Quake3World

Got a lot done today. Starting to pull up the walls, about another day of that should have the corridors closed up. Most of the walls and ceilings in about half the map are now done:

• reflex 2014-11-30 23-51-53-46.jpg

Using a dark blocky design for all the ceilings... I really like the darker areas that are still bright enough to play.

Initially I wanted to add walls on the outside of the three arenas, adding a very low edge. I'll probably just leave it, to keep the "view" more open outside... maybe for some skybox in the future. I also was thinking of clipping all the outside area, for now keeping those area open, so you could in theory RL splash damage players out of the map. Well you can also stupidly jump out of the map... if you like.

Huge amounts of light bleeding. Hmmm... hopefully that can be fixed in the future.

• reflex 2014-11-30 23-53-49-92.jpg

From above still an awful amount darkcaulk to be seem from above, but that will mostly stay that way, since those areas will not be visible from inside the map.

A slight Art Deco theme in the map... not much, but a bit. The ceilings and walls are all in the map now... next I will be adding light, a few areas look slightly dark, and item placement.
Arena 1, with deco teleporter "hut". I started to use the colours more systematically, to colour-code each area.
Arena 2, not really much to say. The open unwalled look out of the map, IMO, makes the space feel more generous. I like my extremely low poly tree though . 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.

Hey, I like this, wanna test it out some day?

what he said

Sure... I got a headset yesterday... only need to figure out how to properly use it with what software... works with the Steam test... but Steam cannot be used to chat in voice?

I'll focus on items today, should be about an hour, and clean up... boy the walls are under-brushed . Ah... and lighting... again ironic... good lighting will again be difficult, since a light compile takes 13 minutes... for Q3A the full compile was 2:10... so a lot more complex map much much more quickly compiled. They say they will significantly speed up lighting compiles for Reflex... so anything less than by a factor of 10 would be a let down.

Im sure the steam voice can be used to chat in game, but we can just use text if you like. I think skype does a better voice than steam anyway.

Hipshot and I did a quick run of the map... automatic download of a map one does not have is simple enough and just works. Well I can now set up a server without a problem. It may even be possible to join from Steam chat, "join game" under my user icon (needs testing)... so this is pretty nifty.

Did another run of the map with another mapper from the Reflex forum today, "Devil"... he has built a training map for strafe jumping, and all that jive I have no idea of. And I have learned a few things now that I will probably add to the map as I get better. E.g. adding just the right ledge here and there, or angled ramps for double- or even triple-jumps. The real-time editing really helps to test out such things immediately. Should make the map slightly more interesting for a few folks. For me it will be interesting to see how far I can get.

Hey I am loving the updates on this and I have been keeping up almost daily. I have been too busy lately to do my live server and more Reflex videos as I keep running into something right before I commit to doing it.

I am definitely up for jumping in and checking out your map sometime!

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...

• reflex 2014-12-03 19-52-41-88.jpg

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.
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.

Looks good AEon!

Fjoggs, thanks.

I never was much for detail brushwork... but this excessively low poly approach does map the maps look drab, especially since you cannot fake detail with texturing. Oh well.

BTW, you are the moderator over at the official Reflex Mapping forum, right? And the one who created Reflex\base\internal\maps\FjoRXtourney1.map? Now that map has an insane amount of brushwork done... even in GTKradiant it would have been a pain to pull off, but in Reflex... respect!

Yeah that's me. Gotta push those boundaries!

Luckily the folks at the Reflex forum are on the ball... the trick to make clip brushes work in Reflex is to avoid them having direct contact with any brush. I.e. have them float slightly off the walls, floor, ceiling.

• reflex 2014-12-04 17-42-02-53.jpg

This is the corridor I showed yesterday, all the clip brushes now are 8u away from any wall. The usual distance the folks use seems to be 2u... but since this is not creating a bot file, and the player certainly cannot tell the difference, I am using a larger distance, that also lets you get at the wall brushes more easily. Remember, the editor does not have a "hide" key... so clipping actually really gets in the way. And there is no view filter either... but hopefully there will be.

• reflex 2014-12-04 17-42-07-02.jpg

So this is how the corridor now looks with "proper" lighting. I am presently not going to add light entities, because IMO they are not needed. On the upper floor a few areas were a tad dark, so I opened up the ceiling by 32u and that fixed that pretty much.

• reflex-2014-12-04-light-com.jpg

Well... only slightly brighter... but should be enough.

Did some brush clean up today, trying to reduce the size of the lightmap... i.e. removed the mitering from all the orange floor trims, because brushes cut off at an angle are "longer" and since the lightmap uses rectangular images to save those, and this is slightly wasting space in the large lightmap page. Well, I could improve things, but only so slightly it was pretty much a waste of time.

• reflex 2014-12-05 18-58-24-12.jpg

Notice the glowing cube in front? I experimented with the idea of the map actually being placed inside the superstructure of a gigantic cube (3584³ units³), so that you can see the framework when running the corridors inside of the map, and of course from all the arenas. Well it looks relatively cool... but there is a downside... the lightmap file does not actually go up, it had two pages, and now it still has two. But the compile time went up from 700 seconds to 1100 seconds... so that is a slight pain.

The maximum volume of the map seems to have an influence on the compile time. The frame rate is fine... an extra 36 lit triangles to draw is not really much of an issue I would imagine.

• reflex 2014-12-05 18-59-11-23.jpg

Something one would do by using a "real skybox" in Q3A, I would imagine. For now keeping it... since deleting it would only take a few moments. Anyway a bit of fun possible in such a low-poly situation.

Mostly did clean-up work on the map.

• reflex 2014-12-07 01-06-42-35.jpg

Added more stripes to the walls to make them have some form of decoration. I created some form of "leaf" in all of the pools, bumpy as they look. Sure not as pretty as Sock's, but then again they are built from one cube per leaf.

• reflex 2014-12-07 01-09-01-86.jpg

I experimented a bit with the "light shaders"... adding the triangular brushes on the floor with the glow light shader (static light). Alas the quality of the light on the wall is a bit "blocky"... I'd love to add them all over the place... but they simply do not look that great. Hmmm... I could use nice real-time light entities... but they mess with the frame rate badly.

More clean-up... it turns out, "falling out of the map" will not be an option, since the ugly darkcaulk would become visible... alas... so will probably add some surreal clipping. I.e. you think you can jump out of the arenas, but you will actually not be able to do that. And I prefer not to add walls as used in the original AEdm7. Oh well.

• reflex 2014-12-07 17-49-33-42.jpg

I experimented using a light texture on simple brushes... to add more lighting interest to the map without having to add real-time lights that lower FPS. Looks a bit nicer IMO... so will be adding it all over the place.

Alas, just noted that the .probe file (no idea what that does) went up from 1.8 MB to over 10MB due to my "cube" superstructure... seems the structure needs to go as well... sigh.

There is a Q3 .map Reflex .map converter over at the Reflex forum. Been helping with the conversion a bit.

Here is a test run of the q3dm7sample.map as seen in Reflex:

• reflex 2014-12-11 02-26-56-62.jpg

I edited out hint brushes, portals, player clip and the skybox before converting, but the very latest version now does that for you automatically.

It might become an option to convert Reflex maps to Radiant... we might want to create a "game pack" to let us edit geometry with the proper textures from Reflex in Radiant... no idea how difficult that would be, but I know we have the experts here. Just some wishful thinking on my part, but it might become reality.

Oh, and BTW... using GTKradiant camera view with W,A,S,D now... and remapped the keys requiring those keys... it is so nice to have that kind of functionality. Whee .

There is a Christmas Tree Group Building over at Reflex. The idea, 8 mappers join and build their own Christmas tree, demonstrating the multiplayer mapping of Reflex. Date will be the 20th December apparently.

Well, I had to meddle... pointing out that there has so be some structure in place to let folks work in peace, not having to do everything from scratch. So I created this small-town suburb or something. Every one of the "players" has their own yard, same size and small house (neo-Gothic or so)... and can build and decorate his yard and house, and add a tree in the yard.

• reflex 2014-12-11 11-26-52-20.jpg

Created in about 2 hours. You may wonder how I did it in Reflex without any multi-select, rotate or mirror... well I did not... I used GTKradiant 1.6.4... and then converted the map file to Reflex. I textured it in Radiant, so can now search/replace (programming editor) the textures with existing ones in Reflex. Boy is it nice to have rotate, mirror, multi-select via brush frame, vertex and edge editing in 2D views back again while editing in Radiant. Oh and the clipping tool too.

Ironically, my first try at those pyramidal corner "mountains" actually created invalid brushes, that never showed up in Reflex...

I was always so in envy of those skilled in using modelling tools to add models/meshes that were just that extra bit more special for Radiant. Now with Reflex... I almost feel like those modellers creating "detail" in Radiant for Reflex.

And now, AExtree, in eye-poking colour (in Reflex):

• reflex 2014-12-11 14-22-47-18.jpg

You have to imagine the "pink" to be some less garish colour, its the darkcaulk texture.

And here I compiled the light (483s), skylight only, using the original nolight texture... making the houses look slightly more subtle:

• reflex 2014-12-11 14-51-18-45.jpg

Been playing around a bit... converted all the Reflex textures to TGA 32bit, kept the file structure and renamed the images to fit what Reflex wants (i.e. remove "_c" in textures' names), put all that into a "textures" folder and turned it into reflex_textures.pk3. And bingo they show up in GTKradiant. The Q3ToReflex map converter I wanted to try out on my favourite fun map, AEpyra... especially as instagib map with q3dm17 bounce pad.

Well, using GTKradiant's (1.6.4) own texture replace tool I started to convert a few trims and one main texture to the Reflex textures... when converted the map should immediately be properly Reflex textured. Why deal with not so great Q3A brushwork in Reflex, if you can see the issues in Radiant and already fix them there.

• radiant164 2014-12-15 17-42-04-86.jpg

I will need to do some experimentation with the texture size though. In Reflex textures are 1024x1024... and in GKTradiant they used to be 256x256 IIRC... so to adapt the "fit" of the texture, I'll need to experiment at bit. But it sure is neat to have a "Reflex" texture environment in Radiant.

If the offset, rotation and scale of textures actually works, when converted (more testing), I could in theory "fit" textures properly in Radiant, and have them show up in Reflex.

I am still working on AEdm7R. With AEpyraR I relearned to use GTKradiant, and it helped me understand how to better use clipping in Reflex (if you use it like in Q3A, intersecting geometry, you are in all sorts of lighting problems). Even though AEdm7R is pretty much done... I will continue to tweak a few more things, add a bit of more geometry and then release it on the 24th ...

The resulting damage of...

• Christmas Tree Multiplayer Mapping Event on Reflex - 20th Dec. 20014

The event was kinda fun. My contribution seems to have been the "most normal"... in a way.

Finally getting the map released. 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 AEdm7R (r163):

• [lvlshot]http://static.reflexfiles.com/u/screenshots/full/S15499db53d904c78e68.jpg[/lvlshot]

And the appropriate thread at the official Reflex forum:

• AEdm7R - AEon's DM7 for Reflex

And a link to the download: http://reflexfiles.com/file/87

So after releasing AEdm7 in 2012, the Reflex version sees the light of day... seems almost like yesterday...

Obviously... the map could use a *lot* more detail... and I will probably continue to update it. So any suggestions welcome. The map has 3 new paths, so even if you know AEdm7... there is a little something different in there to explore.

If I get on it, I might be able to get AEtime for Reflex done before the year closes... a new record of three maps... all be it... recycled as of sorts.