Mek Arcade [Maps] work in progress

[raiden]

This map plays in a death valley theme, maybe on a far planet. It was mainly created for mek arcade. While building I wanted something to play with and wanted to see the map in action. So I made also a playable version for RE.

Mek Arcade:
This is the same as the Re version but it has less details, to be open for possible mapmodels of MA.. I tried to have the proportions of the mechs in mind, although I don't know exactly what to expect. There are no playerstarts or RE entities until now - to stay open for MA. The only lightsource is a skylight, because of the tesseract feature which may come.
size: medium/big

This thread is a showcase of work in progress. The content may change from time to time. For updates see the last post at the end please.

:::updated:::

Mek Arcade version

outpost.zip

(904.14 KiB) Downloaded 310 times

(renamed)

dry_MA 1.1 is now called "outpost" - changes:

_recoloured the whole map
_improved blendmaps again
_retextured the crystals again (as in dry's RE version)
_added a coloured cloudlayer + envlayer
_added numerous details like buildings, which are melted together with the rocks, a stranded spaceship, a landing platform, ...

Red Eclipse:
The map has more details and contains all necessary ents for RE. Weapon placement, playerstarts, gametype support - everything included, besides some other details like weathered teambuildings. The most fun I had while testplaying was in multiteam capture the flag.
size: big

:::updated:::

dry RE ver.1.1.zip

(987.85 KiB) Downloaded 334 times

changes since 1.0 :
_added a sunlight entity
_added numerous details: mines and caveentrances, a miningrobot, tiny crystals, wood, additional dunes of sand, ...
_changed textures for the crystals
_added turrets with rifles and grunt-actors for the onslaught mode
_improved the blendmap for the sand

Red Eclipse version

[D.A.M.I.E.N.]

I'm sure this will work well with jetpack in RE. I took just a quick test, but what I see a bit strange is way you did lighting, even when the colors are not bad in result. I see you have added a "skylight", but somehow I can't find any light entity there..? Anyway, since you added the lensflare, it means that the sun shines sharp. So there is just lensflare particle, but the placement doesn't work well with the skybox. Try to add a sunlight entity with lensflare then? Also, the map has quite too strong red tint, produced by some undiscovered light source. Well used is texture blending on sand and those realistically looking dino bones are well modelled. What does not look that realistically is texture used for the crystals, I'm sure there could be a better one, but maybe it depends on a personal taste. Anyway, while looking at it as a complex, it's a good job.

[raiden]

Well, thank you for feedback. It's all just because the map was planned for mek arcade only at first. Since I stared to make a split for each game, some things are still undecided. Perhaps we will have 2 very different maps at the end.
I will think over your points about texturing and lighting. Maybe the map doesn't needs many lights, but a sunlight for the RE version probably yes, of course. The MA version will besides that, evolve in a different direction, also the main theme will change a bit. The lighting is an open point there for me until now, because the game will probably use tesseract. So let's see ... .

[raiden]

All I wanted to say was that the lighting is incomplete on both maps, indeed. I have not checked out the latest Svn until now, but there are new options for lightentities and flare effects, as. I could read. Your suggestion would make more sense and work better with these new features probably Damien ?

[raiden]

dry RE ver.1.1.zip

(987.85 KiB) Downloaded 301 times

I updated the RE version of the map. I mainly changed and improved geometric details here, to improve the special theme for RE. So I added a miningrobot with additional effects for example. I followed Damien's suggestion and took another texturing for the crystals. I also improved the lighting, although this isn't the last word. I have to edit the map in the SVN from now on, to check out the new features for flareeffects. Otherwise the lensflare may be left off (it doesn't work really good together with the skybox), let's see... .
But my next step will be an improvement for the mek arcade version of the map, wich will evolve into a different direction. The theme will be more "alienatic".

The next update will probably follow after a longer period of time. Simply because of the following christmas days and the turn of the year. Apropos: I don't belong to those people who believe in the end time theory concerning the maya calendar . Like |Public Enemy| said once: "don't believe the hype" .

changes since 1.0 :
_added a sunlight entity
_added numerous details: mines and caveentrances, a miningrobot, tiny crystals, wood and metal, additional dunes of sand, ...
_changed textures for the crystals
_added turrets with rifles and grunt-actors for the onslaught mode
_improved the blendmap for the sand

[Ulukai]

Looking very good raiden! I hope to find some time soon to test it out.

[quintux_v]

so far I feel like it looks a bit too much like colony in terms of theme and geometry. however, I'd like to see the "alienatic" version when it comes. Blue sand?

[raiden]

Mmh, I never thought about colony, while building this map. Although colony is very well done in my opinion. Especially the mixture of in- and outdoor is nice there. I like it. Apart from the scenary of a desert and rocks and probably the open feeling on the map, I think the maps haven't really much to do with each other. I mean, the theme is different, the mood, also the layout. How I said: it was not planed for RE, but for mek arcade only at first. After first results, I wanted to see if it could work in the RE game too - so I just tried it out, thats all.

Different colored textures may come. I'm collecting ideas for other additional things too, at the moment.

[qreeves]

Hopefully you can be done soon, we could use a decent base map to build from in MekArcade. It's good to see people getting interested, I really need the help to get the core mechanics of the game going.

[raiden]

Ok, good to know, I'll try my best to come up with something usefull soon. Even so I have to take care to balance this with my other obligations. But who I'm telling this. I'm sure you know that.
I'm on the way.

[cdxbow]

Raiden: The att. zip has this map peppered with a heap of models, more than 43! Last weekend I started to look at this map, and I wanted to get some models for it, to celebrate and say thanks for the first map done for MekArcade. To me it felt like it could be an American desert, Mars if you gave it a butterscotch sky or perhaps an extrasolar planet, being cooked dry by an exapanding red giant. It was the latter that got me, so I made a skybox, redgiant, which is included in the zip. It's pretty rough, certainly simple but suits. Once the skybox was done it became easier. I worked over our industrial set, made a rusty version of many, did a few experiments, I tried vergetation, but in the end it was the industrial/mining element that won.

Anyway, I ended up with about 43 models. A couple are sitters, the rest original. They only take about 9 MB of space, I have been very economical with textures. Some are animated, a (not very good) Wind generator, fuel tank and a pseudo animated drill. I tired to do an animated oil pump, but I had trouble with rigging, the rusted wreckage of it is still on the map. In addition to the industrial models there is also a meka for scaling, a bit of an early experiment with alien vegetation (do you have to make it purple or blue?) in the extras folder. Johns_III palm is also included in the palm3 folder.

You spawn with models suitable for a working mining colony, scaled for an fps, and as you move counter clockwise you first come to a deserted rusted industrial complex, moving further on you come to the palms and the alien veg. The palms have a problem with leaves not displaying properly, I dont know if this is simply a config thing, a texture issue or the models been buggered up in the conversion process. I am hoping someone will look at it and instantly be able to recognize the problem and give me a fix. if you continue you come to another meka, this time scaled down to mek game size, along with some models scaled to suit.

Instructions

Unzip the file somewhere:
1. The map files dry_MA_models are in the maps folder. Copy to where you put your maps.
2. The redgiant graphics are in the skyboxes folder and need be copied into the RE skyboxes folder
3. The models are all in a folder called industrial, and this needs to be copied to the RE models folder
4. A file industrial.htm in the industrial folder has a list of models.

We are going to package the models up as an 'Industrial pack' and will release them as a stand alone, once all the non open artwork has been replaced. I was hoping to use dry to showcase them, and if you wouldn't mind, distributing dry_MA_models with it.

[John_III]

The problem with the palm leaves is that the texture is only displaying on one side. A solution to this would be to duplicate the leaves, make them a child of the bones, and reverse their normal directions. However, this will add some additional faces to the model.

I'm not sure if this is possible in RE, but if there is a way to have the engine render double-sided models, that should fix the problem.

Edit: I also found a slight bug with the model itself. I'll put out a fix shortly.

[qreeves]

"mdlcullface 0"

[raiden]

Thank you cdxbow! I could look into your material, but have still to take a second one, because I had not much time until now. The buildings are nice, also the mechas I could see. I was not lazy too and could improve the map again. I post the first result in the following field.
I'm astonished about the small filesize - good work.

My first tries with classical alienstuff looked like this: ...

... before I decided to keep the ideas for a later instant of time. To implement this usefully, would need too much time and effort. This could be material for a different map someday. So I went back to my first approach and decided to make technichal buildings and such stuff.
.. I remember you are not a fan of only recoloring a map to let it look alienoid . I have many ideas already, but let's see what is possible to implement later (perhaps/probably in other maps). It's always a question of compromises.

[raiden]

This is the progress of the Mek Arcade version of the map. Because the theme changed a bit, I decided to rename the map into "outpost" now, which fits better imo.
The ground is still mainly flat, for the devs of Mek Arcade, to have room to test various things out. Maybe this will change at a later time.

outpost.zip

(904.14 KiB) Downloaded 308 times

notes for Cdxbow and Qreeves:
_The flareparticles are more a placeholder than anything else. Just feel free to remove, if this should disturb you.
_I'm not sure about the stranded spaceship. You can remove this also if necessary. Maybe it could be replaced later by a mapmodel or removed completely. The ground can be make flat too. Otherwise please remind me here and I can do this for you. The same for possibly other changes. I wanted to give you some material to work with, so that you haven't to wait so long.
_There are several places for lightsources - I let them all empty until now.
_Although the colors and theme changed a bit, surely your skybox will be usefull in the future Cdx. (in a polished form - Perhaps I will start later to help for the work on some skyboxes. I know this is not so easy, because they have to be seamless tileable and looking nice too.)
(_The map still works as a basis, which means no ents for gameplay.)

dry_MA 1.1 is now called "outpost" - changes:

_recoloured the whole map
_improved the blendmaps again
_retextured the crystals again (as in dry's RE version)
_added a coloured cloudlayer + envlayer
_added numerous details like buildings, which are melted together with the rocks, a stranded spaceship, a landing platform, ...

[cdxbow]

Looking good. Dont get too much into the detail yet.

I guess there are 2 issues, one is the look, so in that case keep exploring 'alien looks', if you need some matching model let me know, I am interested in trying to make some interesting & convincing alien landscape, and some combination of map stuff with models is probably more powerful than either alone. I am generally interested in using the standard RE textures to match environment, and I will experimenting more with the next model pack, which will be some subset of buildings. It could also form the base for any desert, so I would encourage you to explore a few different looks.

The second is how does it play. Have you played?

[fawstoar]

Is there a way to try out MekArcade at the moment? From what I've seen it looks pretty cool, but I can't find a download link of any kind anywhere.

[cdxbow]

I'm afraid there will be no download until early in the new year, and this will be a 'developers release', Essentially the basic building blocks for the game will be there, needing a lot of work to make a quality game. Mapping, balancing and testing. And scripting. Bit of modelling. Some conceptual design work, GUI art. And the story, characterisations, the universe and everything. There is going to be heaps to do.

[quintux_v]

conceptual design work, GUI art

Does conceptual design refer to the campaign or story that you're using? Also, for the GUI, you could do something like mecha panels, roughly similar to the Sauerbraten GUI.

[cdxbow]

By conceptual design I mean the overall look of the game; that includes the meka and other models, maps and the individual environments they evoke. For the meka my main concern has been to not make them look like other well known brands, and it would have been easier to have a concept to work to in terms of look. I would like to explore the 'look' more, but there simply is'nt time at present unless santa puts some modellers in my xmas stocking.

The look of the GUI is low priority at present, how the various bits of the GUI work are high priority. There is quite a bit of scripting needed. This is the current start screen:

[raiden]

Sorry for the delay, this could be the case again in the next days, because of the change of the year.

...
I guess there are 2 issues, one is the look, so in that case keep exploring 'alien looks', if you need some matching model let me know, I am interested in trying to make some interesting & convincing alien landscape, and some combination of map stuff with models is probably more powerful than either alone. I am generally interested in using the standard RE textures to match environment, and I will experimenting more with the next model pack, which will be some subset of buildings. It could also form the base for any desert, so I would encourage you to explore a few different looks.

The second is how does it play. Have you played?

I see and agree with you concerning not to go too much into detail yet, also about the mixture between cubic mapdetails and real mapmodels. About this map, I don't know, if it makes sense to try different things out, when the gameplay is debatable. I have choosen a very simple layout here, to have a better chance to make it playable at a later time. The RE version seems to work, but in Mek Arcade ? I don't know, this should highly depend from the scaling of the mechs and the style of gameplay too ... .
I propose to make a second try, another map with a different layout and theme.

(shortlist of ideas:
_the inside of a huge spaceship alien or humanoid
_the outer casing of a huge battleship
_a rotten or damaged megacity (the mechs between huge houses)
_different sufaces of alienplanets: desert, slimy surface, icy landscape ...
_an outpost under a glass dome (not implicitly a half sphere)
_an aliencity, which needs much fantasy )

2 links for inspirations in modeling :http://www.unvanquished.net/gallery this game presents some interesting ideas and artwork for aliens or alienstructures, sadly there are not very much pictures.
http://balancedannihilation.org/portfolio/item/modeling-core-units/ this link could be interesting for buildings and human structures (fusionreactors, solarfields, fabrics, radarstations, cannons, etc.) mainly. Both are open scource projects so far as I know, but I wouldn't garanty for any deeper artcontents. I show this only for inspiration. Both projects have predecessors, partly commercial ones.

You could tell me, what should be the most useful step. I also started another retexturing for "outpost", but I'm not satisfied enough concerning the results until now.
For an alienworld, I imagine slimy structures in shape of eggs, partly transparent, with shadowy insectoids inside for example. Also alien trees could be useful, maybe with long stems and an eggshape at the top... .

[cdxbow]

Those are all interesting environments. I've always had a fondness for plants & weeds, so I would be happy to produce some models if you redo outpost. Regarding the look, you lead with the map and I will follow with the models. I want to try to use the same textures and experiment with some fx.

The current outpost might work well with hill structure in the middle, a couple of ramps on each side and a bunch of powerups in the middle. This was a popular style of map in MechAssault, but we can't really work that out till I have the game out.

[raiden]

Dito, I can remove the rocks in the middle and replace it by something better for gameplay. I will also try to find another look and let some place for vegetation. Depending on the modes you plan to make: would it be better to have starting points for 2 or 4 fractions ?
I hope I understand you correctly . I can't give you a concrete date for the progress, I'm not at home during some days now.

[cdxbow]

No rush, it has taken 3 years to get this far.

I don't much like 4 way games, so 2 would be OK, but if you feel strongly about 4, do 4.

[quintux_v]

By conceptual design I mean the overall look of the game; that includes the meka and other models, maps and the individual environments they evoke. For the meka my main concern has been to not make them look like other well known brands, and it would have been easier to have a concept to work to in terms of look. I would like to explore the 'look' more, but there simply is'nt time at present unless santa puts some modellers in my xmas stocking.

The look of the GUI is low priority at present, how the various bits of the GUI work are high priority. There is quite a bit of scripting needed. This is the current start screen:

I'd have thought that you do conceptual design before you do anything else... But if you've got most of it down already then you're probably OK. I'm liking the GUI, what kind of scripting do you need? I used to be pretty good at Cubescript.

I propose to make a second try, another map with a different layout and theme.

http://mekarcade.com/site/node/43 - cdxbow's timeline of events on the mekarcade website. That could help, I'm not sure what the plans are for how much the game keeps to that.