@shirosae, even though it appears I was wrong about the mod world, my post identifies areas that I thought were not working right. So, as incorrect as the facts may appear, it is a valid statement of one person’s perceptions.
My only excursion into loading custom maps onto vanilla executible was Radar, about a year ago.
It was difficult locating the proper folder to place the .pk4 files
I was uncertain whether or not this would overwrite any setting, cvars, etc.
The map would not load. i.e. it crashed the game
Next, @GreasedScotsman suggested Promod. It worked, but still no bots.
Then there was some issue around textures (I got a lot of black surfaces and I could see through walls.
That required a new version of Radar, also, no bots, so, I thought that was a broken feature. But, seeing as I was on a TV server observing a 6v6 tourey, it didn’t really matter.
Never re-tried [u]Radar[/] on vanilla to see if something had changed.
Hence, the entire excercise concluded my excursion into mod play.
A year later…recently, I downloaded the huge zip file from @Scrupus’ link and tried again. Please look upon this as a suggestion list - Here are my results:
Played the bot campaign
Overall Impression: Neutral - Positive, Quite a range of maps, all beautiful, varying in degree of playablility. Its obvious a lot of work went into these. The best IMHO was consite. Unfortunately, experienced crashing and black textures on several other maps. I probably won’t be trying these maps again without a repair for the texture problem.
In the selection screen, map/campaign names are listed in an odd order, being inserted among the vanilla names is somewhat confusing (minor)
The promod executible (v1.0) crashed when trying to load the custom maps or would simply revert back to the startup screen
The vanilla executible starts twice, then runs the maps
The vanilla executible displays some maps with black surfaces (e.g. [u]teamjungle[/], and others. I tried adjusting the vid, AI off, etc but to no avail)
Overall Suggestion: Release an official mod expansion, that: Selects a subset of exceptional maps; Optimizies the bot play; Fixes the restart problem; Automatically places the files in the right location; Prevents texture problems.
It’s not unreasonable that you don’t fully understand how the bits of the ETQW engine interact; I’m not criticising you for that. All I’m saying is that the reasons you give for an official patch don’t exist.
Okay, let’s take a look at these.
[QUOTE=Stroggafier;206488]My only excursion into loading custom maps onto vanilla executible was Radar, about a year ago.
It was difficult locating the proper folder to place the .pk4 files[/quote]
ETQW attempts to read three or six locations for pk4 files. The base folder where the vanilla pk4 files are, in your savepath, and userpath. It also looks in the versions of these for the mod you’re using, if there is one. It lists these paths in the console when you start up ETQW.
Putting the map pk4s into any of those locations should work, but the pure system is fruity so the best location is the mod or base folders.
When your ETQW needs to load new content, the purity of your client changes and it needs to reload everything. This is why you get the restart.
If you load a new mod, ETQW makes a new folder for the mod’s config files, so you ‘lose’ your settings because they don’t apply to the new mod. You can usually copy your old settings across by copy/pasting in the config files, or copying your autoexec.cfg across.
There was a bug in a previous version of ETQW which caused the game to wipe config files if it restarted when you had a default profile selected. This was fixed a while ago.
By adding the map files to base ETQW (or to promod) as additional type pk4 files, you remove all the restarts and bypass all of the config and download and purity silliness, at the cost of organisation.
ATI card? I crash sometimes if the map I’m loading has a missing thumbnail on the map select screen. ATI OpenGL sucks, really.
That’s a map issue; Chris has never compiled so that bots have data to work with (that I know of). Free Spirit City and Andes do support bots, for example.
Black ground is most likely either a missing megatexture (which vanilla doesn’t autodownload), or a misplaced megatexture (they need to go in the /megatextures/ folder), or you’ve got your shader graphics option set to 'high.
Dunno about the walls, sounds like ATI drivers again. I need to run the old catalyst 7.11’s with a renamed .exe, or I get loads of mouse lag in game. ATI better sort themselves out before Brink or I’m jumping ship. I also get a few black textures, but only on Canal.
[QUOTE=Stroggafier;206488]A year later…recently, I downloaded the huge zip file from @Scrupus’ link and tried again. Please look upon this as a suggestion list - Here are my results:
Played the bot campaign
Overall Impression: Neutral - Positive, Quite a range of maps, all beautiful, varying in degree of playablility. Its obvious a lot of work went into these. The best IMHO was consite. Unfortunately, experienced crashing and black textures on several other maps. I probably won’t be trying these maps again without a repair for the texture problem.[/quote]
People can’t address your texture problem if they don’t know about it. Given that the vast majority of custom map players don’t see the same issues, I’m inclined to think the problem is probably on your machine.
Maps are alphabetical, I think. Campaigns are probably listed in the order they’re defined in.
Sounds like my blank-thumbnail crash. Typically I follow someone in a game so I don’t need to click on the server and see the thumbnail. If the game doesn’t connect to your server when you restart, bring down the console and type ‘reconnect’ (without quotes).
If you join a server running mods, your client restart once to match the mod the server is using, then see that the server is using a non-standard purity, and restart again to match it. DOn’t get me start on ETQW’s pure system.
If it’s the terrain, it’ll be misplaced or missing megatexture. If it’s flat surfaces (are there any in teamjungle?) it might be a driver bug.
An official mod expansion won’t optimize bot play, because the maps in question don’t have any bot support. Support could be added, if anyone had access to the source files. This wouldn’t take the form of a mod expansion, but rather another revision of each map.
The restart problem isn’t a bug, but rather how ETQW deals with mismatches in purity. It’s easy enough to remove the restarts by adding maps to either vanilla or promod, but then you need to do all the organising and get everyone to agree which maps to use and how to arrange them and deal with the fact that you’ll be updating that package every week or two.
A properly configured promod server will put all the files in a location which works. A vanilla server will miss the megatextures, but this is a non-issue if you add all your maps to vanilla.
The texture problems aren’t ETQW or promod. You can’t patch ETQW to deal with graphics problems that originate with ATI’s terrible Open GL.
If you want a patch which alters how ETQW deals with purity, then I wouldn’t argue against it, although you can’t really call that a custom-maps-on-ranked-servers patch.
Hey Scrupus, hope you have not deleted part of your text due to bigness!! It’s was a very nice read!
I do maps because i like to create. Mapper situation on ETQW is a very hard task. Sorry, but we are heros for some deity that does not manifest him self on the mundane world
Althoug we still need to live, so why not receive some donations, from anyone who want to do that, more from ones likely players. Just don’t fall on the space between real merit and human necessities. Treat then like two diferent and genuine, respectable, persons.
A eye_shining speed_racing humanity_intolerant atention catching pedant saying “I am GOD!”! Or a grotesque_spirit money_power merit_killing master of mundane saying “I own your GOD!”?
There is a lot of work to do in order to put bot support into maps and personally I think it’s waste of time which can be better spent creating a greater map. The amount of custom map players is small but the amount of custom map players who actually care about bots is even smaller so I never bother with it in my maps.
The other problem with bot support which I think was previously mentioned is that you often can’t compile the data for them for large maps (estate for one) as it runs out of memory (and I have 4GB on xp64), though Donnovan managed to do it for consite using a copy of the map with just the bot data in - would be nice to post up a tutorial on how you did that Mr D?
Hey Anthonyda, this is not the right way to win my love. But i still loves you, and will always love you, you helped me a lot in the ETQW Custom Map road. Remember your post full of images about Andes 4.1 issues? Your demos? So, thankyou again.
Hey Stroggafier, really nice to hear that about Consite. This make we rechard our gas, eat some chocolates, and go ahead! To the Final Release!
Violator, my big friend of a unknow Era. Here are some shots of the AAS wolrd, the way bots see Consite!
well I have never mapped for ETQW the mega textures etc… kinda scared me away.
Anyway if what shirosae said is true then it’s not as much work (like I said) and the person deciding which maps would just be activision or SD, (maybe) they could set up a poll for other people to vote but the final decision will be theirs.
(just like valve)
@ the bot problem couldn’t you just get somebody with higher specs to do it for you? I am packing 12gb @ 2000mhz
On bots the problem is not spec, the problem is complexity. No matter how much memory you have, it will crash if you do not simplify things. Memory will just make it compile faster or not.
I have 2 giga DDR 667 Mhz in my machine. This is enough to put all the content on the memory. AAS compile in SOME SECONDS.
The time demanding part is Expand, but like it runs with no Hard Drive activity, i believe it’s not memory intensive, but processor intensive (things became really slow when Expand is running).
If mapping in ETQW is anything like mapping in older gen games (e.g. I create numerous maps and compaigns in Disciples II), then of course there are practical limits to map size, texture complexity, and code complexity.
In DII, the answer was almost always, smaller map grid, fewer objects/elements, and fewer and less complex logic steps. In ETQW, Teamjungle seems to be one extreme of this playable size scale and perhaps Consite the other. I’d guess both have well written bot logic?
Also, writing game logic was inescapable in DII, as “bots” were an integral aspect of the game, with very few exceptions. In ETQW it appears the exception is the single player map/campaign. Although I suspect, this may have come about, not as a result of what would be good, but rather what would be a good trade-off.
In ETQW, as in DII, I’m assuming, making a map beautiful is one thing, but making it playable is quite another. However, concentrating soley on map quality has its benefits and draw backs. The rationale is that multi-player games never use bots. Of course, its self fulfilling; absence of bot logic enforces limits on map use. That’s unfortunate for the single-player types who can’t play that map, and unfortunate for the custom map community as this actively prevents extension into a broader audience.
Alternately, “Build it and they will come” comes to mind.
Nice Vio! Bots can’t do precise movements. May be they fall a lot on the mining laser pit.
Stroggafier, we did the map full of details. But also re-did the map in a simple way just for bots.
When we compile the map, we use the detailed version.
When we compile the bot info, we use the siimple version.
Also, there is a Vehicle version, that is even more simple (a full building turn into one big single cube), based on the bot version. This is the way bots see the world when inside a vehicle.
I think I get it, @Donnovan. People require the most detailed version to see, but why not use the simplest version of the map that you can get away with to compile the bot logic, vehicle views/action logic, etc. i.e. For bots to work, they don’t need megatexture, but they do need basic wire frame, wall characteristics and other relevant details for movement/logic; For vehicle views/logic, one only needs basic obstacle shapes and their characteristics and viewable textures. Doing this would enable a custom mapper to use the least amount of space to compile all aspects combined.
Now, in terms of logic complexity, less is more, as it were.
In DII simple meant:
Binary logic (a condition was either True of False)
Sequential execution (one pass through the event log only for each logic cycle, no imbedded loops except from very bottom to very top of logic stack)
Fewer number of referenced locations/areas/waypoints, variables, and spawn types the better
Finally, the fewer number of event triggers in the stack, the better
Sound files and picture files were not imbedded, but called, so the space for sound files was almost unlimited, but consequently CPU cylces were impacted adversely if/as call numbers went up.
The menu driven event logger that came with the map editor was slightly more flexible, but the above mentioned “standards” evolved over time to get around problems as file sizes grew and performance correspondingly dropped. Is there a movement in the ETQW community towards similar standards?
There is a hard limit in the ETQW engine which prevents maps to go over 64kx64k units. outside that range, the engine will refuse to calculate physics, making that area not suitable for playing. It’d require a mod to overrule this setting, if it’s even possible.
I don’t think there’s a limit to filesizes. What you do get is that performance drops when you add more stuff to the map. ETQW has many optimisation options which enable you to control directly what the game will render for the player to see in any place on the map.
This allows you to effectively shut down everything on the map that the player cannot see. That’s why the only way to get performance issues is when your map is very open, with no objects to obstruct the players view.
Then you also have the option to create high and low quality versions of everything on the map, much like what Donnovan said about the bots ‘map’. This allows you to set a certain distance, from where the player will get to see the lower quality version of an object, which lacks detail, but you’ll barely notice this if you set the distances right.
I’ll have to disagree, I think there are quite a number of people making good use of the bot support when it’s available. I’ve played Andes with bots quite often, usually with 1 or 2 other players. It’s great for screwing around, trying new things, driving people over and having fun in general. It makes the map fun to play when you have very few players on, and this happens very often.
Maybe, but you once told me I needed to rename location of Meltdown to somewhere in USA instead of UK for ‘coolness reasons’ so you’ll have to forgive me for not taking what you say on board.
Ho dear …
the mega textures etc… kinda scared me away.