Hardcore Players
#95 posted by dis on 2011/05/10 09:33:27
Anyone tried the Hell skill level yet?
Hell... NO!
Just when I thought I was done with this thing!!!!
Anyways, a little more rant.
Did not mention how much I like the WAND. It's the Quake equivalent of the Painkiller: a multi purpose weapon, jump booster, potentially lethal, if you're out of ammo but you have cover. WONDERFUL.
All maps seem to run perfectly on my 2004 rig, even without vising, on all skill levels...
A few more nits: a coupla centerprints keep appearing when passing through. Most notably the message about the magicians in last room, but there are more that I don't remember right now.
Also, can anyone (Tronyn?) confirm what I said in my spoiler about an empty secret with no way out? Am I missing something?
And last. Don't get me wrong, I like this a whole lot!
On to hell.
Empty Secret With No Exit
#97 posted by ericw on 2011/05/10 10:05:55
I hit that too - in a well in map 3 or 4? I figured it was a bug.
Oh boy, there's a hell difficulty? I've only played skill 0 so far :0
I Always Feel Bad After Stomping Tronyn Like That...
#98 posted by negke on 2011/05/10 10:10:49
jt_: Please do light them while you're at it. It doesn't take long. I just did a quick -extra4 run (with fade gate 1 to speed it up) and the shadows looked much better. Though I foolishly overwrote the original maps and couldn't compare. The jagged ones were only really noticable on the ceilings iirc.
necros: So it's all intentional now? Hmmmm.. Fair enough, though I did notice at least one ogre that was stuck but (imo) wasn't supposed to. Two items fall out in arc3 on skill 2: a box of rockets at -448 1544 38 and a box of spikes at -528 1544 38.
In arcanum5 the doors "wtfvore" and "wtfvore1" have an unmatched target "lightning".
There're also invalid fields in worldspawn (mapversion, wadversion, 0.85). And a note to anyone who intents to use the .map sources: Be sure to delete the multiple worldspawn entries in some of them!
A drop-in-the-ocean hotfix for people who are affected by novis slowdown:
Download visbjp.zip and extract bspinfo.exe and vis.exe to the same folder as the maps. Then run bspinfo -prt arcanum1 and vis -fast arcanum1; do the same with arcanum4 and arcanum5. This will not make the maps super-playable, but the polycount will be a bit lower in some areas which should make for a slight increase in fps.
Haven't checked out the other two maps, were there precompiled versions in the source zip?
3.
I tried to open the source in an editor to check things, and it looks as THERE ARE items in the pool(25 health, rockets, cells).
So, these fail to spawn? Or did an unfinished version of this map creep in?
I Guess These Are Falling Out?
Yes, there are precompiled versions in the sources pack.
Items In The Pool
#101 posted by jakub on 2011/05/10 10:26:50
i'm not sure which pool exactly you have in mind, but i encountered one pool with this set of items in arcanum3 (not sure, i'll check when i get home) and all the items were knee deep stuck in a bottom of this pool/well. i had to noclip to pick these up (darkplaces).
-
jakub
..Vis Or Not Vis
#102 posted by Delor on 2011/05/10 12:06:42
..Let's say rough: many people (I for sure) hate Vising their maps simply because is boring, time consuming and liable to errors.
so as a(relatively) new mapper I ask you: IS IT REALLY NECESSARY TO FULL-VIS EVERY MAP ?
replies needed :)
Yes
#103 posted by Ankh on 2011/05/10 12:15:28
applies to 95 % of maps
#104 posted by [Kona] on 2011/05/10 13:26:20
Ooooh, yeah I think I went into the final wizard room with invisibility, but I assumed that was going to be the final battle and didn't realise you were supposed to run right past them upstairs. I don't search around much - found maybe 4 secrets in the entire pack. So instead I fired a rocket into the toughest, then madly strafed around the room until they were all dead. Couldn't have done it without full lg and ra though. But shit, going upstairs would have been easier!!!
The battle I really liked was those 3 big ogre things that run fucking fast towards you. Basically double-sg only enemies. They were really cool!
The 1st map I didn't like much either. The underground looked good enough, but all the annoying zombies didn't enhance gameplay. And you need to have put the chainsaw in, not a triple-hit-gibbing-axe.
2nd map was great, but got confusing sometimes. After the bridge extended to the sk, I couldn't see how I was supposed to get back up without backtracking over a large amount. Some good fights though.
3rd level was really good, definitely my favourite. battles were tough and epic as well. The textures all looked good.
4th level was good, but it seemed like a huge room filled with lots of different levels and stairs, etc. Which weakened it. Moving into the final area was good though and improved it. The ogres and vores scattered on distant ledges were just a pain in the ass.
5th level was good. The constant noise from the pool was annoying, but apart from that a good final level. Apart from the epic wizard fight it was all pretty easy though.
Anyway great pack! Enemies were all good. The only one I didn't like so much was the super bastard hell knight that blocks all your weapons expect dsg and lg, and fires those red cunt projectiles at you. That's a quickload nightmare taking him on unless you have lots of space for 1-direction-only strafing (which seems to be his only weakness).
Delor
#105 posted by gb on 2011/05/10 16:15:09
It's good practice to fullvis your stuff for the final release. Find someone with Wvis and a fast machine and ask them to do it for you.
What would be even more awesome is a distributed vis system like Vis@home... � la distcc, only for vis.
#106 posted by mh on 2011/05/10 16:37:26
What would be even more awesome is a distributed vis system like Vis@home... � la distcc, only for vis.
Now that would be an awesome idea!
Ideas Are My Job
#107 posted by gb on 2011/05/10 17:58:21
#108 posted by Spirit on 2011/05/10 18:14:13
ZHLT netvis does it.
Also the idea is ancient, see http://www.celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=4&start=16&end=17
I doubt it would be too reasonable to make this. We got multi-threaded VIS just recently.
MH recently posted somewhere about how a well written modern engine can even be faster with unvised data if I recall correctly.
#109 posted by gb on 2011/05/10 18:15:42
> ZHLT netvis does it.
link?
#110 posted by mh on 2011/05/10 18:45:45
Unvised is something I might test sometime; it's a tradeoff though. The theory is that you can put the entire world into a big static vertex buffer and draw it without having to send any data to the GPU. Use shaders for water and sky and there is absolutely no need to modify vertexes at run time.
The tradeoff of course is that you'll have extra overdraw, but if bandwidth savings can more than compensate for it then you're in business.
Vis
#111 posted by RickyT33 on 2011/05/10 19:13:35
Always vis a map. Or DIE!!!!
Drawing Everything In Large VBO
it's not a problem even for large maps, at least on semi-recent hardware. Overdraw is not so much of a problem as bandwidth usually is (for 3D accelerator cards).
Whooo!
#113 posted by Hrimfaxi on 2011/05/10 19:58:15
I'm glad I stayed to play more maps than the first one. The first map was pretty annoying in my opinion.
But the second map!!! Wow! This is a big very amazing map, Good stuff everywere, Good brushwork and texture use and a nice layout! Loved it (but not the wizards!)
I can see from the other comments that the good stuff continues!
Looking forward to play the next maps!
Thank you for making this pack folks!
Hehe
#114 posted by necros on 2011/05/10 20:24:36
maybe i should have added an additional note in the OP: 'if you hate the first map, just skip to arc2!' :P
#115 posted by mh on 2011/05/10 21:44:50
it's not a problem even for large maps, at least on semi-recent hardware. Overdraw is not so much of a problem as bandwidth usually is (for 3D accelerator cards).
My thoughts exactly. Early Z and a few other things can work wonders for overdraw. It's not an alternative to fullvis, and will still run slower than fullvis (not least because you still need to exercise your vertex shader in order to get early Z), but at the least it should (could!) eliminate a lot of the badness from no vis. All purely theoretical and not to mention hardware dependent, of course.
Not Sure
What you mean by early Z. But anyway, I have implemented a VBO renderer that can render for example Vondurs AC without ever looking at the BSP (it loads the map file). It's pretty fast and still has a lot of potential for optimization.
#117 posted by necros on 2011/05/10 22:14:34
that's pretty wild, loading it directly from the map file.
perhaps some stress testing with these arcanum maps? :P
Would Love To Try
but the map files are in WC format.
#119 posted by Trinca on 2011/05/10 22:52:28
I guess I will play this maps for the next month... love then so much... I'm keeping first demos even when I died in 30 monters or so... anyone want then?
full reply after play then all
But must thanks you guys a lot, this is something I will never make... the quality, layout and bushwork is top is the kind of stuff few guys born for it!
I didn't :)
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