Q3: The Tricks (Technical demo map)

[Amphetamine]

Been working on this on and off for a couple of weeks now. It's purpose is to show off a few of the tricks and nice effects you can do to push the Q3 engine to the limit of it's unmodified functionality. Construction is not amazing I'm afraid, but it's not the point of this map.

My .map source is included (It's a bit scruffy in there, so apologies in advance) along with the source .bmp for the terrain section, the pse source for particle studio and the prefab to drop straight in.

If you need further details on how to do anything shown here, then please post in the thread.

No screens I'm afraid, as prety much all of the effects are animated so screens won't do them justice.

There's no .arena so just /devmap tricks (I figure that everyone will want to noclip through the glass in the last area to get a better look).

Enjoy.

Download: http://files.filefront.com/trickszip/;7 ... einfo.html

[obsidian]

You might want to explain exactly what kind of tricks you are demonstrating here. Most people aren't inclined to download a 12MB file that may end up just teaching them something they already know or aren't interested in using in the first place.

[obsidian]

Okay... lightstyles, particles, texture projection, alphaMod texture blends.

Nice showcase of some Q3Map2 effects and I'm sure some intermediate mappers can learn a thing or two, though there are tutorials for this kind of thing already. Sample maps are nice anyway.

The alphaMod alpha channel on the rust could use some tweaking to look a little more natural, but I guess this is a non-issue since this is just a demo anyway. Something to keep in mind next time, though.


In the title, did you perhaps mean Q3?

[v1l3]

I like the lights blinking down the hallway..way different. Looking out the windows in the end is beautiful. Caused me to sit there for a while...looks real. Kind of reminded me of the concept that jaxdm5 has, except yours looks better. It'd make a great spacestation style map :icon25:

[dichtfux]

Lol, thought it was a defrag-style trick jumping map for q2 when I read the topic. :icon25:

EDIT: You got some cool stuff in there! Think I've seen all of it before, but it's nice to have a .map-file for reference. :icon14:

[Amphetamine]

Obsidian: Yeah, did mean Q3, I really shouldn't type things when I'm tired. Edited now.

I figured that most of the veteran mappers would have seen a lot of this before. I've never seen anyone do dotproduct terrain with a detail overlay and moving shadows though. How practicle it is for production maps is debatable, because you need absolute control over what the player can see and the amount of overdraw is amazing.

I promised a couple of people over at map-center that I'd release somthing as a reference for the effects I'd been playing around with, so this is it.

Anyway, I hope this will help to spawn some more interesting looking Q3 maps.

Vile: Cheers, the runwal lights are fun, but a little tricky if you've never done them since you have to work out the crossfades on 4 waveforms. The end scene was really fun to make, I had the idea for it while I couldn't sleep one night, but never got around to building it until yesterday. It worked as intended 1st time as well, which was a bonus

[Quack]

Thanks for posting this Amphetamine! There are several techniques ,almost all of them, which I had thought about but never knew if it was practical or possible. You have given me hope where insanity and frustration have flourished. I hope to implement some of these techniques in the map that I'm working on. Which one of these special effects would you say takes up the most processing power?

[Pext]

12MB

well... 12mb is nothing, really.

[Amphetamine]

Thanks for posting this Amphetamine! There are several techniques ,almost all of them, which I had thought about but never knew if it was practical or possible. You have given me hope where insanity and frustration have flourished. I hope to implement some of these techniques in the map that I'm working on. Which one of these special effects would you say takes up the most processing power?

No probs. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

The most processor intensive is the terrain with moving shadows and detail layer. There's loads of polys and a lot of overdrawing on the layers. The lightstyles are quite intensive with multiple lights, as you get an extra layer of shader for each light (remember to add -nocollapse in lighting phase if you use lightstyles).

Have fun

[4days]

Download: http://files.filefront.com/trickszip/;7 ... einfo.html

nice one :icon14:

apart from everything else, i hadn't realised how effectively lightstyles could be used.

[xgo]

q3 is going to look even more pretty then q4? ;P

[ANIMAL1988]

i can't get the map to load.

after typing the devmapp command i get this message

default model (sarge) failed to register

[dichtfux]

Worked for me (and some others here and elsewhere it seems).

Most likely has nothing to do with the map.

[sock]

i can't get the map to load.
after typing the devmapp command i get this message
default model (sarge) failed to register

This map uses a crazy amount of shaders due to the lights and you will need the latest Q3 patch.

From 1.32 patch notes:
- renderer fix:
MAX_SHADERS up to 2^12

Sock

[dax105]

can someone reupload this map? pls

[rgoer]

you know what if somebody has the original archive it might be cool to put it back up