[FS CMM|Johnnyenglish]

Nice points.

It's definitely too dark atm and this will change.

The map will sit in my mapcycle now as-is for a couple of weeks and during that time I'll be able to see how it plays (ctf).

It appeared in rotation 5 times yesterday and so was downloaded by a lot of people... the size didn't deter any players that I noticed.

Over the next couple of weeks I expect several hundred people will play the map and that will give me a lot of time to consider the layout before the final push.

I don't expect it to reduce in size below 40mb but I might loose the top bit (where the boat is) and add a whole new bottom bit, I dunno yet, I'm going to watch how it plays.

Also, a few people have mentioned how low the corridors are, I might raise the height of the ceilings in these sections.

[FS CMM|Johnnyenglish]

Good day all, bit of an update while I wait for a compile to finish.

Had a week to think about this map and watch how it plays in the real world. The download size has perhaps put a few people off, but not many. I've seen the map with 32 players and it plays a very interesting game.

Anyroadup. I've increased the height of the white corridors, just to speed things up in that area.



I actually want the player to experience that crushed down feeling of being under the water so I've left the roof in the reception area quite low. With the bubble noises I've added it feels like you're under the sea, oppressive and kind of what I wanted.

I've removed the 2 long corridors in the lower level, I agree this was boring. I've changed the dark rusty stair section so it's more open, less confusing.

I've been considering removing the high poly model of the boat on the surface but have decided to leave it, the surface section is a box with water and a few brushes and so can probably handle a model of this size because there isn't much else to draw.

I've decided to use teleports because without them the top bit would have to sit directly over the bottom bit - more confusing minimap - I'll make them look more interesting eventually.

I've fixed all the model shader problems, there were a few, nobody noticed, phew.

I've built the canteen area, added models on the lower deck with a sink and table, coffee machine, Sun newspaper, packet of fags, ashtray, etc.

I've made the engineers workshop on the lower deck.

I've changed a lot of textures.

QUESTION: How the devil can I make these lights without the black bit, so they're just round light emitting shaders? Do I need another image to act like a mask?



Cheers John

This post has been edited by Johnnyenglish: 02 October 2010 - 08:15 AM

[FS CMM|Johnnyenglish]

Updated first post to version beta7.

The "round" lights look very pants in this version, am still working on this.

Also playable on :

/connect dougal.proweb.net

in map rotation with ut4_district (which I like).

This post has been edited by Johnnyenglish: 04 October 2010 - 08:09 AM

[FSK405|mindriot]

Add an alpha channel to the image and erase the border. If that doesn't work, drop the light emitter from the light texture and put a new no draw, no shadow brush over it with one face as a light emitter shader.

Some other observations:
- Still rather dark in some areas (engine room)

- Vis blocking could be improved with proper hinting

- Water tunnel is difficult to get out of at both ends, even the one with the ladder

- Please consider adding a thin playerclip brush to the ceilings where you can catch your head on support beams. It is annoying to run full speed down the corridor then jump and come to a complete stop.

This post has been edited by mindriot: 05 October 2010 - 06:29 PM

[FSK405|mindriot]

I found a problem though I'm not sure if it's isolated to me or not. If ut4_desertia.pk3 is not in the q3ut4 dir and I try to start ut4_glug_b7 under bumpy, it starts to load, then UrT does a hard crash. It runs just fine with ut4_desertia.pk3 present. This problem does not exist using vanilla UrT.

Please check to make sure there isn't a dependency between the maps. When you build a map into a .pk3, test it in a completely separate install of UrT with just the map in question to make sure there are no dependencies.

[FS CMM|Johnnyenglish]

Mindriot, thank you for that, a couple of people have mentioned that glug crashes for them with the bumpy build but I've not been able to replicate it, I can now!

I'll fix it today.

Regarding the round light, yes it was a transparent tga, the black bit is where the image was fully transparent.

I'll try as you say, make the rounded frame a decal and add a small light emitting brush over the top.

I will add a strip of playerclip to smooth out the corridor with lumps in and I will add a ladder to the water tunnel at the far end, I also have trouble getting out the water here and it bugs me.

Not added any vis blocking at all on this map yet, I'm quite looking forward to doing this, I think the way its built should make it easy to do??

Thanks again for all your good advice.

PS. I didnt include the .rad in b7, I'm not able to get decent results with the bumpy compiles and it's driving me nuts.

========= EDIT ==========
I found why glug may crash bumpy clients, I forgot to include in the textures folder twoseven/water_n.tga which I did include in the desertia map.

I don't actually use this image in any of my glug shaders but it must be present if you're packing for bumpy and wish to use shiny water. Probably?

This post has been edited by Johnnyenglish: 05 October 2010 - 06:25 AM

[FSK405|mindriot]

Johnnyenglish, on 05 October 2010 - 05:23 AM, said:

Regarding the round light, yes it was a transparent tga, the black bit is where the image was fully transparent.

I'll try as you say, make the rounded frame a decal and add a small light emitting brush over the top.

Either that, or maybe drop the lightmap stage from the shader? Though that wouldn't make sense as I have decals with lightmap stages and don't have this problem - but then again, my decals aren't light emitting. Are they decals? There are two methods, one is projecting and the other is a flush brush. I've only done the flush brush method which I assume you are using. Here is an example:

textures/ut4_zomker_a3/decal_right_arrow_000
{ 
	qer_trans 0.3
//	surfaceparm trans
	polygonOffset
	nomipmaps
	nopicmip
        sort 6

	{
         map textures/ut4_zomker_a3/decal_right_arrow_000.tga
		alphafunc GE128
		depthwrite
	}
	{
		map $lightmap
		depthfunc equal
		blendfunc filter
	}
}

Johnnyenglish, on 05 October 2010 - 05:23 AM, said:

I will add a strip of playerclip to smooth out the corridor with lumps in and I will add a ladder to the water tunnel at the far end, I also have trouble getting out the water here and it bugs me.

Just lower the height of the edges for the non-ladder end. For the ladder end - not sure how to fix it so you can easily climb up other than to add a ledge.

Johnnyenglish, on 05 October 2010 - 05:23 AM, said:

Not added any vis blocking at all on this map yet, I'm quite looking forward to doing this, I think the way its built should make it easy to do??

The design lends itself to good vis blocking. Let me know if you have questions. Although I do recommend that as you construct a map vis blocking should play prominent role and be built in from the start. I've done work retrofitting maps to improve vis blocking and it can result in significant rebuilds. Save yourself some effort and make it a part of your designs from the start.

Johnnyenglish, on 05 October 2010 - 05:23 AM, said:

========= EDIT ==========
I found why glug may crash bumpy clients, I forgot to include in the textures folder twoseven/water_n.tga which I did include in the desertia map.

I don't actually use this image in any of my glug shaders but it must be present if you're packing for bumpy and wish to use shiny water. Probably?

That is rather interesting, but doesn't make sense. The twoseven/water_n.tga is included with the bumpy build, so it shouldn't need to be packed with any map. Just tested it. For some reason UrT isn't picking up on the textures directory and it needs to be in a .pk3. I just packaged the textures dir into bumpy.pk3 and I can now load glug and ut4_picolasbridge.pk3. I'll post this in the bumpy thread.

This post has been edited by mindriot: 05 October 2010 - 07:19 PM

[CMM|Rylius]

For the last problem, as long as sv_pure is set to 1 the game doesn't read from folders iirc.

[FS CMM|Johnnyenglish]

Rylius, on 05 October 2010 - 09:13 PM, said:

For the last problem, as long as sv_pure is set to 1 the game doesn't read from folders iirc.

.. and so for the same reason you need to include the glsl folder in your .pk3 for bumpy maps.

Anyway, I'm keen to finish this map now, I don't have much construction left to do, it plays CTF quite nicely and the map despite its mega-massive size is proving quite popular. I'm hoping that I can reduce the final size down to 40meg.. without the video.

I'm going to add one new section this week and I have a new surface structure ready to drop in so I'm hoping to have more final version this weekend.

If you don't mind Mindriot, can I contact you about adding vis blocking to the stair portions of the map?

This post has been edited by Johnnyenglish: 06 October 2010 - 07:03 AM

[FS CMM|Johnnyenglish]

I speak a little French, I lived in Lyon for a while.

I speak a little English, I lived in Wilkes-Barre, PA for a while.

I don't speak any of the other languages I've babelfished, can a native speaker just let me know if the text is appropriate?



Am packing a new version of this map now with mucho-reduced size for test.

New download, version 9 in first post with attempt to make a reasonable .rad file... erm.

Size is reduced to 47mb, I expect further reductions before the final version.

This post has been edited by Johnnyenglish: 09 October 2010 - 08:42 AM