MML Helmsdeep (A2) released!

(G0-Gerbil) #1

http://www.pcgamemods.com/4483/

Probably some huge game-crashing bug in it, but releasing it now quickly before I head out for the day.

Any probs let me know in the usual places.

I thank you for your time: :moo:

(JIM_BOB7813) #2

So it’s Helmsdeep, not Church? =]

(Ifurita) #3

Gerbil is a stupid head. Discuss. :wink:

(Cartman) #4

I think the map is o.k, it’s not super but o.k

And I have another mirror :wink:

http://www.et-scene.de/downloads.php?file_id=168

(MadMaximus) #5

i liked church… the lighting was nice

(G0-Gerbil) #6

LOL oops, that’s what not paying attention to the auto-complete does for me!
Changed, thanks :wink:

(G0-Gerbil) #7

Gerbil is a stupid head. Discuss.

Not much to discuss - I am a stupid head :smiley:

I think the map is o.k, it’s not super but o.k

Any chance on more details on why you don’t like it? Negative feedback is just as useful as positive feedback (often more so), as long as it’s constructive :slight_smile:

(Cartman) #8

I find the map am expanded simply only too far, it am not many Objectives and if which are present then all on a heap. The map is stop only which for larger servers.

(DaRkFiRe) #9

Great work Gerbil! I played this map for about 30 minutes on Heirpie’s Map Central server. Very nice work :slight_smile:

(Berzerkr) #10

Many Features inside, like the horn and the Patrol-Points.
There’s a lot to do, but I don’t think the map is only for large servers.

(Chruker) #11

Hey Gerbil

I have been playing the FP (First Playable) version on the ChiGC server. And from the comments during gameplay, it seems many like it very much. But then again, many of them loved the version of Remagen which only contains the big bridge and no objectives, so…

Anyhoo some general comments after having tested this alpha 2 version:

  • Its extremely dark. Had to turn alpha / brightness to 2.00 and even then there were many places where I couldn’t see a thing. It seems to need some ambient lighting.
  • You should consider having a few ammo and health cabinets that are open the entire time.
  • Where is the equipment the allies are suppose to protect?
  • Consider add lost of rocks which blocks the weak tunnel after it is blown.

Here are some screenshots I took around the map:

  • This is in the tunnel with the axis medical partrolzone. Just above the cross-hair, its missing the end texture of the wooden beam.

  • Same place, but looking back from where I came. Above the cross-hair there is a HOM (hall-of-mirrors) effect.

  • The ammo cabinet in the south valley. Its sticking out of its cage.

  • This is in the cave system. I think you should consider adding a phong properties to the gravel shader and the rock shader.

  • The tanks route seems fixed. So either edit the terrain to provide or consider adding roll to the tank.

  • It just occur to me that I never checked whether the dynamite I have planted on the left side also destroyed the right side of the fence. But I’m assuming it did.
  • Dynamite is powerfull, but I think its questionable that it should be able to destroy the fence of the right. So perhaps you should consider having having the fence, still in two parts. But one covering the left side and one part covering the right side.

  • There is a wire floating in mid air here.

  • The VIS is nicely clipped around the map. However there were some places where you could see the entire throneroom being drawn from the outside, like in this screenshot.
(G0-Gerbil) #12

OK I’ll try to address all the comments here - thanks for the feedbvack people, it’s this that can improve the map so keep it coming!

  1. Too dark. Yes, unbelievably, I realised I had my monitor brightness turned up on the final compile - when I reverted to normal to play it (once released), I was like - shit man, some bits are pitch black.
    Having said that, I won’t be adding ambient light - I am trying to stop using that and minlight because of the way it either limits the full lighting range possible (ambient), or removes the large subtleties at the distant edges of lighting (minlight). Of course, I do fully intend to manually light the map properly, and I think it’s fair to say the next version won’t be long coming as a result of this rather huge cock-up of mine :confused:

  2. Floating wire - well spotted :slight_smile: Remnants of the old axis spawn that used to be there.

  3. The main fence - this is just really like fueldump. What I might do is make the middle section thinner, so it’s less unlikely. Having left and right halves seems a bit odd to me though, but point noted.

  4. Tank path - yeah, I’ve not really sorted that properly. Kind of put it off because it’ll be such a depressingly long job to make it follow the terrain properly, but yes it’s in the works!

  5. Throne room VIS-ing - can’t really tell where you took the pic from, but you are right, I should be culling it better. I took out a tiny bit of structural brushes around the throne room entrance because it was nearly doubling the VIS stage. I think a bit more hinting back in is required here.

  6. Lots of objectives close together. Yeah, it’s a problem with the scale and actual layout - IE the halls are small on the command map, and most stuff is there (often above or below other objectives). Not really a lot I can do, although I’m thinking of removing some of the icons that aren’t actual primary objectives (eg main gate, possibly horn). Might move the patrol point triggers too.

  7. Ammo / health cabinets - yeah might have a few unlocked, (yeah they poke, I copied the ammo cabs from the health ones - ammo pokes out a lot more though!). I’ll also probably make them unlock for longer, since the PP triggers are a bit out of the way. I quite like the idea though, so I’ll see what I can do to promote their use. Making them last longer seems easy. People have been asking for an XP reward, and much as I’d like it (even if it’s 1 or 2 points), it simply can’t be done :frowning:

  8. Cave floor - it should use phong, I’ll have a look at it to see what’s going wrong. Note even with phong, it’s impossible to get every edge to merge smoothly since at some point q3map2 still has to split up lightmaps if they get too big.

  9. For large servers only - yeah this is my first deliberate aim at a large map for public play. It should scale reasonably well (probably the caves more than the outside). 6 on 6 should be fine. Late at night we’d play the previous version 2 on 2 which was kind of fun :slight_smile:

  10. the bits you have to defend - these are gone, the final objectives are completely different now. The radio parts was a last minute addition to get a ‘winnable’ map in the FP. They were never intended as anything other than a stop-gap measure.

  11. Final result + debris. Yup, same of the other objectives, there’ll be damage, debris, sound etc for all of them.

So far it seems to play much quicker than the previous version, which is what I’d hoped, although possibly not quite as fast as it is. This is, in part, down to people not knowing the map (lots of coverts + engy wins, like the good old days of fueldump until people realised how to stop it).
Axis PP seems to get used a reasonable amount, allies not nearly as much.
I’m really happy with the caves, people really seem to enjoy the fighting, especially since there’s no field op spam. People are getting lost (happens in all new maps of course), which will improve, although they are obviously a bit non-descript so it’s easy to get disorientated (I still do it!). This will also be fixed for next version, when I add details. I may lower the main ledge in final cave so it’s grenadeable (rifle grenades work fine though ;)).
Also I’ll be laying down rocks on the ground etc to give some places where you can’t mine to make that a bit less dicey on attack.

Some missing textures etc, but the whole look of the map needs an overhaul with proper textures and proper texture alignment (I had done some of this on the version I lost :frowning: ) - this improves the look massively :slight_smile:

Anyway, happy killing until the next version, coming soon to a website near you :wink:

(G0-Gerbil) #13

I find the map am expanded simply only too far, it am not many Objectives and if which are present then all on a heap. The map is stop only which for larger servers.

Yes the map is big, but this was intentional. I’ve only done small-scale ‘technical’ maps before so thought I’d try something different - or rather the kind of maps that people want to play on publics. It entirely depends on whether the map gets popular of course, but there’s a few large dedicated servers of it out there now (ND80 in particular, cheers siliconslick) so if you fancy trying a large bash, that’s how the map should really be played!

My future maps will all be large - maybe not this big (although Minas Tirith will undoubtedly be comparable in size).
Also, it’s only ‘large’ in the sense of the first open area which is, granted, huge (and still shrunk from ‘film’ size) - but if you take, say, fueldump, that map is actually massive overall, bigger than this :slight_smile: Size isn’t everything, it ain’t what you got but what you do with it and lots of other rubbish innuendos about size!

BTW thanks for the mirror :smiley:

(Chruker) #14

I completely forgot to comment about the cave layout. I didn’t find it repetitive at all. Got lost on my first fly-through as spectator. But as soon as I got in there as a player, and could check the command map now and then, there wasn’t any problems. I really like the layout of it.

The VIS of the throne room was taken as spectator, hovering roughly midway between the large gate and the tower.

Although you may want to consider the possiblity of people pushing each other over some of the cave defenses.

(blushing_bride) #15

really cool map, its fricken huge as well. the feeling of utter wierdness driving a tank towards the gate of helms deep was odd indeed. it felt surreal not to be surrounded by hordes of orcs and trolls and stuff. apart from the darkness the only other thing that is needed is some bits and pieces to clutter up some of the open spaces :wink: . Maybe some crates in the caves and tables in the great hall for example. Otherwise superb map i look forward to finding a european server that runs this baby.

(Chruker) #16

One other thing. If you follow the drain down to were it runs into the ground as seen on this screenshot:

Then you can see some black stuff in the water. I assume that isn’t intended.

(G0-Gerbil) #17

Ahhh the water thing, that’s an interesting result of seeing through 2 layers of water. The shader uses alphatransparency, but is lightmapped.
Since transparency isn’t cumulatively bright, but lightmaps ARE cumulatively dark, this means you see dark patches. I’ll rework the shaders (probably just use vertex lighting) to get rid of this.

The caves will get a whole load of detail - stones, stalagmites / -tites (mites go up, tites come down (if you are lucky ;))), and miscellaneous props for lighting, not to mention they’ll glitter :wink: I did make a start on this detail, but along with some of the texturing, this was what I lost when the file got corrupt. But here’s a screeny of roughly what I intend:

I’m glad the caves aren’t too bad though, there’s really not that many routes - I was actually more worried about bottlenecks, hence why there are a few smaller routes in there now joining levels.

(WolfWings) #18

The map seems to be coming along nicely, so I’ll just make a small little request…

Any chance you could add some boats or SOMETHING, beached, broken-down, or something by the Axis spawn? May sound minor, but it’s been niggling me for ages. Where the hell did everyone arrive from, in the first place? :slight_smile:

Heck, could bump the Tank starting just a teensy bit further back, drive off said beached boat to start off, instead of starting in the dead-middle of Axis spawn.

(SiliconSlick) #19

I take it you didn’t see the movie.

Let’s just say the Uraks did not arrive by boat.

:slight_smile:

SiliconSlick

(G0-Gerbil) #20

I can’t model the entire outside of the valley :slight_smile:
The visual issue is a map virtually all terrain map solve by simply surrounding the play area with high cliffs.
I can’t do that, because obviously you are at the mouth of a valley. This is why there’s the terrain bit fading off - it’s meant to imply that the terrain carries on.
In other words, Axis just walked there :smiley: