Wirehead Studios

Update Jul-26/2004: Newest version has two possible approaches for the 'outbuildings' in the courtyard. I'd like folks opinions on which would be better, rubble, or intact. Either can be made out of wood or stone, so I built both possibilities regarding that choice as well. Opinions? =^.^=

And yes, the snowdrifts around the buildings don't clip movement or get marked by weapons. The former is intended, the latter I'm investigating a solution for. And yes, both snowdrifts are identical, I didn't bother building two seperate drift-banks until I've settled on which building style to use.

Level I'm working on. Rough layout is a 2:3 rectangular arena, with a high wall that can be walked on with cover, 6 towers (4 corners, 2 mid-point on the long edges) providing extra-high-angle attack and death-from-above chances, and a group of buildings in the middle of the courtyard area. The buildings will be one large keep, and two smaller out-buildings.

Level will be intended for 4-on-4 team or 6-way FFA at maximum, with CTF support in a later version via doubled keeps with terrain between them. It is currently approximately twice the size of Q3DM17 minus the railgun platform area.

Target hardware is medium-end by Generations Standards, as there is lots of detailing being added to the level where possible, such as hanging oil lamps (with smoke) for lighting, and similair. r_detailtextures will switch off anything inconsequential to gameplay, such as the smoke from the oil lamps as a straight-forward example.

Heavy emphasis is being placed on trying to theme the level with nods towards Wolfenstein 3D, while I'm actually trying to avoid making it look too much like Return to Castle Wolfenstein, more of Vadrigar work to recreate a suitable arena from the construction styles Sgt. Blaze remembers, since none of the castles he fought through so long ago were directly suitable themselves to be cloned.

Current Status:

• Courtyard walls complete, beginning construction on wooden buildings.
• Style defined and finished for:
  • Stone-work construction
  • Terrain
  • Lighting
• Still creating style for the wooden buildings, and still laying out floorplan for central keep.
• Still determining final terrain layout.
• Still experimenting with dynamic lighting effect placement.
• Still polishing hint-brushing regarding terrain visibility.

Latest Version - Jul 26rd, 2004 (Courtyard out-building style poll) - 3.2MB

1st - I think that the courtyard is too empty. Maybye some holes on the floor that would lead to a sewer...or some wodden towers with a railgun spawn...

2nd - To make it look a little more like Wolf3d you could put some stained-glass window...

3rd: You might try using an image editor to increase the brightness on those shots - I can't see much other than some torches :]

4th - you could supply an Alpha test map if you think that the screenshots do no justice as to how bright the map looks in-game. =]

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hmm yes give us some screenshots that we actually can see.. :) it's really hard to give any feedback on this map for the momment..but keep it up!  :thumb:

Well, the map doesn't have to be functional & playable if you're testing its structural look. =]

The courtyard is much better now. Can't wait to see the test-version  :) :)

I wouldn't do things like that for a very good reason: it can seriously tip the balance in favor of one class over the others.

For example: Doom gets a rocket launcher for the GL. Earth gets a mortar. Slipgate gets ammo for his rocket launcher. And you're talking about multiple spawns. Bad idea.

Think strategically. Where is the absolute best place for this grenade launcher? In the corner somewhere, or on a ledge above a powerup?

You also have to increase flow and limit camping. If a room has lots of health and a strong weapon and is in an active part of the map, someone could camp it indefinately.

Here's a thread that I just posted that you might be interested in.

http://forums.wireheadstudios.org/index.ph...&f=11&t=1849&s= (http://forums.wireheadstudios.org/index.php?act=ST&f=11&t=1849&s=)

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I like open 3D type maps myself, rather than 'tight passages' and this looks very good.

look foreward to playing it when you have a beta

I just had a walk around the place. Looking nice and RTCW for so far. I look forward to a playable version.

Here's my opinion:

1st
The courtyard is too empty. But since you already said that you would fill it with holes & stuff, it's solved

2nd
As you can see  in the pic, the map is too damn dark in the courtyard zone. The rest has enough lightning.

3rd
In the stairs, there's a column of oil lamps. Get rid of it. Instead of that put the oil lamps on the walls.

4th
Get rid of the 2nd floor in the mid parts. It's a good idea to just put the 2nd floor in the corners.

BTW sorry about the HUGE pic.

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Maybye a Sunny skybox like in RTCW...that would provide enough brightness for the whole map. BTW forget the 4th oppinion.

I'd suggest an ambient purplish-blue light all over the outside of the map to give the area a midnight look to it.

As far as the structure goes... I hope there's a great deal of good stuff in the courtyard to make the gameplay interesting =]

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Gen supports ladders. Talk to Reboot or Phoenix for details

Counts only work for Arena right now.  It's a code oversight that I've never gotten around to fixing.  A big problem is figuring out how to translate count values from Arena to every other class since their ammo pickup values and useage varies drastically for some weapons.  At this point I would discourage using entity counts as a balancing factor for a Generations map.  I'd focus more on item placement and keeping in mind which items translate to what for each class.

Yes, ladders work in Gen, and will work even better in .99e since you can climb them faster now.  ReBoot knows how to properly implement them into a map.

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Perhaps Reboot could help us out on the 'mapping considerations' thread, and do some Gen-entity/brush related tutorials :]

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1st
On the 1st floor, open the windows in the midlle parts. That way players that are on the left/right side could kill other players on the left/right side.

2nd
there'rea few lightning bugs on the courtyard.

Again sorry about the big pic

Lighting bugs.... Just for reference, even Id's Q3 maps have them.  Q3DM1 and Q3DM17 are horrible for dropping dynamic lights or fragmenting them along certain texture lines.  Hopefully this is fixable and not engine-limited.

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O_o  O_o  O_o  O_o  O_o  O_o  O_o

I REALLY don't understand mapper talking. BTW in the lower pic the blaster shot was hitting the wall and there was no lightning... And I know that the wall in both pics won't have any lightning since that the sun in the skybox isn't facing that part of the courtyard.

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Hmm...let's forget about the lightning bug shall we?

BTW too bad you can't open the windows.  :(

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Yeii i'm glad you understanded. now GG WolfWings! You're making a great job ;)  :thumb:
Keep it up!

uhm..i must be blind or something cuz i can't find the download link.. anyways you are using q3map2 kruzader? q2map2 do hinting quite well this way you don't have to do your hinting manually.

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lol oh im sorry wolfwings.. wrote that in the morning and i guess i was a bit tired :) you've check all your shaders? one could be using the nomarks flag. anyways im gonna check out this lvl

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I know I'm a little late, but yes, the bug is in regards to dynamic lights only occasionally lighting the wall surface.  Just for the record, Generations can and does use additive lights if you use the setting:

cg_dlighttype 1

This uses additive, Q2-style dynamic lighting as opposed to Q3's multiply dynamic lights.  Additive lighting (for those who do not know) take the texture value and add the light value to it.  Multiply takes the texture's RGB values (as provided by the level's lightmap) and multiplies them by the dynamic light value.  Additive lights work good in dark places and show up hardly at all on a fully lit surface, while multiply lights will not show up on a dark surface but make a fully lit surface overly bright.  Additive lighting works more realistically, however it can wash out texture detail.  A better lighting system would be a "lightmap additive", where the lighting brightens the lightmap as opposed to affecting the texture directly.  Sadly, Q3 does not have this for a dynamic lighting option.

Well... you know what you have to do now, right?  Before 1.0 is released, too.

Sadly, the lighting engine is controlled by the EXE file, which we can't modify

What Con said.  ;)

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Update the link when you make a significantly new build.

Also, I'd suggest editing your first post and put the link at the bottom of it so that we don't have to search every post on this thread for the latest version.

Moved the link to my first post, re-wrote with current status, removing most of my previous posts down to empty text. Will update that post when I make progress with the current status, and replace the file at the download link. Download link itself will not change, to help prevent multiple older versions floating around anywhere. :-)

Would appreciate it if Kruzader would remove those screenshots on the first page of replies though, as they're big enough they make me scroll my window sideways, and they're no longer needed since I fixed that problem ages ago. :) Would also appreciate it if a Mod could delete all the posts I've made in this thread except the very first one, and this one. :thumb:

I'll remove that giant picture, but not the posts. Reading up on the progress is fun. ;)

*laughs* I already edited all the older posts down, so unless you can resurrect the previous versions (which I don't mind a bit if you can and feel like doing so) there's nothing to read from me except the first post in the thread.

Uh...There's a little problem with the courtyard floor texture:

now thats the third bug you got considering textures , any extra non gen mappaks , models we should know  of ?

This one's easy, actually, and not even worth a full 'update' edit to the first post, as it was a missed file on my upload scripts, nothing more.

Forgot to include two .tga files (rock1_1.tga and snow1_1.tga) in the most recent upload of the .pk3->.zip file, when I converted the terrain to a newer format that will allow me to add less 'static' blending on the ground once I sit down and do that part in detail.

Fixed. Re-download. :-)

And actually, just to be pedantic... this is the first actual 'bug' involving textures directly. The previous two 'complaints' were:

Lack of lighting on the main gatehouse, due to the angle of the sun.

Lack of dynamic lighting/impact marks on one shader.

Neither of these were properly 'texturing errors' though the last one came close, being an error caused by my map-compiler settings which I had to correct. The former was simply a matter of no lights had been added to cover the front area of the courtyard yet.

But to answer your question... I don't even have the BaseQ3 or stock Generations textures available to me unless I manually add them in as I need them. I'm building this map in a 'naked' directory, that I can flag individual files to be packaged and uploaded with a script to my web-server, where they're automatically packaged and zipped up into the .pk3->.zip combo. It's all very automated, I just have to make sure to flag new textures as I add them to the .shader files, something I over-looked with the terrain/ground textures I'm using. :-)

Right now though... I'm using a couple of Golgotha textures, the skybox is from SoCk's planetquake.com/simland, with the remainder being from HFX's E7 texture set off of evillair.net, all of them with custom shaders, including one small pack built using Particle Studio.

I wasnt refering to you , was more refering to krusader , since he also pointed some bugs in the bug report thread where he has trouble with some textures

Uploaded a new version. Check the first post for details. (http://wolfwings.us/wwsf.zip)

Any opinions on which style of out-building is better? Not even looking for technical reasons, just visual appeal on if I should keep them as they are, make them both 'intact', or demolish them both to rubble? Set em' on fire, let em' burn to the ground? Anything? All of the above?!?

Just lookin' for input before I continue on here. =^.^=

The burnt-out idea sounds good.

Just one issue I don't know if anyone else was having, but there appear to be some seam issues, particularly around the towers, where I could see white sparklies as I was moving around.

BTW that skybox kicks arse!

Yeah, sparklies are a known issue currently. Faster to leave t-junction off when I'm making lots of compiles all over the place. :-)

Maybye putting a 2nd floor in the barn. BTW I think that the building should be in wood.