Author Topic: Lm Community Made Map (Read 118528 times)

BobTheJanitor · June 07, 2004, 06:57:49 PM

As far as vents go, I'm all for just building the map first and then squeezing vents in wherever they seem appropriate. I am however a big fan of interesting vent details. Not a lot, but things like the little infested room in the vent from port engine to... wherever in nancy (confusing vents go everywhere) is neat. And N Corridor in bast is the coolest. A whole hallway hidden in the vent system = win. So before we get too slap happy with adding lines to this, can I get a yea or nay on the basic layout? I'm assuming everyone is okay with it as is. I guess we can start building basic and undetailed rooms to get a dull but playable version in order to see how it plays in some real games. Then if something totally sucks, it's no pain to chop it out and start over. So this is your last chance to complain about the line layout. Next step will be the filled layout with rooms and hallways in it. Then everyone that said they'd help map is going to feel the PRESSURE to start producing!

Edit: Dev, what do you mean about 3 RTs + hive? I'm kind of confused on that point. There's an RT in the hive, there's an RT outside the hive in the choke/siege room. Where's the third? You mean the one down the hall? That's not exactly IN the same area at all...

Bonus Edit: Dubb, your area has the RT off in that little round area on the edge right? So you're saying just put it there where the corner turns? That'd be cool with me.

Decimator · June 07, 2004, 07:22:55 PM

I'm a big fan of the centralized vent system. If we did this then I think we should make the vent room filled with water and weldable, similar to the seige room on ns_metal.

Dubbilex · June 07, 2004, 07:23:37 PM

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Bonus Edit: Dubb, your area has the RT off in that little round area on the edge right? So you're saying just put it there where the corner turns? That'd be cool with me.

Precisely

I've already started to build the part of the hallway that turns left at the corner, and will hopefully eventually make my way back to the marine spawn. Unless someone else wants a piece of that - in that case I can find other things to do.

I'll get some stuff lit and textured and hopefull make a post tonight

Majin · June 07, 2004, 07:43:29 PM

Dubby, you make the nicest MS Paint Maps EVAR!
:lol:

Dubbilex · June 07, 2004, 07:47:52 PM

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Dubby, you make the nicest MS Paint Maps EVAR!
:lol:

I know it's something you might expect outta me, but that was all bob. :lol:

devicenull · June 07, 2004, 07:52:15 PM

@Bob.. there was a "2" with a res node below it.. I assumed that meant double node
@Deci.. that ruins the point of the vents.. they are there to help aleins get from point A to point B faster, not have to navigate an entire system.. besides if you wanted it realistically,
All the vents lead to one center point, but they also intersect other vents, making movement faster
Metal's vents arent totally centralized, thats way to much for a map.. you would have vents all over the place, and it would be chaos

I will say we need one vent on either side of MS, and they need to be connected

@Marine start, I think it needs to be moved farther away from that hallway, its withing sieging distance, and you might have SC through the wall
Look at my 2nd picture to see what I mean

Dubbilex · June 07, 2004, 08:07:17 PM

I've added the room I've been working on in basically the place where It's gonna sit - but this way, it's kind of close to the hive and the resnode outside the MS that the arrow is gesturing to.

SO my suggestions would be to move that particular node to mesh with my portion so far (the arrow and question mark in the upper right show what I mean).

And also to move the right-side hive downwards a little to space it from my node room.

And lastly, the little blue vent I've added on my part is more of like a maintenance corridor that I'm working on - I'll post a walkthrough of what I have if I can get some lights in there.

Dubbilex · June 07, 2004, 08:33:00 PM

Allrighty - -I'm just about dead from exhaustion, so I'm gonna stop here for the night. i only had a chance to do a little of the lighting, so most of what you see is pretty incomplete (not to mention really, really dark)

But anyways, i have a series of 5 pictures showing the progression through my section as of right now.

Picture 1

This is the first little hallway I've done. it has a rather high ceiling and leads to a resource node (which i have noted on the layout above) that is on a platform in the middlke of a pit. Because pits are sweet.

Dubbilex · June 07, 2004, 08:34:36 PM

Picture 2

This is a little closer view of the res node - the red lines that I have added I want to make into neat-looking steam fountains (coming from around the platform). Unfortunately, i have no idea how to do that and am gonna need help :p

Dubbilex · June 07, 2004, 08:36:51 PM

Picture 3

This showcases the aforementioned maintenance corridor. The entrance is over the entrance to the actual res node shaft. it then proceeds off to the side (don't worry if you don't get it - you shall eventually). The red ladder is where I want to ideally add a ladder so marines and onii etc can get up there. And I'll probably add a ladder on the opposite side too.

Dubbilex · June 07, 2004, 08:39:30 PM

Picture 4

This is a shot from inside the maintenance tunnel. As of now i only have three red lights and the computer monitors you see down the hall as llighting, so I don't blame you if you can't see a hell of a lot. or anything, for that matter. :huh:

There are pipes all around and traveling down the length of it, and I want to add the gushing steam spray sprites that can be seen in metal, bast, etc etc. I also want to use the fog sprite used in hera's maintenance corridor to haze up the thing a little.

Dubbilex · June 07, 2004, 08:41:20 PM

Picture 5

This is the exit to the maintenance hatch (off to the right.) There will be a ladder going downwards and meeting up with the hallway underneath (which happens to be the hallway that leads to the room where we started this little tour)

This one's especially dark.

Dubbilex · June 07, 2004, 08:42:50 PM

Anyways, that's all for now, folks. I'm a dead man walking and really need some sleep. I'll add some lighting and, more importantly, some atmosphere tomorrow.

If you have any criticisms, suggesitons, questions, condemnations etc etc feel free by all means

BobTheJanitor · June 07, 2004, 10:59:44 PM

I don't know about making that the node that is at the crossway, as that particular point is supposed to be accesible only by taking the southern passage, looping around through the hive, and then back up. Recall that crossover there is where a catwalk is supposed to go OVER the north-south route. HOWEVER, it would be no problem to make that the RT for the hive. It's close to the hive, and it's not easily accessible by marines without walking through the hive, so it won't have the annoyances of normal RTs outside hives. Of course, if it is close to the hive, you may need to stick some infestation into it. If that doesn't float your boat, we can move it somewhere else, or figure something out.

Can you get me an idea of the textures that you're using so we can keep thematically similar throughout the map? Or we could start coming up with a theme for the map that generally matches those textures, and then follow it through the rest of the map.

IDEA PEOPLE. Space station? Abandoned base? Underwater research station? Nuclear power plant on the SURFACE OF THE SUN??? Let's get a theme going.

And those screenshots are SUPAR SEXY, btw.

Ye Edit: Let's just not worry about the vents for now. You guys are going CRAZY on vents. Bear in mind this means that skulks lerks and fades get free run of the map. Choke points are pointless if they don't actually CHOKE anything. With the vent layouts seen so far I could run from any hive to any other hive AND to MS without ever seeing a marine. That's not so good, eh? Vents are shortcuts, they're not alternate routes entirely! Go take a good look at the vent layout on some of the more balanced maps (eclipse, veil, lost, tanith, etc.) and you'll see that they're very strategically placed to allow clever aliens to get places unnoticed, but not to act as an alien superhighway.

Boy I love to EDIT: Dubbi, steam is great, just remember that every burst of steam requires a particle system, and every particle system requires an entity. And entities are at a premium on ns_ maps. You can play fast and loose with them on co_ maps as you don't have as much space to fill. On an NS map every door, every elevator, every weldable, every particle system, every light overlay... in short, almost EVERYTHING that makes a map look cool, takes up entities. We've only got 275 of the little buggers to play with, and they'll go fast if you don't keep tabs on them.

Niteowl · June 07, 2004, 11:38:02 PM

a theme.....

a theme... hmm.... how about a station inside a ginormouse LUNIXMONSTER!! you can have windows that look out into guts and stuff! yummeh!

er, or.. yeah, surface of the sun sounds cool.

BobTheJanitor · June 07, 2004, 11:46:24 PM

BUT HOW CAN MAN LIVE ON THE SURFACE OF THE SUN???

Oh, wait. Nanites. Right.

NITEY, you need to comment from the comm's perspective on the map layout. How does it strike you? Hard for marines? Too easy? What would your generic strats be? Where would you look to lock down? You see any places that could win the map for you and look like they'd be too easy to take? I NEED INPUT, MAN!!!!!

Yet another Edited post: Considering the original map layout, not the one with one zillion vents. Assume vents connecting the hives and that's about it for the moment.

Dubbilex · June 08, 2004, 05:23:10 AM

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I don't know about making that the node that is at the crossway, as that particular point is supposed to be accesible only by taking the southern passage, looping around through the hive, and then back up. Recall that crossover there is where a catwalk is supposed to go OVER the north-south route. HOWEVER, it would be no problem to make that the RT for the hive. It's close to the hive, and it's not easily accessible by marines without walking through the hive, so it won't have the annoyances of normal RTs outside hives. Of course, if it is close to the hive, you may need to stick some infestation into it. If that doesn't float your boat, we can move it somewhere else, or figure something out

I've made and attached a diagram showing what I meant by moving the hive and 'crossover' downwards, to get a little distance between them. I basically made the exact correct layout of my room and put it precisely where I was building it for. The red boxed area shows where I believe another room should go - a chokepoint (this also serves to elongate the marine journey from the relatively-close MS)

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Can you get me an idea of the textures that you're using so we can keep thematically similar throughout the map? Or we could start coming up with a theme for the map that generally matches those textures, and then follow it through the rest of the map.

I've been using the v_wad an awful lot, as well as the teck texture set (used on nothing, etc etc). I was trying to keep away from the ns2.wad textures because they're on basically every flipping CO map and otherwise in 3.0. So I'm trying to keep a basic, old-school grungy look going rather than a super-clean Ayumi feel.

Now, there's also the question of lighting - I'm not sure that I'm entirely satisfied with the lighting I've been doing. If it were up to me, my vote would be to continue what I had to stop doing with ns_dubbilex and make the scheme green and blue with red used to denote areas of danger (vents, holes, claustrophobic areas like the maintenance corridor, etc etc). But I'm definitely up for suggestions

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IDEA PEOPLE. Space station? Abandoned base? Underwater research station? Nuclear power plant on the SURFACE OF THE SUN??? Let's get a theme going.

Hmmm - the idea of an underwater facility really intrigues me and I think it's worth pursuing. Has anybody ever played the seabase level of Deus Ex? I think that would make an eminently cool map if adapted for NS. Also, it gives us an excuse to have lots and lots of awesome windows that look out at underwater cliffs, chasms, what-have-you. So that's my vote - a submersed base under an ocean.

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Boy I love to EDIT: Dubbi, steam is great, just remember that every burst of steam requires a particle system, and every particle system requires an entity. And entities are at a premium on ns_ maps. You can play fast and loose with them on co_ maps as you don't have as much space to fill. On an NS map every door, every elevator, every weldable, every particle system, every light overlay... in short, almost EVERYTHING that makes a map look cool, takes up entities. We've only got 275 of the little buggers to play with, and they'll go fast if you don't keep tabs on them.

The way I'm envisioning it, I would only need maybe 3 or 4 shooters around the platform and just the big long hera fog sprite (so another one entity). So we could definitely keep it below 10 in this area and still achieve a really awesome effect. But that, like everything else, is up for discussion.

Anywho, when I get home tonight I plan on doing some more brushwork and fleshing out the general area around my place. I'll light it better, add some cool details, and will hopefully be back in here later today with some more things to share.

Until then, Dubbilex out B)

BobTheJanitor · June 08, 2004, 08:18:29 AM

Well come to think of it, you can easily make particle systems generated by entities. So maybe if we wanted to make a big nulled out func_illusionary in a circle around that and then have that as the generation entity, that might work out. The only trick is that the steam will always shoot in one direction. So it's pretty much have to be straight up, as anything else would look odd. That way we could get away with a mere two entities for the steam effect, the func_illusionary and the env_particles_custom.

I may try and crack up hammer and start some work on the central choke point room and middle hive area tonight. If I can drag myself away from all my other distractions. I'll also try and get a decent filled line drawing of the map so we have something more solid to work off of.

lolfighter · June 08, 2004, 08:42:36 AM

What you're saying is that a gush of steam shooting sideways out of a vent/broken pipe/leaking boiler/whatever will continue going in that same direction, not arc upwards like real steam does?

BobTheJanitor · June 08, 2004, 08:46:25 AM

WELL yeah. This is just the ancient and decrepit half life engine after all. NS's particle system is just a hacked up sprite shooter basically. You can change the area that the sprites generate in, and you can change the direction that the system shoots off in, but without making seperate systems you can't make them shoot in totally different direction. They will shoot sort of randomly within given parameters though. But they definitely won't shoot out to the left and then float up to the ceiling or somesuch.

Edit: (I haven't edited anything in a while) @ Dubb - it seems like with that maint access area you've got some sort of level over level thing going on. Is that the case, or am I seeing it wrong? Remember that level over level is a big no-no except in very limited applications. You either can't drop stuff on the lower level or on the upper level. Have to make it small enough that you can move your view over to the side of the upper level and see the level below it or something similar.

Actually looking at you diagram it looks like the entrance is near the node but then sort of jumps off to one side. If that's the case then carry on, everything is fabulous.