Map release: Ares (updated to v1.9)

[Ulukai]

This is my first map for Red Eclipse. It has support for DM, CTF, DTF and Bomber-Ball gametypes. It is included in RE v1.2 but I noticed some glitches and texture errors so I decided to make an updated version. I will ask Quin to upload this improved version to RE v1.3 when it's due.

UPDATE 06/03/2012: v1.9 is ready.
Please download it here and update your links to my map: http://www.mediafire.com/?kmbruf5wprbavzw

Screenshots v1.8.

Screenshot v1.9.

CHANGELOG
-----------------
11/09/2011 - ARES 1.0
Initial release.

14/09/2011 - ARES 1.1
fixed texture corruption at middle tower.
Made surrounding mountains less square at the tops.

16/09/2011 - ARES 1.2
Texture blending and minor texture fixes.
Lighting tweaks.
Added clipping under stairs of middle tower.

18/09/2011 - ARES 1.3
More texture blending.

23/10/2011 - ARES 1.4
Added lots of details.
Colored all pillars.
Made surrounding less cubic.
Added 2 lights.

03/11/2011 - ARES 1.5
Decoration on the ceiling and floor of the temples.
Damaged the bridges some more.
No more grass textures used under water. The shape of the lake has been slightly modified.
Added clipping ceiling to prevent abuse of hacks.

03/11/2011 - ARES 1.6
Fixed some minor water issues, texture issues and geometry issues.
Lowered the terrain a bit on some places.

06/11/2011 - ARES 1.7
Added grass + new blendmap
Made cave under water less square
Corrected some geometry errors
Smaller lightmap + smaller download size

28/02/2012 - ARES 1.8
Added Bomber-Ball support.
Fixed some minor geometry glitches.
A LOT of texture tweaking: I changed the offset of many textures so that the stones of the building really look like whole stones now. Some textures are replaced with others. Here and there I added some more detailed texturing.
Sound tweaks so that the torches aren't audible anymore when walking above them. The blowing wind is less disturbing now as well.
Added noclipping zones around the torches, allowing wallrunning.
MANY changes to the surrounding rocks. They are flattened a bit without losing their shape. This makes the map A LOT less resource hungry and should improve your framerate. Also the bottom and sides of the water zone has been flattened to improve framerate.
Adjustments to the rocks at the temple sides to make wall running / climbing easier.
All playserstarts were deleted and redone.
Improved bot paths.

06/03/2012 - ARES 1.9
Added some bushes to bring a more natural atmosphere to the map.
Skytextured the pushed-in cubes under the grass surfaces to make it less noticeable when diving under the map in spectator mode.
Fixed 2 more geometry errors.

[Goku]

Looks like a great map for zombie mod. hope it is included in 1.2.

[fawstoar]

This is an amazing, very high-quality map. I've had quite a bit of fun on it myself - this should definitely be added to 1.2 as one of the default maps.

[Ulukai]

Thank you guys, I enjoyed creating it and I think things have improved quite a lot since this old screenshot so I've got some action shots for you too

[ZeroKnight]

The map is beautiful! Very nice work Ulukai ^_^ I support the addition of this to 1.2 as well :)

[LuckyStrike-Rx]

The gameplay is nice and scaling is good. And it looks pretty good.

Possible improvement :
Adding grass


Adding more detail. it's something that can be reworked later, but detailed maps make the overall game feel "prettier" (IMO)
(it's just example)




Aslo the mountain around the map are a bit cubic, maybe a few smoothing would improve it

[Ulukai]

LyckyStrike-Rx, I hope you saved your work you did in the map because you are right a little more detail feels nice and gives it that extra touch. Feel free to modify it in any way you want and upload it here or send it to me because I'm a big fan of your work (I looked at your maps to learn how to do some stuff ) and I would be honoured if you contributed to my work since it is my first map really. If you want to polish it up for inclusion in v1.2 that's fine for me as well and of cource you can take credit for it too.

Adding grass is something I tried, but because the terrain is bumpy it gave weird shadows on some corners where I lifted the terrain. That's why I decided that I preferred bumpy terrain over grass. But if you got it straight, I'm curious to know how.

I'm aware of the cubicness of the surrounding walls but they are more functional than aesthetics for me. I already spent a lot of time to make it like it is now and felt that is was rather OK like that. Of cource it can be done better but I would need to learn some better techniques in the engine to do so or a way to be able to do it faster.

[LuckyStrike-Rx]

The map can be released as is, just that there is always room for improvement. I don't consider any of my map as finished (mapping for this engine is so time consuming that i took a break from it).
I saved the detailing, but it was just for example.

I'm a big fan of your work

Thanks, but there is no reason, really. Most of Sauer maps are really away of what I could ever do.

Adding grass is something I tried, but because the terrain is bumpy it gave weird shadows on some corners where I lifted the terrain. That's why I decided that I preferred bumpy terrain over grass. But if you got it straight, I'm curious to know how.

Yes, happen because we don't have perfect grass texture yet. However it can be fixed by adding a bit of texture blending with the noise brush.

I'm aware of the cubicness of the surrounding walls but they are more functional than aesthetics for me. I already spent a lot of time to make it like it is now and felt that is was rather OK like that. Of cource it can be done better but I would need to learn some better techniques in the engine to do so or a way to be able to do it faster.

Agree, it's long and annoying. I spend to much time to make it looks ok on Venus (it's still improvable) and decided that I wont make natural environment for Cube engine anymore.

[Ulukai]

Would you mind mailing me the saved map? I'll see what I can do

[LuckyStrike-Rx]

I'll just upload it here if you don't mind (that's why it's so great to have a forum with attachment)
About grass, you are right. I think you can remove grass until there is a descent sprite for it, it's true that the shadow clipping bug is ugly.

You should edit/remove your mail

[Ulukai]

I'm a big fan of your work

Thanks, but there is no reason, really. Most of Sauer maps are really away of what I could ever do.

Are you kidding me? Venus is a masterpiece!

I'm aware of the cubicness of the surrounding walls but they are more functional than aesthetics for me. I already spent a lot of time to make it like it is now and felt that is was rather OK like that. Of cource it can be done better but I would need to learn some better techniques in the engine to do so or a way to be able to do it faster.

Agree, it's long and annoying. I spend to much time to make it looks ok on Venus (it's still improvable) and decided that I wont make natural environment for Cube engine anymore.

I'll try to find some time to improve it a bit.

Thanks for the map with your saved work, I'm going to take some ideas and make some things work and I will upload it here again when done.

[inpersona64]

Yeah, Ulukai is right. Everyone I know loves Venus. Well built, and can be very competitive. I have noticed that some people complain about getting low fps on Venus..they said it might be the trees. I wouldn't know. I play venus just fine on the same FPS i get whenever I play any other map (apart from Dawn, for obvious reasons).

Speaking of competitive, this map can be too. Especially for DTF, which I have yet to find an enjoyable DTF map in RE. I mean one good map I can remember that I loved playing DTF on was Citadel from Blood Frontier. Ares is another map that I could gladly say I'd vote Quick-DTF to play but also I'm a fan of solid ground so yeah.

[Ulukai]

I'll just upload it here if you don't mind (that's why it's so great to have a forum with attachment)
About grass, you are right. I think you can remove grass until there is a descent sprite for it, it's true that the shadow clipping bug is ugly.

You should edit/remove your mail

I downloaded your attachment 2 times, but everytime I try to edit your mapfile, I get an empty map and a message that "everybody failed to load the requested map" in RE. Also, my map is 4+ MB and your upload is only about 1.7 MB... Did something go wrong when uploading the map? Can you please check this and try again?

[LuckyStrike-Rx]

Yes, it's because I used SVN to make it, and Eihrul bring some change to the engine, map are now much lighter, but they can be open with previous version of the game (it seems).
There is nothing I can do to revert it to be compatible with 1.1. Sorry

[Bahamut1593]

Dam, for an older open source engine, this map is really impressive. Grass isn't something I myself am concerned about since I have it off anyway in the interest of keeping 60+ framerate. Anywho, nice job on the map.

[Knitter]

I would like to try the map, how can I install it?

I'm running OS X, should I just create a new folder in ~/Library/Application Support/redeclipse/models, and place the map folder there?

[LuckyStrike-Rx]

~/Library/Application Support/redeclipse/maps yes

[Ulukai]

Yes, it's because I used SVN to make it, and Eihrul bring some change to the engine, map are now much lighter, but they can be open with previous version of the game (it seems).
There is nothing I can do to revert it to be compatible with 1.1. Sorry

Ah SVN... I choose to keep it with stable releases.

But it's no problem. I looked at your screens to implement some ideas in my map and I have found some other ways to add more detail on other places. It's working out really well, so I'm very grateful for your input. Can you tell me which texture you used for the tiles and whether you scaled it?

Then I need to polish the surroundings a bit and I will have it uploaded here soon.

[Ulukai]

v1.4 is ready!

I updated the first post with the new download link, updated screenshots and a description of the changes.
It took me a couple of hours but I'm glad I have it finished. The input of LuckyStrike-Rx has been very helpful.

Tell me what you think and most of all, enjoy!

[Ulukai]

Inpersona64, would you mind updating your download link in your youtube video? I notice that v1.0 is still being downloaded while there are so many changes in the latest version and I think it's because your Youtube promo is still linking to the old version

[inpersona64]

Inpersona64, would you mind updating your download link in your youtube video? I notice that v1.0 is still being downloaded while there are so many changes in the latest version and I think it's because your Youtube promo is still linking to the old version

Done!

[Ulukai]

Inpersona64, would you mind updating your download link in your youtube video? I notice that v1.0 is still being downloaded while there are so many changes in the latest version and I think it's because your Youtube promo is still linking to the old version

Done!

Thanks dude

[Ulukai]

v1.5 is ready. See some screenshots in my original thread post to see what's changed.

I'm still looking for a way or ideas to fix the grass sprite... At the moment the only possibility I see is to make everything flat again if I would want to add grass. But that can make the map dull for people who play without grass textures... A bit of bumpiness adds to the map imo.

Any ideas?

[kr1egsgott]

The only compromiss I see is to make the map flat and add gras, only on some places.

[Ulukai]

v1.6 is ready. Sorry for releasing so fast but I found some bugs in v1.5 so I decided to correct them immediately.

Please download it here and update your links to my map: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?d481zlcxmmah792

I've been talking with Hirato on IRC about the grass sprite problem (see screenshot attached), he told me to try selecting other textures than grass on the cubes under the lifted terrain. I tried, but it doesn't help at all. Still hoping that someone finds a nice solution.

@Kr1eg: Putting grass only on some places wouldn't be nice either.