AEpyraR - AEon's Pyramid for Reflex (D/L)

[AEon]

The last three days I did a small experiment to see if I could set up a Reflex working environment in GTKradiant to better be able to preview what sort of work will need to be done to convert a Q3A map, my very old AEpyra map, over to Reflex.

So, should someone like to try "recycling" their old maps, here a few things I did to get there. With a few pointers that might help avoid unneeded grief.

I put together a reflex_textures_25%_lights.pk3 file with scaled down Reflex textures including newly created light shader place-holder textures. All texture have the original Reflex names and pathing. So that the textures will show and directly work in the Reflex editor after conversion. There is still an issue with scale between GTKradiant and Reflex texture size and orientation, but that may be resolved in the near future, not that fundamental an issue as of now, IMO

Using the Q3ToReflex (r10) converter, player clip is converted and other forms of special shaders ignored (like bot clip, cushion, weapon clip, ...). Alas items (weapons, health, armour, ...) are not yet converted, neither most of the other entities like triggers (JP, TP), targets, even though that is possible in theory. Again, nothing major considering most of the work is in the brushwork, and that is converted very well. "Flimsy" GTKradiant brushes, that bobtoolz/Brush Cleanup might find, actually do not get converted either (had forgotten what a pain creating quirky brushes in Radiant can be, since they keep on breaking, in that respect vertex editing in Reflex is a lot more stable). The trigger brushes for the JPs, I coloured yellow, to let my easier recreate their shape in Reflex, this is necessary since JP and TP trigger "areas" in Reflex are not simply a brush with a trigger texture on it, but actually special entities that just happen to look like brushes.

I should mention that the author of the conversion tool put in quite an effort into automating the conversion of patches to brushes. As one might imagine, this is a highly non-trivial geometric transformation. I only used cylinders in AEpyra back then, they converted without a problem, the brushwork was very intense, though, increasing the size of the .map file from ca. 1.5 MB to 20+MB... so for the first time I used the Brush/Arbitrary sides... function in GTKradiant and created 16-sided cylinders. It may not be "round", but still looks rather nice. Brought down the file size to 1.5 MB after conversion. And these cylinders also look nice in Reflex.

• radiant164 2014-12-17 18-08-27-05.jpg

Here a screenshot of AEpyra (edited) in GTKradiant completely re-textured. Not really to be seen, but I massively cleaned up the brushwork (something I recommend doing), and darkcaulked all unseen brush faces - that is Reflex's nolight texture. Using darkcaulk removes any such brush face from the lightmap compile, speeding it up. In a way it is like Q3A's caulk application on detail brushes, where every unseen face "should" be caulked. So, since this is an early map, and everything was structural (had not learned about detail brushes yet), I had to actually caulk everything by hand. Darkcaulk does not remove brush faces from the game though, yet. What Reflex actually does, I have no idea, a r_showtris, that would allow the tracking of "faces" and what gets drawn behind walls, does not yet exist in the game. Will be interesting to see what happens in the near future of Reflex.

Next screenshot will be from Reflex's built-in editor... and hopefully a working map for Reflex.

[AEon]

So after a first "cleaned up" compile of 908 seconds (before using all that darkcaulk, it was 1340s) this is how the map looks in Reflex...

• reflex 2014-12-17 23-45-26-94.jpg

Alas the light blue sky leads to a very bleached-out look. Hmmm... will try a deeper blue next. And if you are wondering about a few really off texture alignments, that's something that cannot be fixed in Reflex as of now. In Radiant it looked fine... sigh. Brushes in Reflex tend to orientate with the angled side of the brush... but not always... so it may often look fine, but not every time.

• The JPs are in, and they actually do work like in Q3A, so any fiddling you did in Q3A, will have been "preserved" for Reflex and work there as well.
• Light bleeding is another issue... I already use the nolight texture on all outer walls, but still its there. Will wait for an engine update that fixes the issue. Until then it is pretty ugly in a few areas.
• Some more serious thought will need to be put into the weapons and items.
• Many small things, and a bit of real-time lighting needs to be added.

I am really happy that such an open map, with so many brushes (for Reflex that is) still runs as maxFPS of 125... rock solid on my 4.5 years old hardware (ATi HD5850, i7 920 2.56 GHz). Though once I "decorate" the map with items, that may go down... hopefully not too much.

Still think the map would be most fun in instagib, as a rail only arena.

I should have a download out tomorrow. The folks at ReflexFiles kindly offer instant upload and hosting of Reflex maps. So the map will become downloadable from there. Another nice feature, it allows mappers to update and fix their maps.

If anyone has some inspirational ideas about the "skybox" colour?... I'd be interested in hearing from you. A more sharp and crisp look would be nice.

[AEon]

So I put another few hours into the map to really polish it, and test/clean-up any issues I had seen up to then. So here it is AEpyraR (r38):

• [lvlshot]http://static.reflexfiles.com/u/screenshots/full/S15493627d866b6c6b1b.jpg[/lvlshot]

And the appropriate thread at the official Reflex forum:

• AEpyraR - AEon's Pyramid for Reflex

And a link to the download: http://reflexfiles.com/file/78

Not sure anyone will actually test the map her, after all it is a cleaned up version of a map I did in 2003, but you never know. Have fun.

[Eraser]

Three things:
- I can see the jumppad triggers, but you probably already are aware of that because they're visible in your screenshot as well
- The middle jumppad towards the Quad pushes you up a tad too high for my idea.
- At the edges of the map, next to the pyramid, there's a clipbrush so you don't fall off the map, but it feels a bit odd because you bump into solid air.

[Fjoggs]

The developers made the trigger texture visible by default. It'll probably change, but because there's so few assets it's a nice way of knowing what's a jumppad and what isn't.

[AEon]

Three things:
1. I can see the jumppad triggers, but you probably already are aware of that because they're visible in your screenshot as well
2. The middle jumppad towards the Quad pushes you up a tad too high for my idea.
3. At the edges of the map, next to the pyramid, there's a clipbrush so you don't fall off the map, but it feels a bit odd because you bump into solid air.

1. Triggers visible as Fjoggs points out is a "feature" of Reflex presently.

2. The extra height is to let you cross from the tower over to the pyramid and back... the Quad just gets in the way of the jump arc .

3. Well... it is odd... so is cutting a pyramid into two... no one ever mentioned that strangely. Originally I had to compromise a few realism things in the map to keep the brush count in check. E.g. if you can fly out of the map, all the outside areas will need to be "covered"... that brings up the light compile time significantly, and makes the map slower since the lightmap become significantly larger too in Reflex. So if you can accept being barred into an invisible cage... well all the better . If there where grating textures, one could cage in the map and make it more plausible, but IMO that would also be ugly. Be thankful you cannot fall out of the map... I'd say.

[Eraser]

Yeah the lack of textures makes it hard I guess. Falling out of the map wasn't was I was going to suggest, but perhaps some brushwork to close it off. Even a chest-high wall with a clip brush on top of it would at give some visual indication that you can't fall off.

[AEon]

Yeah... that is something I might look into in future. It is strange to walk on edges without falling out... or one could waste a few more brushes and create some form of "fence"... hmm...