Q3ct4

[cityy]

Hello everyone (:

After a small break I started working on a new duel/ffa(3-4 players) map.

[lvlshot]http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/5441/shot0000cb.jpg[/lvlshot]

Looking forward to release an alpha this evening.

[AEon]

I like the lighting... could turn out to become a really neat map.

[cityy]

***Alpha 0.3***

Link: http://cityy.explicits.de/uploads/maps/q3ct4_a03.zip

*.map file is included - for those who would like to take a look into it.

I would like to hear what folks think about the (item) layout. I hope you enjoy.

hehe AEon, but it's only ambient light (15) at the moment =D

[AEon]

Using your convenient map:

• [lvlshot]http://img690.imageshack.us/img690/7199/q3ct41b.jpg[/lvlshot]

• I took a closer look at you "brown" doorways: The inner arc is divided into *3* patches, instead of just using one. This wastes tris and presently also creates sparklies. It should help to rebuild the doorways once cleanly, to then copy/paste it everywhere else.
• Just noted you changed the layout, as compared to the map image above ...
• You may want to consolidate the design of all your JPs, e.g. use a cut-in half-circle for all of them, just like for the RG JP.
• Your 90° stairs will also probably need to be created very carefully. Presently the create overdraw inside the stair wall.
• The 2nd JP (from the left in image), does not let you jump down from the upper LG area. You might want to carve into the wall more, to let the player jump down *past* the JP trigger. Presently you tend to hit that trigger.
• The top left corridor of the map, felt a bit dead. The shards are not really much of a motivation to take that path, I had thought of putting a RA here, maybe.
• The TPs had me wondering a while, i.e. how useful they are, but the seem to be fun to use, so they are OK.
• The RG pool is a funny idea. You may want to rethink the dead end here though... maybe.
• I really like the MH arena, very neat area to fight. It may be interesting to make this the largest area in the map, by expanding it a bit. Now you would only need to "spiff-up" the other two arenas.
• Note to make all your stairs detail, and to cover the floor under the stairs with structural caulk brushes. (Did not look at the .map).
• Remember to caulk behind patches, in the image behind the PG room's wall patch.

I like the map, and it is fun to play.

[cityy]

***Alpha 0.4***

Link: http://cityy.explicits.de/uploads/maps/q3ct4_a04.zip

Changes:

- reworked the doorways
- reworked JPs
- tried to clean up the 90 degrees stairway
- replaced the YA at the RG with a RA (Not sure about this)
- reworked RA JP trigger
- added some stuff to the RG/RL/RA room
- converted stairs to detail brushes
- added caulk behind the JP at the YA/+5s (simply forgotten that)
- moved the two 25s into the top right hallway (see screenshot above)
- added some clip brushes at the doorways

Feedback:

The map feels a bit unbalanced Action is going on at the RA and in the middle. The LG area is a bit dead but I'm not sure what todo to change this. I also don't like the position of the YA at the +5s.

What do folks think about the RG TP exit? I wanted to add something on the platform but I wasn't sure what. Maybe some shards..

ToDo:

- fix RG TP exit position

Off topic:

Xaero uses a f****** aimbot

[AEon]

• I am still seeing one of the thin patches in the doorway arches, causing the sparklies.
• The water level in the RG pools could be lowered by 4u, flush with the floor geometry looks a bit weird.
• The (top right in image) room, that is the lowest part of the map, is kinda weird IMO. It breaks gameflow because you need to jump down into it and then jump out of it again. To fix this, either bring the floor up to the level of the TP (nearby) or cut another path into the wall, exiting in a side wall of the MH, to give the player an additional exit from that pit.
• RA placement, IMO, is a bit to easy to get to, it would be better to place it in a more dangerous area, the previously mentioned pit would be one possible location.
• Try swapping the LG with the PG, to get more action in the current LG arena.
• The LG arena TP leading to the YA TP might not be really required. From the lower TP a 90° stairs + a JP could also lead up to the upper level YA, maybe.
• I am not so sure about the pool and the RG. Yes it works, the player will normally be too lazy to actually get the RG, but that may not be the best thing. Have no good suggestion presently, so you might as well keep it.
• Another 1 or 2 50H might help the map.
• Something on your 90° stairs might be nifty, some 5H or 5A, also as audio cue.
• I am also not quite sure about some of your connecting corridors, from the MH arena's RL to the RG arena, and the other "southern" doorway to the LG arena. Will take a look at the map tomorrow in-editor, maybe I can suggest something here.
• To give the LG arena some "height", you might try to raise the floor by some steps, compared to the MH arena. To avoid having too much of the map on the level of the MH arena floor.

Still a blast to play

[cityy]

I am still seeing one of the thin patches in the doorway arches, causing the sparklies.

Which one exactly? I thought that I fixed them all :/

New version tomrrow. I feel glad that you enjoy the map (:

[AEon]

I saw it with every doorway I looked at in the RA arena. I'll take a closer look at this in-editor.

Maybe it has another issue, e.g. the "endcap"s (or however they are called) are cutting into the arc of the doorway. You might also look into the "upper edge" "narrow" arcs of the doorways, i.e. parts touching the walls above the doorways. It may be possible to "pull" the patch right through the wall, thus again halving the tris. But this needs testing for sparklies.

Update: I took a look at the doorway right behind the RA... the reason you have such weird issues is that the vertices of your patches are *not* on grid (well the largest possible grid at least), plus you were trying to place the endcaps in you geometry of the doorway arch... cutting right through it. After fixing all this, everything matches up nicely in-editor and in-game I don't see sparklies. Had to lower the door by 8u, but that should be OK. Will build a door version 16u less wide, using support brushes around it, to guarantee that a copy/paste of your doorway will not require cutting up walls additionally to avoid sparklies. Will up it tomorrow.

Pardon my asking... Are you fully aware of how to avoid sparklies at the edges between patches and brushes? If not I could write up a few things with images on what to look out for. In short: The brushes that touch patch edges have to have the exact same length as the patch's edge to avoid sparklies along *that* edge. There are a few exceptions, e.g. a cylinder placed on a floor does not require cutting up the floor (would not be possible anyway).

[AEon]

OK, I created two versions of the doorway:

• One currently placed in the doorway behind the RA uses support brushes around the patches, making the doorway less wide and high slightly, but lets you copy/paste the complete doorway patches + brush frame into all the other doorways without having sparklie issues with the patches. Brush edges mitered.
• The other doorway does not have these support brushes, and is floating in the middle of the RA arena. (This may be the better version for you though).

Note: I placed all the doorway patches into a func_group to ensure that they all use the same LOD when you look at them from a distance. To select the func_group (blue lines in-editor) use Ctrl+Alt-Left-Click (on any one of the patches, might require more than one click to select them). Note: func_group is neat to fix LOD issues, but is can cause lighting/shadow issues, so you may want to test Ungroup Entity, should lighting be an issue.

Other notes:

• All the JPs brushes (not the triggers) can be made detail, and all your doorway brushes as well.
• Note: When you resize patches by simply dragging them in "edge mode", this *will* place the patch vertices off-grid. I used a 4u grid to put them on grid again:
  • Turn on 4u grid (3-key).
  • Select patch (Shift+click).
  • Go into vertex mode (v-key).
  • Drag a selection box over all patch vertices (LMB-drag), turning them dark blue.
  • Force the vertices to grid, via Ctrl+g.
• I noted a inverted bevel under the wall patch next to the MH arena's JP. You caulked the patch face near the detail steps. You can delete such "unseen" patches.
• In-side wall patch of 90° stairs shows sparklies... the first brush step seems to be the issue. I cut into the wall next to that patch, to match brush and patch height, but the "first 90° step" is the issue here, it needs to be moved away from the patch edge.

If you want to copy over parts of my edit, I recommend you run GTKradiant twice, and select/copy/paste between editors. Do not use my map directly, if you are running a version of GTKradiant that is *not* v1.2.13 (the version I am using). I noted that between editor versions some entities and texture alignments can get messed up.

• Map update: q3ct4_alpha4_ae01.zip

To avoid patch issues in the future, please take a close look at how I aligned the vertices in the doorway, and compare them with your own.

Hope this helps.

[cityy]

***Alpha 0.5***

Link: http://cityy.explicits.de/uploads/maps/q3ct4_a05.zip

Changelog:

- lowered water level of the RG pool
- replaced the RA with a YA
- added some more 25s
- reworked the YA area ( near GL )
- replaced all my doorways with AEon's doorways - thanks AEon (: Also the advice about the 3 sided brushes helped me a lot.Though it took me some time to figure out how to select a "func_group" in radiant 1.5. You need to select one brush of the group and then press ctrl+alt+E.

Feedback:

- The railgun is a really important weapon on this map - if not the mostt important. I'm still not sure about the RG area - at least I want to keep the JP but maybe remove the pool..
- the LG area is still a bit dead (decided not to switch LG with PG since LG > PG). Can't find reasons for this.. maybe it's only bot behaviour..

Other stuff:

- did you already discover all the nice rail angles in the map?! :b
http://img69.imageshack.us/gal.php?g=shot0013.jpg
Really usefull if you play duels.
- Damn, I forgott to add +5s to the 90 degrees stairs..
- I really appreciate AEon's feedback but some other opinions would also be really nice!

[AEon]

Some ideas:

• MH platform, extrude one step (one yellow grid unit), to make it less of a ledge.
• The closed off (ceiling) area near the LG IMO works with the steps, bit angly/clunky though, maybe the gameflow here can be improved with a few more rounded off corners.
• It might be nice to cut into this closed off area's ceiling, and place something like "planks" on the ceiling to create interesting shadows in this area, plus make the room brighter again. The shadows from the planks in the MH area are something that really looks neat.
• The TPs in the LG arena in this setup, IMO, are useless, and should be completely removed. The player can just as well use the LG JP. Placing the lower TP where it used to be would make more sense IMO. You might want to think about connecting the different arenas with the TPs instead, e.g. from the RG arena to the LG arena or into the MH arena.
• The simple TPs look nice, as a "temp fill-in" put water into the TP frame ... should look nice too. You might like to miter the TP frames to save a few tris.
• The TP exist for the RG also feels kinda gimmicky. Maybe I just don't see it's tactical worth.
• The PG is too close to the wall, IMO.

[cityy]

@ AEon:

The TPs in the LG arena in this setup, IMO, are useless, and should be completely removed. The player can just as well use the LG JP. Placing the lower TP where it used to be would make more sense IMO. You might want to think about connecting the different arenas with the TPs instead, e.g. from the RG arena to the LG arena or into the MH arena.

The TP exist for the RG also feels kinda gimmicky. Maybe I just don't see it's tactical worth.

I agree that the TPs don't make much sense but - IMO - TPs across the whole map don't work well. Maybe in TDM it would be fine but in duel it would be very annoying - 1 player could do some frags and then play the famous TP game - this way it would be hard to regain control.. I'm trying to find a good balance between the game modes. Gonna mess arround with it (:

Edit:

I'm pretty sure I wont move the lower TP in the LG room to it's old place. I like those to 25s there - pretty usefull but dangerous to grab
I already have an idea for the TPs btw. Maybe it's gonna be surprising ]:>

[cityy]

No update today - tho I have some screenshots (:

[lvlshot]http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/3083/q3ct4edit.jpg[/lvlshot]

Added some detail. I'm currently thinking of a direction to go with the design.

[lvlshot]http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/885/q3ct4edit2.jpg[/lvlshot]

This area needs some support. Tho I have no idea what to do here yet.

[lvlshot]http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/117/q3ct4edit3.jpg[/lvlshot]

Added a new, small corridor leading to the teleporter which was at the LG.

Edit:

I was browsing through Sock's photography pages (http://www.simonoc.com/pages/materials.htm) today. Really impressive stuff

[AEon]

Map is getting an "Italian" vibe. Interesting.

[cityy]

Some more Screenshots:

[lvlshot]http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/5214/q3ct4ingame2.jpg[/lvlshot]

The previously posted shot but now ingame.

[lvlshot]http://img25.imageshack.us/img25/9796/q3ct4ingame.jpg[/lvlshot]

Added some detail to the LG room.

[lvlshot]http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/8481/q3ct4ingame1.jpg[/lvlshot]

There is some weird light where it shouldn't be...

Other stuff:

I had some problems adding a skybox after including all this height detail. What I did was puting some kind of half box over the map and filling the holes with caulk brushes. I would appreciate if someone could look into it when I release the next update.

[AEon]

Your stairs look a bit wide, you might like to either add a angled brush in the middle, at the angle of the steps, to visually loosen up the "mass" of steps, or maybe make the steps less wide and use ramps on the left and right.

About the skybox, I wanted to mention this as a tip a while back: When you have a wall, and place a skybox brush right on top of it, then at the top edge of the wall you will see black shadow seams. To avoid this give the upper edge of all walls, e.g. a 8u wide top, thus placing the skybox brush 8u *away* from the top edge of the wall. Presently doing just that in AEdm7...

[cityy]

Your stairs look a bit wide

This may be because of my fov - tho I like the idea of two stairways seperated by a brush in mid.

Presently doing just that in AEdm7...

Hehe, I can imagine that this is a bit annoying on such a big map :b Didn't know about the skybox thingie - I don't think I have any brush connected directly with the skybox - even tho I'll check it again.

[AEon]

Forgot to mention... the trick with the Skybox is to cover each room and arena with a "half-box", and *not* use one large one. It is usually no problem to look from one room into the skybox of the next one (usually ). You basically treat the skybox the way you would close the room with a normal ceiling. If you still have problems, I'll take a look at the .map.

[cityy]

the trick with the Skybox is to cover each room and arena with a "half-box", and *not* use one large.

Ooops.. I put a "half-box" over the entire map. This seems to be the same as putting one big box over the map... Or do you think it would work?

[AEon]

It works all right, but it is almost as bad as creating a box map. Vis cannot occlude anything this way, the engine must assume that everything is visible (well most of the time).

Note: If you have something like a clock tower in the middle of the map, and plan to be able to see it from all over the map, i.e. other arenas, you will probably need to use one big half-box skybox.

Trouble is, what I suggested - skybox on a per room basis - implies that your walls are always high enough to hide anything tall behind that wall. When you look at AEdm7, you'll notice that the buildings have the same outdoor height throughout, only in the RL arenas looking outward of the map do I vary the height significantly.

[Silicone_Milk]

didn't know that about the skybox thing. I've always used one giant skybox to cover everything. Makes a lot of sense though.

[AEon]

Note that the compiler does some clever things if you stick with geometry that stays at right angles. E.g. if a lot of your "walls" are the same height and flat, the compiler with create a horizontal cut through most of your half-box. This can actually lead to automatic cutting off of areas. But I would not count on things like that.

As always, one has to do some test compiles to see what is happening with vis.

Also note, my "tips" are *very* conservative, because I try to avoid potentially ugly situations. You folks may well be able to pull off the one-skybox thing. Though as mentioned I'd not recommend it.

[Silicone_Milk]

Yeah, I had always assumed the compiler would make a horizontal cut automagically for me.

Still, it's better to be absolutely sure the vis is sealed off than assume that the compiler will take care of the work for you.

[AEon]

On the horizontal "portal" cut... if the compiler does not do it, a horizontal hint brush would let you "force" this. That may help. But such "open box" maps always have the tendency to show inexplicable behavior in vis. E.g. you look at a structural wall, but the engine draws everything behind it, even though it actually should not.

[cityy]

***UPDATE - Alpha 0.6***

Link: http://cityy.explicits.de/uploads/maps/q3ct4_a06.zip

[lvlshot]http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/6343/q3ct406.jpg[/lvlshot]

Changelog:

- added some more detail
- moved the LG TP
- added another TP which is connected with the RG TP
- worked on the skybox
- made some TPs look like "doors" - this is not final yet..
- a lot of other stuff (:

Feedback:

- what do you think about the LG/YA room TPs?
- I have no idea what todo with the area over the MH.. removing the wall would make it too open, IMO. Tho with the wall it feels a bit strange.
- Could you please take a look at the skybox AEon? :/ It's a bit messed up because of all the height detail... I believe there is much room to optimize here.

Other Stuff:

- rspeeds are way better than in my last map (:

Edit:

- added a screenshot