[WIP]RUN

[littleaznboi]

- RUN - (90% complete)
RUN CURRENTLY HAS NO OFFICIAL CARETAKER!

Run is a large but simple outdoor map.
Formats: RMF, BSP
Have Wads: Wads included in archive
Solids: Complete?
Lighting:: 30%
Texturing: Complete
Entities: 20% (no monsters)
Needs Expansion: No
Issues: Not looked it over in detail yet, but seems it could be turned into a solid mid-level map with ease.
LINK TO SOURCE (also in complete wip archive, linked above):
http://www.thothie.com/msc_dev1/WIP_run_by_opdepus.zip

I'm adopting this map! There's quite a few things to do but hopefully it'll turn out how i want it to

So far I've fixed player spawns, because it was stuck in the floor. Re textured some parts of the map, added working doors to unfinished houses, furnish the houses, etc. Screenies come soon!

 

[PBarnum]

Awesome stuff. Can't wait to see what you have in store for Run.

 

[littleaznboi]

PICTARS!

Out by the old apple tree


The forest of dewm! jk


Inside the jail


Ye old mansion


Out by the river


House I'm fixing up and furnishing!


So far I ran into trouble I had to start over because I had cause accidental leaks! But starting over has given me some fresh new ideas. This be my first map and any comments or suggestions would be wonderful!

Solids: 100%
Lighting: 10%
Texturing: 99%
Entities: 30% ( no monster ideas yet)

I'm aiming for a more mid level map!

 

[zeus9860]

why... are those square apples on the tree? "old apple tree"

good work, keep it up

 

[Jordy]

i would not like square apples either.. nice work though

i wish i could do this

 

[littleaznboi]

Well I ran into the worst bad luck ever. My Run version decided to delete itself somehow, so that's like 4 hours of work gone in 1 second and I can't seem to bring it back. J-M also looked at the BSP and RMF file for Run that came in the WIP package and it has 20+ visportal errors and at some parts of the map the 3400+ wpoly. Besides from that the geometry for the map is so complex. I;m only a noob mapper so this is like the worst thing to happen to me. If anyone knows any fixes then maybe I can try to fix this mess of a map. If not then looks like I'll have to abandon it.

 

[Rickler]

All mappers learn that lesson the hard way. Save as with a new file name every time you do 1+ hour of work. Just like mapname_001 mapname_002... etc..

 

[Thothie]

Check for an RMX or re-import the .MAP file, your work may have yet survived. (And like Rickler says, backup, lots, as they say, "Jesus saves and so should you.")

I don't *recall* RUN having very complex geometry, or leaks, but it's entirely possible, as I've not looked a the thing in ages. A lot of the VIS portal errors may be repairable via the -full flag on hlvis.

Assuming it *can* be repaired that way, and the leaks aren't numerous, the complexity of the geometry shouldn't add much to the task, as the map is, more or less, completed, it simply needs triggers and monsters to be tossed in.

As for the unused monsters you asked about via PM - Eagles aren't much used. They do get a bit abused on the upcoming Thanatos map, but only the high-end magical varieties, no normal ones. I also recently was reminded that Frost Wolves are entirely unused (although there maybe no place for them in RUN)... I started working up a Frost Wolf pet script, thinking it'd be easy, and an excuse to hit up Aleyesu, but then I realized there were none there. :\ Eagles may make good alternate pets too, as their hitbox is about the right size to fit snugly in the consolidated pet model - but the script would involve a lot more than changing a few stats and adding frost abilities.

 

[J]

For accidental deletions of files, you could try a program like Recuva (free). If the file hasn't been overwritten, you might be able to salvage it. It may be too late now, but it's a handy program for future use. Btw, don't install it on the drive the lost file was on to avoid overwriting.

 

[Thothie]

Six leaf into leaf errors is well within reason, depending of course, on where they are.

Exceeds MAX_PATCHES is easily bypassed by increasing -chop and -texchop to 64, 96, or 128 without too badly impacting lighting quality, and is more or less inevitable on a brightly lit map with this many large open areas.

1900 wpoly is high... But I'll bet over 30% of those are from the cylinder trees touching flat surfaces, which can easily be fixed via the 1-unit gap method, either splicing or scaling the trees away from the brushes they are touching. Looks like the sky box can be brought down too.

I'll have to look at the map, but it sounds salvageable... Most difficult sounding bit is the potential leak. IIRC the map has a lot of floor brushes that aren't simple, but conjoin at angles, and if there's a leak in one of those, it can be hard to track and fix.

 

[Thothie]

Yeeah, this is a fairly easy fix actually...

I danced through it real quick, and simply grabbed all the cylinder trees and func_walled em into small groups (I woulda done the 1 unit gap thang, but a lot of them are overlapping uneven ground). I also null brushed some of the flat tree-tops (more outta habit than anything else).

This eliminated all but four of the leaf errors (three of those remaining are all in the same location - seems to be a corner of the map). It also reduced the wpoly count at the bridge to a max of 1200 - and even then, only on entering from the cave side, or viewing it from one particular corner. Realistically, it's averaging around 800 wpoly.

1200 is still high if you intend anything to happen near the entrances there. The only way I can think of fixing it for good (short of a partition), would be to completely delete the floor, and make one that's mostly flat instead. (More work than I was willing to go through on a quick pass.)

Oddly enough this fix apparently also eliminated the MAX_PATCHES error (or my default high-quality compile parameters just never generate it for some reason - no need to adjust the texchop - but there maybe if you light the mansion). Compile time was about 6 minutes, between vis and rad on the Q6700, which is within reason.

Another nasty wpoly spot is exiting the forest and facing towards the entrance mansion. This could be easily remedied by adding a partition and banner near the front door, so that complex set of spiral stair cases don't render from the outside. It's all flat-brush work in there, so it shouldn't prove a challenge. It may not be critical, however, as by the map design I'm guessing you'd rarely go in this direction.

The Nazi coat of arms textured banners inside the mansion must go though. No need to lecture me on the various non-Nazi symbology behind the design, this is obviously a texture ripped from Wolfenstein.

Some of the trees fail to touch the ground in some areas (even though most just recklessly pierce through it). These, and some other minor aesthetic issues I've not touched. These include the incorrect rendering properties on railings, and lack of lighting in the mansion, for instance, as well as a nasty "sticking spot" on one of the cliffs, near what I assume to be the exit (the crop farm followed by gates to large open area).

The map suffers from that "Nintendo 64" look I used to accuse Cyax of creating in his maps, but it's viable.

I couldn't figure how to open the door to exit the jail - even when looking at the map source, so I just made the door breakable and removed the master tag from the rotating door beyond. Maybe he was thinking some NPC would come in and let the player out? (Could be done...)

Link to this "fixed" version (BSP/RMF/WAD/Compile params):
http://www.thothie.com/msc_dev3/WIP_run ... evised.zip

 

[littleaznboi]

Yea I couldn't figure out how to open the jail door either. I was thinking about making it breakable but never got around to doing it on my version. Thank you for your awesome magic work Thothie and thanks to J-M also. Maybe I can get this map released

 

[FER]

Just curious but is it some texture more suitable for the trees that make the walls, like some photo-like texture?

 

[Thothie]

Oops.

BTW - I noticed I forgot to SAVE the RMF before I dumped it into that archive... So umm... Either clear your cache and download the package again, or click here for just the RMF. Ye can tell you have the wrong version right off, if there's no ms_player_spawns, and the jail's door isn't a breakable.

Just curious but is it some texture more suitable for the trees that make the walls, like some photo-like texture?

No good ones that I know of - photo-like ones tend to look like wall paper, even more than these textures do. If you want a more "layered" look, it tends to be best to use either creative lighting, or a layer of transparent texture or two to create the appearance of foliage (the former of which may not work well with this map's lighting layout, and the latter of which maybe difficult with all the sloping areas.)

The engine is better suited for flat walls than for natural environments. Something that might be possible, that I've not really fiddled with, is somehow designing a consolidated series of tree trunk models that can line walls appropriately.

 

[littleaznboi]

Oops.

BTW - I noticed I forgot to SAVE the RMF before I dumped it into that archive... So umm... Either clear your cache and download the package again, or click here for just the RMF. Ye can tell you have the wrong version right off, if there's no ms_player_spawns, and the jail's door isn't a breakable.

Just curious but is it some texture more suitable for the trees that make the walls, like some photo-like texture?

No good ones that I know of - photo-like ones tend to look like wall paper, even more than these textures do. If you want a more "layered" look, it tends to be best to use either creative lighting, or a layer of transparent texture or two to create the appearance of foliage (the former of which may not work well with this map's lighting layout, and the latter of which maybe difficult with all the sloping areas.)

The engine is better suited for flat walls than for natural environments. Something that might be possible, that I've not really fiddled with, is somehow designing a consolidated series of tree trunk models that can line walls appropriately.

Err not much of a problem I guess. I only did a little bit before i noticed it wasn't right. Thanks again thothie.

Edit: Is there a story for this map? Just wondering if there's something Odepus had already planned for in the map.

 

[Thothie]

Not that I know of...

It's obvious the player starts off in a make-shift prison in some sort of dark and sinister looking mansion. I'm assuming undead or K-cult members put them there (although, as I explained to AmIAnnoyingNow, with the possible exception of this guy and the various mutants, K-cult members can't see in the dark, and would bruise their knees horribly on all the coffee tables).

I suppose, if you lit the place, bandits would also be an option - but the place looks a little fancy for them - might need some retexturing to make the place have that "lived in" look bandits seem to love so much.

Unless the cage was magical in some way, it seems only the undead would be stupid enough to lock the players into a prison with their weapons though.

Depending on what you use in the mansion, I suppose you could either have guards, bears, or wolves outside (possibly wolf guard-dogs of some sort). You might need to use race parameters to make them play nice with whatever's inside.

The darker forest corridors look like obvious bat and undead territory. Possibly followed by more wild animals where they open up, or maybe even roaming or invading orcs. Again, you'd have to be careful with monster placement, or use race parameters to cut down on NPC combat.

 

[littleaznboi]

The main things I'm stuck on are:
1. NPC's, will there be quests, or what.
2.Chests, what loot will be on the map.
3.Deciding on monsters, where to place them, and what kind.

 

[Thothie]

1 and 3 are entirely up to you. 2 will be decided on our end, depending on what you choose to do with 3.

Team whine requires more high end maps in order to sate them long enough to stop driving our developers away. (I realize this won't last long, but I can dream, can't I?) This map design seems more mid-level than epic though, in that it's kinda typical territory - no spectacularly menacing structures, ancient ruins, or any such.

Ideally, I'd like to see a map that can auto-adjust to a wide range of player levels, but I realize this is very hard to do under the current system. You can use the hpreq on monsters, and maybe the hpreq trigger scripts, but we've no real efficient way to deal with this at the moment, and it seriously complicates entity design to attempt to pull this off (nevermind balance testing). I'm hoping to add some new features to trigger brushes to help aid with this (so you don't have to use the rather awkward trigger script system) but even that isn't going to make it as easy as I'd like it to be.

PS. Do you have test characters and/or map developer commands?

 

[littleaznboi]

If I fill it with Giants and Bludgeons will the loot be ULTRA RARE!?! jk
Err well your ideas for the monsters you gave me were pretty nice. Skeletons and bats in the forest, wolves and such outside, more wild monsters. K-Cult members wouldn't fit in really as the buildings aren't related to them at all. About the hp requirement stuff, I'll probably add in a nasty monster or 2 for that. I don't think I could pull off a self-sustaining map.

 

[Thothie]

TBH, if you flood the map with insane monsters, I'd have no choice but to add insane loot, but you'd have to do a lot of retexturing and brush work to truly justify the end-of-days dewm squad being there.

In terms of triggering monster spawns by level range, I *think* this works under JUN2008a - you can *fairly* easily add a script to trigger_once entities to cause them to trigger for a "range" of HP. For instance:

A trigger_once, with a targetname of "200;400" and the scriptfile property of "other/trigger_avghp" would only be activated if the average HP of the players on the server was between 200 and 400 hp.

With several of these, and several spawns, you can handle a range of players - maybe even just spawn the same monsters with different dmg/hp multipliers and some modified names. These can also be used to spawn different treasures based on the difficulty of the monsters that are defeated.

 

[littleaznboi]

TBH, if you flood the map with insane monsters, I'd have no choice but to add insane loot, but you'd have to do a lot of retexturing and brush work to truly justify the end-of-days dewm squad being there.

Haha that's very tempting. That would be a crazy map though.

In terms of triggering monster spawns by level range, I *think* this works under JUN2008a - you can *fairly* easily add a script to trigger_once entities to cause them to trigger for a "range" of HP. For instance:

A trigger_once, with a targetname of "200;400" and the scriptfile property of "other/trigger_avghp" would only be activated if the average HP of the players on the server was between 200 and 400 hp.

With several of these, and several spawns, you can handle a range of players - maybe even just spawn the same monsters with different dmg/hp multipliers and some modified names. These can also be used to spawn different treasures based on the difficulty of the monsters that are defeated.

A self-sustaining maps isn't a bad idea at all, it would be better imo but that's a lot of entities I'd have to add. I might make 2 different version, one with insane monsters, and another that's a self-sustaining map. Then hold a beta-testing for both of them and see which one is more popular.

 

[Thothie]

You can always re-texture for a "nightmare" variant and release both - one for n00bs and one for the 1337s. Either snow the place over and toss in winter wolves and ice ladies and other such things - or scar the land with fire and lava and run the other theme, or mix and match.

You have three or four distinct areas in the map already... You could snow the outside of the mansion (witches and skeles)... Turn the river into a lava flow and burn down the shack (fire giants and horrors)... Turn the last area into desert (sorcs)... And if yer really ambitious, I think there's enough room in that final area for an iron fortress containing a maze, provided most of said was underground and the entrance was properly occluded and exterior extremely simple (maybe fill with bludgeons?). The ground there is a solid block, so it wouldn't be too hard. Then you'd have your aesthetic justification for your elemental apocalypse map.

 

[littleaznboi]

Arrr, I'm posting up some pictars here. I've been working off of the amazing version that Thothie made for me with his mapping magic.

A dirt trail that leads to this part. Don't know what to put in it yet! Got ideas? Share them!


The bedroom of the house I've been working on!


Another room in the house! A little too much decoration?


One of the rooms in the mansion.


Any opinions, suggestions, etc. would be awesome.

 

[J-M v2.5.5]

Hey I recognize those prefabs.
Awesome!

My idea: put a huge, imposing portal in that open area that teleports you to an underground dungeon. I'll teach you how to make working teleporters.

 

[Thothie]

A dirt trail that leads to this part. Don't know what to put in it yet! Got ideas? Share them!

And if yer really ambitious, I think there's enough room in that final area for an iron fortress containing a maze, provided most of said was underground and the entrance was properly occluded and exterior extremely simple (maybe fill with bludgeons? [in nightmare variant])