Ara (aka The Unnamed Map)

[J]

All righty, the first public version of Ara was released today. It wasn't meant to be released yet but it was. We played it through and it was a huge lagfest, but we believe it wasn't caused by the map but J-M setting his antialiasing to over nine thousaaand x.

There are still a few things to fix:
-too many enemies, it gets a bit boring after a while
-one chest doesn't spawn because of a wrong spawnarea name
-only one chest has something in it, the others only contain a few gold coins
-the boss minions keep spawning after the boss has died, it was suggested to be changed
-view distance could probably be longer
-monster ramping created some irritation
-Taol can speak to the room above

DOWNLOAD

 

[Littlefrodo]

I dont have so much to say about this screen, there is a bigger house in a smaller village right? It's looks nice
What is this map going to be? a village ´surrounded with areas to explore? and kill things?
I dont think msc needs anymore neutral maps like thornlands or edana and so on. Msc needs new areas like a new world to eplore like a series of maps with desert landscape for example.
I mean like a whole new expansion

Anyway I hope its grows into something nice and fun GLHF!

 

[J]

The map has a village with a few buildings and a harbor a bit like in Deralia. There are some caves, forest and a dungeon type place. There are already enough neutral places in MSC, but since I already made a village I thought the story could be that enemies have taken over the place. I won't make it a neutral/low-level/buyzone type map. And you are right, MSC needs more different types of scenarios. I didn't take screenshots of the other parts because I don't want to reveal it all.

I was thinking that there could be a few friendly NPCs who would give you quests like the golden axe quest: "the <enemy type>s have taken over our village, please help us by killing X enemies".

 

[Littlefrodo]

Killing quest sounds cool

 

[evilsquirrel]

you may want to mix up the archetecture of the buildings a bit, make them look more interesting and such.

 

[J]

I admit the buildings are a bit blocky, but I don't think I'll make any major changes to the structure anymore.

 

[evilsquirrel]

add a bit of detailing to them, then.

pillars, wall supports, clotheslines, windows, small balconies, etc.

 

[J]

Well, my idea was not to concentrate in details that much but I guess I could add some. I've actually added a few tables and such there, and the insides of buildings are a bit more detailed. I just kept the outside area rather simple because I didn't want high r_speeds.

 

[Littlefrodo]

Please can you post some more pictures of ur map becuase that one doesn't look so promising

 

[J]

Edit: pics offline

That's most of the map. The reason I was suggesting it to be a default map was that I'm not sure I could be able to make a whole series. It's a lengthy task. Oh well, we'll see what happens.

 

[ceriux]

honestly i like how his towns and such are set up... and i think with more practice he could do really good, he can map towns better than i can lol....

 

[Littlefrodo]

I like those pictures, It looks good J you can map, and I think you can do it better also becuase u told us that you did't want to concentrate in details that much

 

[J]

Thanks, guys, I appreciate that

 

[Dridmar]

Those pictures look very good in my opinion, keep up the great work man!

 

[Gaz]

Lighting is letting this one down. Also, pic with the skeles in, needs a more contrasting floor against the walls (but not too much)

 

[J]

Yeah, I haven't adjusted the light_environment yet.

As for the contrast, the floor texture is much lighter than the walls but the lighting in the room somehow kills the difference. In Hammer it looks completely different, but you're right, it needs to be fixed.

 

[Thothie]

I know I already went over this with you, but I thought I'd mention it again for everyone else: WE DON'T NEED TOWN MAPS plzktnx.

Basically, the only town map we need is the elven city, which should have some crazy insane magical architecture - a spot for a friendly dragon and attendants, and a hostile hostile underground area leading to another dungeon.

We have Verath, which is more of an outpost than a town - the majority of the map is hostile territory, and Verath itself, is potentially hostile.

 

[J]

Very true.

I think people tend to make town maps because the architecture can be more interesting there in comparison to caves and forests for example. Anyway, if I make a map after this one, I promise and guarantee it will not be a town.

 

[J]

The map now has some enemies in it and it would be nice to get to test it with other people, I just don't know how it should be done.

There are no rewards or anything, just killing. I'm not quite sure how difficult the map will be, I might have put too many enemies there but we'll see. Here's the list of enemies, don't read if you don't want to spoil it for yourself:

Wave 1 (kill all to get to wave 2):
4 x orc archer (10 lives each)
4 x orc (10 lives each)

Wave 2 (kill all to get to wave 3):
4 x blackhand archer (10 lives each)
5 x blackhand warrior (10 lives each)

Wave 3 (kill all to get further):
5 x elite blackhand archer (10 lives each)
4 x orc champion (10 lives each)
2 x orcish brawler (10 lives each)

There's also the shop cellar that has 3 fangtooth spawns with infinite lives. After the waves a few doors open and you get to go further. There's the cellar/dungeon which is set up like this at the moment:

6 x walking ashes (20 lives each)
Kill them and you get:
2 x ghastly knight (doesn't get up, 10 lives each)
1 x soul eater (1 life)
Kill the soul eater and a gate opens and you get:
8 x undead warrior (10 lives each)

Or if you chose to go to the forest you get:
7 x orcish flayer (10 lives each)
3 x orcish brawler (10 lives each)
After which you get to kill:
5 x huge aggressive wild boar (10 lives each)
After which comes:
1 x boar made of metal (1 life)

Also there are some infinitely spawning spiders in the cave and the tunnel. As you can see, there are hundreds of enemies altogether and it could get boring very fast so I might need to make adjustments. I'm just hoping the number of enemies isn't overkill and won't lag up the game. I've used a bunch of counters to limit the number of simultaneous enemies. And as I said, there are no rewards/items/chests, so after killing a horde one needs to face the anticlimax as nothing happens.

 

[Thothie]

The map now has some enemies in it and it would be nice to get to test it with other people, I just don't know how it should be done.

I'd warn ya not to test your map on FN, but not a real issue ATM. ^_^

See your PM for where you can get an FN archive, you can use this as a collection of server-side characters. (Dump the archive into your msc/SAVE folder)

To setup your listenserver.cfg for server-side characters, remove any "exec fuznet.cfg" line and add:

ms_central_enabled 0
ms_serverchar 3

Also, if you are using fireallperish to make things happen after all the monsters die, familiarize yourself with the issues with and solutions to that: viewtopic.php?t=1379&start=10

 

[J]

Thanks

No fireallperish used and the triggers should work now.

 

[J]

I'm running into a few problems. I set up the FN archive and it works but there are some other things that don't work.


Nevermind these, they have something to do with the FN archive

First, when running the map a message saying something like "Sprite: pSprite has no frames!!!" gets spammed in the console. Is this normal?

Second, after playing for a while the game crashes and says "Fatal Error, Cache_UnlinkLRU: NULL link". Any ideas what could be causing it?

Also, now when I am in the game, the health bars (the potions that is) don't appear correctly. The values are still there (like 224/355) but the bars are missing and there's some weird corrupted-like graphics on the right potion.



And this one I fixed

This one has been around for a while, I can't get msarea_music to play for some reason. I think this is my fault because it worked earlier but I remade the brush and now it doesn't work. Anyway, I have an msarea_music with a key named unnamed.mp3 and value 1 and I have the unnamed.mp3 in my msc/music directory. It's probably difficult say what's wrong with it based on that info so I'll try to look into it myself.


Lastly, there's still the echo problem I mentioned earlier. When a player enters the map there's an echo in the sounds, I tried to place an env_sound to get rid of the echo and gave it a huge radius but the effect doesn't take place right away when entering the map. So if there's a better way of disabling the echo, let me know. This isn't a big problem though.

 

[J]

I'm running a listen server now. I had it up for a while last night and earlier today but no-one joined. I figured "Unnamed map test" wasn't a snazzy enough name so it's now called "The Sacred Deathblades of Darklord Eternum" and I'm hoping people will join. Or if they can't join or download the map off the server, please tell me so I know something's wrong.

Edit:
Mikkel was kind enough to test the map and we got through the 3 waves but there was something wrong with triggering the doors to open. Either I have screwed up something or MSC didn't spawn all the enemies or send the triggering to the counter. It happened in wave 2 once earlier when I was testing alone but next time it worked so there might actually be something wrong with MSC's spawning/triggering.

Anyway, I guess I'll just drop the count values a little below the number of enemies so that even if all the monsters didn't spawn/send the trigger, it wouldn't halt the map.

In addition to that, the waves were too long - at least for 2 players - so I'll need to change them too.

 

[Thothie]

First, when running the map a message saying something like "Sprite: pSprite has no frames!!!" gets spammed in the console. Is this normal?

This, usually, happens when you change a map without actually joining a game - the health bar sprites get corrupted on load for some reason.

Second, after playing for a while the game crashes and says "Fatal Error, Cache_UnlinkLRU: NULL link". Any ideas what could be causing it?

That one is still a mystery to me, but I know certain maps sometimes cause it when they are loaded first on a listenserver (Deralia).

Also, now when I am in the game, the health bars (the potions that is) don't appear correctly. The values are still there (like 224/355) but the bars are missing and there's some weird corrupted-like graphics on the right potion.

This is the new version of the -32000+ health scrolling bug. I figure it's somewhat preferable over the old problem. Sometimes you'll get it on the map following health sprite corruption too. show_health in console is my personal work around, as it gives both a quazi-visual bar and numbers.

This one has been around for a while, I can't get msarea_music to play for some reason. I think this is my fault because it worked earlier but I remade the brush and now it doesn't work. Anyway, I have an msarea_music with a key named unnamed.mp3 and value 1 and I have the unnamed.mp3 in my msc/music directory. It's probably difficult say what's wrong with it based on that info so I'll try to look into it myself.

I *think* the proper use of msarea_music is in the tutorial... Some other things about HL1's internal mp3 handler that will cause it not to play:
- Doesn't like sampling rates over 192kbps
- Doesn't like ID3 tags
- Doesn't like variable bi-rate

Lastly, there's still the echo problem I mentioned earlier. When a player enters the map there's an echo in the sounds, I tried to place an env_sound to get rid of the echo and gave it a huge radius but the effect doesn't take place right away when entering the map. So if there's a better way of disabling the echo, let me know. This isn't a big problem though.

Check the entity report, make sure you do not have another env_sound in there. It could also be something in the world_spawn (map properties) - I think there's a global EAX setting. Worst case scenario, disable your EAX.

I'm running a listen server now. I had it up for a while last night and earlier today but no-one joined. I figured "Unnamed map test" wasn't a snazzy enough name so it's now called "The Sacred Deathblades of Darklord Eternum" and I'm hoping people will join. Or if they can't join or download the map off the server, please tell me so I know something's wrong.

Ja kinda need to go around and snag people for that sort of thing, rather than just leave an open server.

Mikkel was kind enough to test the map and we got through the 3 waves but there was something wrong with triggering the doors to open. Either I have screwed up something or MSC didn't spawn all the enemies or send the triggering to the counter. It happened in wave 2 once earlier when I was testing alone but next time it worked so there might actually be something wrong with MSC's spawning/triggering.

I'd have to see the map source. :/ Most likely something missed somewhere.

Anyway, I guess I'll just drop the count values a little below the number of enemies so that even if all the monsters didn't spawn/send the trigger, it wouldn't halt the map.

This is a typical precaution, it is usually effective.

 

[J]

I'll have these sorted out, no worries.

The pSprite message and crashing with a fatal error have vanished, I have no idea why.

I don't mind the health bar, at least the numeric value is there.

Msarea_music works fine now, 'twas my bad.

The echo doesn't really bother me since it's there only for a short while, so it's no biggie if I can't get rid of it.

Don't worry about the triggers, you've got your hands full already, I'll just drop the count value.