oa_minia modifications

[cosmo]

I like your changes although I think you overdid it.
Especially the rooms where the floating platforms have been: too narrow and too many obstacles. Why not lowering all these stairs to gain more freedom of movement again?

[kit89]

Thanks Cosmo, made a few modification to make the stairs less of a nuisance around certain parts of the map.

-Lowered stair/floor heights. You can now easily jump the stairs.
-Added Clips to prevent being stuck around certain objects.

http://www.linxonline.co.uk/devel/OA/zoa_minia.pk3

[cosmo]

That's better now. Enjoyed a big bot match.
Still have two issues:

Picture1: You are often unable to use the jumppad when coming from this RL as you hit the ceiling with your head. *ouch* Maybe move the jumppad further away and have different stairs up to the RL.

Picture2: This trims framing the stairs are a pain in movement although they look good. Why not replace them by triangular shaped stairs so you can easily access them from the sides?

[bill-----]

On that troublesome jumppad:  you could also move the target so that the player will land on the ramp connecting the
platform the player lands on now with the upper platform.  The jumppad tilt 'reads' as though that ought to be the
landing point anyway.  The player who wants to land on the lower platform can use air control. 

On the original oa_minia, those stairs in the 'pit' under the QD had open sides, and you could even get under them
(a bad camping spot though).  My guess is that the intent of the mapper was to slow down players who take the QD.
They fall into the pit and must climb out, and other players will have a good idea where the QD player will be for a few
seconds.

The pit also slows down players on the lower level who are trying to move from one side to the other.  This isn't
necessarily a bad thing.  However, I did notice that your changes there allow a player to avoid the stairs by strafe jumping
using the brushes cosmo mentioned that block side access to the stairs.  I like maps that reward jumpers. 

However, those same brushes make life a little easier for the player who takes the QD since he can now
land on one them instead of in the pit.  For that reason, along with cosmo's, I recommend removing those brushes.

This map modification is coming along nicely now. 

[kit89]

Thanks for the replies guys.

-Modified the stair pillars, there now smaller & slope.
=Modified jump pad, so it pushes you to the ramp instead of the platform.

http://www.linxonline.co.uk/devel/OA/zoa_minia.pk3

[kit89]

-Improved .aas file size: 2.6MB(original) to 1.9MB(now).

http://www.linxonline.co.uk/devel/OA/zoa_minia.pk3

[cosmo]

Yes. Great work. For the moment I have no clue how to improve it further.

[kit89]

A few more minor modifications

-Removed the floating centre lights. Replaced with Arcing lights. Looks much better.
-Removed the base of the pillar(the one with the cables at the top). I found it was just annoying, causing problems getting to the ramp.
-Replaced certain objects around the map, with something more appealing.

http://www.linxonline.co.uk/devel/OA/zoa_minia.pk3

[kit89]

- Replaced Double Health items with one.
- Replaced some armour shards with small health
- Moved certain ammo around or replaced them with different ammo.

http://www.linxonline.co.uk/devel/OA/zoa_minia.pk3

[Neon_Knight]

I'll test this map in a bit.

[Neon_Knight]

Gave a short 15min run, I've included it in the 3rd unofficial patch.

Here are my thoughts:
- The map is mostly symmetrical. Could help a bit on the flow of the map if one of the bridge sides would be left as it is, and the other area gets a radical change. One of the ledge zones can actually be replaced for some other thing, platforms with jumppads on them for example.
- Also, as I've said to you before, try to not to put ammo near to its respective weapon. Plasma gun actually have plasma ammo in the same zone. Consider this too. Also try not to put two boxes or more of the same ammo very near of each other. Spread more the ammo.
- Replace the floating armor shards on the plasma zone with the Red Armor, and move the Quad Damage to the changed zone.
- Try to put at least 1 weapon per zone, (both ledge zones actually have shotgun & rocket, you can put shotgun on one side and rocket on the other) and unless you want your map to become big, try to not to repeat weapons.
- There's a lot of shards and small healths on the level, even there's one YA, having already one RA. This is excessive, try by changing the 4 green healths in the corner for one 25 health, for example.

Maybe you'd like to check the CPMA competitive guide (look at Mapping resources & tutorialss on the main page of the Wiki) and take some of its recommendations for your map. This one has a great potential to become a nice 1on1 map.

Also, the map in its actual state looks very good, but there's a huge lot of shadows too. Try to give a bit more of lighting on the level.

[kit89]

http://www.linxonline.co.uk/devel/OA/zoa_minia.pk3

Made a few modifications.

[bill-----]

Sometimes I wonder if kit89 hasn't chewed on this map enough! :-)

Different item loads for different game types would be interesting, though.

As an FFA map, this is a good run and shoot on which everyone will be
well armed, and someone will get the QD occasionally for some extra
excitement.  Don't know that I'd change much for FFA.  Might lower the
item count some as Neon Knight has suggested.

Don't know much about Team Deathmatch, but the symmetrical layout
gives it retreat-regroup-attack structure that seems to be important
in TD.  TD might  call for a different item load, with fewer items and
something to fight over, RA or MH, or NG(!), for example, in the middle area.

1v1, you could do something like reduce item load to somewhere around CPMA standard,
put RA and MH in diagonally  opposite corner rooms, and LG and RL in the other corner rooms.  Add RG
or PG where the armor shard arc is over the hole in the floor of the center area,
or in the 'pit'.  If gameplay shows players camping in the corner rooms, move one
or more of the high value items toward the center.

As far as shadows go, I like them!  :-)

[Neon_Knight]

Yeah, bill is right.

kit89, I'm a nobody to give advices to anyone, but what about if you release a version, wait two weeks or more for criticisms, ask for criticism in other places (other forums, IRC) and collect those which will serve you for your map.

Also, try to name pk3 with a different version, for example zoa_minia-b1.pk3 and so.

[kit89]

Okay I've re-done all the weapons & ammo for FFA.

http://www.linxonline.co.uk/devel/OA/zoa_minia_1_1.pk3

[Neon_Knight]

I've made an .ent file which makes this map to support TeamDM, Elimination, and DD. In DD, players will start at Shotgun/RL zones and both points are in the bridge zones. In the three modes, the player will have info about where (s)he and his/her friends are.

When I finish to do one thing I'm doing, I'll post screenies with what I've made.

Here's an article I've wrote about entity-only editing: (DO NOT LINK) h t t p s : / / openarena . wikia . com/wiki/Entities-only_editing

[Falkland]

Okay I've re-done all the weapons & ammo for FFA.

http://www.linxonline.co.uk/devel/OA/zoa_minia_1_1.pk3

What the hell is happened with this map ? O_O

It is not linear anymore O_O ... moving on it is like walking on transylvania map :S

And it also spams messages about textures :

Code:

Autosprite2 shader textures/base_trim/wires01 had odd vertex count
Autosprite2 shader textures/base_trim/wires01 had odd index count
Autosprite2 shader textures/base_trim/wires01 had odd vertex count
Autosprite2 shader textures/base_trim/wires01 had odd index count
Autosprite2 shader textures/base_trim/wires01 had odd vertex count
Autosprite2 shader textures/base_trim/wires01 had odd index count
...
---- TONS OF SPAM LINES ----

[kit89]

And it also spams messages about textures :

I'm unable to re-create that spam you find yourself in. Does anyone else have this problem when running with 0.8.1?

[Neon_Knight]

From this source: (I'll may copy that list to the wiki)

Textures/dirpath/texturename had odd vertex count autosprite2 shader
   You're implementing a shader script that uses vertex deformations that are greater than the size of the brush you're using it on.

I guess that a solution can be finding the brushes which are using this shader and fixing them... or find the shader and fix it. The first will only affect your map, the second will affect all the maps which are using that shader.

[Falkland]

Look at the screenshots

[kit89]

What textures are you using? They don't seem to be OpenArena's textures...

[Falkland]

What textures are you using? They don't seem to be OpenArena's textures...

Uhm ... the only extra textures I have are those contained in the z-gpl-q3a2oa-textures-v5.pk3 ... anyway I'll try wthout that pak.

EDIT : yes ... the problem is caused by that pak , not by your map. I guess jackthompson removed that pack from RN for the same reason.

[kit89]

A few minor performance tweaks.

r_speeds
minimum: 2000
average: 4000 - 8000
maximum: 9000

Compiled Neon_Knights oa_minia.ent into oa_minia.bsp.

http://www.linxonline.co.uk/devel/OA/zoa_minia_1_2.pk3

[Neon_Knight]

You could have copied the part which goes from the entity 182 to the end of the file directly at the end of the .map file to directly apply the changes.

[kit89]

That certainly would have been easier!

Updated:
oa_minia.ent applied directly to the .map.
Re-compiled with updates.

http://www.linxonline.co.uk/devel/OA/zoa_minia_1_3.pk3