Helmsdeep BETA 4 + new feature! (+Moria / Minas Tirith pics)

(Jaquboss) #21

Maybe you can add some kind of storm to Moria , remmember Dynamic light with angle is your friend :wink:

(G0-Gerbil) #22

A storm in moria???
Anyway cheers for the compliments, much appreciated as ever - itā€™s all very encouraging!

(CooperHawkes) #23

any infos about the objectives in moria yet? do allies have to throw a stone into a deep deep deep well? :wink:

btw: helmsdeep r0x0rZ! i love the crystals :slight_smile: ambient noises are brilliant
however, i didnā€™t get a voice message, when i built the axis com postā€¦ is this intentional?

(Ifurita) #24

Iā€™m suprised thereā€™s not more emphasis placed on actual sneaking around.

Sneaking around doesnā€™t result in uber-fast games and people are apparently lightening everything so that you donā€™t have shadows to sneak around in :wink:

(G0-Gerbil) #25

Sneaking = fun, you can bet Iā€™ll put more sneak routes into my maps :slight_smile:

any infos about the objectives in moria yet?
Wellā€¦ itā€™s an Axis attack map, and I havenā€™t worked it all out properly yet, but the idea at the moment is to get most of the way through the level to the second hall with the big pillars and thenā€¦ escort the balrog :slight_smile:
This entirely depends on me finding a suitable balrog model and the kind modeller letting me use it, so donā€™t hold your breath, but if thatā€™s the case, then itā€™ll be that you escort him, allies can hurt him, and instead of repairing him, heā€™ll be a mobile medic PP (IE medics lurk near by to give him health). Also, getting too near would burn ya.

Obviously you have to then try to free the little wee beasty.

Iā€™ll stop now, itā€™s too much pure speculation though :smiley:

(G0-Gerbil) #26

however, i didnā€™t get a voice message, when i built the axis com postā€¦ is this intentional?
Buggerā€¦ I stripped out too much VO. I was building my own for the map, but they didnā€™t sound too hot so I removed them - obviously my delete key was a bit overzealos, Iā€™ll get the obvious stuff back in for the final.

(Jaquboss) #27

Dum , I am not big Tolkien Fan , I was thinking about mordor , i dont know how i could miss that screenshot above thoughtā€¦
EDIT:
Here is ā€œcreateā€ script for storm , however sounds and color are not working ā€¦
I hope it will not take too much place

		create
		{
			scriptName "lightning1"
			classname "dlight"
			//style "18"
			origin "300 2500 0"
			angles "25 25 25"
			stylestring "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazzaaaaaaaaa"
			color "0.99 0.01 0.01" // doesnt work , at least here :(
			spawnflags "1" //FORCEACTIVE
			sound "sound/world/thunder_01.wav"
		}

		create
		{
			scriptName "lightning2"
			classname "dlight"
			//style "18"
			origin "300 2500 0"
			angles "25 25 25"
			stylestring "zzaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa"
			color "0.99 0.01 0.01" // doesnt work , at least here :(
			spawnflags "1" //FORCEACTIVE
			sound "sound/world/thunder_02.wav"
		}

		create
		{
			scriptName "lightning3"
			classname "dlight"
			//style "18"
			origin "300 2500 0"
			angles "25 25 25"
			stylestring "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazzaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa"
			color "0.99 0.01 0.01" // doesnt work , at least here :(
			spawnflags "1" //FORCEACTIVE
			sound "sound/world/thunder_03.wav"
		}

		create
		{
			scriptName "lightning4"
			classname "dlight"
			//style "18"
			origin "300 2500 0"
			angles "25 25 25"
			stylestring "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazzaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa"
			color "0.99 0.01 0.01" // doesnt work , at least here :(
			spawnflags "1" //FORCEACTIVE
			sound "sound/world/thunder_04.wav"
		}

		create
		{
			scriptName "lightning5"
			classname "dlight"
			//style "18"
			origin "300 2500 0"
			angles "25 25 25"
			stylestring "aaaaaaaaaaazzaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa"
			color "0.99 0.01 0.01" // doesnt work , at least here :(
			spawnflags "1" //FORCEACTIVE
			sound "sound/world/thunder_05.wav"
		}
(G0-Gerbil) #28

Since Iā€™m a bump-whore, have a free pic of something else coming soon:


Naturally the texturing is about as temporary as it gets (select everything - then select a single texture!), in the same way from the FPs, but layout is much more proper, and yes you can get onto virtually all the roofs.

Once the first level is mapped out Iā€™m going to work on proper objectives and get in some of these various new-fangled ideas I keep hinting at but never doing :smiley:

(DWM|Commando) #29

i wonder what the compile time on minas tirith is, seeing on how its a gigantic map (ps looks nice with the buildings)

(G0-Gerbil) #30

Itā€™s ermā€¦ rather long.
For tests like this, I actually delete all of the levels above for compilation.
However, as I go up the levels I do intend to simplify / improve the VIS structure - indeed, parts of it should speed up because I am going to work on making the VIS more efficient than it currently is (itā€™s crap right now, mostly cos thereā€™s very few buildings in the level to help block it with structural).
But! I canā€™t give the whole map much polygon detail, because Iā€™ve got so much space to cover. Areas which will see a lot of play (like hopefully the first level) will be ā€˜ok-ishā€™, and the rest reasonably ā€˜barrenā€™ (barren according to my level of details, prolly not compared to many customs ;)) - the aim is to use a few very high res textures to cater for most of it.

Oh, and the lightmapping for the whole level is currently 2x, which by my maths = 4x lighting stage speed-up - this may actually rise (even lower definition) should memory requirements / compilation times force my hand.

Itā€™s actually quite interesting for me to map having to plan this far ahead - eg low polygon stuff.
In the new bits I showed above I use roughly 1200 brushes - compare this to the total of helms deep which has around 18000 (damn those caves!).
So if I can keep a level down to 2000 brushes (less as they get smaller) I shouldnā€™t really have a problem - and I doubt Iā€™ll need that many anyway (since buildings you canā€™t reach will be little more than a box to pad out the level).

Itā€™s all a bit of a techy challenge, but thatā€™s one of the reasons I like mapping :smiley:

(P4nth3r) #31

I think this is because of the many tweakers that tweak the lights so badly that they can see in the dark as if it was light.
Personally I think punkbuster should act harder against these tweaks, but some people just have crappy monitors that are just very dark.
But I think light and dark are great, specialy for sneaking around.
Keep up the good work.

Greetz Way2Evil aka Panther

(G0-Gerbil) #32

Ah yeah Iā€™d forgot about the variability of monitors.
Itā€™s more than that though, eg if I play during the day I have to up brightness because of the sunlight - at night I can have it way down dark.
But then I always have brightness set so that dark is dark, but I remember my clan days when that wasnā€™t the case :wink:

Bear in mind if you map without ambient or _minlight, black on a bright monitor may be grey, so the level will still be ā€˜without detailā€™.
The problem with the player models is thereā€™s a hard-coded minimum lighting level for them (I think, sure I read it here somewhere), so a player in a black room would still have some detail, which is more visible to the brighteners amongst us :frowning:

(Fusen) #33

ooooh shiny crystals

(DWM|Commando) #34

not to be buggy, but any idea on the realease of the updated minas tirith :stuck_out_tongue:

(G0-Gerbil) #35

Iā€™m working on it I assure you :slight_smile:
Iā€™m just about finished on all the modelling I plan to do for it - which is basically level 1 playable area (just to see what kind of detail I can get away with), but I want to focus on the scripting / objectives for the map now, and get some of that sorted before I release a new version. Ratty is also busy on the terrain, so things are progressing, but you should realise Iā€™m the last person worth asking for a projected date - I donā€™t think Iā€™m met one of my own deadlines in about 2 years!

(G0-Gerbil) #36

Hereā€™s probably the last pic updates Iā€™ll do until Iā€™m ready to release the FP2:



I will naturally fill in the ground bits you can see the skybox through, but probably with nothing more complicated than a flat ground - after all these are areas of the map you canā€™t get to, so Iā€™ll only worry about ā€˜detailā€™ of these areas once the rest of the map is fleshed out and I know how much detail I can afford in these areas.

I will say though that the first gate area looks pretty damn intimidating as you come up to it now with all the layers of buildings above / behind it :slight_smile: Probably the first glimpse you guys will get of something that really offers the scale of the city for easy consumption :smiley:

I would add, itā€™s actually quite refreshing modelling on such non-detailled terms (buildings arenā€™t really much more than blocks with a few supporting struts / balconies etc), so things are going pretty darned quick \o/