Shibam [NEW UPDATE v1.3]

[ShadoW_86]

125 fps limit is what everybody have, and that's what should be always kept in mind while mapping.

[DaEngineer]

Again it's time for an update.

• the nets above the MH are non-solid now
• the jumppad brushes have 16 sides now (8 sides before). Although this means more polys, the less blocky look justifies this
• the sand on the lowest level finally has a smooth transition to the ground texture thanks to alpha fading
• the stairs and edges in the area with the RA tube have been smoothed out by creating additional 45° edges. Those smooth edges can be found on the lowest level in some other places too

Here are two pictures:

[DaEngineer]

When I released the first beta version of Shibam on September the 26th at mappingbase.de I never would have expected so many more improvements to be made. But again, I was busy, and there's no end in sight:

• when you have absolutely no idea how to VIS optimize your map, go and ask your girlfriend. If you are a lucky guy like I am, she has no idea about how it works, listens to your explanation what hint portals are, understands the concept and tells you (the one with the experience!) how to do it. Embarassing, but effective
• player-clipped the baskets and the big wooden crate aside the teleporter
• there was a bright light spot caused by a too intense light entity at the RA
• the grate texture below the RA and the one at the bazaar had dark edges around the transparent parts. I created a new alphachannel for both to make them look less teamfortressy
• the mosque and the rooftop of the building left from it made running around up there a bit troublesome, as jumping was required to get up the almost waist-high edges. To improve the flow, I placed some of the bricks there I already used to create a stair at another place
  
  
• the debris of the broken wall above the quad is less angled than before and looks a bit more natural this way
• the third staircase in the RA area has the same style as the two other ones now
  
  
• cleaned up some messy brushwork here and there => minor improvements for VIS and the lightmaps
• the cobblestone texture now has the surfaceparm "nomarks". I decided to add this, bacause large hit decals like the one from the RL looked strange when they were on the edge from floor to sand (the sand is nonplanar, and thus no marks can be seen on it. As a result, the hit decal gets cut away sharply)
• I finally found out what to do with this empty balcony above the five armor shards. I drilled a hole into it, put a SG and one pack of slug ammo on it and made you reach it with a new jumppad nearby
  
  

I'd be interested in how you like the last point in the list and the stones I've added, as both affect gameplay.

[obsidian]

when you have absolutely no idea how to VIS optimize your map, go and ask your girlfriend. If you are a lucky guy like I am, she has no idea about how it works, listens to your explanation what hint portals are, understands the concept and tells you (the one with the experience!) how to do it.

Does she have a cute sister (hook me up, bro)?

[DaEngineer]

Even two of 'em! But unless you are willing to fly (drive, swim, ride - I don't want to influence your choice) to Germany to meet them, this information won't be of use for you. On the other hand, you could announce your need for females in public, and then really swim; I guess this would increase the chance to get one of the two. Or even both, if you do it very cleverly.

[Eraser]

Maybe this was asked before, dunno, but did you create those textures yourself? And the skybox?

[DaEngineer]

No, the textures are from cgtextures.com. Type "loam" into the search box and you will find the textures I have used pretty fast. I only adjusted the colors with photoshop. All other textures (sand, bricks, cloth, skybox and so on) have been taken from this page too. The skybox is in the "Skies 360" category. I only needed to cut the texture strip into 6 pieces and scale them to 512x512 pixels each.

I have not yet made any texture from scratch, as my knowledge how to do this is very limited.

[Eraser]

Oh nice, I am bookmarking that site
Is it in the mapping resources sticky thread yet? Might want to add it there if not.

[deqer]

screenshots look good, but i couldn't see the large ones because abload.de = ass. anyways, it looks serious sam(game makes me puke) or urban terror map. anyways, what's the status on this? you still waiting for more feedback? any personal doubts of your own?

[DaEngineer]

Feedback in any kind is always a good thing. Admittedly, the updates I release sometimes don't have a huge impact on gameplay but I want to keep everybody who could be interested in the development of this up to date. Right now, I've come to a point where I'm not quite sure what to add or improve. I'm very content with the gameplay and the map's look, the only thing I still can work on are details. But even here I've almost hit Quake 3's limits, Shibam's polycount is very high already. When standing on the square tower and looking towards the RA there are around 48.000 triangles. As I wrote, the map is vis-optimized, but it's impossible to reduce the polycount seen from this place.

To put it in a nutshell: I won't release this map on lvlworld until I'm absolutely sure there's nothing to add. Feel free to comment on everything you don't like, be it gameplay, the look, item placement and so on.

EDIT: I just made a small update. I've inserted a barred window in the wall aside the box with the floating orb.

EDIT2: I have absolutely no clue how this happened, but the target of the jumppad to the MH was missing in the version I uploaded this morning, so nothing happened when you stepped on it. I fixed this and made a small change inside the mosque's balcony where the wooden door is:



I've added a playerspawn inside this arch and in some other places and changed some of the playerspawns that have already been there.

[RasaArt]

looks incredible cool

[Bonnebez]

I find everything in this map to be gorgeous. So aside of my noobish feedback like "this looks great" there's not much i can provide. However it reminded me some maps of rtcw: enemy territory, wich is not really a game focused on the unique goal of fraging people around. But i assume that the game types this map is made for, have all been taken into consideration. But it definitely looks gorgeous.

[DaEngineer]

I've just sent an email to lvlworld.com to add the map. There are some tiny additions I've made since my last posting. Minor brushwork changes nobody will notice and a camera entity for intermission screens when the match is over.

Feel free to write a review as soon as the map is in the queue!

[monaster]

Congrats on releasing your map! A review has already been submitted (quite fast compared to other map reviews in the past), so it should be up with the next update.

[DaEngineer]

Shibam can be downloaded on LvLWorld now. A big thank you to all of you for your support!

[DaEngineer]

Shibam Update v1.1

When I released Shibam I thought this map was finished. I guess I was wrong. TheMuffinMan noted on LvLWorld that the jump pads in front of the jump pad tunnel entrance were a bit odd. Originally I had implemented them to draw bots into the pits, as they wouldn't jump down there voluntarily.

I accepted that the bots couldn't be convinced to get down there, regardless of how many botroams I used. The only solution was an external AAS, which was the first of many improvements. If you liked Shibam, you'll love this update. For some updates I've uploaded pictures. Left you'll see the last version, right the new one. Some feedback or bug reports would be nice Here's the change log:


[FIXED]
• lots of surfaces the player can't see anyway were not textured with caulk
• sloppy placed or missing clip brushes
• really bad brushwork in some areas. Not noticeable, but results in a cleaner BSP and less polys
• the camera entity for the spectator mode was placed outside the playing area
• corrected one misplaced and thus useless hint brush
• one brush was textured with slick instead of nodrop
• wrong texture scale at the archway near the MH
• it’s no longer possible to collide with the underside of angled clip brushes inside the RG tower
• when approaching the RA tunnel’s entrance from above (e.g. by rocket jumping) the player was thrown against the wall above the tunnel endlessly instead of getting drawn in. This has been fixed by adjusting a clip brush
• removed one unnecessary brush as well as an entity inside the RA tunnel


[ADDED]
• the archway above the MH is partly destructed now. This allows jumping directly from the balcony above the shard group to the MH without hitting the inner city wall



• raised the lowest floor (the one with the Quad) by 16 units which results in no falling damage when dropping down from the first level
• added a stair at the YA leading from YA to the tower's socket



• added a stair at the socket’s RA facing side



• added a jump pad behind the Rocket Launcher to connect 1st and 2nd floor. Two spawn points needed to be moved




• at the RG tower's backside there's a button now. Push it, and a door at the tower's front will open for a couple of seconds. This door will lead you to the tower's inside. You can get the RG from there just as if you'd taken the teleporter. While the door is opened, the teleporter will be closed by lowering poles



• multiple weak lights to light up the narrow stair aside the mosque and the mosque’s front
• added a nodrop brush to the RG tower’s bottom


[CHANGED]
• replaced Shotgun on the balcony with a Plasmagun and bullets at the teleporter with cells. Removed SG ammo at the basket-stair and placed cells on the new stair aside it
• removed clay pots to clear the new walkway to the stair at the YA
• slightly broadened the walkway along the four firebowls
• decreased the brightness of the firebowl's light entities to reduce bright spots when playing with r_overbrightbits 1
• added 3 small health's in each jump pad tunnel and removed 2 small health bubbles above the left bazaar. Removed the middle one of the 5 armor shards
• wooden frames under items are now depending on the item type. Shards, 5HP and 25HP bubbles have rectangular frames, armor, MH and Quad have octagonal ones. Frames are below every health and armor item now, and the texture has been changed from the standard Q3 wood texture to Shibam's wood texture
• redesigned the teleporter to the RG tower's bottom




• significantly increased the distance to the top skybox brushes. Jumping around with quad damage is just too much fun to prevent it artificially
• changed some lines of the skybox shader to improve lighting
• the plank in front of the mosque no longer lies in a straight line from window to window. Instead, it has become a ramp to allow travelling up to the right window from the stairs‘ foot aside the mosque



[KNOWN PROBLEMS]
• bots don’t use the jump pad behind the RL


//EDIT: Tigger updated Shibam's page on lvlworld.

[Bliccer]

Nice detail and stairimprovements.
Only one tiney thing: When the path in the first pic is broken, what did you take the normal brickwall texture and not a debris one?

[DaEngineer]

It's not the same texture, although it looks like it was on this picture. In fact it's a second version of the brick texture with cracks on it that I've drawn in myself. At first I wanted to use one of the darker loam textures, but then I thought about the logic behind it: when you destroy a massive brick wall, the inside is made of bricks too. That's why I chose bricks instead of loam. But I've to admit that the broken surface looks to smooth. I'll add roughening it to the to-do list.

[DaEngineer]

Great. Just when you think "let's see how people think about my map and how far it has spread" you find this: http://www.map-factory.org/quake-3/deat ... hibam-3254

It seems Shibam just wasn't made by me. It was made by somebody called "RIA-NitroKydd". And I just helped him a bit (see his comment below). That's one of these moments when I wish I had a big sledgehammer. I already contacted map-factory, let's see if they react.

[obsidian]

I wish he had posted something here... BANHAMMER!

[Eraser]

That's just totally uncool

[EmeraldTiger]

Betcha he`s a COD4:MW2 player too...

[fKd]

why?

[obsidian]

Because lots of immature 12-year-old mouth-breathers yelling profanities in mics and stealing other people's work play CoD4, not necessarily meaning that CoD4 players are dirty thieves.

[fKd]