Still Working On My NAE NAE
But I have my WIP! :D Anyone? Oh, shut up.
Quick intro: I'm new here, I don't talk much, but I type a lot when I finally say something. This is one of those times, so no hard feelings if you want to just skim this whole thing.
I'd love to make a bit more progress before sharing anything, but my sleep schedule is screwed up and I'm too tired to Google "time zone converter", so in the interest of not missing the roll call deadline, here are some shots:
http://imgur.com/a/5mxh4
I tried to show an interesting portion of the map without giving too much away. It's a fairly open plan, I don't want to spoil the sense of discovery showing the whole thing at once. It's for your own good, you understand. Yes, that's a good way to rationalize it.
In order, the album shows an overview of the center of the map (it'll get extra light as I go along, don't worry), a view under the lava bridge, and a closer view of the structures beyond. The last image is just for fun, and is apparently what my sloppy temp geometry does when Tyrutils' light is run with -extra4. It started when I added -gate 1.0, but has persisted even though I've removed the option. A default compile works fine. I'm sure I'm just asking too much of the tools, I'll get my crap together soon enough. Or maybe my computer will melt.
My work so far is primitive as all hell, since unfortunately I'm still blocking out the map. Rough geometry, placeholder textures, just enough to organize my thoughts and get the map running. I've got a grand total of four enemies in there right now, and the triggers, doors and keys are only almost all there. I'm a slug.
Part of the reason for that, though, is hopefully justifiable. I spent the two days before the jam started, and a couple once I began mapping, hacking away at Metapyzik's VMF Instance Inserter. It's a third party utility for Source engine games that lets you use func_instances (see
https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Func_instance to learn more) in branches of Source whose tools don't natively support them.
I've found instances, and by extension VMFII, more than a bit useful in my own projects, and in the run up to this event it occurred to me the VMF format isn't too far from the MAP format, nor are Quake FGDs dissimilar from the Source versions. So my fork of VMFII now supports Quake maps. You can't see the instance contents in editor, of course, since that would require editor-specific support, but they compile properly, name fixup and variable/material replacements work, and I'm using a couple of them in my own map. I'll clean up the code and publish the branch to Github at some point, I just want to use it for a while longer to see if I stumble over any more giant bugs. Keep an eye out here if you're interested:
https://github.com/ItEndsWithTens/VMFInstanceInserter
As far as everyone else's work:
necros: Your work for this Map Jam is making me Map Jelly. I'm a Hammer/Jackhammer devotee, myself, but I'm always fascinated by what comes out of 3D modeling packages with converters like Warren's. Keep it up, can't wait to play!
Breezeep: Teasing people with an item is a great idea, but if it were me I'd go a step further and have a monsterjump launch something out of there after a few seconds.
matecha: I love that ledge up in the corner. Is that where the stairs lead, or are we getting a glimpse at a potential secret area?
Scampie, you posted that while I was writing all this, now I feel like an even bigger schlub.
Sorry for the essay! Looking forward to the results, hope I can bang this thing out fast enough to finish on time. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a map to map.