kaz4dm1 alpha

Post by **Kaz** » Wed Jan 10, 2007 5:16 pm

x post from ESR:

I was trying to keep this sorta under-wraps until the competition was over, but I'm not making too much headway harassing people on IRC for feedback, so I figured I'd just go on and come out with a public alpha.

I'd really like to craft this particular layout to play as smoothly as possible, so I'd love some feedback regarding how I might improve the flow and whatnot. The item placement is a little hasty, I've only tweaked it a little, so that can use a lot of work as well.

Here's an obligatory screenshot for your viewing pleasure, but it's entirely bland at the moment:

[lvlshot]http://kaz.quakedev.com/junk/kaz4dm1_1.jpg[/lvlshot]

Download: http://kaz.quakedev.com/junk/kaz4dm1.zip

Thanks in advance for any responses!

Post by **Lukin** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 2:57 pm

The flow is nice, but I think the map lacks some open atriums. It feels like every hallway leads only to another hallway. Also, I think it would be better if the walls would had some borders, or the textures would had some grid on them, or maybe you could put in some temporary lights - right now it's hard to recognize what is what and where I am...

Post by **GODLIKE** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 4:59 pm

I think the doorways are a little narrow, but that could be just me..

I know it's an alpha but as a side note: I wanted to rocket jump up here (http://www.kilnet.org/images/kaz1.jpg) .. And I muffed it, and ended up "inside" the mesh on the curve.

I am constantly surprised by the Q4 (didn't happen to me in D3, for some reason) engine allowing the player to 'fall through' meshes and angled brushes if you hit them at just the wrong angle, or with sufficient force or speed. The only thing that works for me is to clip EVERY mesh that a player might be able to walk on, quad rocket jump to, etc.. and every place where angled brushes might "squeeze" the player bounding box. q4dm3 shows some nice examples of 'how to successfully clip the bejezus out of your map', methinks..

Getting back to the layout; it feels like there are a lot of places where falling damage is a factor. Not sure how much you care, or if this is desirable, but I felt like jumping down was a fairly damaging prospect, after running the map for ten minutes, those little 10d/5d hits add up.

Post by **Lukin** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 5:25 pm

GODLIKE wrote:I am constantly surprised by the Q4 (didn't happen to me in D3, for some reason) engine allowing the player to 'fall through' meshes and angled brushes if you hit them at just the wrong angle, or with sufficient force or speed.

Doom3 had per-polygon-hit/collsion-detection and IK, Q4 has hitboxes and bugs

Post by **Kaz** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 6:10 pm

Lukin: I was worried that there were too many hallways, and a number of people have stated that it needs to be a little more open, so I'll definetly change that in the next version. I'll also make sure to texture things to where you know what's going on.

GODLIKE: I really hate that bug and the same thing happens when trying to jump on the RL ledge

I'll clip that off. I noticed that I was taking falling damage earlier, and if more people suggest it's a problem, I'll try to lower the height differences to get rid of it.

Thanks for the feedback guys

Post by **Kaz** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 12:20 am

Okay, download is updated with new changes.

Post by **GODLIKE** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 3:58 am

the new RA area is better, definately..

Post by **roughrider** » Fri Jan 12, 2007 3:30 pm

Since I haven't made any maps for q4 yet nor do I have the game so take this with a grain of salt, but is the "nodamage" type texture still useable in q4?

I can't remember the actual name of the texture right off hand and I looked in GTK Radiant 1.4 for the tex but didn't see anything close to "nodamage" or related type so the name escapes me at this point.

Post by **Lukin** » Sat Jan 13, 2007 8:00 pm

Yes, there is such a texture ("cushion"), but it removes footsteps sound along with a falling damage.

Map is very, very, very promising. But it lacks health bubbles so I can't really judge the gameplay...

Post by **Kaz** » Sun Jan 14, 2007 4:58 am

Lukin wrote: Map is very, very, very promising. But it lacks health bubbles so I can't really judge the gameplay...

Updated with health bubbles, and some armor shards for good measure!

Post by **roughrider** » Sun Jan 14, 2007 5:11 pm

Ahh yes, thank you Lukin for causing my brain to remember the name, hahaha. For the life of me I couldn't remember that. I only used it once in one of my released maps and only toyed with it in test maps so the "non usage" of it by me caused me to forget so easily.
I remember the usage, which is about 80% the reason why I never used it in released maps but one time.

Matter of taste and idea of the design, I suppose. I don't know what kaz plans are so using cushion may not be the ideal solution, but thinking on the prefered method (prefered method for me anyway),
versus cushion and relationship of certain aspects of this map design, it may be better to use the cushion.

Post by **Lukin** » Sun Jan 14, 2007 8:08 pm

Kaz wrote:
Lukin wrote: Map is very, very, very promising. But it lacks health bubbles so I can't really judge the gameplay...
Updated with health bubbles, and some armor shards for good measure!

Cool. I'm gonna play it tomorrow, then I'll give you some feedback.

Post by **Lukin** » Mon Jan 15, 2007 9:03 pm

OK, here we go.
The map is similar to ztn3tourney1. That's cool, but ztn has one YA more so even when one player controls both RA and MH the second guy has two YAs. On your map come back is almost impossible. There's no place for another armour, but you can move some other items to fix the balance. First of all - move RL somewhere else, right now it's on the way from MH to RA. Basically all you've to do now to win is running this road back and forth... Definitely remove RG ammo. Also, consider enlarging the MH area - or do something that would make it harder to control...

P.S. Armor shards also should be somewhere else, and I'm not sure if there's still not enough medkits :/

Post by **pjw** » Mon Jan 15, 2007 11:40 pm

Lukin wrote:OK, here we go.
The map is similar to ztn3tourney1. That's cool, but ztn has one YA more so even when one player controls both RA and MH the second guy has two YAs. On your map come back is almost impossible. There's no place for another armour, but you can move some other items to fix the balance. First of all - move RL somewhere else, right now it's on the way from MH to RA. Basically all you've to do now to win is running this road back and forth... Definitely remove RG ammo. Also, consider enlarging the MH area - or do something that would make it harder to control...

P.S. Armor shards also should be somewhere else, and I'm not sure if there's still not enough medkits :/

Ahahaha, Lukin pretty much typed exactly what I came in here to say, other than the 2 YAs in ztn3t1 observation. I finally got around to looking at this, and just running around, it really seemed like there was a real power concentration at RA<--RL-->MH and not as much elsewhere. Lose RG ammo too...yep.

Lukin get out of my head!!!

Here's an interesting experiment I'd try, off the top of my head:
1) Switch YA<-->RG
2) Move RL to where RA is.
3) Make another small room down low--lower than anything else in the map--down two floors under GL in that back corner where there's nothing but void now. Maybe make one entrance be short stairs down from HB and the only other way in a drop-down from the current ground floor. That would make a nasty, dangerous little frag hole for RA.

Post by **Kaz** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 2:05 am

Excellent advice you two, that's the type of stuff I was looking to hear.

Todo for next version:

-More health somewhere, or perhaps change a 25 to a 50
-Fix the RA-RL-MH problem (maybe with pjw's room idea)
-Remove RG ammo
-Move the shards around
-Maybe expand the MH area

edit: will upload after sleep :>