Operation Evil Eye 23:57 hrs

[demonspawn]

To: Agent Blazkowicz
From: Coronal RC. Tommelson
Commander, OSA Special Operations

Subject: Operation Dark Vengeance

William, Our sources have still been unable to confirm the integrity of drop-zone Victor. As of now, we are still a “Green Lite” and will commence operation “Dark Vengeance” on schedule.

Will update you at 7:42 hrs, at which point you will recieve final preparations for launch.

Make sure you have all your personal affairs in-order Agent Blazkowicz, rembember all our hopes rest on your shoulders.

Reguards
Rick

[digibob]

o_O

[demonspawn]

Message received August 27 1943, 22:13hr
Encryption coded at source.
Deciphered by OAS Ultra department, 22:47hr

Classified TOP SECRET

From:
Nicoli Grevael, Franc-Tireur Partisan Resistance Force
As per your orders I have had my operatives keep close watch on the recent activities at the three concentration camps in question, what I have to report is both puzzling and potentially catastrophic.
Two of the three (codenamed Issimut and Dardium), no longer contain any activity, they have been cleared out; as to where the occupants have gone, it is still as yet, undetermined.
The speed in which this activity occurred is remarkable and I regret to report that I have been unable to determine where they have been taken. I assure you all access points into and out of the area were and have been closely monitored, its like our friends have just disappeared.

Due to this recent activity I have personally taken watch over Kessimit. Although there hasn’t been a mass exodus out of the camp, there has been an increased amount of traffic into the facility. Although I have little information to report as to the activities taking place within the compound I can report the presents of SS-Oberfuhrer Wilhelm Strasse who arrived on the morning of the 3rd. With out any other concrete information to go on I can only add that his presents here doesn’t sit well in my stomach. I feel we must act fast or many more of our friends may be lost.
I await further orders.

[demonspawn]

Tactical briefing for Operation Evil Eye
September 4, 1942 10:27 hrs

We received the following message earlier this morning:

Message received September 4 1942, 9:22hr
Encryption coded at source.
Deciphered by OAS Ultra department, 9:53hr

Classified TOP SECRET

From:
Francisco Mochas, Franc-Tireur French Partisan Resistance Force
I received an open aired radio message late last night from Nicolas, it wasn’t encoded or secured and didn’t make much sense to me but here it is.

“Evil Eye is active in Kessimit. Camps in chaos, nothing but screams. Being followed, can’t shake them, must….�

The message was very broken up and sounded as if Nicolas was running, then it was abruptly cut off .
I fear; no I know Nicolas is no longer with us and fear that we have been compromised beyond repair. I have ordered a complete dismantling of our operation from this source.
When all is safe I will contact you.
Francisco

OSA High Command has preempted our initial target launch, and ordered a “Full Go�, condition Alpha. Because of these changes we have been unable to acquire the requested ordinance but have substituted what we feel are adequate replacements.
Our latest intelligence has a drop site deep in the heart of the Vercors mountain range, approximately 2.2 Kilometers south of the target.
Our meteorological forecast has a heavy storm front moving into the area.

Here are your final orders Agent Blazkowicz, good luck and God Speed

http://www.fileplanet.com/dl.aspx?/planetwolfenstein/tramdesign/operation_evil_eye.zip

[digibob]

Knew it had to be building up to soemthing

[demonspawn]

It seems that a few people are having a loading delay with “oee” There is quite a bit of unique content that is being pumped in.
So please hang in there, it will get past the loading screen I promise

Map on

[digibob]

Yeah, had a small load delay, was an interesting map, a bit tough at teh beginning i thought, getting rather easy at the end, cept for that pesky flametrooper!

Aside from that, some other things i thought you could improve on were the waterfall, as the texture just looked plain odd there, and the platforms the big guns were sitting on seemed a little too flimsy.

Texturing overall was nicely done, and model placement was done well, lighting was rather dark in the early part of the map, and was annoying that the ai was able to shoot THROUGH the sandbags.

[demonspawn]

Thanks for testing it out.
The lighting was a challenge, lightJunior’s seem to be effected by the lights around them, which as you can see by the layout I didn’t have enough sources present.
The flak mounts were originally covered in camo, it increased my poly count way too much so I removed it.
The waterfall was modeled after a waterfall that is close to where I live, Its color is formed by mass amounts of silt in the water. I guess sometimes reality doesn’t transfer well to CG. The fact that it was at night too, maybe its too bright?
I’ve had comments that it was quite short, it was bigger when I drew the preliminary designs but I had to make some changes because of poly count decisions.
I’ll fix the errors I’ve found, (is it normal for a compile to not include a “weaponclip” texture? thats what happened to the sand bags as well as the halftrack)
and start my next map. I really want to get deeper into scripting and creating unique md3 models.
The lighting is something I’m going to leave as-is, I’ve learned alot about the restrictions imposed by the engine and will avoid/adapt solutions to future maps.

Thanks for playing it and the feedback

Map on

[kat]

file info?? how big’s the download?? me is on lowly 56k…!?

[demonspawn]

Its 9.6 megs

Yea, I’ve used a whole bunch of custom textures, and adapted many textures to what I needed.

I hope you’ll take the time to download it Kat, I’d like your feedback.

Map on

[kat]

I will now I know how big it is… ooo er misses…!

[kat]

On 2002-08-27 00:04, djbob wrote:
Yeah, had a small load delay, was an interesting map, a bit tough at teh beginning i thought, getting rather easy at the end, cept for that pesky flametrooper!

Aside from that, some other things i thought you could improve on were the waterfall, as the texture just looked plain odd there, and the platforms the big guns were sitting on seemed a little too flimsy.

Texturing overall was nicely done, and model placement was done well, lighting was rather dark in the early part of the map, and was annoying that the ai was able to shoot THROUGH the sandbags.

…in addition to bob’s comments
: didn’t load properly the 1st time… it took ages (longer than the ‘warning’ you mentioned) and loaded into the default RtCW for some reason? I think it may have some thing to do with the mess my install is in atm…!! When I restarted RtCW it loaded almost straight away…! go figure…!!
: I had to copy/paste my default config file so I had the same keys… didn’t spot this in the readme so it might be worth mentioning that
: one of the bots seemed to get stuck a little bit behind the door on the 1st floor exit of the ‘depot’ (the door kept opening and closing)
: I’d agree with bob on the gun platforms… your best bet would be to pull the bases right down into the terrain and make it look like a solid concret block
: a minor note… I don’t know if you’ve done this but I jumped into the water and could only really get out from a crtain angle, try adding some clipsteps just under the water to add getting out… (incidently, there were some interesting ‘features’ near the base of the damn that I nearly drowned looking at, are they for anything??)
: I got a missing background on the notebook
: you forgot to make the ‘warehouse’ gate solid… you can walk thru it…!!
: that soldier near the stairs that take you to where the ladder is (to go up into the tower) gets stuck on that corner, he keeps running into it, maybe monster clip it or something (ai_no_touch??)
: got console warning “ai_marker (march7) in solid” make sure you’ve not got this embeded into a wall or clipbrush…!

: the models seemed a bit dark, even though it’s set at night the map itself was quite well lit… have you used any of those ‘lightjuniors’??

overall I really enjoyed this (took about 2hrs, can you beleave that…!!), the one thing that did pee me off was getting up that ladder into the tower, for gameplay purposes I’d be tempted to pull the ladder away from the wall and put it on the other side of the opening so it’s free standing and you face the soldier as you come up…

can’t wait for episode II

[sock]

Been away for the weekend and got back to a find a SP map release! w00t

djbob had d/l it already so I loaded it up and had a go. Its a very nice map for a first rtcw release. Here’s my list of strange things I’ve found while playing it …

• In the top courtyard where you come out from the ladder in the tower the ground of the courtyard has bomb blast textures but they are scaled up too much. Should create a decal of the bomb blast and overlay it instead. Produces better results.

• the button to release the main building is very strange and time related. It would be easier on the player if you cut to a camera sequence the first time showing the door opening so people have got a better idea of where to go.

• The prison section has loads of rooms with cages hanging from the ceiling which generally use are hung outside in the main prison area to serve as a warning to other prisoners. Plus the cells had no detail, like bedframes, bucket, locked door etc just loads of skeltons.

• The flamethrower guy at the top courtyard is mental. I remember from the original SP wolf how tough those creatures are and in open courtyard he just murders to quickly.

• The dynomite objectives do not show on the final exit screen. The guns you destroy early on in the first part of the map.

• The final exit point seems wierd not sure why you would want to exit down a well. But each to their own I suppose.

• I was expecting some camera cinematic at the end or some storyline to explain what happened. It ended very sudden and I was not sure what was going to happen next.

• The front porch area of the first wooden building needs some kind of supports. That balcony if made from wood and would not substain that sort of weight. It needed some square poles underneath on the balcony.

• The long loading time at the beginning is because wolf is re-generating the OEE_B1.RCD file. It looks like it is either corrupt or out of date.

• Some of the bots cannot seem to climb staircases or small amount of steps. I assume you put a slick texture on the steps. (They are the ones in the common folder.) Bots need these texture in order to use stairs correctly.

• The window glass in the first building is too transparent. It also needs a frame of some kind so that you know that there is glass present.

• Some doors in the first building auto close and some seem to be stuck open and cannot be closed again.

• The texture on the telegraph poles is really stretched and looks wierd. I assume these r patches and need a Natural fit texture on them.

• The front gates on the first building where the vechicles are does not have any detail for where the gates are to go. Check the mp_base map for a good example.

• All the germans in the lower section of the final building are just standing around doing nothing. They should be patrolling around or in groups talking or checking things. Maybe a few should be smoking a cigarette or checking some equipment in the rooms.

• The inside metal grate door has no metal_clip to stop people falling through it.

• The prison area doors seem out of scale. nice touch with the one of the cells having a broken wall to get through to the next cell.

• The main metal door next to the prison cells is far too big and needs to be scale. The german next to it looks like a midet compared to the door.

Hope all those comments help.

Sock
3d Brush Monkey

[demonspawn]

O…My…God!
Thanks you guys.

Kat
I forgot the config file, I noticed that I had to re-set my keys but didn’t clue into why. I will make sure I add this to the readme next time.

The flak guns went through several changes. They were an octagon shaped rock block, but as they were the first things I built, I had them embedded into the terrain which was causing major vis problems. I then made them into what they are now but had camo draped off of them but this increased my poly count which I couldn’t afford, they ended up as they are. They will go through a redesign when I release map 2.
I need to raise the water level again and rework the foam below the falls. This will fix getting out of the water. The “features” at the base of the dam had a grating over them but it was giving me ghosting nightmares so I removed them.
The notebook (n)? Oops I didn’t put the proper scale on the text.
The cellar door was working great, I don’t know what happened to it.
I’ll be fixing all the AI
I have over 60 light Juniors all over my map…I believe that they work dependent of real light placed by them? I had a hell of a time with the lighting. I’ve learned alot (what NOT to do) and will be implementing it into the next map.

Ladder guard
“The designer must learn to step back from his work and see it as a player in order to properly judge its effectiveness as an interactive experience”
Guilty! Won’t happen again

Thanks for testing it Kat

Sock

The bomb blast was designed to be geometry but I found that I was too high on my poly count so I scratched them. I should have gone back to square 1 with this element and started again.

Good idea about the camera cut for the door.

Not to take from the story but in the second map you find out what the skeletons are and what’s happened to them

The flamethrower was originally designed to catch himself on fire and fall into the scene but I could get the scripts to do what I wanted so I adjusted his friends to lessen the challenge of the area.
There was originally a whole other battle that was to happen after the 3 soldiers were killed. A trigger volume by the well was to have another attack happen but I scraped it.

The flak guns were removed as an objective as I had the main door to the cellar be a 1-way door which wouldn’t allow the player to backtrack to the guns and destroy them should they neglect to blow them up to begin with.

I had a whole other ending planned but couldn’t pull it off for this map. I will be placing it as part of map 2. I will work on making this ending more cinematic.

I will make sure way ahead of my release that the loading times are in-order.

I wasn’t aware the “slick” texture was needed for the bots. This will be fixed and incorporated into my future maps (thanks )

I will be focusing on scripting my ai with far greater intelligence for the next map (as well as correcting this map) I felt I needed to move on from this map as I was spinning my wheels on it.
It started as one thing and has ended as a completely different thing. I attribute this to it being my first attempt as radiant/quake mapping and will take everything into account while I paper design the next maps.

Thanks for all the feedback Sock and Kat, every comment has helped me a great deal, as a matter of fact having someone take this kind of time to help me out has stoked my creative juices again and I can’t wait to dive into map 2.

Map on…

[sock]

On 2002-08-30 04:32, demonspawn wrote:
The bomb blast was designed to be geometry but I found that I was too high on my poly count so I scratched them. I should have gone back to square 1 with this element and started again.

Decals are not high poly you simply create a brush with one side for the decal texture and the others all “nodraw”. The decal is offset via shader so that it appears faded on to the top of existing poly’s. If located in the middle of the surface of an existing brush it will not break up the bigger brush into smaller sections. Its sort of like detail brushes so its fine for poly count.

On 2002-08-30 04:32, demonspawn wrote:
Not to take from the story but in the second map you find out what the skeletons are and what’s happened to them

Then that should have been the final cutscene as the camera faded in moving through the prison section and focusing on the skeletons in the cells.

On 2002-08-30 04:32, demonspawn wrote:
I will make sure way ahead of my release that the loading times are in-order.

As I said it was just a simple case of one file being damaged or corrupt, the map will always take a certain amount of time for loading. But if any of those RCD files are damaged or missing the engine will stop loading the map and generate the file. This really kills time and the engine should tell people what its doing as suppose to a big blank screen and it looking like its crashed. (Typical coders, always using the force! )

On 2002-08-30 04:32, demonspawn wrote:
I wasn’t aware the “slick” texture was needed for the bots. This will be fixed and incorporated into my future maps (thanks )

Shame on you! its in most of the sample maps given away with the editor and pak0 file. Just take a copy of your staircase and paint it all in the relevant slick textures.

btw if you do another map do we get to see an early beta version, it might help to iron out the bugs more.

Sock
3D Brush Monkey

[kat]

…btw if you do another map do we get to see an early beta version, it might help to iron out the bugs more…

yah, even if it means having it sent privately so as not to fall into enemy hands…!!

[demonspawn]

Thanks again, I’ll explain a little bit more.
The bomb blast holes had originally had a German zombie guard housed in each blast hole. They were going to crawl out when commanded by a priestess that appeared in the larger towers open window. She was going to be triggered when the player entered a trigger volume placed by the well.
The sequence was that several flying ghost heads were to rise out of the well and zoom over to each blast hole and then the zombies were going to come out.
I had problems with the ghost heads, (couldn’t figure them out) and I couldn’t get all the animations I wanted for the priestess to look right as well as I needed to have her shielded so that she couldn’t be shot( simple chalk brush) but the bullets looked stupid bouncing off of nothing.

I didn’t think about the decal as I assumed that when the zombie’s crawled out they couldn’t have anything over the area they exited.
I scrapped the whole sequence.

I will add clipboards by each cell to give further info on what (who) the skeletons are and which experiment they were involved in to get then to their present state.
Adding a camera cut would also tie up loose ends for the map. Thanks for the suggestion.

I did look at the official maps and saw the slick textures, but I thought the exact opposite of what they true purpose is.
Slick denotes a surface that is difficult to traverse, not one that directs the AI.
This is somewhat confusing.
Perhaps a definition sheet of what the common textures purposes would be of great benefit to mappers
Also when I first started looking at the official maps there was tones of stuff that I didn’t know about, so I decided to comb the forums first and learn what I needed instead of following the Dark Side of the force and copy/paste.

Offering to be apart of a beta test team, well how do I respond to that except…
COOL
now all I need to do is enlist John Carmack and I’ll have the best in the business making sure everything is perfect before I release my maps.

Thanks for the offers you guys and I’ll make sure your the first to see them.

Map on

[Ghast]

Great Feedback!!

I did look at the official maps and saw the slick textures, but I thought the exact opposite of what they true purpose is.
Slick denotes a surface that is difficult to traverse, not one that directs the AI.
This is somewhat confusing.

Slick on every step! Will do! Thought it was just really really cold in the castle!!! Ice! LOL

I was bummed when I saw the door was one way only, wanted so much to panzerfaust the guard at the top of the tower! G Why couldn’t the door have a door open button on both sides. I too was curious why the objective didn’t update, thought I had missed a gun placement?

[kat]

…I needed to have her shielded so that she couldn’t be shot( simple chalk brush) but the bullets looked stupid bouncing off of nothing…

when she trigger_spawns add this little bit of script to the…

spawn
{
godmode on
}

that way you could actually have her moving about, still being hit by bullets but not being effected (hurt) by them

[demonspawn]

Kat you da man.
Any idea how the ghost heads function?

Ok, I wasn’t gonna add her but I can test it out right?..I’ll start with her and set-up the zombies now. Then if I get the ghosts, great but if not I’ll figure something out.

Thanks Kat
Map on