Wirehead Studios

Edit 2009-10-28:
Final version: tabq1dm5.zip (http://www.tabun.nl/dl/tabq1dm5.zip)

New mapping project started.

Thomas Mink wrote:

And there are beautiful pictures of old cisterns from over the world to be googled. Obviously, id took the idea and turned it into an otherwordly, dark and nonsensical level. Which is fine.

Here's what I've been playing around with. Scale and layout are pretty much sorted out. It's a bit larger than the original, which makes sense, but still a bit slipgatishly claustrophobic.

tabq1dm5_pre01.jpg (http://www.tabun.nl/tmp/gen/tabq1dm5_pre01.jpg)

I'm fairly happy with the brick/wood textures and overal theme. It's a bit warmer than the original due to the more reddish tone of the tiling, and I think I'll keep it that way. I must remember to play around with slightly orange lighting (from torches, if I can get those to look nice enough).

If anyone has pictures of particularly cool medieval-looking brick architecture, let me know! I've got some ideas for a catacomb-like lower/underwater area, but I'm still puzzled about getting an nice look to basic rooms.

Looks quite a lot better than mine already, which is quite expected. Mine is flat and boring to look at. I tried to think of a way to break up the flat texturing a bit, and came up with nothing.

I love how you also kept the overall yellow brick look that the original had. Looking forward to this. :slippy_thumb:

Here's a few links I found:

Small pics, but various (http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_commissions/archeo/inglese/documents/rc_com_archeo_doc_20011010_catacroma_en.html)
Catacombs in Paris (http://www.lightningfield.com/05/11/151751.html)
More from Paris (http://www.quovadimus.org/paris/cat/thumb.html)
Rome (http://www.italianvisits.com/images/lroma-im/rome-im_monuments/rome-monument_catacombs.jpg)
More from Rome (http://campus.belmont.edu/honors/catacombs/catacombs.htm)
San Fransisco Convent catacombs in Peru (http://michaelfairchild.com/landscapes_wildlife/images/Skulls_femurs-Catacombs.jpg)
Tutbury Castle dungeon (http://www.carolyn.topmum.net/tutbury/castle/castle_dungeon.jpg)
Warwick Castle dungeon (http://www.flickr.com/photos/briscos/2892662625/)
Chillun Castle dungeon (http://static.panoramio.com/photos/original/244631.jpg)
Leap Castle in Ireland (http://orbsandghosts.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/leapcastleorb5_large.jpg)

Hope that helps.

Thanks! A bit too many pictures with rocky interiors. I think I want to stick to a more modern brickwork-type look. "Medieval architecture" actually works rather well in search engines.. :]
Still in doubt whether I should throw in metallic textures/beams like in the original, or maybe stick to wood.

Teleporter shader looks to my liking now. Still working on the sky -- this map really begs for a cool deck of shifting purple clouds.

Once I get some experiments with the lighting underway, I'll make some more screenies.

Sigh. Wasted hours trying to find good textures, models and pictures online. Hardly any results. So I did what I should have done immediately, anyway: made some of it myself.

I don't know if you (or any other mapper reading this) still need a good torch, but here's something that should do any Slipgate map justice:

(http://www.tabun.nl/tmp/tab_torch_shot.jpg)

Download: q3mapobject_tab_torch.zip (http://www.tabun.nl/dl/q3mapobject_tab_torch.zip)

You'll need to add a fire brush (I just use id's fire sprite in the fx shaders) and a light source, this is just a "dead" torch by default. I scale it to 0.5x, because it's rather large, too.

The fire sprite looks clipped on the right side in the screenshot, though I realize that's not part of the model itself.  The torch itself looks very good, as does the wall texturing there.  :slippy_thumb:

Yeah, sprites never look good from every side. It's actually a V, and you're seeing only the left part of it. I might try crossing two sprites like id does, but that looks bad in other ways. :(

That is indeed a very nice torch and texture.

Thanks!
Id's double intersecting sprite solution works better, so I've replaced my "V's".

Some screenies:
tabq1dm5_pre02.jpg (http://www.tabun.nl/tmp/gen/tabq1dm5_pre02.jpg)

Still didn't get to actually working out the right kind of lighting, but this gives a very rough idea (should be much less dark eventually). I've also decided to replace much of the original cistern's metal to wooden structures (not that there is many, but still) -- it just fits better.

I'm quite unhappy with the greenish bricks in the ceiling cage, so I'll have to think of a way to improve that. I'm happy with the sky, though..

That's quite amazing, especially what was done with the ceiling.

The torches look great as well. Wish I had need of them, but I abandoned even trying torches almost from the start. I went with the wall lamps instead, even though I'm not really happy with the black bit that they leave on the wall when you provide them with a light.

Black bit? When using surface lights or light entities? I find that nasty shadows usually disappear with enough radiosity bounces.

Um... wow.  I never thought I'd see a Quake map look like this.  That's pretty freaking amazing.  Whatever you're doing, keep doing it.

As a random side note, seeing you make progress on your version of the cistern has inspired me to no end with work on mine. I honestly can't say why that is.. but I do know that I spent like 5 hours or so tweaking my map. The walkways and stairs got graphical tweaks, I got the lights somewhat figured out, and I even started on an idea to make my walls less flat and bland in some places. All I need now is an idea for the underwater area, which I was never really pleased with in its current state.

*Tabun humbly bows*

Let's see some screenshots then, Mink -- Screenshots are always good.

I've been reluctant to post any screenshots because of the rate I've been tweaking. Nothing is set in stone yet, and anything has a possibility of changing.

Water exit (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/Vaeladven/Quake3/The%20Cistern/shot0003.jpg)
Long hall (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/Vaeladven/Quake3/The%20Cistern/shot0004.jpg)
Teleport room (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/Vaeladven/Quake3/The%20Cistern/shot0005.jpg)
Pillar room (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/Vaeladven/Quake3/The%20Cistern/shot0006.jpg)
Basic design (http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v246/Vaeladven/Quake3/The%20Cistern/shot0007.jpg)
Tab's button (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/Vaeladven/Quake3/The%20Cistern/shot0008.jpg)
MH/RL room (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/Vaeladven/Quake3/The%20Cistern/shot0009.jpg)
Main underwater area (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/Vaeladven/Quake3/The%20Cistern/shot0010.jpg)
Pool (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/Vaeladven/Quake3/The%20Cistern/shot0011.jpg)

The water exit is dark, but the lighting in the area isn't done yet.. so it should end up brighter. The long hall, I wanted to break up the flat texturing a bit.. but I'm still scared that the method used might still be too repetative. The pillars were originally pipes, but after abandoning the idea I still wanted them round for some odd reason. All of the water areas are far from being completed.. the screenshots are there only to show the laughably crude design, as well as the old pipe setup that was in place at the time it was made.

I think the only thing really odd that jumps out when looking at those screenshots, is this: it is very true to the original in brushwork, while having a totally different set of textures. It also looks like the map is rather brightly lit -- while the original was (too) dark. Making it brighter seems like a good idea (and I'll do so myself), but maybe some point in between very bright and very dark would look best.
How's the scale? Is the layout working for you at a different size?

After abandoning the ideas that were just asking too much of myself, reverting back to my DM4 remake's style seemed like the logical choice. So yea.. the brushwork is quite faithful to how it was in the original map, with only very minor differences.

The scale is bigger than the original map.. I can't exactly judge by how much, but it's bigger. I'd say the size increase here is roughly what it is when comparing my DM4 to the original there.

The layout works quite well.. but it's kind of hit and miss. Then again, it was kind of hit and miss in the original as well. You can see in the screenshots where I made some changes to it (red armor instead of yellow.. SG where the nailgun would be in the original.. some 5 health packs in a corner of the pillar area.. armor shards under water). I'll probably change some of the bullet spawns to plasma.. because right now there's only one plasma spawn, as per the original map only having one big nail box.

Armor on this map is very sparse.. and always was. It just feels odd to me.

Yeah, the layout seems to be a bit too gimmicky to actually work. I was thinking on adding some armor to the water area, making it more attractive to go to and more part of the map. It's a very risky thing to jump into the water (for more than one reason) and in 1on1 tourney it would be positively suicidal. :]

Another update, but it's going slow now. Fullbright screenshots this time, I'll really put off lighting until I have the better part of the brushwork and theme worked out.

http://www.tabun.nl/tmp/gen/tabq1dm5_pre06.jpg

I think I've got some neat ideas for the lower area now. Color theme will probably work, but I hope I can pull off a sort of vaulted ceiling -- and without making the map too heavy on polygons..

Oh boy. I just worked all day to get the basic shape of the lower area right. A whole day that I should have spent studying. I'll regret that when I'll be trying to make up for it tomorrow.. But still, not unhappy with it:

http://www.tabun.nl/tmp/gen/tabq1dm5_pre07.jpg

Some notes:

Lighting is just a few random lights thrown in -- I'll have to think of a good way to light this so it a) both fits in better with the upper area (lighting in the upper area I will make much less orange, I think, though) and b) shows off the ceiling better.

No worries about the ugly bits and the placeholder stuff, I know about pretty much all that is wrong with this room, still. I also plan to do a lot of work on the diffently coloured section of the roof - should fit in better in the end.

Kinda worried about what the r_speeds will amount to eventually. Right now it just hits the 7k mark at the highest. Should be ok if I max it out at 10k, I think.

That looks downright amazing. A shame you lost study time over it though.. but I know how it can be once you're in the groove. With how much trouble I'm having with my boxy version of the same area, seeing this just leaves me speechless. The ceilings you come up with are beautiful. I'm jealous. :)

Thanks.

By the way, I've found that just toying around in radiant doesn't work well for this kind of map/ceiling. Here's how this became easy and fun for me:

1. First, find some pictures of architecture that you want to emulate. No need for anything spectacular, but it really helps to browse through google images for words like "medieval ceiling" or "support column" or the like. I save pictures that I like to a reference directory and look at it a few time before deciding on what to make.

2. After selecting the look/general shape of the bit I'm going to make next, I make (very rough) sketches -- just real pencil on paper. Some may not have suspected this, but I'm actually very bad at doing real drawings (they're messy and it takes many tries to get lines to come out right). But the point is to get a rough idea of how the bit looks. I usually do two angles to make sure I understand what I'm picturing. That way, you know that you're going to make something that can really exist in 3D. :]

3. Next step is not much different, but I make same additional sketches or add some lines to previously made sketches, while thinking out the brushwork. It's usually not too hard to decide what needs to be done with curve patches or brushes. It may take some time to figure out what details to make with brushes, or use textures for them.

4. After all that, I do the real work. Sometimes I test out some of the thought out shapes first, but usually having worked it out before helped to smooth out the process. I usually use placeholder textures that show at least the right kind of contrast and texture detail to let you see how the shapes work.
Planning how rooms interconnect without breaking up the shape of ceilings is difficult, and you can see that I'm not entirely good at dealing with that kind of thing. But it helps if you can accept moving entire rooms around to make the brushes within other rooms work.. :)

5. Not a really the fifth step, but usually mixed in during the fourth: I make my own textures. I use cgtextures.com, which is an amazing repository -- very much worth an account. They have tiling textures aswell, so that should help you if you're not too keen on doing a lot of photoshopping. Pretty much all textures in tabq1dm5 are based off of cgtextures material.
By the way, if you need anything edited for a specific idea, don't hesitate to ask - I may even have something lying around that could help you out. The biggest obstacle to devoting time to making nice architecture is not having good textures to make it all worth the effort.

By the way, I've been meaning to link you up with this:
(http://www.tabun.nl/tmp/gen/tab_qwbutton.jpg)
I found that the older version was a bit too bright for my map. Looks like that goes for yours aswell, so this one may look better.

By the way 2, what door texture are you using? I'm considering making a fresh door texture to match the look of my map. Not quite sure how much I want it to match the original Quake door.. would be hard to pull off and still be consistent with the quality of the surrounding textures..

Very nice vault usage there.  I'm definitely looking forward to seeing it properly lit.

I'm really looking forward to the completed product after that last picture.
Qualms over lost study time?  Pfft.  You're doing community service!

The brighter button actually didn't look to bad to me, but yea.. the darker one looks better.

The door texture I'm using is, uhhh.. door04_1.. from the Quake Retexturing Project. I'm also using door02_1 for the sides you see when it opens. I was reluctant to use any textures from there, but I figured that since I had a Quakey button, I may as well have a Quakey door too.

I'll keep doing sketches in mind if I plan to ever create a map after this one. Highly doubtful, but you never know.

That said, I think my version of the map is just about done (guess 'done' is a loosely used term here). Only have a couple lights to add in various places.

Found some time to work on the lower room again. Still not done, but getting there now. Decided on and executed a different take on the powerup area. Not that this room looked much like original, anyway.

http://www.tabun.nl/tmp/gen/tabq1dm5_pre08.jpg
(pretty big set of screenshots, but I am rather proud of the area now.. ;])

Still need to fix some sparklies here and there. I'm not happy at all with the water surface (though the fog looks really nice and moody). If anyone has a good murky water shader, please let me know! Lighting is still just randomly thrown in, though it gives a better idea of the place, now. R_speeds are surprisingly low, still, so I may be able to add some nice details later.

Nice indeed.  Keep it up!

Thanks, will do. :]

Small update - not even time for placeholder lighting:
tabq1dm5_pre11.jpg (http://www.tabun.nl/tmp/gen/tabq1dm5_pre11.jpg)

Just some WIP shots of the water exit area and surroundings. Curved stairway was a bitch to make. Painstaking work and took quite a bit of planning to get it right. I'm happy with it now, though. Water exit stairs and the cementy area surrounding it will probably be heavily reworked, not happy with that at all yet.

The curvature on the stairs is nice, and I like the gothic look on the doorways.  I agree on the water area.  It feels cluttered and out of place.  Maybe it should be more of a weathered natural rock instead?

Could try some mossy/weathered rocks there, but it would take some work to make it look natural. I've got a normal set of stairs in there now. That looks better than the fancy stuff I had before, but still not right. Problem is that r_speeds are already up to 8k, so I don't think I can add too much detail anymore. :/

Anyway, here are some new WIP shots:

tabq1dm5_pre12.jpg (http://www.tabun.nl/tmp/gen/tabq1dm5_pre12.jpg)

Still have one more basic room (MH/RL) to do, and then I can really start tweaking the details.

The screenshots look a tad dark overall, but that could just be my settings.  I've changed video drivers a few times and haven't adjusted my gamma.  If you were going for a Gothic look you nailed it.  This kind of reminds me of some of the architecture style in Unreal, and the lighting is superb.  The underwater shot was a nice touch.  I think the translucency of the water is good.  I'll love to give this a whirl when it's in a testable form.  :slippy_thumb:

Yeah, it is dark. I'm running into the same kind of problem that I had with tabd2map01. In-game it all looks ok, but screenshots are dark as hell. I think I'll try to get my Quake 3 a lot darker, so that I'll automatically make things brighter..

I may also have to chuck some of the fancy doorways, otherwise I'll never be able to add other details, and they really are serious polyhogs. But first, to make a texture for the big door. :}

But... but... I like the doorways! *sniff*  :(

Yeah looks abit dark but cept that it looks freaking awsome :)

Hehe, no worries Pho. I'm just removing the second set of arches from one of them. :]
At 8k max. r_speeds right now, and still have some detailling to do. And still one more room to add..

I whouldnt worry that much about r_speeds most ppls got better computers nowdays :)

A lot of people pump the settings up on those computers, too.  Keeping the r_speeds sane allows for more computing power to be devoted to effects, etc.  Normal Q3 is no concern, but Gen can be quite harsh if all the settings are turned up and you want to keep a high frame rate.

Well yeah of course, just meant that there are more room for higher r_speed nowdays than before :)

Here's some new screenshots to show that I'm still working at it:

tabq1dm5_pre13.jpg (http://www.tabun.nl/tmp/gen/tabq1dm5_pre13.jpg)
tabq1dm5_pre14.jpg (http://www.tabun.nl/tmp/gen/tabq1dm5_pre14.jpg)
tabq1dm5_pre15.jpg (http://www.tabun.nl/tmp/gen/tabq1dm5_pre15.jpg)
tabq1dm5_pre16.jpg (http://www.tabun.nl/tmp/gen/tabq1dm5_pre16.jpg)
tabq1dm5_pre17.jpg (http://www.tabun.nl/tmp/gen/tabq1dm5_pre17.jpg)

Lighting is slowly getting there, and hopefully getting bright enough for everyone, too. All areas are done as far as basic shape goes, but I still have to rework some bits (like the water exit and some ceilings) and I want to do a shitload more detailing (better water lighting, broken wood, scattered tiles, etc). Still, I feel it's really starting to take shape. I might release a test version soon, too. Not sure if I want to do that before or after I'm happy with detailing..

Pretty nifty looking stuff going on there. Even if the lighting isn't finished yet.. I do love the mood that it gives. It certainly feels like Quake, only judging from those screenshots.

Still going at it. Slowly.

tabq1dm5_pre18.jpg (http://www.tabun.nl/tmp/gen/tabq1dm5_pre18.jpg)

R_speeds are maxing out at just over 10k now, and that's with items thrown in. A little higher than I went for, but still acceptable these days, I think.

Still need to fix some things, add technical stuff like (bot)clipping, and still have to think up a better item layout. I will make an alpha version with the "pure" layout soon. :]

Ok. Finally managed to get something close to a playable version wrapped up.

This is "alpha 1":
Download: tabq1dm5_alpha1.zip (http://www.tabun.nl/tmp/gen/tabq1dm5/tabq1dm5_alpha1.zip)

You know the drill.

The map is presented as the final "default" version will be, but this is obviously the "purist" version. If anything is different from Quake 1, let me know. Note: I have deliberately placed the lightning gun at a more sensible position.

A few side notes:

• Bots work, but aren't tweaked in any way yet. I played a round against them, and was pleasantly surprised by their behaviour. Even without any clipping and tweaking, they seem to get all the weapons and even go for the button and the MH just fine. They also seem to be able to exit the water intelligently, which is extremely good news.
• Aesthetics are pretty much done. I don't think I can add any more detail (map is heavy enough as it is).
• As with tabd2map01, I will make a Q3A-(+Gen)-friendly "default" version once the biggest problems are fixed with the alpha. This item layout totally sucks in VQ3, I think. :]
• Clipping has not been done yet. You can still pass through torches, get stuck behind edges, et cetera. Water clipping has been done though, so if you have any difficulty gettting out of the pool, let me know!
  
• I forgot a spectator spawn point. :shifty: This means that the SP end-game podium is drawn at a deathmatch spawn and consequently looks messed up. Hopefully doesn't mess up anything else for this alpha test.
  
• There's no ambient sound(s) yet. Well, there's a test wind sound which I'll probably keep, but sounds will be worked on some more (should I include another global button sound, like in tabd2map01?).

For those willing to test this map, here's a list of things I'd like to hear about:

• Performance. This map is harder on the hardware than my previous one, averaging about 2k higher in "r_speeds." I did manage to keep the pk3 smaller, though, so texture load is lighter. If you get serious FPS drops in specific locations, let me know.
• Weird texture errors, sparklies (glitter, seams, etc.), lines in the sky (shouldn't be any, this time), z-fighting. I haven't found any myself, so anything you come across may be important. (Exception: I know there are some untextured brush surfaces in the roof of the long hallway. On purpose, once clipping is in place you won't be able to see (through) those anymore.)
• Errors (none in my console).
• Gameplay issues - as pertaining to the architecture/layout and keeping in mind that the layout is still "pure". Ideas for the default version are welcome too!

That's it for now, I guess. Probably forgot something, but we'll see. :]

Wow, this is simply awesome. Tabun, you're an amazing artist man, this almost inspires me to go back to mapping. However I'm too busy competing in Quake Live right now to even think about going back into game development at the moment. This reminds me of Quake 1 and Painkiller, it's got that atmosphere to it. Good work as always buddy. =8]

Very nice looks on this map, havent tested it yet thought but once i get the time for it i will :)

Now that I can take a break from this stuff I've been working on, I'll try to get a good look at it today.  :slippy_thumb:

I haven't done a full testing on it, but one thing is glaringly different from Quake 1.  The walkway down in the water area does not exist at all in the original map, as well as the supporting stonework under the blind end of the walkway.  It was a pure swim down there, and the water was much deeper.  The Thunderbolt was near the pentagram for the sole reason of discharging into the water to take people with you, and if the pentagram was not available, you were taking a huge risk going after the Thunderbolt.  A lot of Q1 maps have the Thunderbolt in the water for the discharge aspect of it.  Why was the walkway added?  :doom_?:

The walkway was added, because swimming is not at all appreciated by the general pplayerbase in the Q3A environment. Nobody is used to seeing Q3 maps with huge bodies of water in them, and adding them mainly disrupts whatever speed was there in the gameflow to begin with.

Why I didn't start out with a really "pure" version of the map, is because I knew I would have to get rid of the huge body of water eventually. I really don't want that in for any non-pure version that I would make. It's easy enough to take out the walkway (just rise up the water level and remove a few brushes), but I didn't want to have to re-think the looks and vis-work of a map after perfecting one with an empty/purist water area.

Frankly, I don't like the Cistern's original layout, as far as items and water placement are concerned. It is extremely lop-sided and relies on two annoying gimmicks that define the way it must be played. Whole areas of the map are pretty much useless to even bother trying to control, too. That, I guess, just means less motivation for me to try and go for a pure version right off the bat. I just had to put some items in there to release a test-version, and the easiest way was to use the Q1 layout for that. I don't know if I can best just scrap the idea of making a pure version, do it first, or do it after making a properly playable Q3A version...

For a Q3-specific standpoint, I can understand that, however I'm looking at everything primarily from a nostalgia standpoint, playing the role of the Q1 "purist" as it were.  If this were not a remake map I wouldn't even bring it up.  I had no idea that Q3 players were such landlubbers.  :smirk:


From a design standpoint, that is logical, and I have something to add to that below as well.


Cistern isn't the most popular Q1 map from my understanding.  It's like Lava Tomb for Q2.  You love it, or hate it.  What you've done with the map is make it absolutely beautiful, something I did not think was possible with a Q1 map.  From a strict gameplay perspective, backing off from the nostalgia angle a bit, I can understand the desire to make the Lightning Gun more easily accessible and keep the pace up.  In Gen or Q3 it's a lot more useful than in Q1.  The Thunderbolt is actually pretty hard to use in Q1 deathmatch besides diving in and suiciding with it.  I do like map gimicks, like the Frag Pipe, the crusher in Dead Meat, etc, but I can understand overdoing it as well.  Either way, this map makes me want to play it, whereas the first time I played Cistern in Quakeworld I honestly thought it was a community map.  Apparently many servers don't run it.


Is it possible to make a "quick and dirty" "pure" version that simply lacks the walkway and higher water level as you mentioned above?  The Thunderbolt and ammo would obviously have to either be moved back to the invuln spawn or else dropped in the water somewhere.  This would give a baseline to compare a pure vs non-pure geometry.  Let me give it a comparison run.  If it works out with just those minor changes, then the pure version would be "in the bag" after you finalize the clipping, etc.  Once the map geometry is set, just remove walkway, raise water, move a few items, and purist version is done.  At that point, all you'd have to focus on is the item placement for non-pure version with included walkway.

There is the possibility that taking the walkway out and raising the water might suck as well, and not work in a final version.  That's what I want to find out.   :slippy_thumb:


Now for testing so far.  As for bugs, I found a few, and fortunately they're all fairly minor.  Screenshots and buglist are here:

http://www.wireheadstudios.org/phoenix/editing/tabq1dm5_bugs.zip

The only visual gripe I could find that's not a bug is in the water texture shader.  Part of the water surface moves, and part of it does not.  I did not know if that was intentional, but the texture that does not move makes it almost looke like transparent stone.  I think some minor agitation to that texture would help there.

Gameplay I have not tested yet.  The overall look of the map is damned impressive.  I'm not normally one for Gothic because so many people screw it up.  This looks more authentic and, as I said earlier, reminds me of some of the better levels from Unreal.  I'll get back to you on gameplay when I get a chance to properly run through with some bots.

I had the same feelings about the texture of the water. It almost seemed too stone-like to be water. Other than that, I didn't notice much.. except for a couple of the things Phoenix already mentioned.

It was a joy to run through this. I know this might sound cliche or corny, but it felt like this place could actually exist.. in a weird fantasy-ish way. Honestly though, and this is also going to sound stupid, my favorite part was the bobbing teleports. It's subtle, but it adds and explains a lot.. and also made me say, "Damn! Why didn't I think of that?"

As for the purist Q1 layout.. all of your health packs are the smaller variety, where some of them should be the larger ones. On that note, most of the plasma spawns should also be bullet spawns (smaller nail boxes), as there's only one large nail box in the original Cistern.. but I really can't fault swapping them at all, and I doubt many will complain about that, but I figured I should mention it anyway. Perhaps keep at least one or two as bullets though?

@Pho:
Ok! Good catches, though some things I don't quite understand (duplicate faces above one doorway have no detectable error in the .map).

Don't waste too much time and effort playtesting at this point. I'm currently adding clipping, and the bots will behave differently once they're in place. Many gripes with getting stuck on walls will also be gone once I'm done with that. Finally, any stutter related to bots will be resolved (and the .aas file in the pk3 should be much smaller :)).

Alpha1 is actually only an aesthetics/performance test. Once I get the visual bugs out of the way, I'll make that pure version (will take some tinkering though, since I'll have to adjust the pentagram-alcove to fit the higher water level and make room for the thunderbolt. :]

Now, regarding the bugs:

385: Don't know what's going on here.. shouldn't be happening, .map file is in order. If it doesn't show up in normal use, I'll ignore it. Otherwise I don't know what to do about it...

387: No z-fighting on my end, and shouldn't happen. I'll take another look. I think it has to do with the way r_fullbright 1 duplicates all the surfaces..

388: Found and fixed.
390: Found and fixed.
393/4: Found and fixed. Good catch!


@Mink:
I had a run-around in (Fuh)quake, noting the item layout, but I didn't catch those differences. I would like the pure version to be as Quake-like as possible in this respect, so I think I'll try and fix that. Apparently I can't trust my (and the only working) Quake version for that. :/
If someone can double-check this and point out the precise differences, I'd be much obliged.


As for the water, what I was going for, was a combination of ripples and dirt floating on the surface. Making it all realistic is nearly impossible, alas. I had the dirt layout with a more aggressive level of turbulance first, but that looked wrong. I can up it some, but I'm afraid it won't get much better than this. Maybe I should remove that dirt layer altogether.. Not sure yet.

It's a bit harder to tell the difference between the health packs in old q1.. all there is to differentiate them is a blinking light on the side. If you still have my version of the cistern, I kept the health layout true to the original.. not counting the smaller 5h packs that push you past 100, of course.

I also ran through the map again, and noticed z-fighting on the bloody handprints in MH room.
screenie (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/Vaeladven/Quake3/shot0000.jpg)

Uh oh. Could it be that the polygonoffset shader keyword is not working properly in Generations? I cannot reproduce the z-fighting in VQ3. Still have to test the map thoroughly in Gens myself! D'oh.

The ones that should be larger health packs are:
By the grenade launcher - Screenie (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/Vaeladven/Quake3/shot0003.jpg)
By the teleport closest to the 'pillar room' - Screenie (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/Vaeladven/Quake3/shot0002.jpg)
On the uppermost walkway, at the corner by the MH door button - Screenie (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/Vaeladven/Quake3/shot0001.jpg)

And as far as I know, the only large nail box on the original map is the one on the uppermost walkway.. pretty much right above the two lightning ammo spawns (Screenie (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/Vaeladven/Quake3/shot0004.jpg)). The rest are all small boxes. Of course, this kills anyone who actively likes using plasma weapons in default q3.. and even Gen if they aren't Slipgate.

And yea.. all of my playing is done in Gen, guess that's my bad. Then again, perhaps it's a good thing?

Not so worried about VQ3 play with the pure layout anyway - besides, you get a lot of ammo with the weapon anyway.. :] (The weirdest thing for VQ3 is probably that there are plenty of shotgun shells lying around, but nothing to fire them with :))

Gen-testing is good, ofcourse. I just somehow seem to save it for after normal Q3-testing. No good reason other than that I have desktop shortcuts to quickly launch my map, and Generations takes a minute longer to load any map. ;]

Thanks for the update, I'll adapt the layout accordingly.

Whoops!  The z-fighting with the polygon offset is Gen-specific, and I know why.  I have r_znear forced to "1" in Gen, the default is 4.  Setting that in Q3 reproduced the glitch.  The reason I have r_znear forced has to do with some weapons clipping the first-person view.  I'll have to look at how else r_znear is used in Q3, specifically with polygonoffset.  This is definitely not a map bug.  Good catch there Mink!

Edit:  Well, this creates a little unhappy extra work for me.  In .99f you can't do anything about the zfighting, but for the current non-public version I unlocked r_znear.  It only makes the zfighting stop at a value of 3 or more.  Unfortunately that affects 3 gun models at normal resolutions, and I haven't checked out widescreen resolutions yet.  Hopefully the models can be fixed by a simple scale and positional adjustment.  I'll check widescreen first.  Serves me right for using a cvar hack instead of fixing it the "proper" way.

I did a run through with some bots.  With 5 Slipgate bots running around, I noticed no slowdowns in FPS, and that's using the new particle code in the test build.  I did notice one issue with bots though.  It's the same issue that deadmeat has, and that's occasionally it will hitch the game when bots are present.  I noticed it most when the bots went for the button, but it seemed to happen in other places as well, like right in front of the door.  I know the Q2 Gladiator bots had this problem when falling into lava.  I don't know what causes it, but it's definitely a Q3 bug somewhere in the bot code.  This is only the second map I have seen this on, so there's got to be some kind of similarity between what's happening on tabq1dm5 and deadmeat, where it's a lot worse.  Bots are only supposed to "think" every so many msec, default setting is 100.  I'd love to know what causes this.

Well, like I said, the botclipping is not in place in alpha1 yet. That means that the map is horribly complicated for bots. Proper botclipping hides stuff like complicated ceiling structures, wall damage and many little nooks and crannies of odd shapes. Basically the bots should "see" only a very blocky, simplified version of the map.

I've placed player and botclipping in 3/4ths of the map at the moment, and already the bots are behaving more intelligently. I haven't really checked the difference in stutter, but that should already be less or even gone at this point. (The .AAS also dropped from 1.7Mb in the alpha to 1Mb..)

Weird bug with the r_znear cvar.. If polygonoffset wasn't used so freely (now, anyways) in the Q3 Mapping community, it sounds like it might have even been better to just remove the decals. Isn't there some way to split up the r_znear behavior for the weapon scene and the world scene, or something?

New alpha:
tabq1dm5_alpha2.zip (http://www.tabun.nl/tmp/gen/tabq1dm5/tabq1dm5_alpha2.zip)

Clipping should be in order in this version and bots should behave better. Haven't changed the water section yet, but all the mentioned glitches and layout errors should be fixed (where relevant).

Edit:
Question: I can make the MH/RL-room work so that the door never closes as long as someone is inside it. Does that sound like a good idea (as a camping deterrent)? Alternatively, I thought of setting up an extra button that pumps a couple of grenades into the room (for the non-pure version only, ofcourse). How does either of those ideas sound?

I would say, door stay open for anti-camp on the pure version, and grenade trap on non-pure.  As for the extra button... I remember a brick sticking out somewhere near one of the teleporters.  ;)

Unfortunately r_znear is pretty global, and the view weapons are drawn in the world scene.  They're just depth hacked to not visibly clip into walls.  I'll have to look at fixing the weapon model issue the hard way.

god everything disapered what i wrote cuz i pushed the wrong button so here we go again:

Had a few mins to run around your map, will do an more extensive test later.
First the looks on the map is awsome, very good! :)
however i just feel its abit too big compared to the original.
I rember when i did play it was ppls actually used the nailgunz on this since it was perfect to shootdown the corridors with it. (dont have quake 1 installed on my laptop so can't compare but will do once i get home)

Pho already said it about the water, im not very sure this bridge fits in but it might be cuz im abit of q1 purist.

And to answear your question: dont do a thing about the MH/RL room it's good as it is, one of the point of this map was to actually "own" the RL/MH room and the suprise to find out someone's camping the room then you get an close vision of a rocket towards your face :) (not that i like camping but it made the map fun)

I so much of a purist that I like keeping little quirks of a map perfectly intact when I remake that map.. like some of the low doorways in my version. That said, I'll agree with ReBoOt in regards to the MH/RL door.. at least for the purist version. In modified versions, changes can be made. But if you're going to actually change the layout of the water area at some point to be more true to the original.. you may as well keep the door camping in there as well.

As an alternative, you could change the respawn timer on the MH to reflect the original Q1 item.. which was a whopping 120 seconds. In Q3, I think it's something like 40 seconds.. I may or may not be wrong.. but it's definitely shorter than in Q1. Why it was that long, I doubt anyone will ever know. Just tossing it out there.. I mean someone could still hide in the door, but more health will erode away before the MH respawns. Might be an awkward adjustment to make, though, from a player standpoint.

Bots do behave a bit more sane in this version.  I'm still getting the occasional hitch, but the bots appear to not be completely stupid about navigating now.

I'd leave the respawn time alone for the MH.  Long MH respawn time in Q1 was due to the fact that you could uberstack your health with multiple MH's, and you got a lot more armor as well.  Map scale being larger is OK by me.  It is quite a bit large compared to the original, but all Q1 maps were so damned tight that rocket spam equated to instant death.

As for door camping... well, grenade launchers work pretty good to empty rooms of campers.  Lobbing a few in front of the door, hitting the switch, then lobbing a few through the doorway tends to decamp small rooms, so perhaps letting the players solve it would work best?  Besides, if you just camp that room, all the frags are going to take place elsewhere so if people avoid the room you'll be kind of low on the scoreboard.

Speaking of grenades, I do have one suggestion to a change in items.  I noticed that as an Arena Gladiator, there are 3 rocket ammo boxes, but no grenade ammo boxes.  Slipgate won't see a difference, but Strogg and Arena could definitely use some grenade ammo.  I propose changing the ammo box on the walkway above the button from a rocket box to a grenade box.

I'm going to keep the door working as it is now for the pure version -- pure will work exactly as bad as I think the original did. ;] I'm talking about the Q3A-default version. Camping is not just a lame tactic, it actually slows down gameplay, something that seems to be seriously frowned upon by the professionals in the mapping scene. I'm already 100% sure that a common comment I'm going to see is "take out the button, keep the door open always." I won't do that, but I will make the room more of a powerup-spot, not a weapon niche, and certainly not for the most powerful weapon! Anyway, my point is that camping shouldn't be all that safe in the non-pure version.

A further consideration is that this is such a small map -- which makes me worry about tourney play aswell. The default version will be more balanced with that in mind, too.

Scale is final. I made it this size on purpose. The usual reasons for changing scale to get Q3-playable results apply.

I'm not going to mess with respawn timing. I don't do that as a rule for normal items (real timed powerups are a slightly different matter), since people have come to get used to default respawn times, and will get upset if something is throwing their intuitive play off. And rightly so, IMO.

Good idea on the RL=>GL ammo change, that makes sense to me, as it's just as "pure," anyway.

Here's "alpha 3":

tabq1dm5_alpha3.zip (http://www.tabun.nl/tmp/gen/tabq1dm5/tabq1dm5_alpha3.zip)

This should be the real "pure" version. Also new: ambient sounds.

Now that one actually felt like the Cistern I know. I even think the bottom-most area looks better flooded like that. It was a treat to run through this and play a quick Slipgate deathmatch with the bots. Seemed like the clipping wasn't fully complete yet, so I'll leave out those issues with the bots. They took some weird and interesting paths though. :)

Have to agree feels alot better with the water flooded :) might do a switch between BFG and LG gun if you feel "normal" quake 3 players get bored just getting an LG as reward with the work swimming to it.

The botclipping is complete, so please report any seriously weird issues (like bots running into walls or not able to leave the water, etc.). Playerclip is also done, so also be on the lookout for places where you can run into things that you wouldn't expect, especially where this is annoying in combat.

Also, I'm not going to put a BFG in there, I think. The PoP should be reward enough, basically. The whole water-thunderbolt-death thing (as Pho described) is Slipgate-only, anyway. I've pretty much written off the pure version as anything but a funny gimmick for nostalgic Slipgate games. Serious, balanced gaming is what the non-pure version should be all about.

I wouldn't call it serious.. but there's a a couple very slim 'lips' along the walls in places that I saw the bots use. One is by the grenade launcher, where during a fight I saw a bot take the scenic route to get the weapon instead of using the normal floor. (Screenie (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/Vaeladven/Quake3/shot0010.jpg))

The only other that I saw is directly under the button to open the door. A bot jumped down from the button and landed on the narrow lip, then walked along the wall to the stairs. (Screenie (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/Vaeladven/Quake3/shot0009.jpg))

In both cases, a player can do the same.. if they chose to anyway.

Not anything major.. just made me look twice when I saw the bots running across them is all. :)

Yeah, I deliberately didn't clip those, so players can use them.. Maybe I should bot-clip them, though. Didn't expect them to use it. I did notice they use the small ledge in front of the curved wall near the three doorways, but that's actually neat. :]

I just downloaded the map, and I'll give it a run in a bit.

I would say no on the BFG as well.  In normal Q3 the BFG is enormously hated by players.  That was a large part of the reason the weapon was changed in Gen.  I have not to this day heard a single complaint about the revised Arena BFG, even from hardcore Q3 players.  For the non-pure map it would be a definite no-no.  The lightning gun, on the other hand, is a very favored weapon with Q3 players and it will definitely draw people to the underground area.

As for the pure version, it wouldn't make sense to give everyone a BFG and Slipgate only the Thunderbolt, especially spawning next to the invulnerability.  That's giving Doom and Strogg too much of an advantage on a Q1-themed map.  Besides, if someone does a remake of Lava Tomb for Q2 (assuming someone ever does) we wouldn't swap out the BFG10K spawn with a lightning gun, would we?  :doom_?:

Tab:  I wouldn't call anything you do worth "writing off", especially concerning nostalgia.  That's the whole point of the project, no?  I take the pure maps as serious for gameplay as any balanced versions because the purists (like myself) will want that as much as the "normal" Q3 community would want "balanced-for-Q3" maps.  I see both as equally important.

Hmm, yes. Somehow I see the important part of the pure version to be as close to the original as possible, altering only things that destroy gameplay in ways that weren't an issue in the original game/level.

I guess I'm not too interested in how the pure version comes out in the end, because I'm just not a fan of core elements of the map: a big water pit, two item spawn combinations of a strong weapon and a powerup and an almost completely useless section of the map due to item placement (upper walkway corner near the GL). Changing any of those would be a requirement for me to consider the map to play as enjoyably as it could be, and I think that nostalgia wins out here and such changes are simply ruled out for a version true to the original.

That doesn't mean I'm not willing to tweak the pure version -- indeed I hope the feedback here will lead to it being the best it can be. (I'm already happy to note that the bots actually go for the PoP, while they don't in alpha2, so the change to the water section has already paid off. ;]) It just means I'm going to focus on actually get more out of the basic layout of the level, which is a hard enough task, anyway.

Edit:
Speaking of which, here is what I'm currently planning to do.

(http://www.tabun.nl/tmp/gen/tabq1dm5/tabq1dm5_items_a.jpg)

This is based off of (just slightly) a design guide for tourney (http://www.goodstuffmaynard.com/portfolio/other/cdg/index.html#IV), my wishes to make players really roam the map and be able to have a fighting chance against players who are in control of one of or both the MH & RA. Not sure if I want to keep the door button as it works now. I kind of like the idea that you have to risk something (taking the room with only one easy exit, or going for the button to enter a dead-end room) to grab a powerful item. Weapon placement will probably require most testing, because I'm just not sure how that will work out. I do think the shotgun will be an important weapon here, with the many ways one can get close to the other players and the extra shell pickups I'm planning to add..

The "h" indicates not all, but just the bigger health spawn points.

Double posting to add this link:
tabq1dm5_alpha4.zip (http://www.tabun.nl/tmp/gen/tabq1dm5/tabq1dm5_alpha4.zip)

Includes latest (alpha3) pure version as tabq1dm5_pure. Default version now added as tabq1dm5.

One change that I'm already planning to do is to remove some of the health near the teleporters. I'll probably move that somewhere else, or maybe even take it out entirely. Another thing I should probably do is add bot_roam entity to give bots a stronger pull to the MH. If anyone sees bots pick up the MH, let me know -- that would be good news. :]

On the non-pure version, I saw a bot take it exactly once in a 20-minute span (I timescaled while observing).  On the pure version, the lightning platform was accessed 7 times - 6 times by Hunter, once by Uriel.  I had Ranger, Wrack, Uriel, and Hunter playing.  Since Hunter prefers the lightning gun, the weapon priority in the bot code seemed to be at work there.  Overall the bots accessed the water area more in the pure version.  I only saw bots use the platform on the non-pure version once while spectating.  They did not overuse the water on the pure version like they tend to do on some maps, but I was a bit disappointed they did not use the underneath on the non-pure.

The pure version plays fine to me in Gen.  Regarding Gen play, some of the problems inherent in the map in Q1 are diminished.  For example, access to the rocket launcher is not entirely dependent on the button thanks to Earth and Doom being able to get one at the Grenade Launcher spawn.  Anyone taking out a Mortar wielding Earther or a Doomer that's using a Rocket Launcher will claim the weapon.  That takes a bit of the camp-factor off the button room for Gen's sake.  A Slipgater, Arena Gladiator, or Strogg Trooper lacking a rocket launcher can technically acquire one anywhere on the map so long as an Earth Soldier or Doom Warrior is present.  In Gen, I absolutely love the pure version.  I like it much better than how it plays in Q1, but then, I like Gen better than Q1, even playing Slipgate-only.  I have not tested the Pure version in normal Q3.

Per-Class breakdown on the Pure map:

Earth has it pretty tough since the only place he can pick up a Gatling Gun is at the Lightning Gun spawn, so he'll have to rely on the MP-40 and mortar a lot and the Napalm Launcher to a large degree as well.  The hand grenade pickups help a bit there.  The lack of armor also means Earth will have to watch his health and not depend on armor stacking.

Doom lacks his signature double-shotty, but he's better off using plasma and rockets anyway, with single-shotty for long-range work.  He can get a double shotty off of an Earth Soldier if Earth picks up a Gatling Gun at the Lightning Gun spawn.  The Doom Chaingun's usefulness is hampered by the teleporters and the lack of raw open space.  It's possible to chew an opponent down, but they duck behind walls a lot or teleport out so it's not much gun for the grabbing.  The lack of armor also means Doomers take a beating.  That's not necessarily a bad thing.

Slipgate can be damned near all-powerful on this map.  Get a hold of a rocket launcher or the Thunderbolt and you can kick serious ass.  Avoiding accidental, non-protected water discharge and running the walkways using the Thunderbolt will result in a lot of frags.  The grenade launcher is immensely useful around the spiral stairs, and any place where you can have altitude over other players.  Nails make a good backup for fighting until you can get a better weapon.  Since opponents lack armor, the SNG is actually quite useful for skirmishing since there's a lot of nails laying around.  The lack of a double shotgun really doesn't hurt Slipgate that much.  If you have trouble getting to the rocket launcher, get topside, lob some grenades, drop down and hit button.  Odds are you'll get in the door, or just use Mr. Thunderbolt on a Doomer or Earther and pry it off them.  Once you do get the Rocket Launcher, you're guaranteed frags, especially if you manage to snag the MH as well.

Strogg's saving grace is the Chaingun and grenade launcher availability.  There's no shortage of ammo for the Chaingun, and the grenade launcher can make quick work of the spiral area and is good for mining the teleports.  Hyperblaster is good for suppressive fire on the catwalks, but Strogg will definitely want that Chaingun.  It'll be a short fight for Stroggers most of the time unless you're a damned good shot with the machinegun.  The ability to toss hand grenades helps, but not much against a rocket-wielding Slipgater. 

Arena does well on this level mainly because some of the other classes have some difficulty.  Plasma and lightning with some grenades thrown in works fine for the bulk of the fighting.

On the non-pure version:

I'll test in Gen tomorrow, out of time tonight.  I did test in normal Q3 though, and here's my thoughts.

Placing the Red Armor in the door room was an excellent idea.  That's one thing this map is very short on is armor count.  In Q1 the yellow armor gave you 150 points, so it was the #3 area for contention in Q1 besides the Thunderbolt and Rocket spawn, whereas in Q3, yellow armor is only worth 50 points.  Moving the Yellow Armor to the ledge corner makes it more accessible and the corner is not totally useless now.  The pillar area isn't as desirable an area to visit now, but it always was a bit odd having the armor there.  The staircase will still get used, but the area's importance has been shifted to the catwalk.  That's not necessarily bad though.

For weapons, I found myself wanting a railgun owing to the long halls.  I was thinking, if you really want to make the Red Armor room a reward for risking the button, replace the two health globes with a railgun spawn.  You have to fight in and out to get it, and the spiral stairs is not the optimum place to use a railgun, so it would require a little strategic thinking to save it and keep a different weapon out so you don't just hand it over to a player with a lucky rocket or grenade.  I don't think it's an absolute necessity, but I do think it would be worth play testing and it's not nearly as good a weapon to camp a small room with compared to the rocket launcher.

The plasma gun up top feels slightly odd there.  I think putting the plasma gun where the shotgun is, putting the shotgun where the grenade launcher is, and putting the grenade launcher where the plasma gun is might be a more logical arrangement.  The reason for my thinking is the plasma is useful for long corridors, which is presented at the current shotgun spawn.  Shotgun is more useful for tight spaces, and getting one near the spiral stairs would be of more use than the grenade launcher there.  Right now it's pretty easy to bounce grenades back onto yourself if you grab it and then attack up the stairs.  The shotgun would allow for some dirty fighting around the button room.  Putting the GL up top would let you lob 'nades below anywhere on the map, including right through the button room doorway or at people pressing the button.  The rocket launcher and lightning gun feel fine where they are.  I like the lightning ammo being moved into the water as well.

One option with the MH spawn might be to teamchain it with a regen powerup so that they alternate.  It would add a little spice in the form of a powerup but not an overbearing one.  Otherwise, I like the MH placement and swapping out the in-water health with lightning ammo gives a reward for venturing under water.  The water texture moving also looks better now.  It looks more like muck and less like stone.

Where you have the 5 point health globes 4 in a row on the long catwalk is nice, but I think on the opposite side of the connecting hall 4 shards would be nice there too.  It would add some symmetry and make that area a little less boring item-wise.  I do agree on nixing a health globe near the teleporter by the spiral stairs.  I'd leave one in place there and remove the other.  Mega health placement balances out the sewer area nicely with the other sections of the map.

I did see one visibility glitch and that was as spectator I can fly to the top of the map and see the rest of the map through the tops of the wooden beams running along the top edges of the walls. This is really only noticeable as a spectator so it's not absurdly bad.

That's all I've got for now.  I'll do more playtesting tomorrow.   :slippy_thumb:

Excellent feedback, as always, merci.


Non-pure:
----------
The graphical glitch surprises me - I thought I'd nixed that! Apparently not. Is that in the long hallway near the 4 small health globes?

I've added a lure that should draw more bots to the MH platform, but still have to test whether it has any effect. It may also lure too much bots pointlessly and helplessly into the water -- if that happens, there's not much else I can try. So we'll see.

Adding in a RG seems like a good idea. I'm slightly hesitant to put it in with the RA, but what you say does make a lot of sense (a lot more than the health globes, at least ;)). Without further ammo in the map (or perhaps a box in the water), it isn't that big a danger. Worth a try, if anything.

About the suggested three-weapon swap: that does a few things I wasn't hoping to do.. 1) make the weapon spot near the water entry less important, 2) make for a high concentration of powerful weapons near the best spot to be to get the powerups, 3) make the upper walkway easier to control (and even give it double-RL-pickups in Gens). The swap does make sense in the way fights work in the staircases and around the button.. So I'm not so sure what to make of it. GL on a nice high & spammy spot is very tempting.
Would it also be a (big enough) improvement to just swap the GL & PG?

I don't think I'll add in that teamed Regen just yet. It seems like a nice enough idea for FFA. It doesn't seem to add all that much, however, and would certainly be considered disrupting to tourney. If it turns out that the MH-spot is just too annoying to get to for such a small reward, I think I'd sooner consider swapping it with the RA. But that doesn't sound like too hot a plan, at the moment.

I've moved the shards from the teleporterroom (with the Q decal) to the walkway in between the PG-to-be-GL spawn and the corner. I've also added some health globes between the other teleporter and the YA, for it seemed empty there, too.

Finally, I've changed the rocket ammobox into a bulletbox (as a placeholder, mostly, probably will take that out eventually). Seems to make more sense to make people actually go for the RL itself if they need rockets, and make that area of the map more important for the player.

Pure:
-----
I'm glad this version plays so well in Gen! I too prefer Generations Slipgate only over Quake, so it's not entirely unexpected, but I had feared that the differences wouldn't work out too well for this particular map. In normal Q3 the reward for swimming is a bit too low - it takes a lot of time to get the powerup/LG and it's very dangerous if opponents are savvy. There are other, more minor annoyances, but then, _pure is for Generations, anyway.

Blargh, my post got eaten!  And it accidentally attached my pic twice.  Oh well.  The problem with the wooden beams was fixed.  I found exactly one missing texture in the non-pure version.  The crosshairs show it in the pic, it's on the top of that column.  The non-pure version does not have this issue.

On the GL and plasma, I think that would be good.  I also realized there's a plasma ammo near the weapon spawn by the drop down, so some distance between the PG and the ammo pack makes sense.  I'm kind of mixed on removing the rocket box...  Some classes, like Strogg and Earth, don't get as many rockets.  Perhaps if the box were placed in the water and replaced the shotgun ammo down there?  At least I think it's shotgun ammo... either way, the non-lightning ammo box near the MH is the one I mean.

I did find one glitch that I'm not sure if anything can be done about.  If you push the button and someone immediately runs through the door before the door fully opens, the door will close again.  I believe this is because they are hitting the door trigger before it's reached the end of its motion.  I don't if this happened in Q1 or not as I was always rocket fodder on that map.  To reproduce the behavior, I set g_speed to 2000, timescale to 0.5, hit the button and ran through the door.

Hah, I actually found a spectator-ceiling glitch that I thought you meant: you could float up between the beams near the button-door and look through their topside. Missing texture now added to the column indicated in the screenshot.

Not sure what I can do about the door-closing error.. Maybe I should team, then relay the switch and the door trigger on the inside of the room, then delay the function for some more seconds. Not sure if that would work, though. I could also make the door open a lot faster, but that would look a bit weird.

Also, it amused me that I did exactly what you suggested with the RL ammo (there were plasma cells in the water) before reading this. Probably means it's a pretty good idea.

Still running some tests to see if I can lure the bots to the MH area some more. I've already been able to make them go for it more often (and less awkwardly), but not quite often enough yet.

Aye, that was the original glitch I mentioned a few posts back.  You fixed it in the previous version.  I had found it in the version before that.

I could say that great minds think alike, but that would be preening my own feathers a bit too much, no?  ^_^

The door thing didn't happen in Q1. I played a bunch of bot-matches on it to try and get a feel for how the map played, but the bots got hung up on the door quite often. Dunno why, but sometimes I opened the door for them instead of just gibbing them on the spot.

Anyway, I noticed that happening on my own Cistern remake as well. Didn't happen often though, so I left it alone for whatever reason.

I ran through the non-pure version and played an all-arena botmatch, and I'm not quite sure what to make of it. I guess I need to play the map a bit more. Felt so foreign running around with the layout after playing the original layout, and original-themed layout, so often in the last two months or so.

The only lightning ammo box on the map is underwater. Might just be me liking the lightning gun too much, I dunno. Guess that's what I get. :) Adding a railgun would be interesting, but I'll remain skeptical in my thinking. Might be worth a test though. And I'll agree with the PG and GL swap.

Small aside, I also prefer Gen Slipgate matches over playing Q1. Spawn protection is a huge plus. Getting insta-rocketted after spawning was never my idea of fun. Guess that's why most of my Q1 play time was done in TF.. the original, and still the best. :)

Yeah... spawn-die-repeat is pretty much the sum of a lot of my Q1 matches.  The other thing I hate about Q1 is the sv_aim behavior.  I don't know how many times I aimed at the floor by someone only to have the server auto-target and send the rocket whistling past them.  What would have been a kill in Q2 or Q3 resulted in my death instead.  I absolutely hate auto-aiming of any kind.  If I miss I want it to be my own damned fault.

Regarding the balanced layout of tabq1dm5, I did get a chance to play it in Gen and overall the gameplay is pretty decent.  I don't think having the only lightning ammo spawn in the water is too much of a problem for standard Q3 play since the gun is easy enough to get and Arena gets a crapload of ammo just for picking it up.  It hurts Slipgate a bit for Gen play though, so maybe a lightning ammo elsewhere on the map would be a good idea.

The door issue must be something Q3-specific then.  Come to think of it... I think this happens on Castle's Q1DM1 remake as well with the MH room.  If I knew the names of the triggers in place to open the door via button and by walking out of the room I could look at the code and at least let you know why it does that.

I guess the bots aren't really programmed to deal with paths that are only available after doing something as complicated as pushing a button (the door is opened by a func_button that targets "func_door1" -- the targetname of the func_door in question). There seems to be no way for the bots to link their going for the button (which they do "on purpose") with the actions/areas triggered by the button. They are just "pulled" by the item weights of the items behind the door, and go for it. They can't even detect whether there is a path to the item or not, and just give up if they keep running into the door for a few seconds. I don't think this can be fixed by just changing the map, sadly.

I'm currently cooking up new versions of the map, with some layout changes. _pure is close to final, with only minor clipping tweaks. Nonpure version has changed a bit more. Calculating the light on both versions will take a couple of hours, so I'll upload alpha5 tomorrow.

Well you could turn off auto-aiming in Q1 with a console command.. 'noaim 1' I believe.. so that was never a concern of mine. :)

As for the Q3 bots.. yea, they're dumb like that. They even get distracted quite easily if someone gets within proximity. Like they'll run to push the button to open the door, then forget about it because someone just ran up the stairs.. letting the door close back up again. Viable tactic at times, sure, but with the pure layout I'd gamble and go pickup the RL and MH anyway. :)

They do the same thing with the grate on q3dm7 though.. hang by the grate even when it's closed because they don't realize they need to push the button first. Doubt it would be a simple map fix.

Here's alpha 5:
tabq1dm5_alpha5.zip (http://www.tabun.nl/tmp/gen/tabq1dm5/tabq1dm5_alpha5.zip)

Bots should be lured to the waterroom alcove a lot more. Still not really often on the nonpure version, but this is all I can do without pretty much breaking bot behaviour anyway.
I did swap the MH & RA - keeping the weaker item right next to the weapon (RG) spawn, and making a dive/jump towards the alcove better worth the trouble and danger.

Fire away!

The map plays well with the railgun. I was expecting a bit of dominance when using it, but the lack of an ammo spawn evens that out a little.. then again, I'm not the best shot with the railgun. A bot even managed to grenade me after I made it into the room, so that swap paid off a bit too.

The bots went to the water alcove quite a bit, so that was good as well.

The lower area of the pillar room feels like it needs something more, but I'm really not sure what.. and it also might just be me.

Only other thing is the pure version of the map didn't show up on the in-game map list. I checked, and it seems you forgot to include the .arena file for it. :)

That said, the pure version still plays perfectly. I forgot to keep an eye on how often the bots went to the alcove on that one though.

With 4 bots running around, they went for the armor.  I noticed that if they dropped down the ledge onto the walkway, they just exited the room, but if they entered the water room by the stairs under the button area they'd go swimming for the items in the water and just about always check the armor spawn.  One time the fighting moved down into the water area and the bots just went nuts over the armor spot while they were fighting.  It seems as long as they're in the wet stuff they'll try to get to it, and as long as they're not all fighting each other they'll make an attempt to go downstairs every so often.  I'd say the issue of the bots not getting armor has been fixed.  No complaints about game play.  Seems to work pretty good to me.

Very close the final now, I feel. I've got some very good feedback on the Q3W forums. Mostly positive but with nice pointers and useful nitpicks. The non-pure version is affected primarily.

Biggest changes for the non-pure are visual. Stairs have been made steeper, for they were a bit out of scale. Biggest gameplay change is that there's now a (somewhat tricky) way out of the pit besides the SG/YA. You can jump on some bricks/ledges to get out there, so it isn't a dead end anymore. Another (test of a) gameplay change is an alternative teleporter destination when you hop in the back end (opposite the bloody Q). Not sure if I want to keep that, yet, but it's there to see how it plays.

Beta 2 download:
tabq1dm5_beta2.zip (http://www.tabun.nl/tmp/gen/tabq1dm5/tabq1dm5_beta2.zip)

I don't know what you did to the bot logic, but they love the sewer area now, in fact, a little too much.  They definitely go for the armor, lightning gun, and the other items quite frequently, but they tend to all jump below and fight and not really roam.  They won't use the button anymore either.  I only got Sarge to hit it once while spectating the bots, and the bots avoid the big door completely now.  They also seem to like to bounce between the two teleporters a lot.  I know the bots like to congregate and fight in one spot on any map, but they've moved from clumping in front of the door to clumping in the water or stairs near the water.  On the upside, they're not hitching the game that I can see, but I think that's due to them not getting as confused near the button or doors.

The alternate teleport on the back of the Q I don't like.  It's too close to that area to really be a good destination.  I'd leave that as it was.  It gives one "safe" entrance to enter to get to that other teleporter, whereas the other teleporter is flat out dangerous no matter what.  Having the backside of the Q teleporter go somewhere else breaks the flow of the map.  I think it's better to keep it as a safer exit from the button area than using the front side of the teleport.

The rocks out of that blind pocket are nice.  I'd say that's a keeper.

Don't know what's going on with the bots at the moment. I know about the TP-hopping, got some things to try to fix that. Probably will go away if I remove the alternative tele-destination. Regarding the latter: I'm not too fond of it myself. Q3W-folks really liked the idea, so I put it in there for testing. Right now it's teleporting to the pit next to the SG. That's better, but I think I still prefer normal (and logical) function.

I've noticed that bot-behaviour changes per game, too. If they keep running into eachother in the same area, the fight is going to lure other bots in (especially when the weapons start dropping). This can happen in various places, but it tends to happen more in the water. I guess that's because it takes them longer to get done roaming the area. I haven't changed anything that would directly affect bots between beta1 and beta2, so your guess is as good as mine here.

I'm working on some other changes aswell. The water is in for improvement, and should come out properly lightmapped. I'm also changing gameplay by adding some "shortcuts" - much in the style of the way out of the pit near the SG. The map was too linear to be interesting for long, and this way there will be a slight learning curve to the map that might keep people interested and make more tactical plays possible. Needless to say, pure will stay pure. :]

If anyone's interested in seeing what Q3W people are discussing, here's the thread (http://www.quake3forum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=41765).

I only did a quick run through, but it seemed well enough. I will agree with Pho about the extra teleport however.. and the steeper stairs confuses me, but that's easy to get used to.

The bricks at the bottom of that pit are a nice touch. That was the one area of the original map that bugged me the most because it was pretty much a dead end. :slippy_thumb:

I was so busy watching the bots I forgot to take note of the stair design changes.  The stairs feel inconsistent being broken up like that.  Aesthetically it looks better on the previous revision.  I also think this might be affecting bot navigation a little... probably not as severe as the teleport destination, but it does change their routing and that might be a clue as to why they're clumping up a bit more.  They might want to navigate more off the stairs and with the ledges breaking up the stairs they might be staying put where they really shouldn't.  It's just a guess but it's the best one I have.

I read the comments on the dev thread... yikes, I can see what you're up against.  Aeon and Sock definitely are opinionated.  A lot of what they're talking makes sense, but would apply better if this were a "from the ground up" map project as opposed to a remake.  I think they're being too heavy handed in the suggestion department as far as flow is concerned.  Part of a map's flow is not just how easy it is to move, but also more tricky areas to navigate.  For instance, the red armor.  I see suggestions to make a quick in-and-out for it.  That defeats the purpose of having it in a precarious spot, same as the MH room needing the switch.  I'll cite Frag Pipe as a great classic example of risk and reward, as it's one of your favorites.  The Quad, armor, mega health, railgun, hyperblaster, and even the invulnerability have risks to get to them.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but is not a large part of the gameplay on that map the choices players must make as to the timing of taking a risk to get an important item?  You might get the invulnerability just to fall into the lava and have 30 seconds of hot bath water before a toasty death, or get a railgun slug put through you and blow yourself up with the rocket jump a split second later (has happened to me).  I've pinned players going for the mega health and who hasn't toasted someone running through the pipe?  That uncertainty is what makes that map great.  As for fighting on stairs... uneven ground adds a vertical element to the fight, and it's one more element to the gameplay that makes the player think as opposed to just twitch-spamming rockets at peoples' feet.

I think too often players get used to certain kinds of maps and then become a bit too narrowly focused on how they think map flow should be.  I know CPMA maps are designed for constant movement, few stops, lots of trick spots, shortcuts, and more of an emphasis on fast movement and accurate shot placement than situational strategy.  A lot of Q3 maps tend to follow that formula as well, however this is a remake of a Q1 map that already plays a hell of a lot better than the original.  I think most of your own design decisions have been the best ones so far.  I wouldn't go overboard with changes at this point.  Stick with what you feel is best on the map, and take the really good suggestions, like the exit to the pit, and do it your own way.  The brick wreckage was a really good choice there - makes sense, solves the problem, but doesn't change the design.  It's functional but subtle and doesn't really break anything.  I sure as hell wouldn't ruin the map by putting jump pads on it.  :surprise:

Regarding visuals... the details on your map are fine.  I don't know the trapezoid thingy that was mentioned, but the broken bricks, etc, all seem to fit.  The only thing I might agree with would be subtle weapon marker points, like some scraped or chipped tile decals, etc.  The level looks just worn out enough to be in a state of semi-decay but not complete disfunction.  Adding more damage would overdo it.  Cripes, this is your second map and it looks this damned good!  I'm not usually one to lay compliments on thick, but I've seen some of Castle's older work and he's pro now, and some of it sucks compared to this.  You really have outdone yourself, and as far as the visuals go, the map is absolutely beautiful.

Hmm, I disagree there. The only reason the stairs are as they are now, is because it looks better to me. I upscaled the entire map, but didn't think about the way that would affect some things. Doorways look fine a tad larger, but the steps look better smaller. I really don't notice any change in gameplay, so I pretty much ignored sock's opinion regarding the matter.


Aye, they voice their opinions pretty extensively. On the plus side, they are also very willing to share their expertise. I'm currently priv-msg'ing back and forth with AEon, who's helping out with the bot issues and vis-blocking to lower r_speeds. These guys have been in the 'business' since Quake 3 was actually still popular, and when in doubt, I tend to trust their view on non-aesthetic matters.

There's also another side to this, that makes me pay more attention to Q3W than I would for tabd2map01. I feel that the map's layout is tight and has good potential to actually work for the kind of gameplay that the people there like. I'm not willing to do things that would go against my own idea of a fun map, but I'm willing to make some jumps easier, or shortcuts available, if an big and active crowd of players prefers this.

Add to that that I care most about the aesthetic side of mapping -- I like creating moody, convincing and hopefully eye-popping levels that catch a particular look that matches the original game. How it plays is secondary to me, so I have no strong opinions on the matter. (That, by the way, is the main reason why I would never have added a jumppad --or even a lift-- to the map, no matter how strongly it was recommended).

The result is that I'm willing to learn about either, but tend to follow experts in gameplay design more easily than I would people voicing their opinions about the looks of the thing. I feel that I can justify that in this case, because there's a pure version to keep the gameflow of Quake. I'd decided very early on that I didn't want to keep that for the non-pure version -- additional changes seem to come naturally.

Finally, the suggestions aren't as extreme as it may seem at first. For example, the request for a change to the RA-alcove didn't include making it easier to get to the item. The RA is at a higher position and it looks like you can make it back to the walkway without swimming -- but you can't, by a hair. That means that circle-jumping back only drops you awkwardly into the water in such a way that it can't but be annoying. If they'd asked to keep the RG/MH-door open and remove the button, I'd not have considered it. That would be too much, and remove the needed danger to get to the items. But in other points, such as shortcuts and added interconnection, I really am willing to listen to these rather opinionated mappers. If it looks good, fits the map and doesn't play any worse for me, I'm willing to consider it.

Summary: a lot of words to simply say that I will make this lean slightly towards the common type of Q3 map, while certainly not doing everything Q3W-people are suggesting.

I'm certainly not out to say Aeon's or Sock's opinions are invalid as I'm no mapper myself.  When I said "I see what you're up against" I was just rather surprised at the sheer number of suggestions being thrown at you when the gameplay aspect was already fine from my own perspective.  I did not know about the help they were offering in the bot department, or that there were PM's going back and forth to that effect.  I do not know these people so my sampling of information was limited.  I'm glad to see they're as helpful as they are critical.  That's a good combination.  :)

What you say makes sense, and I better understand your thinking in the design process, which in turn helps me understand what you're gunning for with the non-pure version.  I'll adjust my perspective on the next revision to test with that in mind.

I thought I was nearly done, but now it seems I've been doing some bad things when clipping and botclipping the map. I'm currently trying to fix that, and every room I change seems to cut the bot-information (in the .aas file) down by many tens of kilobytes. Should in the end fix a lot of the bot stutter, I hope!

Yup, different way of clipping makes a world of difference:

First, bspc got me:
4486 brushes, 829 Kb .aas and compiled in 101 seconds.
Now, it's only:
1950 brushes, 420 Kb .aas and compiled in 44 seconds.

That should further reduce any hitches and maybe even other bot problems and stupidity!

Nice!  Perhaps this technique might be helpful in solving the reachablilty glitch with tabd2map01_pure as well?

I'm curious as to this good way of clipping. If it's not hard to describe, it's a bit of information that might be worth knowing about.. being a rather amateur mapper myself.

It may solve the tabd2map01 problem, but probably more because it involves entirely redoing all the botclipping, rather than any inherent quality. Not looking forward to that, but bugs must be fixed..

The "proper" botclipping process is indeed simple to explain, so here goes:

The logic of it is that apparently, using less brushes is better. Complex solid brushes (and especially patches) that are entirely enclosed in a botclip (or even a playerclip) brush, will be ignored by the botcompiler. The simpler the remaining set of structural brushes, the simpler the .aas can be (and the quicker it compiles).

So if you have a hypothetical level that has all its ceilings at the same height, you'd best begin botclipping by drawing one huge brush over every ceiling, right up to (or even enclosing) your caulk hull (if you were using one). It doesn't matter that it intersects stuff or even if it ends up largely in the void around your level. It also helps to make it as low as it can go without getting noticeable. Bots don't really rocketjump and if they can't even get halfway up to the ceilings, you can really clip a huge chunk of empty space below the roof.
I did this for most of my level, even though not all ceilings are at the same height, and it made quite a difference.

Playerclipping comes first, though, and should be done relatively simple aswell. Most of the guidelines for botclipping work for playerclip aswell. Ofcourse, you wouldn't clip stuff the player actually expects to get to, even if it means rocketjumping, etc.
Basic approach would be: 1) playerclip complicated brushes so the player doesn't get annoyed or trapped by them, 2) enclose the playerclip brushes in an even simpler botclip shell (that completely encloses them), if it simpler it can be.

Guidelines to keep in mind:
- If you can use one botclip brush to do the job of two, use the method with only one.
- Angled or complex botclip brushes complicate the .aas. If you can use big, simple cubes, that's the way to go. This means that you do not miter botclip (or playerclip, for that matter).
- Extend brushes to the botclip-ceiling or floor if they can be without interfering with play. (example: my torches are botclipped with rectangular botclip brushes that extend way up to the big ceiling-botclip brush.)

Other things to consider:
- Clipping stairs as ramps can help, if the ramp stays simple enough.

That's basically it. If you're not sure if something actually helps, just compile the map once with, once without and compare bspc results.

The only thing I'd wonder about stairs-to-ramps is does that affect the bots' physics, or just their navigational logic?  In normal Q3 there's no ramp jumping, but in Gen there is for Slipgate and Strogg, and also CPMA uses ramp physics.  A few other mods might as well.  I know it won't affect normal players unless you playerclip with a ramp, but I wasn't sure about the bots.

I don't think the bots can do those fancy tricks... the stairs are ramps for the bots, though. With botclip you make real bot-geometry, as well as the logical space for them to work in.

I wasn't meaning deliberate trick jumping, I was simply referring to inherent movement physics.  So if you were to put a bot clip that blocked a passageway and launched a bot into the air with a rocket explosion, the bot would smack against it just like a solid wall?

Aye, that's the idea. It's like the bots are running around in a different map from you. They can walk on botclip brushes, crash into them, etc. I don't actually know what happens if a func_bobbing or _rotate or the like pushes a bot into a clipbrush, but my guess is that it'll go *splat* as if there'd been a normal wall..

Yea. On my recent trend of updating Bad Place, I have a partial invisible platform built with a botclip at the end of the quad nook to help the bots better jump across to it. Sometimes you can notice it when they decide to fight from the edge of the ledge, just kind of standing in midair.. but oh well. If a player tries to fight up there while standing on that same area, he'll find himself taking a lava bath.

Didn't really know botclips worked liked that though, in relation to walls, floors, and ceilings. But now that I think about it, it makes quite a lot of sense. Definitely a good bit of info to know about. Thank you for sharing it. :)

Ok.
Here's beta 3:

tabq1dm5_beta3.zip (http://www.tabun.nl/tmp/gen/tabq1dm5/tabq1dm5_beta3.zip)

Have to run now, but I'll add a list of changes here later.

Note(s):

• Pure still needs tweaking of the lighting @ the water.

I love all of the subtle changes that were made. On their own, it might not be much.. but add them all together and it's quite nice. A few examples are the blackness on the wood that was toned down, the slowing of the teleport shader, the floating debris in the water, and I think something was done with the checkerboard floor tiles.. but I'm not sure if that's just me thinking something was changed, or if it really was.

Anyway, the shortcuts that were added are a bit weird to me.. then again, it was my first time playing the map with such shortcuts in place.. but they're not too overbearing, and they still hold the map's overall feel, kinda like the bricks that were added at the bottom of that pit in the previous version.

Bots seem to act a bit more intelligently, so I can only assume that your redoing of the clips was a success, and they use some of the shortcuts quite well. Bit annoying when they decide to clump and fight at the one added in the long hallway, but that's just me nitpicking bot behavior not your map. I know they love to clump together and have group orgies.. gradually moving around to other places in the map. :)

Single bots won't roam the entire map (oddly enough, this was the first time I ever tested this map with a single bot). Put the bot in a fighting situation where it needs to find health.. and then the entire map gets used (minus some of the shortcuts, of course). So, that's nice to see. They do have some strange 'zig-zag' type behavior however, like before they enter the MH room they have to touch each corner of the doorway first for some reason.

In short, an already impressive piece of work got even better. Excellent stuff. :slippy_thumb:

Thanks!

Actually, I just reworked some more stuff. Again, little things, relatively speaking. The big "button-room" has a new roof, the doorways look much nicer now, and I fixed some small annoying imperfections...

But I think it's almost time to really call it a day. Shouldn't get out of hand.. :)

New, and hopefully final "beta" release.

Here is beta 4:
tabq1dm5_beta4.zip (http://www.tabun.nl/tmp/gen/tabq1dm5/tabq1dm5_beta4.zip)

• Did some more texture work and gave the doorways a much needed facelift.
• Made a new roof for the big room w/ the button.
• Added an areaportal for the button-door.
• Tweaked some textures, lights and small bits of brushwork, and optimized clipping and r_speeds some more.

I think it's done. If there's anything important that I've missed, or something still sucks, now is the time to tell me. :]

Screenies:

http://www.tabun.nl/tmp/gen/tabq1dm5_pre19.jpg (http://www.tabun.nl/tmp/gen/tabq1dm5_pre19.jpg)
http://www.tabun.nl/tmp/gen/tabq1dm5_pre20.jpg (http://www.tabun.nl/tmp/gen/tabq1dm5_pre20.jpg)
http://www.tabun.nl/tmp/gen/tabq1dm5_pre21.jpg (http://www.tabun.nl/tmp/gen/tabq1dm5_pre21.jpg)

I know Pho mentioned it back somewhere around the first test release, but I feel it worth mentioning again (since up till now I had it filed under 'a couple of the things Phoenix already mentioned'). The burn marks behind those two torches in the teleport room without the Q-symbol have some z-fighting on my end as well. I get it without fullbright enabled, so that wasn't the case.

You can see it in this screenie (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/Vaeladven/Quake3/shot0001.jpg).
The burn mark on the right disappeared during the z-fighting.. while the one on the left is somewhat fuzzed with the wall. I actually took the shot in vanilla Q3 as well, so that was interesting for me. :) . Since it's not there for you, though, I'm not quite sure how it could be fixed. Just figured I'd actually (finally) mention that I see it too, so it's not only Pho.

Other than that, everything look great to me.

Hmmm. If it's not r_znear, then I have no clue what may be going on there. I checked them again in the editor, but it's clean. If for some reason polygonOffset is failing in only that case.. no clues. Shaders, technique and placement are all the same for those soot marks and all the others. :/

I ran out of time today with the hardware changes, so I'll try to get a look at the updated version tomorrow.  :)

No worries. There's a new, final version out now, anyway. I've done all I could on this one, and it's time to move on. I know you won't like it, but I did decide to keep the alternative teleport destination for the non-pure version -- It grew on me, and I like the way it can tense up a tourney battle over the RA.

Final version sent off to lvlworld.
Download here: tabq1dm5.zip (http://www.tabun.nl/dl/tabq1dm5.zip)

I was hoping to do a final bug test before you got things wrapped up, but at least you caught me before I started.  I'll definitely give the map some play though.  I haven't had a chance to look at it since beta2.  :surprise:

Edit:  Well I only found one glitch that stood out, and that's in the pure version the mega health is turned so that the Strogg health item faces sideways when in the switch room.

The standard version rocks.  The shortcuts make sense, are useful, and do not detract from the gameplay.  Actually it adds some extra variety to the combat, which made the map a bit more fun.  Surprise attacks at the busted column were common.  The item layout on the standard version seems to fit the map perfectly.  In Gen, the bots know what to do.  They roamed the entire map, fought anywhere and everywhere, actually knew how to use the button, though did not always enter the room if they were distracted by a potential victim, went after the armor, and generally played a hell of a lot better.  The bots hitching the map is gone as well, in both versions.  The extra teleport destination works where you have it.  What's kind of neat is if someone wants to be a bitch they can camp the lightning gun and nail people coming off the teleporter, but you can also escape by going up the blocks if you're clever, and someone wanting to remove the camper just needs one railgun shot down the bottom floor from the stairs side to get someone off the LG.  It's a nice balance of potential hazards for all parties.  I love how the map plays now.  I only tested it out in Gen, but it's damned good in Gen so it'll be good in Q3 as well.  I love the teleport symbol, btw.  If we get some Doom maps that involve a teleporter, that would make a nice a nice base for "evil" symbols on the floor... I'm thinking animated versions of the red tiles used in Doom.  Visually everything is good on both maps.  The weapon spawn marks fit perfect - just enough to let you know something is there, but not glaring and annoying.

I noticed the pure version got some visual updates as well.  Bots also seem to navigate the pure version better.  Did you update the bot clipping there too?  Either way, excellent work.  I think stepping back a bit gave me a fresher perspective.  Other than the mega health facing the wrong way, I'd say both versions are pretty much Cistern Perfected.  :slippy_thumb:

Playing through the map again, I sadly did notice a few texture misalignments that I didn't see before. They mostly pertain to a few of the updated curved archways (or rather, the walls serving as the caps of the curve), so I apologize for not really checking them before. I saw the updates made to them at the time, but the walls went unnoticed.

Anyway...
01 (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/Vaeladven/Quake3/shot0019.jpg) - The arch at the bottom of the pit. Both sides, but it's more noticeable from the LG side. Both pure and non have it.

02 (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/Vaeladven/Quake3/shot0017.jpg) - The arch at the back of the MH room. Both map versions.

03 (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/Vaeladven/Quake3/shot0018.jpg) - The arch over the MH-room door. Oddly, only the pure version has this.. and even more oddly, only the side facing the button.

04 (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v246/Vaeladven/Quake3/shot0016.jpg) - Not the arch, but the right side of the arch at the GL(pure)/SG(non).. there's a slim bit of misaligned texture running up along the wall. I turned fullbright on to try and get a better shot, due to it being a bit dark in that area.. so I also caught the bit of weirdness seen in the shot as well. Oh.. both versions of the map again.

Sloppy. I've done some editing on the doorways and copied them over here and there (even between map versions). Should have fixed the alignment afterwards, but apparantly forgot to do so. Too bad. Thankfully, it doesn't catch the eye too much. The long vertical misalignment between the two doorways can't be helped, but I know about it - this is the best I can do without using a patch (and getting bad lighting problems instead :)).
By the way, you're using really low subdivision/lodcurve settings there! Having FPS-trouble?

I thought I had all items facing the right way, but it seems I have been sloppy even there! Oh well, another thing I can live with. Odd how these things only seem to pop up when you've actually released the final. :] Teaches me for thinking I'd ever really be done with it.

Edit: it's really weird, but I have the MH facing the right way in the editor (in both versions, too). It's rotated counterclockwise 90 degrees like it should be. I have no idea why it would be incorrectly rotated in the fixed up version of Generations..

I did update the botclipping for both maps (pretty much copied over the new nonpure clipping to the pure version), so yes, that should be playing a bit better now, too. The bots still just tend to swim and get lighting-owned, but pure is rather for playing with real people anyway, I hope. :]

Thank you both for your alpha- and beta-testing this map for me, by the way. It's really helped getting me from rookie mapper to one of the semi-pros in no time. :]

About the MH... I'll take a look at my code.  Perhaps it's something I forgot to do for Strogg.

It's not my code, but I used the code to track down the problem.  Here's the angle data from the item spawn:

PITCH: 0.0000000
YAW:  -1.403340
ROLL: 0.0000000

Both maps are reporting these angles.  It needs to read:

PITCH: 0.0000000
YAW:  -90.000000
ROLL: 0.0000000

The item is rotating according to the code, but it's only rotating about 1.5 degrees.  I verified it by manually assigning a value of -90 to the yaw inside the code, and it aligned correctly when forcing the value.  Interestingly, -1.403340 in radians converts to -80.405459 in degrees.  I don't know if that's of help, but it appears that somehow the angle data exported incorrectly from the editor.

Really odd. Presumably a GTKradiant bug, then. I rotate items by clicking toolbar buttons that do 90 degree clockwise rotation for X, Y and Z separately. I rechecked and it's true, the angle has a really weird value. Probably went wrong with copy-pasting at some time. Dang. I've fixed it in the editor, just in case I do ever need to recompile it for other reasons..

What can i say...
This map looks and plays great as far as i can tell from playing it against bots in vq3 and generations.

Reviewed at lvl (Finally!):
http://www.lvlworld.com/#c=m1&i=2076&d=21%20Jan%202010&m=All&p=review (http://www.lvlworld.com/#c=m1&i=2076&d=21%20Jan%202010&m=All&p=review)

It's about time someone got around to reviewing it.  8.2 score so far.  Nifty!   :slippy_thumb: