OpenArena Message Boards

Hi ,if you are looking for a good cargo type map for inspiration there is one call Hibernia, it is an oil rig type of map but has a good cargo / freight  container part off to one side .

http://lvlworld.com/review/id:1840

Well, took a quick look at it. Shows a lot of promise.

Since just praises won't help you in anything, here's my constructive criticism:

- The map is pretty horizontal. Some areas could only be reached by rocketjumping, and have no reward for doing so. What about adding some jumppads in the ship to reach the cargo tops, make the port areas playable (perhaps with bridges connecting both the ship and the ports) and raising the water level and the ship? That should help imrove the gameplay on the map. There's also a lot of cover in the port as well. OFC you should add more weapons as well.
- For the sky, you might create a skybox (http://www.urbanterror.info/forums/topic/11389-3d-skybox-portalsky-skybox/) and enclose the ship's area with gates and a port's extension.
- The water could be made deadly, currently there's no reason to swim, except to reach those jumppads. Or, make it swimmable, and add something below the ship, such as an entrance (remember AS-Frigate (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mMkjsBA4uE) from Unreal Tournament, where you could enter to the ship from it's bottom, something like that).

Those were my $0.02 for now.

Quickly tested oa_cargo map.

Nice. :) Some suggestions:
- Some jumppads to get on the containers would be welcome.
- What about an opened container, with something inside?
- What about making the docks playable (reachable)?
- The jump-pads in the water make you splat your face against a container, and then fall on the floor. Maybe it may be tweaked some way, to make it nicer.
- What about a way to get on the tower of the ship? Maybe a jump-pad, or maybe through stairs inside or outside the tower?
- What's the "strange effect" you said with water? I noticed that at moments it's difficult to put your head outside of it. Possible workarounds include for example teleporting somewhere else who falls in the water.

Questions:
- Where did you find those container textures? Nice!
- Does someone know what that texture Akom placed under items was originally intended for? I've just seen them used for jump-pads in ps7ctf (http://openarena.ws/board/index.php?topic=4635.0) map...

It keeps me wondering why only akom74 seems to make that much maps and also releasing them on the forum...

Well, asset creation requires a LOT of patience, something which isn't easy to find nowadays. And maps aren't exempt of this.

I had that mapping spree once I've learnt how to make maps. (There's the tons of am_ maps you see on OA and beyond  :P) I remember I was releasing a map or version per day once I've learnt how to use the editor. But then stopped or slowed the pace.

Don't worry, Akom, as I've told you, you and Gig have already done way more for OA than a lot of the so-called "OA saviors/guardians" who claim to be the best of the community, but the only big thing they have is their ego. =)

About GPLv2, it's only until you get used to it. The main thing for GPLv2 is that it allows maintenance, expansion, or whatever, even in the absence of the original creator, hence why you can take OA's assets (maps, code, models, textures, etc) and see how they're made, what can be done to fix/improve them, etc.

- Those textures are from UFOAI (GPL'd)
- The texture above the items is original from OA and it's a Light :P

UH-OH!
Care to explain which assets exactly have you took?

http://ufoai.org/wiki/Download

Thanks Noen_Knight :D

@Suicizer: as you can see from many of my posts, i'm an old man that jokes :P i've nothing against anyone, and all suggestion are welcome. I think you are a player, aren't you ? Well, waiting for Adriano, can you  tell me anything about playability and suggest me how about improve it ? I mean, items placement, hiding spot or other thing that now i don't remember...

;)

@Akom74,
I certainly are an OA/QuakeLive player, but learned a lot of mapping skills on Sauerbraten (which basically uses a pretty Quakish layout and gameplay also). I'm just too lazy to get involved in mapping programs like gtkradiant (which radiant is actually the best/easiest to use of all radiants?). Maybe I'm too much spoiled to have the mapping program integrated in the game itself =S (would be totally awesome if OA also had this).
Anyway, I'm definetly an OA savior (as doing nothing more than commenting), but still are in to do reviews on maps and so (as I do for years within the Sauerbraten community). You certainly have a quite good source of  inspiration which I respect as you don't see that quite often.

What? A map editor integrated directly into the game? I'm not Fromhell or Sago007, but however I think that's really impractical, for various reasons.
- Would require A LOT of time: working on that would mean having no time for other aspects of development of the game
- There are already map editors (*Radiant) programs... Why another one?
- IIRC, Fromhell wants to make OA3 user interface more friendly also for devices that do not use a mouse.y How to map without a mouse?
- Fromhell hypotized some kind of character customization (http://openarena.ws/board/index.php?topic=4768.0), but of course not an "integrated Blender". At the same way, one might hypotize some way to alter existing maps (e.g. the already supported "disable_" and "replace_" hidden CVARs, to prevent all the items of a certain kind from spawning in the map, or replacing them with something else)... but a complete map editor inside the game really seems to much to me.
- One automatic map generation tool, maybe? Where you just select an approx map size, map theme, how many jump-pads, how many teleports, how many weapons and bonuses, and it automatically/randomly creates a .map file, that you can later fine-tune with a standard .map editor? That would be an huge work anyway, and probably it would better exist as an external tool.
- A simplified map editor for beginners, where you have a simple interface with a series of pre-defined objects that you can place in a grid (like Stunts - 4D Sports Driving (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stunts_%28video_game%29) track editor)? Nice... that may introduce new people to mapping... but again, I think that would be too much work for our small number of developers. Maybe someone may take the idea and create it as an external tool or as a mod... However, I don't think the problem of OpenArena is the lack of third-party maps to play on...
To sum up, I don't see it as an easy to implement or necessary feature. But I repeat, I'm not Fromhell or Sago.

@Akom74,
Make sure there is more depth in the layout, like letting the players move into the machinery room (maybe even from outside like a hole, as if the ship is about to sink?), Then you coukd let them come back to the main surface of the ship again via the control room.
The cargo loads are putted to symmetrical to me. Can't you fill  1 or 2 paths with another load or an atribute to get on top of the cargo.

I've tried this map and it's good. But I really want to go to that pier with crane, but cannot reach it even with a rocket jump.
Could you please tilt the ship floor 10-15 degrees to the side, so it won't be so flat? Or even add a slow waves that tilt the ship from side to side? I guess it's impossible though.Also, I would like some way to reach top of crates without rocket jump. And a passage to the captain deck/crane tower. And maybe a rope or chain to the pier, which you can walk to reach the pier.

You can also go upside the captain tower and grab a railgun and snipe everyone. A railgun it's also over the big crane.

You don't really need to surround it with walls, I would prefer transparent noclip region, and just seeing the sky instead of walls, even if it is black.
The map is big, so it does not look weird that you cannot go past the border.
Or, alternately, going past the border will make you fall to death, but you'll have a chance to see an elephants, whales and turtle below ;) .

1) You may keep the outer walls if you wish... just place something that seems a big door in front (or behind the back? Maybe better in front) of the ship (a theorical way to exit the dock to reach the sea).

2) When you are in the water, you have no bonuses and one way out only. And you are a very easy target! Hence:

2.1) What about placing a "speed" powerup (I don't know if that affects swimming speed, but probably yes) in the water?

2.2) What about adding fog parameters to the water? If the water brush is not moving, is done with a single brush and has not even deformvertexes parameter, that should work correctly. This may mean you would have to make the level of the water inside the ship at the same level it is outside the ship (I can guess that would have sense, though), probably something in the middle between the current two different heights. Just an idea to make it a little more difficult to see you when you are in the water.

2.3) What about placing some small "service ramps" that, from the docks, reach the water? To have more ways to get out of the water...

3) What about making some machinery in the dock moving? Making the robot move, and/or making the crane moving a container up and down (or having a container swinging as a pendolum, as in the Hibernia map)?

4) What about allowing to pass between some containers on the ship, like in the previous version? Not all of them, just some.

The water is builded with 5 brushes, caulked at the intersections, to allow to place the lower part in the hole of the ship. I don't think to give it a fog parameter.

If you think it's necessary the water in the pit inside the ship to be lower than than the rest of the water....
... however, that seems against communaticating vases (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicating_vessels)... isn't it?

Akom, for your compiling tests... what about trying Q3Map2Build tool?

I've just re-packaged it, adding required DLL files and BSPC, that were missing in the original package (http://www.moddb.com/groups/radiant-mapping/downloads/q3map2build-1025-by-dlb).

http://digilander.iol.it/flagraiders/files/tools/q3map2build1_0_25_withDLL_BSPC.zip

I also added a readme file about the re-packaging.

Let me know if that works.  :)

Ooops, it looks like I missed it. Zip updated, try downloading it again now.

Thanks again, i've solved searching on the internet.

How?
I'd like to know if the package I did this time works out-of-the-box...

Thank You Gig and Suicizer, i've updated the map in the box server and now you will see the appropriate sky.

;)

Whoops, I forgot to tell; the jumppads are positioned quite tight to it's platform (you jump over the entity pretty easy). Maybe could use another view and fixup?

Whoops, I forgot to tell; the jumppads are positioned quite tight to it's platform (you jump over the entity pretty easy). Maybe could use another view and fixup?

1) Add another railgun on the other side of the docks.

Fig.6. I've found a bug, yay! It's in the hangar, where you can jump to the dock crane.

it's a little wide open :P and really favors bunnyhopping.


The sky could be better, like a new, more scattered sky shader, to bring a little more light and less blue all over the place.

Looks awesome on the screenshots. I'll certainly check it out when I'm back from holiday (and oa_suicizer also).

@Gig: Did you know when a source light is at the right of an object ? The other side it has to be dark (or black).

Tell me if you notice something else.

Given a quick try on Android phone.

Good, but a few things:
- Was it necessary to completely remove the crane?
- Why did you remove that yellow armor on the ship?
- Maybe the path which connects the two docks (behind the ship, where you just added ramps to get out of water) is too tight?
- I still miss the ability to get above the containers of the area where there are many.

- I've deleted the crane for better map-roaming.

- I can reinsert it, no problem.

- It can be enlarged, but i think it's not so necessary...

- For now, no way to jump above the containers.

Without ambient occlusion baked into lightmaps, these maps look and feel unnaturally flat, on the level of Uncanny Valley  >:(

Either something is wrong with the map editor/exporter or it is always used with debug quick-export settings instead of production settings.

Because most Quake II maps looked much, much better than this. They were also taking several hours to compile, due to each lightmap texel receiving bounced light from each other lightmap texel in its visibility, up to 3 times.
http://benryves.com/bin/blueprints/3d/2007.08.09.01.png

As it is now, even Minecraft has more realistic, pleasant lighting than the screenshots provided here  :no:

Thanks for your feedback, the map is a Beta version not optimized, because of an error occourred during the compiling process. The VIS process don't work and i've decided to release the map as it is, for now, just to have feedback and suggestions.

When i've more time, i will fix the VIS problem.

By the way, in the PK3 you can find the original .map file in the "sources" folder, if you want make some try to verify the issue.

;)

2.5.16
2 threads
Q3Map         - v1.0r (c) 1999 Id Software Inc.
Q3Map (ydnar) - v2.5.16
GtkRadiant    - v1.5.0 Oct  8 2004 08:08:27
Voter turnout
--- InitPaths ---
VFS Init: C:/Games/OpenArena/devoa088/
VFS Init: C:/Games/OpenArena/baseq3/

--- BSP ---
Flare surfaces enabled
Creating meta surfaces from brush faces
Verbose entities enabled
(...)
     2872 shaderInfo
--- LoadMapFile ---
Loading C:\Games\OpenArena\devoa088\maps\oa_cargo.map
entering C:\Games\OpenArena\devoa088\maps\oa_cargo.map
Entity 0, Brush 107: duplicate plane
Entity 0, Brush 377: duplicate plane
Entity 0, Brush 1455: origin brushes not allowed in world
Entity 0, Brush 1981: duplicate plane
WARNING: Over 90 percent structural map detected. Compile time may be adversely affected.
(...)

2.5.16
2 threads
Q3Map         - v1.0r (c) 1999 Id Software Inc.
Q3Map (ydnar) - v2.5.16
GtkRadiant    - v1.5.0 Oct  8 2004 08:08:27
Voter turnout
--- InitPaths ---
VFS Init: C:/Games/OpenArena/devoa088/
VFS Init: C:/Games/OpenArena/baseq3/

--- Vis ---
Loading C:\Games\OpenArena\devoa088\maps\oa_cargo.bsp
Loading C:\Games\OpenArena\devoa088\maps\oa_cargo.prt
  7062 portalclusters
 26308 numportals
 20524 numfaces
************ ERROR ************
MAX_MAP_VISIBILITY exceeded