Taking the plunge: Byzantine-B2, public beta

(Ifurita) #1

http://www.fileplanet.com/dl.aspx?/planetwolfenstein/4newbies/byzantine-b2.zip

Overview and Notes:

  1. Dual-objective. Both sides must capture and secure 2 objectives
  2. This is a large map, intended for larger servers. Should be played with at least 16 people (figure 8 per side, 4 O, 4 D/mid, min)
  3. Cistern level has 3 entrances/exits. There is a North and South stairwell, as well as a well w/ rope right by the German Embassy (where the axis gold is)
  4. There is a hallway that leads from the Docks to the Mosque, but has a pair of team doors on either end. In order to use it, you must have a covert in uniform.
  5. CP and forward flag can be found by the mosque courtyard

Known issues:

  1. Cannot for the life of me figure why the center flag is not showing on the command map. You can still click on the spot where the flag should be (0, 0) and change spawn via the limbo menu, but the flag just doesn’t show
  2. No VO’s - working on this
  3. Some textures still need aligning, particularly the wall textures with the bell shaped windows.
  4. Noticed some brushes disappeared during the compile (wagon in the mosque courtyard lost a brush for example)
  5. Still tweaking the script - currently does not have all the wm_objectivestatus arguments filled out
  6. When you are disassembling the radio/radar cabinets, it still says “constructing” … not sure you can change this
  7. Still working on signage
  8. Still working on the tracemap and the skywalls that block vis - as a result, mortars firing from the interior to the exterior will sometimes hit and explode in the sky

Anyways, please let me know how this runs. Suggestions, comments, edits, solutions, etc are all welcome

(G0-Gerbil) #2

Any chance of a download location that doesn’t need logging in? I hate those things on principal :frowning:

(Ifurita) #3

need to fix the tracemap

OK, just found a very big problem. I can generate a tracemap, using a copy of the map without the blocking skybrushes, but in-game, when I fire a mortar, they impact against the walls of sky I have. Can anyone suggest a fix? Would this be a surfaceparm to the shader or is there another way I can make the skywalls passable by mortar rounds?

(SCDS_reyalP) #4

I don’t think it would be a surfaceparm. It should be automatic, included when your shader has
skyparms
in it. Could the other sides of your skywalls be causing the problem ?

One way to help work stuff like this out is to make a simple test case, i.e. a box with a a wall of sky in the middle. That will save you compile times, as well as eliminating any extranious stuff which might cause problems.

(Ifurita) #5

i wonder if the entire brush needs to be sky. I made blocks of caulk and just textured the visible faces

I am very bummed right now. Those walls helped me save tons of FPS

Hmmm, the map probably isn’t ready to go onto any servers then, but feel free to run around and check it out. I’ll see if I can get this fixed in the next day or so

(SCDS_reyalP) #6

In general, it is not true that all sides of your skybrush need to be sky for the mortars to work. My narfpractice map, for example, has caulk on the outside of the sky brushes. Maybe there is something specific to having walls of sky that causes the problem. Maybe it is having vertical wall that causes the problem, try giving them a slight slope.

As I said, reduce it to the simplest possible test case, and work your way up from there.

You might also be able to save the tris using the antiportal shader, and using a larger skybox.

(Ifurita) #7

i know it can be fixed, SD uses the same technique on Goldrush and I can fire from the bank courtyard over the buildings and into the courtyard where the ammo/health racks are

(G0-Gerbil) #8

I’d say the simplest test has got to be converting all your sky brushes to purely using sky texture. It’s a simple enough test to do, and I must admit I’ve always done it this way.

Another idea that strikes me is if you are using clip brushes to prevent people / spectators going right up into the sky - you may have accidentally chosen the wrong clip. A test for this is can you fire a panzer into the sky (IE does it disappear at the sky brush (can be tricky to know, true), or does it explode / disappear nearer?

One final thing that it might be (although highly doubtful) is making sure you don’t have any brushes above the sky - a ‘common’ cause might be the big box I’m sure most people draw over their level to get the mapcoords from. That’s so unlikely it’s not true, but I mention it for completeness sake.

Oh, and you may as well check your sky shader has

surfaceparm sky

in it. It may be automatic, but I can’t see any harm in chucking it in if it’s not there already. Actually, I just checked forum’s sky shader, and it doesn’t have that surfaceparm in it. Scrap that idea…

I reckon your best bet is to paint all the sky brushes with nothing but sky.
Maybe it works for SCDS_reyalP because he’s been lucky - a brush is sometimes assigned parameters based on a randomly chosen face (eg ye olde falling through water brush cos a face was painted with nodraw) - this might be one of those situations?

(Ifurita) #9

well, I turned everything to sky and I can fire a panzer thru it - at least it doesn’t explode against the face, but the mortars still do.

They are actually exploding on the vertical skywalls and not the ones that actually seperate the void from the map. I tried shooting the mortar at two of the skybox walls and they go through it as expected

On some skywalls, I can throw a grenade and it will stop on the sky wall and blow up there too. Yet, on that same wall, I can fire the mortar thru it.

also, no clip brushes in those areas, just hints

This is very frustrating

(SCDS_reyalP) #10

I just had a quick run around. As the map is large in complex, I haven’t looket at the whole thing in detail.

A few comments:
In the allies initial spawn I suggest making the team doors double, or dispensing with them entirely. While the intention of stopping spawncamping is good, I think the current situation will have the reverse effect. By the time you have got out the door, your invulnerability will have worn off, and you will be jammed up between the moving door and your slow ass teammates, a perfect target for a waiting PF. Better to have diverse cover you can run to while still invulnerable.

Any main traffic area (such as a door to a spawn) should be wide enough for two players to get though without slowing each other down, IMO.

Some technical issues:
There is a lot of z-fighting. I suggest you switch to 16 bit mode and wander around a bit. Here is a representative screenshot:

The windows z-fight because the wall behind them is one solid texture. The wall circled at the left appears to have two overlapping brushes of different texture. I noticed the same sort of thing in a number of other places, including the trim around some doorways. Fixing the windows will result in more triangles, but less fill rate. That might hurt or help performance…

Some models are missing in this shot:

Also, I would suggest making the glass in front of that room breakable, to make it more accesable.

As a stylistic point, I would suggest that you make some kind of transition between the different wall textures. In this shot:

The two walls have sharp transition between the textures which doesn’t look very realistic. The sharp line between two kinds of dirty faded plaster just doesn’t look right. I would put some architechural element betwen them. For example:

  • a wooden support embedded in the building
  • or a pillar of a third (stone/brick/wood) texture sticking out a bit,
  • or a texture specifically made to transition between the two, i.e. one of the texture apperently peeling off of the other one, on a ragged edge.
  • make one of the buildings stick out into the street a bit more.
    Any of these solutions will add to your triangle and/or texture count, so be careful.

There is also some z-fighting in the circled area of that shot, where the hidden side of a building is textured. There are other instances of this around the map.

FWIW, performance seemed acceptable on my 1.4ghz athlon with a gf2 ti. I’m impressed.

That is quite possible.

(Ifurita) #11

Yeah, I’ve actually been focusing more on the performance and game flow than the texturing, for better or worse. I figure if I nail the first two parts, I can fix the third, not the other way around. That’s why I’m so bummed about the mortar issue, those walls save me tons of FPS.

Good point on the doors and glass, I can fix those. The z-fighting will take a little bit longer, and I’ll address that last

(G0-Gerbil) #12

Still no sign of another download location :frowning:

Please, I wanna see! :smiley:

(Touch&Go) #13

http://pub.xferoc5a.fileplanet.com/^1031102158/planetwolfenstein/4newbies/byzantine-b2.zip

(Ifurita) #14

anyone have ideas on how to fix the sky wall problem? alternatives?

(SCDS_reyalP) #15

My suggestion is still the same. Make a simple box map, with one wall of sky in the middle. Test that. Make it pgressively more like what you want in the final map. Find the limitiations. Apply what you learn to your map. When you are done, write the tutorial :smiley:

Since it works in goldrush, obviously, it can be done. Examine the goldrush map, and rip it off shamelessly. Dont forget to look at the goldrush tracemap too.

BTW, the goldrush sky uses caulk on the outside, so that shouldn’t be a problem.

(Mean Mr. Mustard) #16

Are mortars ‘solely’ controlled by tracemaps?

Possible stupid idea below…

  1. Remove the interior ‘sky’ walls and generate the tracemap
  2. Add the sky walls and compile the bsp

If the mortar is controlled by the tracemap, then maybe they’ll be fooled into not ‘seeing’ the interior sky walls

But then again, maybe I have not idea what I am talking about… :smiley:

(Ifurita) #17

Narrowed down some of the problem (I think)

  1. Regenerated the tracemap, w/ skywalls, and mortars seem to work for the most part.

http://www.fileplanet.com/dl.aspx?/planetwolfenstein/4newbies/byzantine-b2-tracemap.zip

– add this to your etmain folder and mortars should work on the map now, 99% of the time :stuck_out_tongue:

  1. Mortars will still occassionally explode in the air, but only on occassion, it seems like those instances where the path of the mortar crosses the top-most brushface of the skywall

Further experimentation. I’ll rerun a tracemap with all 6 faces textured with sky and make the skywalls as thin as possible and see if that helps

(SCDS_reyalP) #18

If all else fails, you might be able to manually touch up the tracemap. Somewhere, there was a post by one of the splash folks regarding what each of the channels do.

(Ifurita) #19

Yeah, the tracemap info is in the LDR. BTW, when you mentioned strolling around in 16-bit to see the z-fighting etc, did you mean texturebits and depth bits = 16? If so, I tried that and for the most part aren’t seeing the problems you pointed out. In any case, I replaced most of the windows anyways since i wanted something that looked a little more realistic

(SCDS_reyalP) #20

Depth bits is the one that matters, but many cards make you use 16 bit depth if you set 16 bit color. They may also force you to use a 24 bit z-buffer if you use 24 bit color. Texture bits doesn’t make a difference affect z-buffer at all.

Mind you, there is plenty of z-fighting on the splashdamage maps if you play in 16 bit mode, so it is not like your map would be particularly bad. You should fix the cases where you have hidden faces textured, or two textured brushes sharing the same plane, because they will needlessly cost performance for everybody.