MML_Helmsdeep_A3 released!

(G0-Gerbil) #1

After ages, I finally did it - yes, another alpha release, hurrah!
OK I’ll get down to the nitty gritty:

For information, more screenshots as well as a rough play guide, see:
http://theburrow.fragland.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=208

For download locations, see:
http://theburrow.fragland.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=207

For screenshots see here:

Blowing the wall actually feels like it’s blowing now:

The horn can trigger a sweep of mortar fire across the valley:

Looking southwards across the valley from Axis spawn:

Caves have detail:

Ye olde command map:

Quick list of the most important things:

  • Caves layout changed putting Allies nearer the weak tunnel
  • Throne room compost bug fixed and moved into caves
  • Horn has better effects now :wink:
  • More detail, and bug fixes
  • Erm, did so many changes I forgot most!
(neotic) #2

Nice additions! Cant wait to play with those mortars.

(knuckles) #3

played it for the first time yesterday…great map. :smiley:

(blushing_bride) #4

great map, tbh the caves man. they actually look like caves. anyone know any euro servers running this where i dont have to download twenty other maps to play it?

(ChiemseeMan) #5

You can play it on: Goats Bar & Grill (18 Map Rotation + XP Save)
IP: 69.31.6.147
http://goat1.proboards26.com/

Take a look here for the Map Rotation:
http://goat1.proboards26.com/index.cgi?board=cheese&action=display&num=1072974147

Maps can you download from: www.etmaps.de

(Big Boss) #6

Wow this map just looks better with each alpha version.Look forward too the final version.Just wish someone would do a LOTR mod too go with the map just don’t seem right storming helms deep with a panz.But thats just imo still nice work.

(LaggingTom) #7

So… shiny… drool

(thore) #8

hooooooooly sh!t oO!
right off the feature list this really seems to be not just a great but also innovative map.
i’m REALLY looking forward to have a frag on this one! love the idea that the horn can
actually be charged - is there anything like 5 glowing stones near the horn that show the
player at wich charge level the horn currently is? 1 glowing stone for lvl1… 2 for lvl2…
yeah, i think you get the point :wink:

(G0-Gerbil) #9

:slight_smile:

I’ve just released a 15k patch for the map too, available at the normal download location as the map:

http://theburrow.fragland.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=207

I dunno if servers are patched, but having the patch won’t prevent you connecting to unpatched servers so it’s probably worth grabbing.
The patch contains the following updates:

  • Fixes the south valley bug.
  • The well rope starts down.
  • The Horn charges up at the rate of one level per minute.
  • Various Horn announcements saying when it’s charged, at
    what level, and what level it’s blown at.
  • A few new sound effects.
  • Removes the initial axis command post announcements.
(G0-Gerbil) #10

BTW for people who have asked me how I do the flying rocks when the Deeping Wall blows - they are just script_movers following splines.
So kinda like flying rock-shaped tanks (but don’t take that too far, I won’t be attaching mg42s to them :wink: )

(G0-Gerbil) #11

Someone claims to be getting a hunkmegs error on the map, but I can’t recreate it (highest texture size / bitdepth, uncompressed, highest geometric data, hunkmegs set to the 56mb default). Don’t suppose anyone else is getting this error are they, because if it’s a problem with the map then I’d consider it a bug and fix it next time.

Have I missed anything that might up the requirements for hunkmegs? I thought it was just texture / map settings that affected it, but if I’m wrong, let me know :slight_smile:

(thore) #12

this. map. is. amazing.
well you claim it a3 and i’m going to believe that, but that could only mean the final
version is going to be much better :smiley: some things to mention so far: taaaank moves sloooow.
i bet this is for giving the allies a chance to hit somehting when blowing the horn… this wouldn’t
be the case if axis are already in before some allied guy could reach the horn. actually… it gets me
crazy running up the spiral staircase. i don’t know how to make it easier… but it would be a nice
thing to do. i couln’t stop myself jump down :smiley:
i hope the final will get a more powerfull BLOW out of the horn. the current sound is some
hoopey poopey kind of nothing. this really should be damaging your ears when fired :banana:

tec sidenote: those glittering effects down in the caves look pretty cool but seem to produce
z-fighting with wallmaks… no clue how to get rid of that, just thought you might want to know.
once i got crushed by the crank / wheel when releasing the rope. nasty little… whatever. maybe
put some clipbrush around it.

(G0-Gerbil) #13

taaaank moves sloooow
Actually not true, and I sped it up 20% from A2 to A3 (it now has a speed of 60 - compare to goldrush and fueldump with speed of 50). The reason it looks slow is simply because it’s covering such a huge open area :slight_smile: For testing I did up the speed to about 300 which is a nice sprint speed, but obviously a bit too quick for proper gaming.

i couln’t stop myself jump down
The Horn of Helm Hammerhand aka The Lemming Leap :slight_smile: yep, we’ve all done it (and indeed I continue to do it!).
There’s just something cool about plummeting that far. Bear in mind Minas Tirith will be a bigger drop than that…

i hope the final will get a more powerfull BLOW out of the horn. the current sound is some
hoopey poopey kind of nothing. this really should be damaging your ears when fired
The sound is taken directly from the film. It’s quiet because I’m having problems with the ET sound system not altering volumes properly. I’ll manually have to up it it appears. Also, I was going to make the level shake when it’s blown, but quite frankly I’m sick of messing with target_rumble entities which have to be one of the least intuitive entities ever created - god knows who did them and thought they worked well…

As for the z-fighting, thanks for that. I don’t play with wallmarks so would have missed this one completely. I am pretty sure I’ve seen a ‘priority’ setting for shaders to get around this exact problem, so I’m sure I can fix that.
The crank is clipped, obviously I didn’t clip it enough though - will sort that.
I had a weirder situation though, I was just standing next to it without it moving and I got gibbed! Something a touch screwy in the collision code, but I’m not going to complain, it’s the only time it’s ever happened to me :slight_smile:

Anyway, A4 will be next version - then possibly if I feel confidant it’ll go straight to final, but more realistically there’ll be a B1 version first.
I’m not even going to think about giving a timeline for that though - I am amazingly unreliable on timescales, and I prefer leaving versions out a long time to get proper feedback anyway. No point in churning out daily versions cos no-one knows what the hell is going on…

Thanks for yer praise though, I’m pretty pleased - but the next version should be much much better, it’s when I can really concentrate on putting in detail and custom textures (the fort walls in particular need spicing up).

[edit]Over-use of smileys!

(thore) #14

the sound system really seems to be buggy or at least not quite good explained. i have my probs
too… global sound just don’t want to play global. but that’s about my map, not yours :wink: when
saying your sound needs little more power, i also meant it needs to be longer. don’t know
exactly how long it is in the movie… but i doubt it’s that short? will have a look at that one :wink:

keep it going!

[edit]

okay, i got it. it’s a loud first blow followed by a more silent but longer blow/echo. the second
part can hardly be heared in your map - but you already stated you have some probs with
ingame volume control. now that i’ve compared film and map, i think the first, strong blow
should be longer in the movie too… so that’s not your fault :smiley: but it’s up to you to make
it longer - just a second maybe…

but that’s just me. if everybody else feels happy with the original sound, feel free to
ignore me :moo:

gl

(G0-Gerbil) #15

The length of the sound is based on what level the Horn is when you blow it - you only get the really long one for level 5. Obviously a level 1 ‘blow’ is pathetic.
But yeaj the following ‘echos’ will be upped.

(Chruker) #16

Hi Gerbil

Nice to see a new release of this map. I know a lot of people have been waiting for it. Especially due to the darkness in the a2 version. That however has improved :slight_smile:

For my personal taste there are still a few places in the caves where it is extremely dark. That said there are still some places where your lightmap is screewed.

Like all the way up inside the tower, there is this section which doesn’t have ligting.


And this is where you exit from the stairs and into the small lookout room in the bottom of the tower. You can see how my cross-hair is brighter in the upper part. That is because its looking into the void. It probably needs a texture.


The wave animation on this water puddle, by the axis command post, is way too violent for its size.


This is one of these places where its extremely dark. However that was not what I wanted to show you. If you look really close, then you’ll see a tiny opening in the terrain, just above the grenade launcher on my rifle.


Above the ‘you are wounded’ text there is a set of sparklies.


Your terrain outside the wall has been subjected to q3map2’s your-terrain-is-too-nice-let-me-screew-it-up bug. This triangle is raised above the terrain.

I haven’t checked if you corrected all of the issues I reported on the a2 version, but I noticed that this one is still there:

Its a piece of wire from the command post in the fp1 version.

All that said. Great map. We had some good fighting in the caves.

(G0-Gerbil) #17

Cheers :slight_smile:
Sparklies ahoy I know.
There’s two kinds of sparklies - 1 I can definately fix, 1 I can’t for sure.
There’s misaligned brushes (eg your 2nd and 6th pics above). This is me being crap (that terrain one is bloody huge! How I missed that I dunno!).
Then there’s compiler-introduced sparklies (the other ones in your pics). All I can do is tweak, compile, test, and most likely repeat.
But I will, cos I love you all so much - I hate sparklies and crap brushwork so will strive to eliminate all instances of it!

BTW you missed another big one which was interesting cos you are close to it in the ‘water too violent’ pic - it’s around the edge where the floor meets the cave texture at the back of the Axis caves CP ‘room’ :slight_smile:

Anyway - onto the issues:

  1. Lighting in stairs - yup - this is a result of my quick fix - lots of low level lights in the stairs. Unfortunately I positioned them on alternating sides of the stairs as you go up, so certain parts receive no light and combined with the way lightmaps are done, you end up with this harsh result. Will indeed be fixed next version.
  2. Water - again yup - I wanted to get the A3 out and I’d said there’d be a stream down one cave so you knew where you were. Well, I ran out of time so put in the odd puddle of water to differentiate. Rather than ‘waste’ time creating a new water shader, I used the stream one, and made the (now overly strong) current point in the direction you are supposed to head. Will be fixed. And I don’t think I need the stream now since the caves are simpler to navigate (certainly to head straight to main cave). More detail will help here to.
  3. Cable to nowhere. Heh oops. I am thinking I’ll rework this bit slightly anyway. I’ve got to make it less Allied-sniper biased, and one way is to give Axis more spawn choices. I am probably going to put more spawn points back in here, basically same as was in FP (IE east and west spawn). Axis medic PP will change to something else - possibly a reduced spawn time for Axis (I love messing with spawn times!).
  4. Map sstill being too dark in a few places. Well, I want (and indeed love) some totally black areas - most maps are too bright and you never get the full range of the lightmaps. However, there are still a few places I’ll be tweaking. Stairs, stables, and the odd bit of the caves. Not to remove blackness, but to prevent the disorientation you can currently get - there should never be a place you can get to without ANY light to give you some clue where you are.

Anyway, overall, A4 will be the ‘detail’ fix. I’m happy enough (apart from the Axis spawn and cover on main valley floor) with the map layout, so A4 will be lots more detail, better effort on lighting, and fixing ugly areas of the map (terrain still needs a bit of working in places with textures too stretched, and the side route up to the fort (past the base of the tower) is so god-damn badly modelled I can’t believe I’ve never received a complaint about it! I tend not to go that route cos it makes me cringe when I see it :slight_smile:

Glad you like it - feedback has been positive and helpful for which I’m grateful.

Oh and while I’m at it - thanks to everyone who plays on it, thanks to the server admins running this on their servers, and especially those running dedicated ones (particularly SiliconSlick and Zum)!

(Chruker) #18

Same picture as in my previous post:

Does the brushwork in the editor look the same?

Because this is what happended to a terrain of mine:

While it in radiant looks like this:

That was why I blamed the result in your map, on q3map2. Sorry ydnar :wink:

(Chruker) #19

I regards to the lighting on the tower stairs. It was thinking that the texture, for those parts where its black, was missing the lightmap stage for some reason.

Couldn’t you get the lightsources and textures to bounce the light?

(Chruker) #20

Try doing a compile with the light settings that SD used for the original ET maps:
-light -fast -samples 2 -filter -bounce 8 -external -lightmapsize 256 -approx 8

I would love to see how the lighting in the tower and caves would differ with the bounce parameter.