photos.

Although you mention less contact with the community with the forum closing, I hope you will consider continuing sharing in the subreddit, Discord, and Steam as Snowburgh develops!