The Chill Runs Deep - Phantq4dm8

[phantazm11]

This is a small duel map for Quake 4 set in an underground glacial laboratory. The map is setup for FFA, duel, and 2 vs 2 team death match.

[lvlshot]http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y138/phantazm11/Level%20Design/chill_02_ss.jpg[/lvlshot]

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[o'dium]

aww man, waht are you doing! That snow/ice could look so cool, just get a better texture for it and using vertex blending

I'll check out the map when I get home

[phantazm11]

I don't think the ss does the ice enough justice.

[o'dium]

I know you have an env map on it, I can see that. I just think you could of doen a lot more with it myself. Why not mix a nice ice texture with a snow texture, and then have some fancy blends in there? Would look 10x better!

[Kaz]

"Snowbound"

[pjw]

I'll try to give this a look sometime soon--my weekend is kind of full.

[ALMighty]

I tried running it with /devmap but q4 kept loading and minimizing the window again and again until I couldn't take it anymore and closed it with ctrl-alt-del. I wanted to look at the layout from a perspective with noclip. Anyway...

I thought the snow looked much better in-game. The ss doesn't do it justice like you said. It looks like snow that's a little melted. It would probably look better with more textures though, like o'dium said.

The gameplay felt kind of claustrophobic and with not enough open spaces to fight in for my tastes. But maybe that is what you aimed for.

[phantazm11]

ALMighty: Thanks for checking out the map man. I may have deleted the info_playerstart from the level. Could be the trouble with the devmap.

As for the size of the level...It is a little tight. I love variety and think that there is room for all kinds of maps. I wanted to pull this one in a bit and really give the feeling of being underground. The map is pretty fast to navigate though, which I hope compensates for the lack of vast atriums.

ALMighty & o'dium: Yeah, I probably could have found another texture(s) if I looked hard enough. This is my first level with any kind of modeled terrain and I was concentrating mostly on constructing the ice cavework. I think the texture works well enough for what I imagined: A map where sections were carved out of solid ice.

pjw: Thanks man.

[g0th-]

I had a run through this map and it's cool. Looks nice as always but I do as ALMighty said miss some bigger rooms. I think you did a good job with the feeling that the map is underground and the ice meshes fits the map very well.

Nice job keeping those ugly hard shadows of the terrain especially for a first time with modelled terrain.

[phantazm11]

Thanks a lot g0th. The hard shadows were a pain in the butt for sure. With Q4's lighting, I'm surprised myself how well they turned out. It took a lot of tweaking, both in the modeler and the editor. By the looks of your screenshots, I know you do well handelling the issue.

I'm not sure if this is a major problem on other (non-id) engines. I don't remember seeing the same problem on UT3 maps.

[g0th-]

UT3 has the same problem with realtime renderings but it also supports lightmaps and vertex lightning so that's why it's hardly seen. I think this is a problem for all realtime engines.

[GODLIKE]

Id tech having 'unified' lighting for D3/Q4 does limit a little bit of what you can do by today's standards. It looks like they're addressing this with Id Tech 5 (Rage Engine), but in the meantime, you can turn shadows off on some assets so they don't cast on themselves, which prevents a lot of ugly black tris from appearing on your terrain. If you're REALLY patient, you could turn off shadows on large/ambient lights and use light textures to 'fake' fuzzy soft shadows for large light volumes.. (See Lunaran's stuff re: "Strombine" for a wicked example.)

[phantazm11]

Oh, Strombine is a masterpiece. Lunaran did wonders with lights in that level.

I'm not sure I've ever heard about turning off shadows on assets. Do you happen to know the key/value for this?

[pjw]

I'm not sure I've ever heard about turning off shadows on assets. Do you happen to know the key/value for this?

I can't remember this off the top of my head. It might be something as simple as "noshadows" "1", but probably not.

I finally (finally!) had a chance to give it a look tonight--sorry that took so long. I agree with previous posters that more could be done with the snow/ice texture. Don't get me wrong, it doesn't look bad, really, just kind of meh. I suspect if I weren't told beforehand (by the thread and the name of the map) that I might think it was slightly odd looking stone...some sort of fog/mist around it would be cool (hurrr), but I'm not sure how you would do an effect for that...I'm more a geometry guy.

Speaking of geometry, I generally like the layout, and I love the stark look of the level. Some blood splotches/splatters here and there would be a nice highlight. The interconnection is good, and there's a lot of over/under, which I also like. I don't like so much that the bridges are so low and head-bangy; please lower the floor there, or arch the bridges, or something so you can freely hop through under them? Also, there's one light at roughly 265, 1905, 200 that's perfectly in the way as you're hopping through.

My biggest concern is item placement and proximity. Quad placement is cool, and so is RA, but when you can go RA-->Quad in literally 1 second, or RA-->MH in about 2 seconds...hmmn. After thinking about it for a while and roaming back and forth through the level, and cursing a bit, I don't think there's really a good way to place all three items decently far apart within the level as it stands now. I would think strongly about building some kind of additional little mini-atrium for one of these items.

Feel free to ignore the next bit, which is obviously very subjective, probably not what you would do, and I might be full of crap anyway. That being said, what I would do: Leave Quad where it is, switch RA and YA (the current RA spot is a nice advantageous position anyway, and fun with GL up there--doesn't really need the ultimate bonus), and build a new area for MH. A couple of good places would be either directly over the current MH spot (another room/cave up there that would allow watching/jumping down, but a jumppad (or combo jumppad/stairway) ascent of some kind to get there), or maybe over the beams in the middle of the level at around 1050, 2250? You could leave the beams to allow someone to lurk up there...

Hope this helps.

Edit: Oh yeah, please make the jumppad triggers a little thicker--it's annoying when you jump over them and then have to fall down on them first to go up.

Edit2: VVV Right, that's the one. Thanks!

[o'dium]

noShadows simply stops it casting shadows. Not good.

What you need, is noSelfShadow, which stops it casting its OWN shadows onto itself

[GODLIKE]

Odium is right about selfshadow, although I think in Q4 that has to be done via the material/shader.

(http://iddevnet.com/quake4/ArtReference ... shadows%29)

Turning shadows off on models (terrain, for sure) .. I'm trying to remember offhand if you can do it in Q4 Radiant, but in SDRadiant you can definately do this.. "Shadows 0" on the func_static entity, maybe? I'm low on caffiene at the moment.

[o'dium]

It can be done with lights that way, but you already have the material set up for blending so use it in the material.

[phantazm11]

pjw: Thanks for the critique. I can always count on you for an indepth analysis

I agree with you about the size. I guess I could take the quad out completely. That would solve some problems. I like your idea of adding another cave section above the MH. That would be a much better solution. There was actually a third level in the main atrium at one time, but I shaved it down because I had like four different maps going at the same time and wanted to finish a couple of them within this decade

I'm not sure I will be going back to revise this map though, at least not any time soon. I have whittled my current projects down considerably and need to finish them up as well. I think it is time I tried new things. Time to move on, in other words. I do, however, like this map a lot, and if I were ever to go back and revamp it, your suggestions will be at the top of the "fix list".

o'dium and GODLIKE: Thanks for the info guys.

Edit: In the vein of future fixes to this, do you guys know of a good ice texture that could be used instead of the crappy one I have? I've checked cgtextures, but I don't like any of the ones they have there.

[GODLIKE]

I hate to be a smartass (okay, dubious)... But any time you find yourself thinking "Quad Rune" and "Duel Map" together... go get more coffee. :P