FreeGameDev

This is the first map I've ever seriously tried to make. Don't flame me if I messed up everything in the map, or broke some taboo regarding forum posting rules, because I still don't know how everything works. I'll be working on this for as long as I am able, this is not yet a finished product. This, (pauses for dramatic effect) is Corruption v1.0.0, the result of many hour's worth of trial and error.



corrupt

Information
Full Name Corruption
Author "wowie"
Release Date 4/22/2012
Size Large (8 - 12 Players)
Weapon Counts
Swords 4
Shotguns 4
SMGs 4
Flamers 4
Plasmas 4
Rifles 4
Grenades 8
Rockets 1
Supported Modes
Deathmatch
Team Deathmatch
Capture the Flag
Defend the Flag
Bomberball
Player Amounts
Ideal 12
Ideal - Team 12
Strategies
Wallrun and wallclimb to quickly move across any obstacles in your way.
It is possible to grab the rifle then jump under the barrier and wallrun directly to the center of the map.
Sometimes if you are low on health but high on impulse you can jump off a ledge then wallrun around it to fake a fall to your doom.
It is possible to wallrun almost directly from the center to the plasma and back.
Wallrun across the outer base walls to quickly go to and from the side base entries.
Use the water to put out fire if you are attacked by a flamer (duh).
Swords and area of effect weapons are very effective in the center area because there is little room to maneuver.
It is possible to wallclimb directly to the rocket without having to stop to refill impulse if you find the right path to take.
The rocket can be used to reach almost any target in seconds if you use it to boost your jump off the tower rather than using it to kill other players.
In some areas it is possible to combine lots of short runs and climbs to create longer acrobatics paths.

Not bad map for a begginer

thank you! Notice the 'a' in the name though? this map is not even beta yet! edit: the map is now in beta ... any advice for helping the AI get to the rocket without using a jump pad/ladder? I'm trying and failing to get them up even though I aiclipped it to get them to use only 4 paths. Also: where can I find a good texturing tutorial? I'm serious, I want this to look as good as it plays. Question #3: How exactly does the ai decide when or how to use parkour? knowing this might help me solve the aforementioned pathing problem.

wowie {l Wrote}:How exactly does the ai decide when or how to use parkour? knowing this might help me solve the aforementioned pathing problem.

Never rely on anything but a simple path for AI, they parkour at random and will always choose a simple path over a complicated one.

Played with the lightprecision and reduced the filesize, and added grunts for onslaught, the map is nearly finished.
What are some more professional touches that an amateur mapper may not have thought of?

I think that's nice concept right now. I've look on that map only on edit.

Btw. maybe you will try to add smth here to make route here more 'random' ?

Fallen {l Wrote}:Btw. maybe you will try to add smth here to make route here more 'random' ?

I was thinking about doing that, but wasn't sure whether or not it would be an improvement.
I'll try adding it next time I work on it and see how it plays.
Also, how would I "connect" it to the rest of the map visually, since it would look out of place
being the only thing freely floating in midair without being connected to anything else...?
Maybe I'll extend the floating wall lengthwise to anchor it to the corner bases,
or extend it vertically, to the same height as the outer wall,
or leave it free-floating and add some effect to the bottom or top to explain why it floats...?



Something for me to think about until I get back to my computer... what would the people playing the map prefer?
(ALL OF YOU PEOPLE READING THIS WHILE DOWNLOADING THE CURRENT MAP VERSION PLEASE TELL ME WHAT YOU WOULD LIKE)

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...also, how would this map play with a bunch of actual live players? I'd host a server myself (I know how to do all of that junk)
but my internet connection is way, waaay, waaaaaay too slow to host a playable game for a dozen random people to run around on.

hmm.. on one map there's floating banners (this map with 'QUIN' on a roof of one building - I don't remember map name). I think, that if you will add smth smillar then maybe it will look normal. Probably someone who is most advanced in making maps will give you better idea for that.

Fallen {l Wrote}:(this map with 'QUIN' on a roof of one building - I don't remember map name).

UBIX!

Yea, Ubik, thanks

I just found out that the texture looks interesting with alpha material.
I'll be using that, plus making them pillars anyway because platforms let you navigate while using less impulse.
Also, they are thin, so you can shoot explosives through them with almost full damage.

Hi,
I have made the following observations.
-Color the corner bases for 4-team play.
-Diagonal off some of the 90 degree corners with some 45s.
-Make the some of the base blast walls curved.
-Between the bases on the perimeter of the of the outer buildings readily accessible by jump pads on the corners add a snipe ledges way high up. The backs would be good places to have rifles if they are not already in the general vicinity. Put 8 grenades up on the snipe ledge to make things interesting.
-Add a skybox.
I can elaborate on these if you want.
Cheers

Thanks, but I'm probably not going to round off many of the corners or angle anything unless I find out something that cripples the gameplay.
I also don't like the idea of having a sniper's nest very much because currently the map is very flat and I like it that way.
I might incorporate some of those ideas into the next map I make though... whatever that map is.
I'm currently figuring out how to use all of the vtex options so in the future it will be colored only in team modes, (like bath)
plus have more interesting texture highlights everywhere.
I also tried a few skyboxes already and didn't like the way it looked with any of them.
I'll re-add a skybox and play with the settings and see if I can get it to where I like it.
The location of the rifles is not very obvious so I'm planning on adding something to make them more visible.
(maybe playing with more transparency and adding windows to see the rifle areas)
[noob question]Also in the cutec thread I keep on hearing people talk about clipboxes... whats a clipbox?[/noob question]

You're welcome wowie,
As you like with the flow. The diagonal blast walls are most likely good enough for little wall runs.
That would have been 4 sniper areas so it would have been worse than you thought.
Yeah, those 45s and rounded walls are just meant to improve flow. Also you might make some blast shields you can shoot over and duck behind in your next map.
Congratulations on digging into the vtex options (whatever they are). That sounds like a good idea in a way. However it also makes it hard to know which of the 4 areas your are in relative to your opponents. Just a thought. Texture highlights would be good.
Are you looking for a specific theme for your skybox?
Thanks for playing around with them.
Go with whatever you think will work for the rifles.
And I have no idea about the clipboxes except that it seems raiden is having trouble with them on cutec. Funny, is that cute C or Cute[k]? Wrong thread, I guess.
Cheers

I didn't had the time to post it earlier (had to get off the computer fast) but I noticed that layers of alpha material have interesting reactions with each other:
Alpha material areas behind other alpha materials do not render. So if you have two layered walls and one has high alpha and the other has low alpha it will look different depending on the side you are on.
I took advantage of this to make funky windows to see the rifle positions. The thin walls have a valpha of 0.01, and the thick windows have a valpha of 0.99
So if you look at the windows through the see through walls you see a window, but from any other angle it looks like a solid wall. I can't describe it very well with words.
Also, I found out that vcolor overrides vpalette and the lightmap. I used this to create artificial areas of shadow where the windows would have otherwise let light through,
along with splitting the map into four (visual) sections. The Red E wiki helped a lot with the variables and stuff but a lot of stuff isn't in there yet (spincloudlayer!) and I would help with that but I don't
know how to dig through the code at all and I just happened to discover spincloudlayer by chance anyways (was typing random stuff in to see what happened and how it looked at the time) so yah.

that was rambling like a pro
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Posting while on the go again, and I had an idea I wanted typed down before I forgot it:

Add fast vscroll to the cloud and env layers to do two things: a) make it seem like the map is flying through digital space at high speed. b) provide a reference point visible from anywhere that can be used to tell direction like if the map is hurtling toward x horizon I can use it as a navigation aid.

I think I'm figuring a lot of this out now! If only every map editor was this intuitive! I LIKE IT.

edit: merged posts
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...Won't be able to work on this map for awhile. Suggestions are still welcome.
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Added the cloud and env scrolls. I still want to do a few lot of things, but I can't/don't know how get the answers to these questions myself:
How does this map look with maxed gfx? My computer runs the game on minimum settings to get acceptable framerate.
How can I make the map look better without slowing it down? All of the polygons on the player and grunt models in a 12 bot onslaught match pretty much eat up all of my polygon budget.
How does this map play with a bunch of live people on it? I can't host my own server because my internet connection stinks.
Why does the AI keep on getting stuck on the corners by the base walls? Do I need to redo the pathing? (again...) I figured out how to modify the pathing by adding aiclip.
[offtopic]Why do most of the guns in this game remind me of various dart blasters and/or super soakers? lol! [/offtopic]
How do I get the "X fell to they death." message to appear? Found the variable! How do I integrate the .wpt file into the map file? I'm n00b. lol. Ignore that.
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New version is out with extra polish! It won't be too long before I change from beta to release candidates!
Unique fall death message: tried to leave the simulation
Default player count is now 12
Other things mentioned above

posting while on the run, thought of something extra I could add to the strategies section:

In some areas it is possible to combine lots of short runs and climbs to create longer acrobatics paths. edit: added

What are strategies and tactics you have developed while playing this map?

Hey, I played a bit on your map. The basic idea and layout looks good. I like these combination of cyberspace and parkour. The whole design could become better. Different combinations of scrolled textures, mabe with glow, particle effects or other new additions could add more atmosphere to the map. The grid textures are nice, I would combine them with plain ones. However, keep it up .

cheers

raiden {l Wrote}:Hey, I played a bit on your map. The basic idea and layout looks good. I like these combination of cyberspace and parkour. The whole design could become better. Different combinations of scrolled textures, mabe with glow, particle effects or other new additions could add more atmosphere to the map. The grid textures are nice, I would combine them with plain ones. However, keep it up .

cheers

Thanks for the feedback! I don't know how to add glow or particle effects, how do I do that?

Some of the textures from the usual palette have an own glow-effect. You can recognize it, seeing them mostly white in the palette (light textures e.g.).
For particles just type:

{l Code}: {l Select All Code}

"/newent particles"

There are many variables to influence the effect, which you could define immediately by typing the necessary numbers behind the command. (/newent particles 0 1 230 0 1 -1 ...). I can't describe all numbers with their meanings here, but it helps to examine the particles from other maps, for examble longest yard or others. The editor shows all variables of the entity you've selected in the bottom of the right corner.
One disadvantage: the particles are not rendered behind alphatextures or glasswalls.
I hope I could help a bit.

raiden, I tried changing up the gfx for this map, but didn't like the results I got.
I stink at making anything visually pleasing.

I was in the middle of writing a huge speech, but then my computer crashed.
Here is the short version:

I'm going to call this map finished.
The fire (this idea) has burned out (lost my interest).
I fail at all attempts at creating real or digital art of any kind.
After only a few weeks I am already well versed in the SCIENCE of mapmaking.

<I'm posting this from mobile while my comp recovers, excuse the double post everyone >

Anybody who wants to can add their name to the authors list and continue work on this map is encouraged to do so.
Anyone who does that should create their own thread for it and let this thread die.
I would like to team up with someone well versed in the ART of mapmaking and build a roaring bonfire (distilled pwnage in the form of a map) from another spark (idea).
If anyone is interested let me know in this thread.

BUMP! Corruption has been re-released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
... I tried rebuilding the graphics for this map again, the longer I worked the uglier and slower it got. I won't work on this map myself ever again. It's done for good... unless it needs a bugfix.