ns_battlefist
HairyPomegranate
Join Date: 2007-01-18 Member: 59673Members
Join Date: 2007-01-18 Member: 59673Members
<div class="IPBDescription">working title, most everything is NOT final</div><img src="http://img160.imageshack.us/img160/4664/nsbattlefistdepictionku2.png" border="0" class="linked-image" />
Brown squares indicate a weld point.
Dark yellow diamonds indicate a resource nozzle.
Green diamond indicates the command chair.
Red diamonds indicate hives.
Blue indicates a vent entrance/exit.
Red indicates a vent.
Engine room may, or may not, be replaced with plantform observation deck
suggestions about the overall layout of the map is much appreciated. I will (hopefully) keep you updated throughout the creation of this map, if it ever does get finished <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" />
Brown squares indicate a weld point.
Dark yellow diamonds indicate a resource nozzle.
Green diamond indicates the command chair.
Red diamonds indicate hives.
Blue indicates a vent entrance/exit.
Red indicates a vent.
Engine room may, or may not, be replaced with plantform observation deck
suggestions about the overall layout of the map is much appreciated. I will (hopefully) keep you updated throughout the creation of this map, if it ever does get finished <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" />
Comments
edited first post... now fully updated to my current map plan.
Being able to lock down two areas as aliens to cut off a massive part of the map can be done (metal, veil, tanith), but you REALLY have to balance it. Your map resembles Metal the most in its layout. Keep in mind that Metal balances the chokepoint of Mineral by making very good use of Line of Sight, Siegeability, and even node access en-route. Try to do the same <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
Mess Hall is currently the <u>only</u> middle crossover area of the map. If one team has Mess Hall, the other team <u>has</u> to go through either MS or the middle hive to get across the map. Consider revising the web-layout to offer a secondary route. Metal, for example, as its crossover point just a bit north of the real chokepoint.
something along the lines of that for the choke point problem?
keep in mind that the vent in MS is weldable. a comm can easily drop a welder at the beginning of the game to fix this problem, a map specific quirk i wanted ;P
Try to get a server community interested and organise a few playtest sessions with those key areas mapped as well as possible (fairly detailed brushwork, texture application and lighting) and then just really basic corridors linking them. After a few playtests you should have a good idea of which routes need tweaking. It's quicker and less heartbreaking to redesign a corridor than a main feature, although you shouldn't rule out alterations to the key areas if they are needed.
I'm concerned about vent vs siege placement on this map. I assume marines are expect to siege Neuro from the east hallway. The vent looks too far back for a gorge to bilebomb/lerk to gas even the marine phase gate. This is something you should consider changing in the other hives too. In fact the middle hive looks like a death trap in general with the vent being at the end of that long room and away from the hive.
My suggestions:
Make the engine room vent go to Equipment Bay also(either increase travel time or make vulnerable in some spots, maybe even weldable).
Change the Neuro vent to go the West hallway but not to Mess
Add a Nuero vent (I think this vent should move some on the z-axis to increase travel time) from the mid or northmost octagon room of the hive to the east hallway, halfway between security and the bend.
Add a Bioform vent originating on the hive half of the room to NoName room.
Maybe also keep the vent going from the south of Neuro to the DeadEnd, I like that vent.
It looks like you're trying to mix short style ns_lucid vents near hives with long connected ns_nancy near MS. It will be interesting to see how that pans out.
P.S. I <i>really</i> like the style of your map with the broken hallways and the specific bends around hives and MS. So please don't take my critique as hatin' on your map.
I'm concerned about vent vs siege placement on this map. I assume marines are expect to siege Neuro from the east hallway. The vent looks too far back for a gorge to bilebomb/lerk to gas even the marine phase gate. This is something you should consider changing in the other hives too. In fact the middle hive looks like a death trap in general with the vent being at the end of that long room and away from the hive.
My suggestions:
Make the engine room vent go to Equipment Bay also(either increase travel time or make vulnerable in some spots, maybe even weldable).
Change the Neuro vent to go the West hallway but not to Mess
Add a Nuero vent (I think this vent should move some on the z-axis to increase travel time) from the mid or northmost octagon room of the hive to the east hallway, halfway between security and the bend.
Add a Bioform vent originating on the hive half of the room to NoName room.
Maybe also keep the vent going from the south of Neuro to the DeadEnd, I like that vent.
It looks like you're trying to mix short style ns_lucid vents near hives with long connected ns_nancy near MS. It will be interesting to see how that pans out.
P.S. I <i>really</i> like the style of your map with the broken hallways and the specific bends around hives and MS. So please don't take my critique as hatin' on your map.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Updated first post.
the broken style hallway that the neuro vent originally went to was supposed to be the more strategic sieging point, but i guess that vent kinda made it lop-sided for the halls. Vent from engine to equipment room now. "No name room" (guess i forgot to make a theme for that room) is now closer to bioform to make it easily-siegable from that location. Vent was also added from bioform to "No name room."
Since you're all about the... is that MSPaint?... you could add in siege areas. You could even make the siege range circle around the hive, to show exactly where the sieges can be placed to reach. This helps as lot for when you're building the map, as you can create the same huge circles, place them under the hive, and build out from the hive rooms accordingly, always knowing exactly where the marines can siege from or not.
Also, the middle and right hives look like they'd be hell to siege. This of course depends on the way the hiverooms are build, but from a layout perspective, it doesnt look laid out.
There are many ways you can begin building a map. Creating the most critical rooms and building out from there is one method, as Crispy suggested. For a map that needed such strict inter-connections as Nexus, I decided to start with the <u>most</u> critical room, in terms of connections, not gameplay importance. Hence I began with the Shaft. From there I slowly build outwards, decided which connection was the most important to get right first, and did that, then continually built outwards.
But again, making the hives and Mess, and then connecting them all, might be more suited to your map. I don't know how set in stone all of those hallways are. I pretty much planned out every inch of nexus beforehand, whereas many mappers leave certain hallways 'open' in design, to be figured out later.
the broken style hallway that the neuro vent originally went to was supposed to be the more strategic sieging point, but i guess that vent kinda made it lop-sided for the halls. Vent from engine to equipment room now. "No name room" (guess i forgot to make a theme for that room) is now closer to bioform to make it easily-siegable from that location. Vent was also added from bioform to "No name room."<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
If you really wanted the break to be the siege point(which would look cool) you could have the dead end at the middle octogon(removing that north/south hallway) and connect the bottom. If you did that you'd probably want to change the vent position to give the marines a longer hallway.
The marines are strongly encouraged to push east by the map by the long hallways, so I think that east hive(Bioform) should be the hardest to siege while the west hive(Engine) should be the easiest. With that in mind you may want to remove the shortest vent from Engine and maybe lengthen the south entrance to engine.
At the end of the day players will spend about 80% of a round inside or immediately outside the MS or a Hive (or an obvious relocation point, like a double res node or central chokepoint). Worrying about the details of a location that the average player will not spend more than 3% of a round at is a waste of time at this early stage in a map's development, imho.
If you look at the main offenders of why maps don't play well, it's almost always down to the Hive rooms or the MS. Eclipse went through several redesigns for its Marine Start. Bast's Hives have also seen multiple revisions. Ayumi and Nancy have two terrible Hives and they both suffer for it. One of the major changes to Altair was to remove the 'pit of dewm' around one of the Hives. Anyone remember the Marine Start in Hera that had vents leading into it and a CC chair behind a door and at the top of an elevator?
Focus on the areas that make or break the gameplay first, and then work out.
i think marine start is almost done... i'll post pics when its finished ^_^
First off, the Valve Hammer Editor comes with a lights.rad, its under /tools. When modifying it, rename the extension to .txt, but change it back to .rad when you're using it.
Open it up. The first word/phrase on every line is a texture name. E.g.:
<!--c1--><div class='codetop'>CODE</div><div class='codemain'><!--ec1-->~LAB_CRT9A 225 150 150 100
~LAB_CRT9B 100 100 255 100<!--c2--></div><!--ec2-->
So the texture ~LAB_CRT9A will emit light of colour 225 150 150 and of brightness 100.
To find out what colour 225 150 150 is, I always just used a random light entity in Hammer. Since Hammer should already be open when you're doing it, just place a Light entity somewhere, and then go into its brightness/colour field thingy. It should open a colour picker. Pick exactly the colour you want, hit OK, and then you should see the 4 numbers, just like 225 150 150 100. The last number is the brightness (power) of the colour.
If you want to add in another texture to emit light, just type the name in exactly in the lights.rad on its own line. I usually do a Search in my lights.rad first to make sure it isn't already in there (hit ctrl-f).
Then, use Cordon Bounds to quickly and easily test out changes. The Cordon Bounds button is right on the screen in Hammer, it looks like a little warning stripe. One turns on the bounds, the other sets the box of the bounds. When the Bounds are on, only the brushes and entity within the box will be compiled. So, even with a massive map, you can Bound off a small room or section.
So bound off a small section where you have the texture you want to emit light. A full compile of such a small room will only take a couple seconds. Play with the .rad settings until you get exactly what you want.
Hope this helps,
-Stix
when i create my map, is it necessary to make an fx version of a light in front of the actual light?
thanks for the help <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />
when i create my map, is it necessary to make an fx version of a light in front of the actual light?
thanks for the help <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" /><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That technique is called using overlays, and it is used like this:
The FX version as you call them need the light values asigned to them as Sitx showed ya, instead of the light textures. These are then supposed to be used in front of the original texture using a func_illusionary (1 grid unit space between the texture and FX texture). Texture the func_illusionary in NULL and one side you want to show the FX-texture on with said FX-texture. Now all you need to do is set the rendermode of the func_illusionary to Additive and FX-amount to 255. And you're set.
The FX-textures are not linked with their texture counterpart, Half-Life doesn't work like that. They are textures just like any other texture in the wads (none special ones). All you are doing is using them instead of their texture counterpart. Basically you could asign light values to any texture, and it will only light up those textures, also they have to be present in the map. The FX textures are not present because you use their texture counterpart in the map, you need to manually place them as I explained above with a func_illusionary. (just a little added info <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile-fix.gif" />)
Keep in mind that this technique should be used sparsely, as it will eat up runtime-entities. And they can add up to a bunch if you get crazy with this technique. One thing you could do is bind a bunch together in a hallway, but make sure you don't bind to many togetheras they will be rendered troughout the entire map, complety ignoring VIS.
Hope it helps,<i> I myself prefer another technique, which requires cutting up textures in Hammer and on small patches of light I use a light(2x or 4x) + spotlight if need be. The cutting up of textures only works with a texture that has an off and on version. Or you could create custom textures, of course ^____^ </i>
Perhaps you mean the textures that are the same as other textures, but with all the non-light parts ripped out, leaving just the light behind. These can be put over normal textures and turned into a func_illusionary with whatever setting you want, to make the light on the wall look more alive, and to actually shine light from it.
If you bind the lights.rad light to a full texture (one that is wall + light), then the wall itself will emit the light as well. I think this is what you were talking about, and yes, this obviously should be avoided.
Remember too, you can experiment with all this. Have Hammer, NS, and the /tools directory open. Open lights.rad, change a setting, save it, compile the small test area in Hammer, load it in NS, and check it out. Then (all of this is through alt-tab'ing) open lights.rad again, tweak it some more, save it, compile the test area, load in NS, check it out again, etc.
For your first time, try putting in two different light colours to be able to vividly see that its changing. Then tweak as necessary.
Once you're comfortable with this process (which doesnt take long at all once you've tried it), you can quite merrily create a custom texture lighting setup for your map. It really goes a long way to forming your own ambient theme for a map. For my map, ns_nexus, I used quite a lot of the bright blue stripe texture, which I set to an exact teal colour I wanted, and then used throughout the map.
With my map-in-progress, Ns_Stage, I'm leaving the texturing and lighting completely until the brushwork is finished. But once I get around to it, I'll first select the light textures I'll be using throughout the map, and then I'll tweak the colour and brightness until its exactly what I want, before I even place a single texlight.
I strike from the shadows!
Honestly it seems very aesthetically appealing from the looks of the minimap, especially the way you made it. Did you use Paint to draw the concept map?
I will be reworking it with my new knowledge of mapping (using the experience i've gained while making zombie panic maps) to help performance issues/polycounts as much as i can.
The map will be released upon completion under the name ns_vailance
Consider it a sort of "recon/scout" type ship.
Anyway, I'm going to take this very slow and make sure everything is in pristine condition before I release it. In fact, I only have MS and a very small section of a hallway done already, so be ready for some great quality mapwork when it is released :D
I intend not to use custom textures for this one, but if I feel the need I might throw in some easter eggs (maybe not a secret porn room, but maybe a rave room like nancy :]). The ns.wad and ns2.wad actually offer a wide variety of great textures, and I doubt I'll ever even need to use custom textures.
<a href="http://img10.imageshack.us/i/nsvailancecompletion.png/" target="_blank"><img src="http://img10.imageshack.us/img10/6296/nsvailancecompletion.png" border="0" class="linked-image" /></a>
Green shows completion (mostly brushwork, excluding lights and some entities)
screenshots are soon to come!! :]