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Author Topic: Operation Metro BF3 Beta Testing download now!!  (Read 13924 times)
JoeSox
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« on: March 17, 2012, 07:42:28 PM »

I decided to put a Beta version of the Operation Metro BF3 cover I have been working on to get any feedback for last second gameplay/map adjustments.

It is a large map because the BF3 is large. So I recommend
making the following setting change, if you haven't already, in your q3config.cfg
seta com_maxfps "125"
I haven't had any issues with that setting.

Known issues still for me to work on:
- There is still some bots sticking near the kamikaze office
- Missing trees (not sure if I am going to add these)

.pk3 download (21MB):
http://www.mediafire.com/?kn08s3mvc4hc3y6
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GrosBedo
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« Reply #1 on: March 17, 2012, 10:22:16 PM »

Great news!

I have tested it, the environment is quite stunning, mostly the exterior place with the cars, it's pretty stunning. I also liked very much the subway with the cashmachines and advertisings :p Also the brightness was perfect for me, you did a great job of tuning the settings.

Attached to this post are some artifacts that I've found, some misplaced blocks that makes it possible to go to unattended places.

Here are a few things I thought when testing your map:

- Should enlarge the doors, like 2x the size (I think that a good door is a door where you can jump through, remember that players often jump in this game, particularly good players using strafe jumping tricks)

- Particularly love the fire damage in the metro station, you should add more traps like that (is a running and crushing train possible?)

- Add a lot more weapons/powerups/items, there are a lot of very sparse areas. Eg: no weapons nor items at all in the big exterior area, while this should be the main groundfight! It would be amazing for gunfights!

- The building interior is rather empty and ugly. Maybe making a roof of glass would be better visually? And you could add some platforms and jumpers, this would be pretty cool I think

- FPS is very low in big spaces, but I think you can't do much about that, this is the way the engine works, it's made mostly for interior environments.

- Adding some movers: making the cars move and train running at full speed once in a while (then go back in a tunnel and comes back later) crushing everything on the way would be a lot of fun and add a lot of dynamism to the map.

- Adding jump pads: as with movers, this would "dynamicalize" the map a lot. I know jump pads are not really realists, but it's a big part of the OpenArena gameplay. And you can set them as you want: for example it could be a big umbrella, or anything you want, or even make the jumppad push horizontally instead of vertically.

Anyway, even if I like very much this map, I must objectively face the fact that it is not very adapted to the gameplay of OpenArena since games consists of max 14 players usually (but the engine supports up to 64!), so it will end up being seemingly quite empty when played.

I think that a good solution would be to add movers, like moving cars. I don't really know exactly what is possible with movers, and I'm certainly no mapper :p But I imagined a few cars running around, speedily enough, and jumping on them in a middle of a gunfight or when having the flag and running to the base, and I think it could really be a very nice addition to the gameplay of this map, and would make it feel less empty and static.

Anyway it's very promising, currently there's no such map for OA. What licence will you use for your map? Same as OA, GPL 2+?
« Last Edit: March 17, 2012, 10:35:06 PM by GrosBedo » Logged
JoeSox
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« Reply #2 on: March 17, 2012, 10:48:54 PM »

- Should enlarge the doors, like 2x the size (I think that a good door is a door where you can jump through, remember that players often jump in this game, particularly good players using strafe jumping tricks)

Some doorways are a bit small (I even enlarged them). Remember, this is a "cover" map so I am trying to stick as much as possible to BF3 map but also put in the good OA stuff. I had a kamikaze request so I put that in there.


- Particularly love the fire damage in the metro station, you should add more traps like that (is a running and crushing train possible?)

In the BF3 map, there is more fire on the right side of the subway cars. I'll try and add those in.

- Add a lot more weapons/powerups/items, there are a lot of very sparse areas. Eg: no weapons nor items at all in the big exterior area, while this should be the main groundfight! It would be amazing for gunfights!

It is mainly like that right now because of me trying to keep it balanced and fair. I thought of placing a bfg in the courtyard but that could possibly give Red team an advantage unless I placed another bfg on the other side of the map. You bring up a good point that a ffa game would need lots more weapons in different spots, so I will put that on my list of things to do, make ffa weapons only.

- The building interior is rather empty and ugly. Maybe making a roof of glass would be better visually? And you could add some platforms and jumpers, this would be pretty cool I think

That would be cool. didn't think about jumpers in there.  The inside of there was not a priority as other things on the map needed work. I do need to fix it up in there as both teams spawn at the same time in it.

- Adding some movers: making the cars move and train running at full speed once in a while (then go back in a tunnel and comes back later) crushing everything on the way would be a lot of fun and add a lot of dynamism to the map.

Cool idea, but the BF3 has no movers, just some of the ads rotate.

- Adding jump pads: as with movers, this would "dynamicalize" the map a lot. I know jump pads are not really realists, but it's a big part of the OpenArena gameplay. And you can set them as you want: for example it could be a big umbrella, or anything you want, or even make the jumppad push horizontally instead of vertically.

Hmm, I could place jump pads near Cafe to get people up from the street level, instead of using the ramps. Then again I need to keep things fair in racing to the middle flag in domination. Tricky, but I will think about it.

Anyway, even if I like very much this map, I must objectively face the fact that it is not very adapted to the gameplay of OpenArena since games consists of max 14 players usually (but the engine supports up to 64!), so it will end up being seemingly quite empty when played.

Yeah, it was an experiment for me to do a cover and I was curious to see what the gameplay would actually be in OA. Operation Metro is a cool map to begin with and there are some spots where you can get some long distant shooting in.
I thought long and hard where to place the Double Domination flags and after a few games, it is fun to try and lock-down those two rooms. I have been testing with 12 players total.

Anyway it's very promising, currently there's no such map for OA. What licence will you use for your map? Same as OA, GPL 2+?

It's a cover, a parody, and I have been designing it with GPL 2+ in mind. Thanks for the feedback, good stuff.
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GrosBedo
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« Reply #3 on: March 18, 2012, 07:55:01 AM »

Yeah, it was an experiment for me to do a cover and I was curious to see what the gameplay would actually be in OA. Operation Metro is a cool map to begin with and there are some spots where you can get some long distant shooting in.

The main difference with OA is that there are a lot less players (even if theoretically there could be the same number), and the gameplay is more "speedy", players like to go fast.

The Kamikaze is a good addition. Please also consider the Haste powerup (one for each team?), and the Flight powerup.

About the jumpers, yes it's a good idea, or even it could be used to access the roof of some low buildings, or jump into a secret floor of a building! (just my imagination Smiley)

About weapons and items, I did test in CTF gametype, but even for a CTF gametype, most of the time players will have only the machinegun to defend themselves. There should be a lot more items, like 1 every 15 sec of walking at normal speed (320ups) for a normal player. Also, I couldn't find the railgun, which I think is very important for your map (but can be very dangerous in the hands of good players). About the BFG, at first I would advise to avoid it because it's very difficult to balance correctly the gameplay once you've added this weapon to your map, but at second thought, since your map is very large and BFG has very low ammo (so there should not be any BFG ammo pack), it should be ok. In fact, railgun is far more dangerous for the gameplay of your map.

Anyway, I think that your map is already pretty much playable and fit very much Only Rockets and Instagib + Railjump gametypes. It should already be a lot of fun with these gametypes! Also I can imagine Clan Arena and Last man standing would be very cool to play on your map Smiley
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GrosBedo
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« Reply #4 on: March 18, 2012, 08:03:41 AM »

About low FPS, you could maybe add some tunnels or obstruction elements in the scene to separate scenes from the next. This would allow the engine to hide the other scenes when drawing the current one.

/EDIT: there's a big problem with BSP triangles, the whole map is always drawn. You can check this by doing:
Code:
devmap operationmetro
r_showtris 1

I don't know why is that, maybe there's a misconfiguration there, because even inside the metro you can see the triangles of the outside. So I think that it's possible to easily enhance a lot the FPS, but an OA mapper (such as Neon_Knight) will help you a lot more than me on this subject.

Also, as a last solution if nothing works, you can add a bit of fog to limit the range of drawing. Plus it will add some more ambience Wink But I think a fog shader can be just used to limit the range without modifying the aspect of the map if you don't want a foggy aspect.
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Peter Silie
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« Reply #5 on: March 18, 2012, 09:17:38 AM »

If all brushes will be drawn you usualy used detail brushes.
Change to structural will fix this.
There should be a tut about it here in the forum.
NK?
Do not use fog. This could have bad impact on fps.
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JoeSox
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« Reply #6 on: March 18, 2012, 11:46:30 AM »

About weapons and items, I did test in CTF gametype, but even for a CTF gametype, most of the time players will have only the machinegun to defend themselves. There should be a lot more items, like 1 every 15 sec of walking at normal speed (320ups) for a normal player. Also, I couldn't find the railgun, which I think is very important for your map (but can be very dangerous in the hands of good players).

The weapons are there but they might be sort of hidden. I am going to add more though. I don't have a railgun in there but I think you are right. one neds to be added for both sides.
Thanks
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JoeSox
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« Reply #7 on: March 21, 2012, 09:13:08 AM »

About low FPS, you could maybe add some tunnels or obstruction elements in the scene to separate scenes from the next. This would allow the engine to hide the other scenes when drawing the current one.

/EDIT: there's a big problem with BSP triangles, the whole map is always drawn. You can check this by doing:
Code:
devmap operationmetro
r_showtris 1

I don't know why is that, maybe there's a misconfiguration there, because even inside the metro you can see the triangles of the outside. So I think that it's possible to easily enhance a lot the FPS, but an OA mapper (such as Neon_Knight) will help you a lot more than me on this subject.

I am trying to make it as close as possible to the original Operation Metro map. I have added some more content but was forced to do some optimization. I had to calk a bunch of brushes which has helped. Right now in my testing gameplay it averages 63fps per Fraps. I don't have an average baseline from the first beta release pk3. I have just a little more content to add and then I am ready to release this puppy.
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GrosBedo
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Posts: 710


« Reply #8 on: March 21, 2012, 10:15:49 AM »

I had to calk a bunch of brushes which has helped. Right now in my testing gameplay it averages 63fps per Fraps. I don't have an average baseline from the first beta release pk3. I have just a little more content to add and then I am ready to release this puppy.

Good news Cheesy

Normally, a typical OA map aim for a constant average 125 fps, but since your map is pretty big, an average of 63 fps is very satisfying!
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