Abandoned [WIP] Archives - These Maps Need Mappers!

[Thothie]

Know how to map, but don't feel you have the time or energy to start from scratch? Got the basics of mapping down but still overwhelmed? Weird like me, and prefer working on other people's maps to your own? (Less blame to take that way...) Well, here's your chance to do some good for MSC, see your name in lights (or credit text files, in any case), and watch your friends die repeatedly at the hands of your creation.

We've several nearly completed map sources for anyone who asks can take a stab at finishing. Be creative, you don't even have to keep the original map concept, and the more you expand on the existing source the better.

Adopt one today! The life you save, could be your own!

Various WIP archives: http://www.thothie.com/msc/wip_msc.rar (8mb)

Some examples from or catalogue of the would-be-adopted:
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- RANDOMSNOWFRAGMENTMAP - (60% complete) by Franswa
Randomsnowfragmentmap currently has no official caretaker

Randomsnowfragmentmap Hammer Overview

Indoors... and out.

Originally the beginnings for Tundra, the oft talked of map of frozen ice to connect various nasty areas in the northern part of the world. Contains both ice caves and wide open areas. At first, this map connected to ms_mine, but seems some counts went too high when maps were combined.
Formats: RMF, BSP(fullbright comp)
Have Wads: All
Solids: Complete
Lighting:: 10% Some
Texturing: 99% Complete (some need alignment)
Entities: 30% Some (no monsters)
Needs Expansion: Yes
Issues: Terrain method maybe FPS unfriendly. No _begin and player in ground in BSP.
* I've not looked into it, but it maybe possible to make the Mines + Randomsnowfragmentmap combo work yet still. If so, that'd become mines2 - and all it would need is new ents on the Randomsnowfragmentmap half.
Additional Materials: You may apply this lovely map fragment to the work, but please credit P|Barnum if you do.

- VERATH - (70% complete)
VERATH IS CURRENTLY ADOPTED BY REGORTY!

Verath Hammer Overview

Entrance and caves...
Verath is a small, mostly abandoned town leading to some caves and a strange keep.
Formats: RMF
Have Wads: Most (probably all, but not sure which) - Some textures may need replacement
Solids: Complete
Lighting:: Complete
Texturing: Complete
Entities: 70% (no monsters)
Needs Expansion: Some
Issues: Needs some expansion, although it's fairly packed, so maybe not as much as seen at first glance. Please do not turn it into yet another city/town map. You can setup a functioning town (I'll help with scripts), just make sure that 75%+ of the map winds up being playable area.
* There are a few, minor, bad mapping habits here. The crystals in the caves are made with lighted textures, and then copied over with a clip brush. Lighting textures work for crystals, but a single light works just as well, is more controllable, and generates less lightning entities. Cloning the crystal to make a clip brush also defeats the purpose of putting a clip brush around it (which is to reduce clipping planes); instead, use a box.
Link: http://www.thothie.com/msc_dev4/wip_verath.rar

- RUN - (90% complete)
RUN has no official caretaker

Run is a large but simple outdoor map.
Formats: RMF, BSP
Have Wads: Wads included in archive
Solids: Complete?
Lighting:: 30%
Texturing: Complete
Entities: 20% (no monsters)
Needs Expansion: No
Issues: Not looked it over in detail yet, but seems it could be turned into a solid mid-level map with ease.
LINK TO SOURCE (newer than the one in the wip archive linked above):
http://www.thothie.com/msc_dev3/WIP_run ... evised.zip
Slightly updated variant: http://www.thothie.com/msc_dev3/run2_just_the_rmf.rar

- THE VILLAGE - (20% complete) by LittleFrodo
The village has no official caretaker

The Village Hammer Overview

The Village, while far from complete, does contain some well constructed brushwork, and might be worth integrating into an existing map.

Formats: RMF
Have Wads: Unknown (but allinone.wad and the basic MSC wads seem to cover it.)
Solids: 20% complete (map is not sealed)
Lighting:: 10% Some
Texturing: Complete
Entities: 5% Some (no monsters)
Needs Expansion: Yes (LOTS)
Issues: There were some axis-perpendicular texture errors and an empty solid, but I fixed these before distro.
LINK TO SOURCE: (this is new, and NOT in the wip mass archive)
http://www.thothie.com/msc_dev2/wip-the_village.rar

- HOFTBOFH - (40% complete) by Stoned
The Hoftbofh has no official caretaker

The Hoftbofh Hammer Overview

Now that Nashalrath is off the WIP list, we have another map that makes you spit all over your screen whenever you attempt to say its name.

Formats: RMF
Have Wads: Unknown (but allinone.wad and the basic MSC wads seem to cover it.)
Solids: 90% complete (map has a leak)
Lighting:: none
Texturing: Complete
Entities: 5% Some (no monsters)
Needs Expansion: Some
LINK TO SOURCE: (this is new, and NOT in the wip mass archive)
http://www.thothie.com/msc_dev3/lolwut.rar

- WATER TEMPLE - (60% complete) by Chimz
Water Temple has no official caretaker


Chimz's mapping efforts have been kindly added to the WIP archive.

Possibly good as a connector for or to be cannibalized into the Sunken City of Adel lore concept map. Would be nice to see what it'd look like lit - I've a feeling it'd be lovely, even if the overall design is simple. There's a lot of sweet rooms and structures in this map ripe for copy-pasta. If we were to update the prefab factory, there's a lot of good candidates here.

Formats: RMF, JMF
Have Wads: All Included in archive or MSC
Solids: 90% (Complete, save sealing.)
Lighting:: 40% (Quite a lot of lights, but not sealed.)
Texturing: Complete
Entities: 30% Some (no monsters)
Needs Expansion: Not so much as it needs assembly.
Issues: Epic sized rooms and hallways, a good deal of the map seems to be in pieces made to be pulled or copied together.
Additional Materials: This beast also comes in Jackhammer flavor, and even has some images of the concept materials for the artwork, as well as some PDFs to explain the design goals.
Download: (Link temporarily removed pending confirmation) (~162MB - not in the wip mass archive)


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J's Wip Pack: (link) Includes maps by J, Little G, Joe, Dridje, Little Frodo, P|Barnum, and others, too numerous to list here.

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Also, in the gallery to be abused:
Dridje's WIP Maps

Three nearly complete works, found at that link. Or download direct from here.


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...and last, but certainly not least...

OCULUS by Crow



Oculus is a large series of map fragments, plus two nearly complete (if unpopulated) maps, originally intended to be assembled into a series by Crow. He donated these to us just before he was simultaneously killed by wild boars and kidnapped by aliens.

Download:
http://www.thothie.com/msc_dev4/crow_wip_pack.rar (~250MB)

Most of the wads you might need are in the wads folder, or subfolders. It wouldn't hurt to also have allinone_fixed.wad, but be careful not to load too many large texture packs at once, or you'll have to go into regedit to get Hammer to load again. If you are uncertain as to which wads to use, check the .map files or .bsps (available for all but the_village, which Crow was fiddling with a bit, apparently.)

I'm not going to track who is caretaker for this, as there's more than enough stuff in here to share, and, worst case scenario, we end up with a few maps with entirely different populations made up of similar segments. Still, you may want to announce which bits you are using and what you are doing with them in this thread.

You do not need to attempt to complete the epic "Oculus" series - you may use these maps and fragments any way you wish.

Some explanation of the files in the rar linked above:
• The art folder contains some logos and such Crow had intended to use for the series.
• The fragments folder includes several of the smaller fragments to be assembled.
- Among these, Oculus-World4 has some interesting potential to be our first truly vertical map, if you wanted to build around it, using it as the core. The complex angles may make it tricky though. (Lore wise, would work as one end of The Wall.)
- ( Also, just for the record, we had The Wall well before George R. R. Martin did, damnit! Almost makes me wonder if he plays this game and stole the idea... )
• The oculus6_fail folder contains a large, but conceptually flawed cave map (bad Chinese finger trap design), including a version in which I tried to salvage it for Crow, but to little avail.
- If you do manage to fix it, you'll need to either create rather extensive func_monsterclip stair casing, or populate entirely with ranged monsters and jumpers, as there's so many steep ramps that melee based mobs will otherwise simply slide down them with even light lag.
• The oculus7 folder contains a few variants of two maps that are meant to be glued together. Mind you, the sky brushes do not properly block VIS without some fandangling, so working out how to do this might be complicated.
• In the root, oculus1 is a town map, intended to either be the finale or a hub for the series, and testmap10 is the most complete large world map, made largely of bits from the fragments folder.

Wizard Wars (open source)

Also, a reminder, among a few other games and mods, I am also the official caretaker of Wizard Wars, which has long since gone open source, so you can officially do with the materials as you wish. Some of the map sources are available yonder (scroll down), and maybe viable for use with MSC (the source for the perpetually back-burnered "shrinkspell" among them):
http://www.thothie.com/ww/

Post here if yer interested in working on completing one of these. If we have more than one person working on one map, you can combine your efforts by working on sections, or we can make it into a competition of whoever has the niftiest version.

 

[Crow]

oooooooooooooooooooooooo

that looks like fun >_>

<_< /sigh

Edit: Well, after much debate, mainly with the voices in my head, I decided I want to try one, ....or two
My current project is going slowly, and I think this might help me re-gain my focus, or something :?


__________________________
Artwork by Adam Phillips
http://www.biteycastle.com/html.shtml

 

[Gurluas]

tundra is interesting...
id like to try it...

on another note i got source for goblintown

 

[evilsquirrel]

/me calls bloodrose

i love lighting like crow loves sound

and i can get some monsters in there too, if you want to give me some suggestions as to what kinds of things to put in it, that'd be great too.


i'll just work on this while doing the fixes (if any) on foutpost, speaking of foutpost, i was sad that it didn't have more places for lighting

 

[J-M v2.5.5]

I am really busy with school and I will be busy for the next week or so, but after that I might try the Wicardoven map.

Edit: What is that sexy wadfile with the snow textures?

 

[Avoozl]

After I finish the Frozen Summit, I will definitely be interested in working on one of those.

 

[Gurluas]

As i said i want to do Tundra.

 

[kray1091]

3 Words...
Bad ass maps.




Can't wait till yall have finished the maps shown.





Sorry for the intense cursing.

 

[evilsquirrel]

so...about the getting them so we can work on them

 

[Gurluas]

yah i wanna work

 

[Avoozl]

Dibbs on Verath, can't start until I finish The Frozen Summit though .

 

[Thothie]

Meh - I gotta head out for a few hours... When I get back, I'll send IM's with links to the maps in question to all parties who have posted.

 

[evilsquirrel]

goood....unfortunately most of my mapping time is on weekends

 

[Gurluas]

im looking forward to work

 

[J-M v2.5.5]

Is it allowed to remake a map based on the concept (as in: sexing it up, but keeping the original layout and ideas)?

 

[Thothie]

Is it allowed to remake a map based on the concept (as in: sexing it up, but keeping the original layout and ideas)?

Of course, keep concept or dump it, your choice... Although keep in mind that those maps marked in need of expansion though, well, are in need of expansion.

If this is in regards to Wicard Oven - really it only needs a few expansions, and the areas in which it needs them are pretty obvious (secret well that leads to dead end, and nearby door that goes nowhere etc.). Only other thing it needs is an entrance that works with one of the existing maps (I recommend turning that gate into a door and creating a lead-in area), and most likely, a more robust/difficult monster selection. Might not be a bad idea to expand on the undead trap too. (say, wall breaks open after area is cleared)

 

[evilsquirrel]

so thothie...any idea exactly which wads bloodrose uses?

 

[Thothie]

Not really... I've only an RMF for that one, and I know of no way to extract a wad list from an RMF.

I can tell ya I'm running a lot of wads in Hammer just now (too many, in fact). MOST of the textures came up alright with this combo:
hl: xeno, half-life, liquids
ms: mastersword, medieval, kami-platinum, edana, ms_generic, ms_village, shizo
ext:kuroneko, desnow, snow, forest
unavail/not needed: ( thothie and calruin2_miptext )

That's far too many wads for a safe compile though. The map is fairly simple though, texturewise - you shouldn't have any major issues re-texturing it yourself, if need be.

 

[Gurluas]

thothie you got my PM?

 

[evilsquirrel]

i too have far too many wads in hammer at the moment

but unfortunately, most of the thing is white...guess i'll retexture it and try to make foutpost its own wad file...but it will set me back a bit...


plan:

1) kill lag issues in foutpost (think i've fixed it, but running full compile at home to test)
2) take out massive ammount of wads that are loaded into hammer atm (10!)
3) make a foutpost.wad and release with rc2
4) retexture bloodrose
5) make bloodrose.wad (if necessary)

I hope to have at least the first three done by the end of the week, and then retexture bloodrose next week or over the weekend.

 

[Thothie]

thothie you got my PM?

Don't include hi, hay, hello, or wassup, etc in your message or my Trillian plugin will likely filter you out - just leave your question and I shall get back to you when next I'm around. 192 Trillian buddies = no time for chit chat, specially when some pay your rent, and a good portion of the rest are hi on somethin er' other.

2) take out massive ammount of wads that are loaded into hammer atm (10!)
3) make a foutpost.wad and release with rc2

10 ain't *so* bad... It'll become much less of an issue if you use -wadinclude on the hlcsg, as then it lumps most of the textures into what, memory-wise, is a single wad, and, as an added bonus, you won't have to distro any wads with your map. Eight is your safety zone... But it varies wildly with the wads used, and size doesn't seem to be a factor (seems to be some sort of build up caused by various wad sizes and cross overs or... somethin *shrug*, even Saint Tommy14 doesn't seem to be sure.)

The addage applies though: if it ain't broken, don't fix it. You can start consolidating wads when you come across a compile problem that has no other explanation.

This partial compile may also help with your wad hunt:

Using Wadfile: \hldev\wads\xeno.wad
 - Contains 4 used textures, 7.27 percent of map (263 textures in wad)
Using Wadfile: \hldev\wads\halflife.wad
 - Contains 12 used textures, 21.82 percent of map (3116 textures in wad)
Using Wadfile: \hldev\wads\mastersword.wad
 - Contains 3 used textures, 5.45 percent of map (243 textures in wad)
Using Wadfile: \hldev\wads\medieval.wad
 - Contains 32 used textures, 58.18 percent of map (1141 textures in wad)
Using Wadfile: \hldev\wads\kami-platinum.wad
 - Warning: Larger than expected texture (348972 bytes): '{K_TREE4'
 - Contains 2 used textures, 3.64 percent of map (774 textures in wad)
Using Wadfile: \hldev\wads\edana.wad
 - Contains 1 used texture, 1.82 percent of map (215 textures in wad)

MOST of the textures are in that set. (98.18% of them, to be exact)

...and, since I tried that, I can tell you there are no leaks to track down, so armed with that log, it should be an easy job.

edit: glancing at the compile in HL1, I can tell ya, if you play your cards right, you could turn this into an epic map that'd take hours to complete. It's just effing huge. Good performance, despite that, since all the solids are large, well aligned, and v. simple.

 

[PBarnum]

using 8 or more .wad files can cause errors in the compile. suggest taking all the wads and placing them into 1 mega wad. then using -nowadtextures?

 

[J-M v2.5.5]

Thothie, can you explain how -wadinclude works? Crow and I stumbled upon some massive problems with that in the days of Underkeep (and then you recommended -nowadtextures).

 

[Thothie]

My bad, use -nowadtextures not -wadinclude I've had it integrated into my compile so long, I forgot.

-wadinclude seems to have issues of its own that doesn't make it worth the 5k it saves on the file size.

 

[Thothie]

Those of you working on wicardoven may want:
http://www.thothie.com/msc/wicardwads.rar

And for those of you too lazy to rip apart the included BSP, here's the wad list for that map:
credtex.wad
decals.wad //ommit this ><
forest.wad
lmtex.wad
mastersword.wad
medieval.wad
ms_village.wad
shizo.wad
ms_generic.wad

Also note: there's some weird cache issue with the scripts used on the map. You may need to do a "map edana" then "changelevel ms_wicardoven" to circumvent it. This doesn't seem to affect dedicated servers for some reason.

I had a similar issue on tower.bsp (lure test map). Maybe related to the orc scripts, but not sure. (seems it's strictly a listenserver thing though)