WIP CoreFault

[VolumetricSteve]

It's been a good while since I release a real....playable map..(looking back as wonderfully orange as boozeyjones was, it really was too big) so I restarted and picked up work with something I started with..almost a year ago. I've been slowly adding to it, and, as a test of my dedicated q3map2 machine, I had it run

-bounce 8 -bouncegrid -filter -super 4
(because fast is for quitters)

come look at my junk: CoreFault

[lvlshot]http://sirventolin.webs.com/corefault1.jpg[/lvlshot]
[lvlshot]http://sirventolin.webs.com/corefault2.jpg[/lvlshot]
[lvlshot]http://sirventolin.webs.com/corefault3.jpg[/lvlshot]
[lvlshot]http://sirventolin.webs.com/corefault4.jpg[/lvlshot]
[lvlshot]http://sirventolin.webs.com/corefault5.jpg[/lvlshot]
[lvlshot]http://sirventolin.webs.com/corefault6.jpg[/lvlshot]

I'm very open to suggestions on weapon placement if anyone has any suggestions. Cheers

[Silicone_Milk]

Use [ lvlshot ] to place images autosized to reasonable resolutions in the thread.

[VolumetricSteve]

thanks.

[obsidian]

Some cool looking ideas, I like the roof and the lava window things. What's causing the dark square lines on the textures? Is that part of the texture or is that some weird light artifact?

Lastly, -super is a bit obsolete, it's been replaced by -samples for better quality and actually faster compiles. Typical values for -samples is 2-3. I believe the values are exponential so you don't have to set something like 10 (maybe 4-6 if you want to go crazy).

[VolumetricSteve]

Oh right, I don't know why I typed that, I did actually use -samples 4, looking at the script I wrote for the light compile again.

Do you see the dark lines on the concrete? It's part of the texture, on top of everything else i'm working on, I want to create some custom textures, but I don't know if I'm gounna have all of that ready for this map or not...I really gotta get my energy up. I tried to disguise that effect with pipes and stuff, but I've got pipes and stuff yet to add. For perspective, I'd say this map is maybe...60% done so I'm still open to all kinds of suggestions.

[DaEngineer]

I'm very open to suggestions on weapon placement if anyone has any suggestions. Cheers

Quite hard to tell when there are only pictures to look at You might want to share a download link?

[VolumetricSteve]

Gladly! I'll strip out all of the entities and see what flows back. I gotta recompile though, and I just got to work so it'll be a while. Stay tuned.

[VolumetricSteve]

At long last, a download link.

http://www.mediafire.com/?2ng9tfe98g52u28

I'm still looking for ideas on weapon placement or expansion.

I was able to load this up in vanilla quake 3 with default settings (I was expecting to have to do something with com_hunkmegs but..it seems ok)

[subst]

Interesting look and colours, especially that big machine-thing with lava inside, -that's the core? :p

About items -it would require some testing matches with human players, but I think for a good gameplay the map might be quite too big and as it is now you would need to put plenty of weapons and items in it, but still there are far distances everywhere...so maybe also more jumppads. By the size and open space it reminds me of some of those maps for defrag. For fragging games I think it might be better to make it much smaller, could be centered around that core-thing.

and one note about the floor -it's looking good, just wondering if it wouldn't be a bit more optimized if you made a 256 x 256 texture for it.

[VolumetricSteve]

"Interesting look and colours, especially that big machine-thing with lava inside, -that's the core? "

Thanks, and sorta, it might as well be the core; when I name maps I just think "what would legally count as a map name" and whatever I come up with first it what tends to stick.

"About items -it would require some testing matches with human players, but I think for a good gameplay the map might be quite too big and as it is now you would need to put plenty of weapons and items in it"

If you wanted to do some testing at a lan party or something, that'd be awesome; I tried doing some of this myself but the more input I get on this the better. I can do plenty of weapons, certainly, but should I be maxing out the map with entities or is there a healthy weapon number you were thinking?

"but still there are far distances everywhere...so maybe also more jumppads."

more jumppads, Check. I was kinda thinking this too but I'm not sure where they'd do the most good, but I can do some tests.

"By the size and open space it reminds me of some of those maps for defrag. For fragging games I think it might be better to make it much smaller, could be centered around that core-thing."

I'm ..curious about how to deal with the scale of quake 3 maps, some of Id's maps are pretty big and open, but they have little tunnels and things too so...I think of my maps as just being the big part, forcing the players to deal with each other as much as possible. To deal with the large scale of my maps, I often add Haste or other power ups, I might end up doing that here unless it just makes it awkward.

"and one note about the floor -it's looking good, just wondering if it wouldn't be a bit more optimized if you made a 256 x 256 texture for it."

You're absolutely correct; this is the thing about my maps though, I do a lot of things widely considered to be poor mapping practice, the thing about the floor is the foundation of my madness. My objective is to just make something look cool though, and if the map compiler is willing to put up with it, I'll do whatever I can to add in little graphical nuances like that which are almost an after-thought now with the computing power available these days. Thanks for taking the time to look at my map!

[DaEngineer]

"and one note about the floor -it's looking good, just wondering if it wouldn't be a bit more optimized if you made a 256 x 256 texture for it."

You're absolutely correct; this is the thing about my maps though, I do a lot of things widely considered to be poor mapping practice, the thing about the floor is the foundation of my madness. My objective is to just make something look cool though, and if the map compiler is willing to put up with it, I'll do whatever I can to add in little graphical nuances like that which are almost an after-thought now with the computing power available these days. Thanks for taking the time to look at my map!

Nevertheless you can do it with textures to save tons of polys. That is what I created in a couple of minutes:



The floor has only two polys. That's 510 polys less than it would have had with the method you used. Here's the shader:

Code: Select all

textures/corefault/clangdark_alpha
{
	{
		map textures/effects/tinfx.tga
		rgbGen identity
		tcGen environment 
	}
	{
		map textures/base_trim/pewter_shiney.tga
		blendfunc blend
		rgbGen identity
	}
	{
		map textures/corefault/clangdark_alpha.tga
		blendfunc blend
		rgbGen identity
	}
	{
		map $lightmap 
		blendfunc filter
		rgbGen identity
	}
}

I only had to duplicating the clangdark.jpg texture diagonally (to double the size of the texture) and create an alphamask to mark two holes. Through these holes you can see the tin and the tin's envmap. As you can see, this works very well. Fast machines are no excuse for wasting polys

[Eraser]

I think VolumetricSteve's goal is to push the game and/or compiler to its limits. Personally, I don't see the point of this if the pushing is done with proverbial garbage.

I would say the real challenge lies in trying to use limited resources as efficiently as possible. Trying to see how fast we can get a map with incredible detail to run by applying smart tricks that are cheaper to render but have the same visual effect.

[fKd]

agree

[VolumetricSteve]

Nevertheless you can do it with textures to save tons of polys. That is what I created in a couple of minutes:



The floor has only two polys. That's 510 polys less than it would have had with the method you used. Here's the shader:

I'm impressed you took the trouble to do that, even if you say it was only a few minutes, thanks. From a game-design perspective, I agree that your code would be the correct thing to use. Frame by frame, as someone is running around the map blowing things up, they're not likely to notice what I set forth as the "advantage" of throwing tons of additional polys at the renderer. Thanks again.

When those two polys are passed to the gpu for filtering and anti-aliasing I don't think it'll handle the edges as they would with my tiles. I just liked kicking the FSAA settings up all the way on modern cards, viewing my levels at 1080p or higher, and seeing every part of ever surface look good. Upon doing this I also realized that it's my computers that have to suffer the consequences, by the time any one else get's the finished PK3, whatever the end user system is, it should run fairly smoothly.

Personally, I don't see the point of this if the pushing is done with proverbial garbage.

Floor aside, what would you have done differently?

agree

And you?



Now that this is nice and derailed, I'm at:

More weapons
More jump pads
The floor might someday start a small riot
and
perhaps I ought to map for defrag instead of vanilla q3?