DM-Baikonur - thoughts on my map?

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Karsk
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DM-Baikonur - thoughts on my map?

Post by Karsk »

Hi all,

It's been nearly 20 years since UT99 came out, and the community is still thriving—awesome!
So I decided to create my first map, and I would like some thoughts on it. It's an arena type of map, centered around a big rocket in a Soviet space station. It has some z-axis game-play, and is great fun to play with bots, in my opinion.

Image

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Now, there are a few issues that I don't know how to fix that I would love to get some help on. Since the map is set in an open-sun desert, the map has no lightning, and instead uses ambient zone lightning, which sort of works for this map. I've tried adding a dozen lights around but it causes lots of ugly shading everywhere, and the map lags significantly. If anyone wants to try to fix this, please be my guest.

Link: http://www.mediafire.com/file/dxsqm4g8c ... r.zip/file

Cheers!
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Re: DM-Baikonur - thoughts on my map?

Post by Hellkeeper »

Just took a look, nice first try, the map is fun.
Just a few things:
the map has no lightning, and instead uses ambient zone lightning, which sort of works for this map.
It doesn't. Ambient lighting is always bad, especially map-wide. As is it's sometimes difficult to distinguish the floor from some parts of the walls because they have the same tex.

The sky is barely minimal. Even copy/pasting a sky from another map would have been better, it's just endless blue and a small sun for now.
The map is simple and quite bare, but it's a first. You may improve it someday or simply move on to more complex maps. Either's good.

Your geometry is a wreck. I haven't spotted any issue during testing, but it could be largely improved. Many solids could be turned to semi-solids, the large intersected brush for the launchpad could be a series of clean brushes instead of the one messy brush there is, many brushes are off the grid for no clear reason.

As for the game itself: the water down the silo either kills too fast or too slow. I'd like to die imediately upon entering it if there's no way to get out, or take less damage per second and have an escape route. Either would be nice.

Welcome to ut99.org and nice first, I hope you learn and improve, but it's a good start. :D
You must construct additional pylons.
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Re: DM-Baikonur - thoughts on my map?

Post by Red_Fist »

I fixed some of it, I believe the picture frame on the desk was causing BSP collision problem. I will upload a map with lights see what happens,
I have an idea for lighting without killing the map.
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Re: DM-Baikonur - thoughts on my map?

Post by Red_Fist »

I have a more fixed map for you,

I F'd with the bot paths but did NOT test maps for bots and might have screwed up that. However, just see the textures, and examine the rest of the map.
If you notice, by using textures to show , it's a wall, or it's, not a wall, type of thing, for a 2d screen, and you also need light to make it "3D".
DM (for me) is all about getting the enemy fast but not have to look far (or hear) to watch your own back.
THIS map covers quite well. I moved things away from walls for better paths.

WRONG ?
People think to plant ammo or health or "pickups" close to walls and corners, YOU ?, :) too close, so be aware of that.

I added lighting, STOP slamming brushes ! , keep the lines-edges connected, no overlap.
Beware, reduce spotlight radius to 32 to move them around. What is weird If I set the radius to 128 or 127 the map crashes on the build, I set them at 132 !!! and it don't crash. SEKKTOR ?

A map like you made by using add brushes inside a hollowed out subtract will be problematic for zones and-or useless unwanted poly buildup.

You made a good map for DM.
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Re: DM-Baikonur - thoughts on my map?

Post by sektor2111 »

Red_Fist wrote:Beware, reduce spotlight radius to 32 to move them around. What is weird If I set the radius to 128 or 127 the map crashes on the build, I set them at 132 !!! and it don't crash. SEKKTOR ?
I didn't read or see any render code and probably I'll never waste time with that. The problem I think comes when a surface or more are going with a very high lighting value causing a crash because will override some maximum lightning allowed/capability. I'm guessing if you want to move/deal with light you should use that View-Port without dynamic lightning, I mean handling map without lighting devs if a crash occurs at this point - no dev = no crash. I moved light using Top-View, Front, etc. everything without light and looking at map post building, letting Editor to light map correctly first.
Next chapter is for those able to write a small code, deploy one or more non-static light(s) in run-time using a temporary template for guidance and small lights (radius and lightning). Note: Attached lights will pass through brushes. Why ? Ask coders writing Unreal rendering devs and causing some cheating at this point. Here you can slap more visuals which usually needs heavy net tweaking but, it's way more simple to add decorations even in a SkyBox permanently visible even On-Line without wasting Network resources.

What I have to check in future: Attached Lights to Movers ONLY in client - for server, lightning is pointless anyway.
Red_Fist wrote: I F'd with the bot paths but did NOT test maps for bots and might have screwed up that. However, just see the textures, and examine the rest of the map.
I did not test this too but I'll bet on 10$ that Bots won't get SniperRifle unless that guy is whatever MBot going evil (or not)... because those ramps have no paths - which I think are perfectly doable but this is the last problem. If map is good, I'll write required patch files if I'm decided to add it in Monster Gaming Server because I'm not a big fan of UNI-ZONED Levels slowing down rendering. I'm hunting maps with a default render load discarding what others are thinking, UE1 has the same hard-coded boundaries as in 1999, the rest is blabbering and doesn't worth debates.
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Re: DM-Baikonur - thoughts on my map?

Post by Karsk »

Hi all, thanks so much for the plays, responses and critiques!

@Red_Fist I tried the map you posted, and you got the same results as I did when I tried to add lightning. The lightning becomes dark and you get these really dark surfaces everywhere, which looks awful. But it seems like you optimized it, and fixed some pesky BSP-errors that I couldn't do, so that's good, thank you!

@Hellkeeper
The sky is barely minimal. Even copy/pasting a sky from another map would have been better, it's just endless blue and a small sun for now.
That's part of the atmosphere—when I designed the map I envisioned having the space station in the middle of a vast, dry steppe, under a cloud-free sky with a scorching sun. And fun fact is, the sky is kind of copypasted from an official map—DOM-Sesmar.

DOM-Sesmar has this outdoor part under open sky with the same lightning conditions that I wanted to try to achieve for this map.

I don't understand all this technical talk in this thread, but it sounds like you guys have a clue on what to do, so if you'd like to try to fix it I'd appreciate it! :)
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Re: DM-Baikonur - thoughts on my map?

Post by Hellkeeper »

Karsk wrote:That's part of the atmosphere—when I designed the map I envisioned having the space station in the middle of a vast, dry steppe, under a cloud-free sky with a scorching sun. And fun fact is, the sky is kind of copypasted from an official map—DOM-Sesmar.
But DOM-Sesmar has a horizon. Your sky is much too empty, it looks like a screen painted blue. There's a different between minimalist-purposefully bare and completely empty. A simple horizon of the dry steppe would do wonders.
You must construct additional pylons.
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Re: DM-Baikonur - thoughts on my map?

Post by Red_Fist »

This is the way it looks on my machine, I used openGL and have a Nvidia video card.
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Re: DM-Baikonur - thoughts on my map?

Post by sektor2111 »

Eh... opinions are different depending on what player is looking for. If is about my opinion let's say that I can ignore SkyBox as long as enemies are often in direct sight and you die fast if you look at the sky. However, by retreating, I could figure some funky appearance for wheels from those trucks, :? . They are a single brush and wheels are the same surface probably very hard to align them properly....
See this
[attachment=0]These_Trucks.jpg[/attachment]
I believe simplicity of the skybox it's not the very big problem here...

This map could be ready for On-Line but I have a few things which makes me to change my mind.
- Skilled Bots = Spawn killing - main area is way too open;
- Said wheels design is not entertaining at all.
The rest have been fixed:
- Trap in lower area because of lift setup has been tweaked, and BOT can gain Redeemer as well because I don't like cheating against any opponent, everyone has weapons or nobody;
- Shieldbelt will have a CUT for access, we do have paths on that area - seriously...
- UDamage is very reachable starting from now on;
- I'm thinking to remove "secrets", after playing map multiple times regular player will get annoyed by secret and no longer secret places - also Accessible by Bot if do needs them;
- trap spot between those two barracks has way out for A.I. as well not only for player;
- I'm keep looking for UnFair stuff... probably is place for some other obstructions...
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Karsk
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Re: DM-Baikonur - thoughts on my map?

Post by Karsk »

@sektor I noticed too, that the wheels became off-center in Red Fist's build. If you have a look at my original map the wheels are fine.
Anyways, I'd like to see what you're up to as you got some interesting ideas, however I wouldn't necessary want any big changes to the layout or have added any more objects.
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Re: DM-Baikonur - thoughts on my map?

Post by Red_Fist »

Karsk wrote:@sektor I noticed too, that the wheels became off-center in Red Fist's build. If you have a look at my original map the wheels are fine.
Anyways, I'd like to see what you're up to as you got some interesting ideas, however I wouldn't necessary want any big changes to the layout or have added any more objects.

Ya my edit probably messed up some texture alignment. I left the map alone accept for moving things away from walls.

So does that screenshot look like what you are seeing ? it doesn't look as bad as you are saying, seems quite normal here.
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Re: DM-Baikonur - thoughts on my map?

Post by sektor2111 »

I don't think so, the only wheel looking right is wheel number two watching from left to right, the rest are not aligned at all, at least not in this map where I touched paths and ramps not those trucks. ELSE... texture can be replaced with something uniform more simple in order to match things more properly. But this is not a priority, idea is the map is too open for a DM, if I'm comparing default DM maps with this one, Deck16... looks way different, even if has open fields, it has a lot of obstructions as well...

Edit: Detailed checks
ORIGINAL map is different - that one by Karsk, wheels are OK over there. In Your modified map they are screwed :? at once with other things. Nvm, I'll take in serious the original one.
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