[Beta] pukka3tourney7

[sumatra]

OK. I packed up a new beta. As I mentioned before, only slight changes to the version before.
Mostly I altered the items, like illustrated in the picture some posts above. And today I expanded the higher YA area. More space to fight now.

BETA 011


I'm freakin' interested in your thoughts. Go and check it out.

Thanks!
sum

P.S. I hope you got your flashlights with you, it's getting dark out there... hope it's not too dark...

[Anthem]

Ah, the rain isn't in the pk3. There are missing texture lines all over the map.

[sumatra]

Fixed the link, hope it works now. If not, just let me know..

[Hipshot]

Hmm, the rain...
It's too much swaying att the same time, too fast I think.
You might consider adding some slight white fog to this...

[Anthem]

Well, the rain works now. I really like what you did with the Red Armor. Makes it a bit harder to get unless it's clear. I have to reiterate, though. I am not really clear on the theme you are trying to create. It seems as though this map is all body and no soul at the moment. Perhaps you can enlighten us as to what path you are taking with the theme?

That aside, it seems the game play is evolving nicely. The map is very balanced, but it's very forgiving. It's not a very large map, but it has more armor than q3dm6 (which is quite on the larger side). This is a bit like "Blood Run" without the different levels. While this isn't a bad thing per se, it's not exactly a good thing. It makes the map highly fast paced but also very even. There may be many confrontations, but far fewer points will be scored. On larger maps, it's usual to score less, but when all the items are so close together, it's hard not to have at least some sort of stack all the time. This will cause both players to be closer in scoring, which could be good. I don't know, I'm sort of rambling here because I'm not sure what to say.

It seems that part of the map is rather neglected as well:



The other portion of the map holds RA, RG, RL, YA, MH, GL and SG. It may be a good area for the person to stay low and try to sneak up on the opponent from a fresh spawn (since one can get YA and RL), but if the other player has control over MH and RA, he or she probably also controls the other YA and the majority of the weapons.

[foralarx2k3]

Beta 11:

RL to YA:- That's better chap ... no need to back up or slow down to hop from the RL direct to the YA platform anymore now that you've recessed the YA plaform back a bit and I love the little power box on the wall giving you the option to hop up when coming up the stairs from the LG area towards the RL. Also if you miss the jump coming from the RL, then there is no slowdown to simply use the teleporter anymore ..

RA area:- Much better ... only two small obs. I have are a) VQ3 Bots can't do the TP to RA jump (yet) and end up going round in circles. 2) I kept getting snagged by the broken fence, trying to jump from the platform going up the stairs. I know you want to make it a little harder to get at .. but it became slightly annoying after a few rounds.

Speaking of bots getting stuck I noticed that the Bot got stuck on the RA pit JP and just kept going up and dropping back down by the rear wall. Not sure why this is.

Item layout:- Item layout makes much more sens as well and it's certainly working for me. RG over the MH is awesome and it really works on that ledge.

Visuals:- I quite like em, where others may not and think they are coming along nicely sir, much more moody. I really like the structual detail on the walls and the recessed lights at the bottom of the walls by the JP from the LG corridor ... very pleasing on the eye. Also the fencing around the tops of the walls is a great little touch..(forgot to mentions that about beta8). The wooden panels on the floor of the TP exit platform and the RA platform are nice as well.

Nice update overall

Ian.

[dichtfux]

Item layout is fun and the MH spot made me use the passage at GL much more. If the MH isn't available, the jump to that ledge using the pipes also makes more sense now, the RG is worth it.

I agree on what foralarx said on the new RA area, it's better but atm it feels like a small dead end there in the broken fence.

On the bot problem: it looks a bit strange when they're walking in the air but you could consider making a small bridge out of bot-clip for them. I'd prefer that they take RA, I don't care if they look strange for a second.

To me the theme looks like a prison at night, especially the fencing at the top and those watch towers. I'm not sure about the yellow lights in the floor, they look a bit too high-tech compared with the rest imo. Matter of taste I guess.

I gotta play more when I get back from the library.

Most of the time I just run through maps and look at stuff these days. I didn't even play one of those great-looking contest maps I gotta admit. But I've played this one quite a lot, can't really say why. Guess that's good. And I'm also in the mood to play some of the other maps now.

[sumatra]

Hey thanks for the quick feedback again.

@Hipshot:
I'll have a look at the rain shader again, polishing it by reducing the amount of drops.
I already had some fog in there. But it interacts with other shaders (envmaps) and causes some bad looks. Catchword shaderstages. Any idea how to solve that?

@Anthem:
The theme is based on an old prison, dichtfux is the first one who recognized it. I think I have to add some more detail to make it clear, like grates and stuff. I'm really happy about any photo reference material that you guys can bring in. So the theme is still worked on. Still not sure if I keep the yellow lights.

I don't see the map divided in those areas.
I see it more this way: One side holds RA, YA, RL, other side YA, MH, RL, RG, LG.
That's why I want to keep the RA area slowing you down a bit.

@Foralarx:
Thanks for your kind words. I'll try to improve the botbehaviour in the future releases. But first of all this map is to be played online. :-)
And I also have a look on the RA ledge fence again.

@dichtfux:
Ye, you got it. The development of the visuals is focused on a prison theme.
Would really liek to hear some further thoughts if you got.

Thanks!

[Anthem]

The map isn't divided in those areas, per se, but the juxtaposition between them is lacking balance. There are barely any resources around that area. It looks rather bare compared to the rest of the map.

[Salinga]

Played the beta... are you going to add environmental sounds to the map? I am always a bit dissappointed when a realistic looking map doesn't sound realistic (to me it's like a nice looking meal without aroma). With sound a map becomes "alive".

[sumatra]

The map isn't divided in those areas, per se, but the juxtaposition between them is lacking balance. There are barely any resources around that area. It looks rather bare compared to the rest of the map.

Ah OK, now I get what you mean. Yes, I agree. But I see the RL/YA/LG are as a healing spot for the lower player to come back. MH isn't far away as well. Maybe you have some ideas to improve the 'middle' area, the bare one?

@Salinga:
Well, I have never put much into sounds in maps. Do you know any free ressources regarding cool athmospheric soundfiles?

@Hipshot:
You know how to fix the fog problem that I mentioned above?

[cityy]

For the sounds: http://www.quake3world.com/forum/viewto ... 10&t=41581

[Salinga]

If it's okay with you I will use your beta and put some sound into it, mostly from freesound.org. I am not new to this, since I put sound to my Elite Force conversions of Q3A maps; which was possible because EF has a big sound library from the single player portion of the game.

[Hipshot]

Hmm... the fog problems...
Do you use shaders with sort 6 on them?

[sumatra]

Hey,
@cityy and Salinga:

Thanks for the sound ressources.
Very great database. I'll see what I can use, if I get in trouble I'll contact you Salinga, but I'll try it on my own first.. Thanks though.

@Hipshot:
Well, I'm not really familiar with the sort key.
Now I have one big brush over the whole map and the sky is drawn with/without from different angels.
Here 2 Screenies to illustrate:





In the second one you see, there is a hard edge with/without fog in the sky. When I fly up I even get the following error message and quake crashes:
SHADER_MAX_VERTEXES HIT IN FILLCLOUDSKYSIDE ()

It looks very athmospheric, woudl really like to add fog, but I think it doesn't work whilst using a environmental skybox (with 2 cloud stages)...

[Hipshot]

Ah I see now...
You can't "fix" that the way you might want too...

What you need to do is, use q3map_noFog on the sky shader, then under the clouds add a mask and color it as the fog... and blend it with, well, "blend".

[ShadoW_86]

Hipshot, you sure about nofog? I can't remember it for 100% atm, but I think that Q3 does not support it. But as I said, I can be wrong, and I'm too lazy atm to check it .

[sumatra]

Wow, thanks for the quick response. I'll try that later and give you a report.

[Hipshot]

Uh? Nofog makes the sky not being affected by fog... then he creates a mask with the fog color to "fake" it.

[sumatra]

Well Hipshot, it works! Thanks, great advance.
Now the lightbeams fit perfect and I lost the rain again.

Here some WIP shots:

Inside parts.


More detail on the higher YA area, added watchtower.


Upper RL got roof.


I added barbed wire instead of the rails for more prison looks.


Broke up the topline with some bare building structures.


Hope you like. Gn8

[Anthem]

Lovely, great to see it coming together. The barbed wire looks cool.

Thinking of names for this map yet? "Incarcerated", "Confined"?

I'm glad to see you working on the theme a bit, it definitely needed it.

[dichtfux]

Wow, that looks so like some great progress to me!

[sumatra]

Thanks guys. I'm really glad I satisfied your graphical (and visual-logical) thirst, Anthem.
The names sound great, maybe I'll pick one of those.

Here is another beta:

BETA 012

I would like to get feedback especially on the following to-do-points:

- finishing visuals, polishing
- adding last details
- finetuning itemset, no big chances anymore, even though I would like to have had the PG in there...
- any errors
- bots (but I haven't put much into optimizing bots)
- hinting (I am very new to hinting, maybe you have some proper suggestions)
- something that is a general burning issue to you

Beforehand I want to thank all of you for the great feedback that made this map a better one....

[dichtfux]

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

There's a horrible repeating sound all the time that drives me mad, I can't play this.

The console says sth like warning using default sound for wind_01.wav and the same for tele.wav. Guess those are missing or something.


EDIT: You can load OSP and do s_ambient 0 if you wanna play this version.

Wow, this looks so much better than the last version! Great work on that! Just played a few mins, only wanted to report this broken plant atm.

[Anthem]

The sounds weren't included, and there seems to be a problem with Sock's plant textures. Sort those out and the pk3 bit should be fine.

Anyway, I really like the direction in which you have taken this map. While the gameplay is a tad basic (very circular) it works well, and it will probably make for some good gameplay. One small thing I will recommend is that you add decals to various walls (especially the grey, very rectangular brick textures). doing so will add a bit of variance and break up the monotony of the texturing. It looks pretty nice, so well done. Also, think of a great name for it!


Edit:
Console messages (since the ss is so small):

WARNING: could not find sound/pukka3tourney7/wind_01.wav - using default

WARNING: could not find sound/pukka3tourney7/tele.wav - using default

trying textures/sockter/grass01.TGA...
trying textures/sockter/grass01_back.TGA...