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WIP ut4_abaddon Rate Topic: -----

Design notes and general rants making Abaddon

#1 User is offline   Sneaks Icon

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Posted 05 April 2019 - 12:53 PM

ut4_abaddon
Abaddon

So this has been a month, I won't count the hours spent so far, or how many more to go, but I needed something meatier after making Hamburger Cricket. Taking what I learned in Hamburger Cricket, I wanted to stick to the basic idea of a big open space and then push the limits of what I could do and how much information could be placed inside that open space.

Many mini-maps made in the initial stages, trenches and a tall tower, a tunnel, and lots and lots of sand carried by gull from a distant place. I didn't ask many questions. I needed lots of sand and the gulls deliver. They don't speak anyway, which was fine by me.

A first I thought I'd make a Rollerball style map (Rollerball is a movie set in the not so distant future of 2018, I watched it last year so was a natural inspiration for making a map).

Rollerball is played on a big round velodrome, sloping sides, but it became apparent quickly that running and jumping on the surface was, troublesome. Part of the solution was to create paths, which ruined the initial idea, and parts of these paths needed to cut into the main surface. I always felt I wanted to make a map with trenches, so this was basically where I started.

Made a series of mini-maps to choose my preferred trench layouts.

I'll add more as it develops.

Did I mention this map is big?

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This post has been edited by Sneaks: 05 April 2019 - 06:44 PM


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Posted 18 April 2019 - 02:05 PM

After a month of planning, drawing and testing I was happy with the layout, it was shaping up to give some intense game play, trenches seemed fun, and some other options existed to vary the game play, but anything other than an SR8 wasn't going to cut it over all because this map was so huge.

The concept I was working on at this point for this map, was for use in LAN games against my brother (1v1) which essentially only using SR8 would likely become the norm anyway, so wasn't really an issue. But something else happened, and though the need for new maps doesn't really exist like it used to, I wanted to continue to improve the map so it could potentially see some online team play. Because I was starting to really like the map and wanted to share it on open servers, regardless the reality, I wanted to attempt to make it worthy at least.

This brings about the need to bring everything closer (smaller map) for several reasons;
maintain action by keeping players coming head on
make reaching several different locations on the map more likely, more often (more fun)
reasonably allow players to use weapons which aren't sniper weapons, even if long range was still favored
improve leafs to allow some vis blocking, and so allow more details at a later date


The map had some great elements which I was basically going to be able to copy and paste to a smaller layout, though this is easier said than done, it would still speed up the process compared to re-drawing everything. And it is never as simple as just making a smaller map.

The last 18 days have been spent (when able) on redesign, while keeping to the essential elements that had been chosen. I am at a point now where not half as small, but considerably smaller and still feels large and open, still different to maps I know of, I've managed at this stage to keep the large openness in the centre which I feel offers a freedom of movement and simplicity to understand, of where to go and how to get there, which is virtually never the case in urt.

I was running at 125 fps on the previous version so I'm hoping I can maintain that in the smaller layout, which should be the case. It's going well. Progress goes slow through difficult stages then moves forward quickly when it all goes smooth, so I can't predict when a playable beta might be ready.


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Posted 25 April 2019 - 10:42 AM

View PostBarbatos, on 19 April 2019 - 08:39 AM, said:

This is some nice work. Let us know when the new version is out!


Thanks Barbatos, here is a progress report for ut4_abaddon


Posted Image

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Sometimes it's hard to know if doing more is making things better, but I'm making progress regardless


I could release a playable beta at the moment but I discovered.. how big is too big. When I go and get an ice cream cone, and they put an extra big scoop on top I don't complain. But when I look at my texture folder for the map and it's over 100MB I start to think maybe I did something wrong. (I quickly trimmed it back to 90MB but need to do more).

Making all of the images high (enough) resolution (300 ppi) which I'm maintaining, mostly 1024x1024 and almost every image was .TGA which I now see is a larger file size than a .jpeg for example.. just converting to .jpeg could more than half the texture file size which I'd be happy with right now.

so today I've started to scale more of the the textures back where it doen't hurt, images get scaled in the editor anyway so it basically balances out. Then today I was converting the TGA to jpeg when I saw GTK Radiant 1.5.0 didn't like some .jpg Is this the moment I jump ship for a new editor? or am I doing something wrong when I convert the images (jpg and jpeg didn't seem to help - and I have some jpg already being rendered in game so it kinda stumped me at the moment)


Posted Image


MAp progress: I've re-done the map, a new map with everything re-drawn or copied and re-placed without disrupting the layout too much, everything is closer. Though I think it looks a little rough, and I want to eventually get back to a rounder layout, that looked good bfore, everything felt smooth and spacious. I think it's just a comparison thing but everything was in a big box before and I just added huge walls to close it in (speed mapping/sketch mapping).


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there is some (a little) vis blocking going on, and I used a few hint brushes and it's over all considerably a smaller layout and still huge.


I've added a movie style sound track I had laying around to underground in the middle of the map, quirky, but suitable I'd say.


Slimey walls - Can I have images rendered with some transparency - a script - I want to add more slime to walls, and still have the wall partly show through. The script I use to allow alpha is something like this -->

textures/ut4_abaddon/mouldybottomdirt_1
{
qer_trans 0.4
qer_editor_image textures/ut4_abaddon/mouldybottomdirt_1.tga
surfaceparm nolightmap
surfaceparm nonsolid
surfaceparm trans
// nopicmip
// nomipmaps
{
map textures/ut4_abaddon/mouldybottomdirt_1.tga
alphaFunc GE128
depthWrite
rgbGen vertex
}
}

<--- so that script is great most of the time for what I need, but when I added slime and filth to walls the mask image is not transparent, it looks pretty horrible in some places with some images. Allowing maybe a 50% transparency would fix it.


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Layout and jump distances seem good, a few fun tricks to the map, places to hide/catch your breath/regroup, a bit of backdoor action for CTF, a big tower to lure campers, rail slides downstairs, an obligatory pit of death (I dunno why I like pits of death so much, they're just fun to build), all game modes supported at minimum (beta), I found a guy giving away a heap of barrels, so they're all in there too... so many barrels... anyone have some ok rock models they could spare? Large flat, up right, about the size of your head, any really, but not too much detail to render, I'm getting pretty full.


Posted Image


So to list things I could use help with:

why don't some jpeg load in Radiant? (I use the Gimp to edit images)

How big is too big for an urt .pk3 (I would have thought 25MB was big, which looks like what I'll end up with)

Can I have images rendered with some transparency - a script

I need reasonable rock models

When I put posters on the wall, I use a thin brush with no draw, usually this doesn't impede the players movement when up against the brush. Sometimes it does.

current vis data examples are around about these values

820 portalclusters
2023 numportals
2806 numfaces
4046 active portals
120 hint portals
visdatasize:85288

5 average of passages per leaf

Size: -3200, -3768, -1392 to 3200, 3760, 1080
block size = ( 1024, 1024, 1024 )
1508 leafs filed


Posted Image

This post has been edited by Sneaks: 25 April 2019 - 01:19 PM


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Posted 25 April 2019 - 11:21 AM

a side by side comparison to show by how much this map is smaller, The buildings and trenches are still the same size, just closer together. As I said above, I hope to get back toward the rounder style, because it looks good

TOP - BEFORE

Spoiler


Spoiler


BOTTOM - NOW

This post has been edited by Sneaks: 24 June 2019 - 07:53 AM


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Posted 26 April 2019 - 08:40 AM

I bet you cook a good steak too V, I'll make a coffee and look it over.

Thank you


The map doesn't look competitive? no, it's more a blood bath isn't it.

[edit]
taken from my notes, kind of vague but makes sense while going through the process.
// .jpg not showing in GTK Radiant 1.5.0
convert image in The GIMP 2.10 to a .jpg

//
// Image properties (The GIMP 2.10)
//
// edit
// preferences
// IMAGE IMPORT & EXPORT
// disabled all export policies
// OK
//

then when exporting the image

// export as
// image.jpg
// Export
// Quality 100%
// advance options
// switched off optimize/progressive/save Exif data/Save Thumbnail/Save XMP data
// switched off everything and save the settings as default
//
// image.jpg now shows in GTK Radiant

Thanks V, right direction. Image now shows in Radiant. The hunch was correct, extra data seems to have been saved with the image and 'broke' the image being read by Radiant. I could experiment more and find the actual culprits but this is a good result and I'll run with it.

To track the advantage: the maps texture file size was about 97.6 MB and is now 53.4MB

This post has been edited by Sneaks: 26 April 2019 - 10:23 AM


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Posted 26 April 2019 - 01:04 PM

View Postv3nd3tta, on 25 April 2019 - 10:24 PM, said:

What you want more is alpha blending with blendfunc blend


ok I got it, like in my sky script, a blue sky that fades out into a gloomy smokey horizon.

blendFunc GL_SRC_ALPHA GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA

I developed this script a long time ago for a blue/grey sky fading into a light horizon to create atmospheric perspective in the sky. It's coming back to me what each line is for, I've been away from scripting a long time and maybe never really got it the first time around.

[edit:] example of sky shader
Spoiler


You've definitely given me enough to keep experimenting with.

Thanks again V

[EDIT] getting fantastic results on the slime, nice 1

below is an image of the slime on a wall I thought worked alright with the previous shader

alphaFunc GE128
Spoiler



and below is the same wall using the new slime shader

blendfunc blend
Spoiler

This post has been edited by Sneaks: 24 June 2019 - 07:54 AM


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Posted 29 April 2019 - 06:28 AM

My link

http://www.mediafire...n_wip1.pk3/file

so a few issues need to be addressed. firstly the file size is still much bigger than a map of this quality should be and secondly, maybe more importantly, the perspective and scale is well off.

I designed the map using urt 4.1 and in urt 4.3 this just looks plain wrong, somethings are better, but over all, corridors are too thin and everything is too tall. I'll start to address this today

I've included a link to the current WIP .pk3 which includes all the models, textures, scripts and .map files. It could be a little while before another playable WIP update is ready. Not happy with it yet

This post has been edited by Sneaks: 29 April 2019 - 06:29 AM



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