ns_docked

UltimaGecko

<div class="IPBDescription">...yay, spaceships?</div>Okay, here's the first map (that I've been working on for a long while) that is beginning to look something like an actual map. I've misplaced all of the exciting fiction behind my map, but I'll see if I can breifly cover it:


After more than twenty years of drifting through space the interstellar ship Pallas has returned from regions unknown. State of the art when it was built, the ship has managed to return to its home space station Culima 3 - a shipyard and research platform for studying the nearby nebula. The ship was released early from the docking platform, with a minimal crew and barely functioning systems in order to answer a distress beacon. The final transmission came right before the Pallas docked with the freighter Benedict, scanning for lifesigns.

The ship has returned on autopilot, and moments ago the intercommunications and travel logs were downloaded and are being inspected by scientists on station at this very moment. The ship is now docked at Culima Station, awaiting a group of TSA marines to investigate any possible security risks posed by the vessel...


The map is ns_docked, featuring the top-most deck of a twenty year old military vessel (state of the art when it left the shipyard). The map features closely-interlocking sections that are designed to simulate, as best as I can imagine, what a real interstellar spaceship's main deck may be like. So, with my minimalist mapping skills (feel free to offer all sorts of suggestions and critiques - I have the greatest trouble with ceilings...), the following is a 15% complete section of the map:

(I've attempted to correct the pictures to represent in-game gamma settings, but results may vary <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" /> )

Life-Support Control (the doorway under the catwalk leads to the oxygen recycling center); the sides are a bit bland, and I intend to add some sort of architecture/computing equipment, just as soon as I can figure out how to get rid of a few wpolies for the commander view.
<img src="http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g247/UltimaGecko/ns_docked3.jpg" border="0" alt="IPB Image" />

The most recently completed secttion; designed for recycling oxygen and filtering the air for the neighbroing life-support room.
<img src="http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g247/UltimaGecko/ns_docked1.jpg" border="0" alt="IPB Image" />

The reason I'm worried about adding further architecture to Life-Support Control: commanders view of S-Coridor, a vent and Life-Supprt, with an astounding 1065 wpoly - and I'm not sure where I can comb some of them out.
<img src="http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g247/UltimaGecko/ns_docked6.jpg" border="0" alt="IPB Image" />

Commander's view of the port-side emergency escape vehicle bay (only for A deck, which accounts for the limited number of pods).
<img src="http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g247/UltimaGecko/ns_docked2.jpg" border="0" alt="IPB Image" />

A first-person view of part of the area above.
<img src="http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g247/UltimaGecko/ns_docked4.jpg" border="0" alt="IPB Image" />

My favorite section so far, basically the central part of the ship where ventilation ducts and the two main coridors between the two cargo storage areas meet (along with the large path to engineering).
<img src="http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g247/UltimaGecko/ns_docked5.jpg" border="0" alt="IPB Image" />

Planned materials:

Hives:
Port Nacelle - Engineering/Aft section of the ship, emphasized with red 'emergency lighting'
Starboard Cargo Storage - Right side of the ship, focus is on green lighting, and the general source of the infestation
Bridge - Forward section of the ship, emphasized by blue lighting (hopefully with some of it coming from outside, which has a neat blue-light emitting nebula/star cluster

Marine Start (it's actually in there, it just looks kind of bland at the moment)
Port Cargo Storage - left section of the ship, essentially opposed to the Cargo hive, but hopefully with enough twists and good level-blocking to prevent access from being to easy, and seiges being to close.

Hoping for: an airlock, which can be welded/simply broken to seperate off some part of the engineering areas to the hive; an engineering corridor filled with eerie red light, which can be welded to turn off the emegency lighting and to bring numerous white/yellow spotlights online; the starboard EEV bay, decompressed with a window looking in; and, finally, just for fun, rotating space debris that bounces off part of the ship and makes a cool reverberating 'booong' sound (don't really forsee that one happening).


Heh, does it look remotely interesting? I have fun running around in it, but probably because I made it. Still not sure how well sieging will work in it (it's difficult spacing things enough so many things aren't all in range of a seige turret at the same time. Well, hopefully they don't look horrendous, anyway <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" /> .

StixNStonz

Looking good man. An easy way to spruce up visuals is lighting. Texlights in corners facing either way are nice, and well-placed spotlights. If you're having any creative block, remember that you can always run around every map there is and just check out how they've done it. You'll probably notice that a lot of the maps are a lot uglier than you thought... simply because regular players dont pay attention to that <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />

Its hard to really get a feel for a map just from screenshots. But i can tell that you have some great ideas for rt placement, amongst other things. That second pic looks like it might be a bit too long of a view down there to the right; if either of these rooms get built up... but you're also only at 500 wpoly there.

I dont understand why you have such high comm r_speeds there. The view isnt even high, and the textures seem normal. But do remember, comps these days can handle WAY more than they could in 98. Some maps have up to 2000 comm r_speeds, and with 30 players on the server, still no noticeable problems. Keep in mind that doubling a texture's scale will drop its r_speeds to 1/4... roughly. Its a great way to drop a bunch if you need to, especially on the trim textures.

Oh and those escape pods look pretty cool <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />

If you're having issues with sieges, a trick i use is to figure out the exact range of both the siege and the tf (how far from a tf a siege can be placed). Both are found in balance.txt in the ns directory. Once you have those, make a brush that looks relatively like a circle in the top-down view, that has a diameter of twice the range. I had a VisGroup of these, and used them to build my hive rooms with perfect siegeability.

Of course, the best option is still Cordon Bounds. If you havn't used these, try them out; just turn it on (its a button up top), and then the box that appears in the editor, is the only area that will be compiled. Toss in a spawnpoint and you can test out whatever you want, with very short compile times. If you skip out on rad and vis (you dont need them unless you're testing visuals or making the final product), you can literally compile in seconds.

Keep up the good work.

DarkATi

Not bad, that looks like a great start.

Make sure you align all your textures and use overlays for the lights if they are in highly visible areas. (Like that second shot.) You can get away with lights that aren't "overlayed" if they're facing straight downward but otherwise, I suggest overlays.

Also, your rooms look pretty big, it might be difficult for skulks to survive in there.

Overall, keep it up and I look forward to playing this map!

Cheers,
~ DarkATi

bERt0r

I love the feeling of your screenshots, the whole not too dark, not too colorful feeling looks really realistic to my eye. And i don't see a single of those little mean bugs that are easily overlooked. Nice work!

Thaldarin

Some areas look really nice and other areas look alot more bland and empty. It's a really good start and I like it, just get over that mappers block and make it all look as good as it can!

EDIT: Also in addition be careful with that level-over-level play I noticed the RT is like that, can be complicated dropping HP and AMMO etc. to a marine underneath.

UltimaGecko

Thanks for the criticisms so far (haven't been able to address some of them (such as the long-ish looking room connection), yet, but there are some improvements. The discovery of light overlays makes some places look much cooler. I did adjust that catwalk in Lifesupport slightly to make it a bit easier to reach underneath.


I suppose I'll start with something that could have actually been included before: the readyroom. It's intended to be the terminal for part of the space station to which the ship is docked.
<img src="http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g247/UltimaGecko/ns_docked7x1.jpg" border="0" alt="IPB Image" />

Oh, yea, don't mind the minimap, it's pretty much just to indicate position in the whole level (and it's not color coded for vents, so it's even kind of useless for that). Although I've been having one particular problem with it; it doesn't render the bottom 256-or-so units of hammer's geometry as part of the minimap...I was wondering if there's a way to fix this (or if drawing it in manually would be a valid option when the time comes)...or if I should just move my whole level like 256 units up (hopefully leaving enough room for the third hive on the bridge) - not something I really want to do after hearing about errors it can cause? Also, don't mind that node between the marine start (top left) and Lifesupport (...middle-ish), as it will be removed.
<img src="http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g247/UltimaGecko/ns_docked7x6.jpg" border="0" alt="IPB Image" />

Next, I've got that same as the second shot from before, with light overlays this time (and some changed texture that nobody will probably ever notice).
<img src="http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g247/UltimaGecko/ns_docked7x2.jpg" border="0" alt="IPB Image" />

A corridor intersection (sort of a convergence point for marines headed to Port). The spotlights at the top of the ramp are my favorite lighting aspect so far (for some reason the light they cast looks so cool/realistic too me, like there's a paricle effect without the particles)...plus, woot, light overlays.
<img src="http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g247/UltimaGecko/ns_docked7x3.jpg" border="0" alt="IPB Image" />

Port Nacelle from underneath the hive. I plan on having the bottom part filled with coolant/water/some fluid due to a broken pipe that's not entirely visible in this shot because the waterfall part isn't done yet. It's also missing the second entrance from 'aux. cargo storage' which hasn't been made yet.
<img src="http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g247/UltimaGecko/ns_docked7x4.jpg" border="0" alt="IPB Image" />

My exciting engineering corridor to the hive (no weld-point yet for turning on the lights, but I'm not sure if skulks will be able to ambush there as well as I hope, although there are more than 32 units of space at the top of the individual sections). The hive shouldn't be siegeable from here, that's what the nearby, unbuilt, cargo storage room will be for.
<img src="http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g247/UltimaGecko/ns_docked7x5.jpg" border="0" alt="IPB Image" />

Lastly, the rather drab marine start (not sure how I can spruce it up - although it is a cargo bay, so cargo probably couldn't hurt. But I don't want to clutter it too much, lest it look like how I have Starboard Cargo Storage (a hive) planned to look like.
<img src="http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g247/UltimaGecko/ns_docked7x7.jpg" border="0" alt="IPB Image" />

Further criticisms/questions/recommendations are welcome (especially with the hive-ish area, which is hopefully dark enough, and has enough cover (...which compared to something like Refinery in bast I think it's pretty set).

chubbysteve

Lightin over all seems good. I think that the dark areas are too dark. Might wanna add intense areas of very bright light (tex_lights facing into a wall seem to do the trick) to break it up.

info_mapinfo! thats the entity what controls the size of the minimap and the commanders view restrains. Put one in your map if it isn't there and mess with the minimum Y setting. It's pretty clear what it does. Your final shot of marine start strikes me as a little washed out and sparse. Those columns don't look weight bearing or indeed the right sort of texture. Try some more focused light_spots and perhaps some lights that integrate into the columns or other architectural detail.

Soul_Rider

You are going to experience lots of problems with W-Polys if you continue to have the rooms back to back. You need spaces in between walls of different rooms otherwise the commander sees too much and the polies go sky high.

Try adding at least a 32-unit space between some of the walls, you don't need to do it for all of them, but it will reduce the amount seen by the commander at once, thus reducing the poly count.