Castle,
yeah, that should be fun. Sending you a message.
Today I added the rest of the items to the map (closed off a the last few walls)... and found out that there actually are no ammo boxes. That disconcerted me, because when I add items, I like to "decorate" the map with such stuff. Now its weapons and health and armour only
And since testing the editor you always have all weapons and ammo... I really wonder how "real" playing works.
Did another full light compile on the map...
and finding out that the "dark" areas are somewhat dark, but hopefully intriguingly dark and playable. See the background left towards the TP.
I mention this because I am not too thrilled to about adding entity-based real-time lights, because they bring down the FPS of the map badly. On my rig I still get pretty much 125 FPS mostly of the time. I have tested some other mapper's map and tried to help him track down the issue and it was the entity-based lights. So like in Doom3, lay off too many such lights. Even the devs recommend, use the skylight lighting (it gets baked into the map on compile) and costs nothing, and only add a very few lights for ambience or so. Luckily, that is the way I always did it in Q3A... so that helps.
So presently, no light entities planned. On the topic, there are shader-based textures that give off light (and glow), these also seem to be static, so no (or little) FPS impact. I am already using those... well... I am marginally thrilled about those since none of them cast nice shadows. As I read on the forums, shadows are another thing the devs are working on. BTW, light entities casting real-time lights can be tested for shadows by flinging a few grenades past them... strange, but that works.
reflex 2014-12-03 19-51-18-64.jpg
I started to add "player"
clip to the map, and added it in the MH corridor between the blue columns here to not get snagged by them at all. On closer inspection I wondered why this otherwise darker area is so bright. Turns out that not only the JP trigger brushes but also the
clip brushes actually
cast light... for clipping that is a nightmare. I looked into several material files and "
blend multiplied" could be reason for giving off light. Might need to "hack" the material file for clip... since it really is annoying.
On
Reflex Map Servers:
Interestingly, mappers can run their map, and via "connect <IP>" clients can quickly connect. Should the mapper have a new map running the client will download it. But only the .map file it seems, the client needs to compile the lighting on the local machine apparently. Now here is the interesting part, the map gets downloaded directly into memory, apparently there is no physical copy of the downloaded map on the HDD. This has the advantage for the mapper of not splurging out an unfinished map that then gets redistributed. Another thing, the client can edit the map, but cannot save it locally either. The server can save the file though.
Anyway running around with the map with a "tester" in real time, even trying out geometry changes and the like and then test them right away is a really great way of getting feedback.
. Will try to create some abstract water lilies for the ponds... so that was 7 days of work... not too bad speed-wise, but of course the map really is low poly.
Reflex .map converter