Finishing up my first map

[Regorty]

I added lighting to the map, still working on the door, conveyors, triggers. I might add in some monster place holders to make things a little easier on whoever uses this map.

Map:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/nv39ejixf3x62 ... actice.bsp

 

[Thothie]

I might add in some monster place holders to make things a little easier on whoever uses this map.

If you did that, I may have to kiss you... However, as Oyster has laid claim to this map, as he has every underground map, I dunno if it'll ever see the light of day, so my sexual orientation may yet remain secure.

edit: Blah... The lighting looks promising, but I can't really see what you did with the textures from here, via BSP viewer, as you didn't integrate the textures when you compiled.

 

[Regorty]

I might add in some monster place holders to make things a little easier on whoever uses this map.

If you did that, I may have to kiss you... However, as Oyster has laid claim to this map, as he has every underground map, I dunno if it'll ever see the light of day, so my sexual orientation may yet remain secure.

edit: Blah... The lighting looks promising, but I can't really see what you did with the textures from here, via BSP viewer, as you didn't integrate the textures when you compiled.

Integrate the textures? I don't know what that means.

 

[ceriux]

theres an option to compile the textures directly into the map, maybe thats what hes talking about?

 

[TheOysterHippopotami]

I believe that is what he is talking about. Use the expert compiler or a batch file to 'run the command'

-wadinclude "wadfile" "wadfile" etc.

under csg.exe to embed your .wad files into the map itself so nobody has to download them to play the map.

If you did that, I may have to kiss you... However, as Oyster has laid claim to this map, as he has every underground map, I dunno if it'll ever see the light of day, so my sexual orientation may yet remain secure.

Most of the underworld maps are 100% completed in every way except one: monsters. The only thing left to do for a first release is for me to add placeholder spawns in the right areas and then for you to make the actual monsters.

Unfortunately, I feel the need to do this by myself because I know that you will work your dark magic and find some way to fit linear objectives into these open ended maps, like you did with orc_for and hunderswamp. I'd love to have help with this tedious process, but in order to do that you have to let go of the notion that a 'map' is a single, isolated entity in and of itself.

 

[Thothie]

Simpler to use:
-nowadtextures -wadautodetect
On the HLCSG line, so you don't need to define specific wads for every map you build.

Depending on which compiler you use, you may also have to define an environment variable to point the thing at your wad folder on a separate line before the HLCSG. (eg. set WADROOT=d:\hldev\wads)

I know that you will work your dark magic and find some way to fit linear objectives into these open ended maps, like you did with orc_for and hunderswamp.

I did no such thing! Hunderswamp was populated exactly that way when it arrived. And orc_for, while not populated, didn't have any of its areas nor brushwork altered - near as I can tell the flow is as intended, and the auto-adjust feature is as requested. Certainly never had any complaints from Rehab on either. ...and I know not of this notion you speak of.

 

[MS:C community]

If I recall correctly, -nowadtextures embeds every texture into the BSP. This bloats the filesize and that's not really a good thing when most of the textures can generally be found in the already present default MS:C wadfiles.

 

[Thothie]

Which be why you also use -wadautodetect - which detects which textures are used in the map, and embeds only those.

It also skips any textures used on any brushes with zhlt_renderless to save a wee bit more memory.

 

[TheOysterHippopotami]

And orc_for, while not populated, didn't have any of its areas nor brushwork altered - near as I can tell the flow is as intended, and the auto-adjust feature is as requested. ...

Wait a sec... I recall rehab himself telling me that you had copy/pasted an entire section of orc_for to make it bigger (two of the transition rooms are the same), which is how he got the nickname "srgnt prefab" and I also thought you added that weird black pillar with the red circles before the boss???

 

[Thothie]

I did add the fancy crystal pillar for lighting, as I couldn't find my way up the stairs in play testing (seemed silly to need glow just for that stair case), but other than that, and degrouping the merged hut brushes (that were causing them to render everywhere), and some invalid brushes in the tree tops, didn't touch a thing... Although, I think that bit after the orcs originally just dead-ended, rather than going on to Bloodrose, so I did copy pasta another transition after that point (maybe what you're alluding to) - but it didn't add any more mobs or any real space to the map - and otherwise, you would have had to battle your way through the entire castle sequence to reach Bloodrose - which seemed a bit cruel given that it's mid level.

On Hunderswamp, I added the entire transition from The Wall - used to be you started right at the mouth of the swamp. That was just to make the world more contiguous, and you'll note I didn't add any monsters to that section. Also de-grouped the black shadow brushes between the cave walkways and lower pits, as those were, similarly, rendering everywhere. But if I had populated it myself, I wouldn't have dreamed of going to the trouble of the incredibly complex random monster chains that Rehab setup, that sadly, folks probably don't hardly notice. The one bit of monster population I did change, was swapping out his regular super-beefed (x10 multipier) orcs for Borsh, but he probably would have done that himself, if I had gotten the scripts to him sooner. I think I split up the spawns a bit, so not quite so many mobs would spawn at once with no players about as well (was being a bit rough on the server) - but the encounters remain the same... And fixed one or two accidental racial interaction issues... Oh, and added the pit to the boss chamber, to let the interaction work, and optimized it a bit, but I sent that back to him as a map fragment to re-integrate himself. (Which he did.)

Of course, later, I added the bit where you have to explore the rest of the map to open that boss chamber, but it was either that, or make the boss worth next to no XP and nerf the hell out of its loot - really shoulda figured that out before the initial release (plus the exploit that came up), but was kinda rushing it out at the time... But if anything, that made it less linear, and not more, as otherwise there was no reason not to just run to that boss over and over again, skipping over the whole exploration process for instant gratification.

 

[Regorty]

Anyone wanna tweak my map so that you get pushed in the direction of the water? There is just one place where I need that fixed. Right now I am in the process of putting in monster placeholders. Really just about done with the map, I already put in monsterclips so they don't run off into the water. Any other things I should add?

 

[Thothie]

Difficult, being as all ya linked up was a BSP.

 

[Regorty]

Difficult, being as all ya linked up was a BSP.

I thought all I was supposed to link up was the BSP and all else was useless unless you were gonna map it in Hammer?!

 

[Thothie]

Very difficult to fix maps with just the BSP, especially if the water you want to make do the pushing doesn't already contain a func_push. (Not impossible, but a pain, as you're basically editing entities with notepad, and you'd have to go back and do it manually in Hammer anyways, for the source to remain in sync.)

 

[Regorty]

Very difficult to fix maps with just the BSP, especially if the water you want to make do the pushing doesn't already contain a func_push. (Not impossible, but a pain, as you're basically editing entities with notepad, and you'd have to go back and do it manually in Hammer anyways, for the source to remain in sync.)

Wait, I just gotta make the water a func_push or add another object within the ater and make that a func_push?

 

[Regorty]

Very difficult to fix maps with just the BSP, especially if the water you want to make do the pushing doesn't already contain a func_push. (Not impossible, but a pain, as you're basically editing entities with notepad, and you'd have to go back and do it manually in Hammer anyways, for the source to remain in sync.)

Wait, I just gotta make the water a func_push or add another object within the ater and make that a func_push?

Prolly doesn't help that I populated the 1st and 2nd rooms with monsters... Also my sounds aren't working... I'm using those premade sounds from the jm prefab factory, they work on my other map but not on this map.

 

[Thothie]

Wait, I just gotta make the water a func_push or add another object within the ater and make that a func_push?

Yes, that is generally how it is done (a func_push inside the water).

Also my sounds aren't working... I'm using those premade sounds from the jm prefab factory, they work on my other map but not on this map.

I'd have to see the entities in question... If the ambient_generic has a targetname, it has to be targeted by another entity to work. Also check the entity flags - they don't always copy over, depending on how the entity was copied.