q3ctfp13 no name yet :D

[ShadoW_86]

Quad on such a small map? What about game balance?

[Anthem]

Quad on such a small map? What about game balance?

Yeah, I agree. The map is a tad too tight in spots for quad. The quad person could effectively rape the enemy team of their players, flag, and whatever else they have (i.e. red armor) and time the quad so that he or she gets it every time. If you want a power up for the center I recommend picking something less game breaking such as regeneration or haste. Maybe even something like a medkit wouldn't be too bad, but definitely not personal tele.

[monaster]

My promised report, mostly nitpicking and stuff like that, hope it is of any use:

The bots carrying the flag ALWAYS took the lower level to get back to their base, at least when I played.

Maybe you could make the water HP-regenerating (2 to 5 HP per second) since there's so much going on around and especially in the pool - that would be a real temptation. Could also be a stupid idea, too?

Be careful with the jumppads leading from the lower to the mid level (highest level for me is railgun position): if you just step onto them and don't jump to their end near the wall they only catapult you into the trim (I always had to press forward to get onto the higher level floor), bots might run into trouble because of that.

Other stuff: my suggestions and remarks are displayed on the pictures itself, if there's more to say, Iit's written below.


Plus, the pipes coming out of these things are not weaponclipped, looks strange launching a rocket not only through the fence but right to the very wall behind it.








This is the first place to camp.


The second.


Bot clip recommended.


Playerclip recommended since you can jump into that red trail and stand there.


Holy fucking shit, a hell of a game given it's narrow space, but still (or perhaps exactly because of that) a very enjoyable ctf map (yeah, once again forgot to set a capture limit but since it never got boring, who cares!).

Good work.

[EDIT: deleted "don't"]

[fKd]

cheers man, very helpful stuff. now back to the editor

next edition coming very soon... i might finish this one up quite soon as i've drawn a cool idea up for another ctf. been working on refining the theme and selecting textures, as well as the over all clip pass... so far its going well... ish heh

oh yeah, and quad switched back to ra

[fKd]

just a few shots:

[lvlshot]http://img690.imageshack.us/img690/236/shot0007a.jpg[/lvlshot]
[lvlshot]http://img371.imageshack.us/img371/6938/shot0006.jpg[/lvlshot]

still working...

on a side note. just got dawn of war 2. very fun game. its like diablo 2 mixed with company of heroes....

must map... heh

[fKd]

and a new build: still rough. but play it in 2 v 2 only to get the best games. hope its fun

http://www.filefront.com/16119989/undefined

[skinNCNmaster]

It is looking so damn awesome

You lazy *****

nuff said

[skinNCNmaster]

Maybe you could make the water HP-regenerating (2 to 5 HP per second) since there's so much going on around and especially in the pool - that would be a real temptation. Could also be a stupid idea, too?

wow ive been gone long.. is that capable of being done?

health from running through water... great idea!

[skinNCNmaster]

put the map here for me.. your pm does not include any url and this link above is not holding a map file..

no map file:\
http://www.filefront.com/16119989/undefined

[skinNCNmaster]

ok ok im a say my optimization comments here...

1. the grey octagonal floor pads should have the narrow ends clipper tooled, so they become three brush units, a long rectangle with a fin at each end, this restricts the engine to draw the top faces as six triangles, two equal right angles on the big rectangle and two small acutes on the ends. Also, switch your grid to the absolute smallest increment and pull the pads off the floor by one grid space, they will no longer touch the floor and thus not subdivide anything that might intersect with the.

second..
youve got the little lights everywhere, and when you placed them you cut them into the trim work, this is a bad idea, clean that all up and remve them from the trim brushes and place a caulk cube in place for each light, the light texture on the front face, and have that face one of the finest grid units out from the actual wall surface, another t-junction saver...

these two small things will optimize your map quite a lot... tough you have a lot of sloppy stuff to clean up if youre going to get the tri counts down.. i ran around in the map in devmode with r_showtris on and was aghast.. lol

gtk doesent work like it used to.. im fumbling with things that used to be simple.. its odd.. im gonna havta rollback to an older version older than 1.4... lol

other things.. you've use a lot of large pieces of brushwork where much more refined brushes would fit precisely between corners and edges..

for example you have a large floor brush that extends under a wall and into the next room over, it also ends beneath a wall instead of at the walls edge... this type of brushwork is costing you. every time the render has to decide to add another triangle or draws a texture that you cant see anyway... drags eh.. your map is huge.. and youve really got a LOT of cleanup to do

[skinNCNmaster]

here is a thing you also might learn...

whenever the texture continues on the face of the brush, underneath something else and gets hidden, caulk that face, add another brush, one designed to cover only the viible part needing texture, caulk all faces but the visible one... dont let so much texture get enveloped into the caulk volumes.

once this map has been sped up through this process youre on your way... i hope you appreciate that im being pretty not too hard on you here... im a fanatic for perfection, libra born week of the perfectionist.. and i get on some peoples nerves in my way i can find every mistake and be like.. grr you did some things that stump even me how to fix.. how to fix that???! hmmm okay well good test for me

[obsidian]

If someone PMs you, you might just want to reply to the PM directly instead of posting in the thread. For the rest of us reading, it just looks like you're having a one way conversation with some invisible person and it's hard for us to follow what you're talking about.

[skinNCNmaster]

in his profile he lists: Occupation: one day, this will say level designer

so i figure hes ready to handle some of ym style critique.. technicalities related to optimization are often very important and any input f any kind should always be accepted graciously his pm was pertaining to this map, id rather do anny discussion here in its thread. thanks obsidian.

[fKd]

looking forward to ya examples etc before i post follow up questions

[fKd]

right now i've hidden all ents/detail/patches and im rebuilding the hull from scratch. so many mistakes lol...

[skinNCNmaster]

alright heres a little map file with two copies of the same geometry in it, yours and mine.. ive changed one tiny little thing on the surrounding of the ump pad.. change it back or not..

im not setup to compile or anything, so you'll havta do that to check results.. im pretty familiar with how the engine deals with resplitting faces and stuff...can do it from eye.. in editor. tough with the laying of your hint brushes, a couple of the triangles ive laid in floor corners.. might beg for a well thought out revision....

theres a few spots where your actions caused me to rebuild all your brushwork and use multiple brushes in order to texture specific faces only.. so in editor, you will see caulk flashy faces.. thats for good reason.

also, ive done some forcing of small triangles instead of long narrow ones in tiny corners on the floors where your trims do hexagonal protrusions..

anything small or detail like the octagon floor details i have moved one minor grid unit away from the floor brushes to keep any vertexes from forcing new triangular splits into the floors.

go in game and devmap and turn on r_showtris 1 and grab the flight item and compare

optimiza.zip

im online in msnm if you want to exchange questions etc crockatt at hotmail dot com


excuse the download link ads.. its a free site.. no signup necessary


ps- ive ust gone back into the full map file and started peeking at brush groups and stuff here and there.. man youve done pretty things.. but youve modelled very sloppy.. im inspired to help you with this.. im just not sure to do this all on my own... whew.. look up at the file above.. and then again into your map.. perhaps we should work together and divide the whole into parts.. once you've got the gist of how to optimize and model clean.. we can polish this baby off finely with some co-ordinated effort.

im off to install photoshop again just for the tutorial image style ability..

[fKd]

downloading and also installing msn messenger.

[skinNCNmaster]

yeha so.. when youre online today lets get this party started right...lol

hold off on what we were doing last night, ive integrated the optimized stuff into the map and started tidying up.. i will pass you a copy later tonight.

[fKd]

at work now. will be home in about 4-5 hours. got some hull work done... overall its much better! way less overdraw and a far more efficient use of faces.

[skinNCNmaster]

ive been in your map allllllllll day..... so um... lol.. stop, hammer time!

[fKd]

heh

[skinNCNmaster]

mmm im getting itchy now. lol this is getting fun, i began in the back of the flag room, noticed the room was mirrored so deleted half... though not sure.. since the boiler room is different than the other side..


also notice one thing we're gonna havta work out.. both lower level central routes lead straight trough from base to base... like a near direct line of sight, with some horizontal hinting we can do some filed of view stuff but not lots.. so think about causing a turn in the corridor that goes below.. or perhaps, skipping the ramp.. and coming up from below using a jump pad closer into the base.. this would give some fun battles..rocket jumping off the pad is the sort of surprise entrance.... and would let us land right on the flag... hmm hmm..

you deal with structural newbish, see the flag room with details hidden when i pass you the file later... i'm still not round about enough to even consider what to do about your skylight windows... maybe how you did.. lol works well..

mmmhmmmm yes sir this map is going up up up

i would note that some people call me excessive.. those guys will look around and find the spots where i said ahh fah kit! cutting that again wont save much... the renderer will actually probably save tris... when they get to be slivers and many.. in small space..

though you're quite a bit like me in ways you shape brushes and round corner and oh yeah that reminds me

the Z box wall in the center area is so pretty with its patch rounding.. i didn't notice the patches until today and was wow'd! the ting is.. the patch work to brush work is a tad off.... patches end mid brush.. and i optimized those brushes before seeing they had patches..

look carefully at how you've combined patches and brushes when softening right angles, the ends of the patch ought always meet the edge and vertex of a brush, {a face, off the edge is ok}, somewhere where no vertices rest.. but the vertexes must meet vertices. otherwise.. well sparklies.. and odd anomalies.. lol interdimensional portals to amaxon planets and doomsday machines and who knows what else... lol you get the tousand word version of

oops i read that!? lol

[fKd]

my mapping comp has had a full catatonic melt down and is of to get repaired. will try using this lappy for a while :/ good thing i saved my .maps

[Chretien]

(Sorry for hijacking your thread fKd...)

@ skinncnmaster: does it matter what angles the triangles have when you cut brushes into smaller bits?

And btw, what's the shortcut for hiding details? Is there any way to determine whether a brush is detail or structural in the editor?

[cityy]

And btw, what's the shortcut for hiding details? Is there any way to determine whether a brush is detail or structural in the editor?

It's ctrl+D (in radiant 1.5 at least).