Some Newbie Questions And A Map Idea

Reese · May 2003

<div class="IPBDescription">Most of the questions are inexperience.</div> Well, let me first start by saying that I just installed hammer about two days ago....and haven't had a chance to play with it since. Just fair warning, so everyone knows that I am in fact completely ignorant should this idea be impossible.

Anyways, my map idea was for a mini space station that did one of the following things A) collect solar radiation/energy or B) Collect space debris to keep it away from ships in low orbit around a planet. Either way the plan was to give the designers motivation to make a very very cheap space station. My assumption here is that technology which creates gravity in a weightless environment is rather expensive. So, this station would be designed as the standard "spinning circle" which can be in motion at a speed that creates gravity along the outer rim. This would make the map unique in that the central portions of the circle would have less or even no gravity (g=0 in the center) I'm guessing that this is probably impossibly/very difficult to make, but I wanted to throw the idea out there anyways. The main points that I am seeing difficulty on are

1) Designing a circular map. Although it's not too hard to make a circle-like shape, the problem is that the outside edge of the circle would be the FLOOR or the map. So, basically, can a map be made in such a way that opposite sides of the map have opposite sides of their respective rooms as a floor.

2) Also making the "gradient" of gravity would be difficult. As one moves closer to the center of the map the "gravity" would reduce. (It's a physics problem based around the speed of rotation and the distance between an object and the center of rotation) I guess that each successive room closer to the center could have a lower gravity, but that's just me. I know the gravity part is possible, something about brushes having a push on them. (like I said, i'm new)

In addition I was wondering if someone has suggestions on a gentle tutorial that goes into making multi-room maps. The ones i've found so far cover either complex topics or "here's-how-you-make-a-box" type projects. The box I have mastered....it's just connecting multiple boxes that I don't know yet...and decorating them....and just about everything else. <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'>

Anyways, thanks for any help/comments.

-Reese

taleden · May 2003

Yeah, you're getting into some pretty advanced mapping issues there with the gravity idea. For one, func_gravity does not function at all in NS (as far as I know) - but of course this might be fixed in 1.1. For another, even if func_gravity did work, I don't believe its possible to make gravity operate sideways - I think all you get is a numerical value which determines how strong gravity is in the vertical direction, with the option to set a negative value for antigravity or upward lift (like the big fan in halflife single player). You could simulate gravity using trigger_push entities, I *think*, however then you run into a final problem - you cannot rotate the player model. So even if you had trigger_push entities pushing people towards the outer rim of your circular map, they would still be standing upright, so they couldn't walk on the outer rim the way they ought to be, they would just mysteriously be propelled sideways into the wall all the time.

So in short, making such a map true to the physics you're looking for is really not practically possible in the halflife engine. But it's a neat idea, and I bet you can develop it into a similar idea that would be more easily implemented in NS. <img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'>

Reese · May 2003

My original idea was rather poorly thought out I guess. Kind of got excited about the concept and forgot that there are some important limitations. Commander mode would be basically impossible to execute in this sort of setup.

It could possibly be developed as a slice out of the wheel. That would make sense if an area of the space station were quarantined. The big problem would be setting it up so that the commander could use it. It only makes sense to create the map so that the low-g areas are useful space somehow. But, since they would all be built on top of other areas, they'd all have to be func_seethrough ..... if that would even do the trick. (I don't know too much about how commander mode works as far as mapping is concerned) Anyways .... maybe this will have to wait for the possibility of ns porting to hl2..... or more likely me mapping for another game.

taleden · May 2003

As far as I know (which is admittedly not far, but maybe far enough in this case), its not likely NS will be ported to another engine, even HL2, any time soon. You could theoretically make all the ceilings/floors dividing the low-G upper areas from the regular-G lower areas func_seethough; however the comm would only be able to build on the lower areas. Since the comm can only ever have a top-down view, that's the kind of direct level-over-level that is so strongly discouraged in the building guidelines, for exactly that reason - it would be almost impossible for the comm to use.

Reese · May 2003

Yeah, that's exactly what I meant earlier. It could be possible that one route through the map would go through a low-g area.....which could be buildable since nothing else would be underneath. In general though the idea of the map would be kind of lost. It would really just end up with what seems like a random low gravity room.

moultano · May 2003

There was an unreal map that did this pretty well. Maybe someone better versed in HL can tell whether or not this is possible. The entire map used the normal direction of gravity, and it cleverly simulated walking around a torus by using portal effects.

The level geometry looked something like this:
</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>CODE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='CODE'>
______ ______ ______ ______
/ \ / \ / \ / \
/________\/________\/________\/________\
</td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>

each end of each trapezoid was a portal to the next. Unreal had the ability to seemlessly join two areas that had a portal between them. The ed result is that you would walk toward a hallway that ramped up, and when you got there it would be level ground. I have never seen half life do this, so I suspect it cant. Anyone know the final word?

Some Newbie Questions And A Map Idea

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