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I worked on Train at the end of the project, about 3-4 weeks. I was responsible for the main train scripting system and the first action bubble (first valley and station). I did write up a page on my website talking about all the things I did with the map. I was mostly involved in the AI combat (pacing) systems and the main train script, it took forever to test it correctly.
I thought the map was cool because it took a traditional game element (rail shooter) and turned it into a sandbox element. (Player freedom) Unfortunately people either loved or hated the level and that was often linked to how they play games. People often expect something to be the same in every game and when it is different, they sadly (for them) forget to try new ways to play. Some reviews and community comments did not even realise you could get off the train and play the level at your own pace, oh well. :/ My postmortem review: http://www.simonoc.com/pages/design/games_pro/warhead_train.htm I even put an easter egg in the first valley across the lake behind the tree's. It was sort of my signature for which levels I worked on. Hi evrybdy !
I'm Mic , italian quake player & mapper.. I've been working hard for months and soon i'll show you my first levels (mostly single player.. eheh) But can you tell me if "Quark" editor is better than "Worldcraft" and why? Is it true "Quark" lets you modify everything (models, skins, sounds, weapons..) ?? Pleaz letme know : ) not really the right thread for this, mapping help would be more applicable since you're asking for, well, mapping help. :P
anyway, which editor is better is widely disputed. it comes down to what you like, and it's up to you to try them all out and see. quark is a good all purpose tool because, yes, it has the capability to modify almost everything. worldcraft and radiant (qeradiant and gtkradiant) are only for mapping. i feel those two have superior mapping capabilities than quark does. Necros is right - apparently QuArK is not so good for mapping.
I use Worldcraft for mapping :) Basically Worldcraft wins in my personal opinion because it has a very good texture lock feature, allowing you to rotate multiple brushes (although you really have to set it to "default to 15 degree rotations"). This makes level creation quite a bit faster. I have never really managed to try Radiant, but apparently it is also very good. Which editor have you been using? Also are you planning on getting your maps tested? If so I would be happy to oblige! Also: - Screenshot please :) QuArK can rotate anything just fine without screwing up the textures. You will just end up in floating point hell. It is a fantastic mapping tool if it wasn't for its quirks that sometimes screw up your map.
In between the food and drink festive excess I have had some time to do some detailing on this old familiar area, which I have featured in many screenshots. (Sort of a benchmark progress screenshot) Getting close to the end of this map, I am hoping to finish it for the beginning of the new year!
http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/maps_q3/moteof1ei1.jpg http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/maps_q3/moteof1ei2.jpg Love the little skull on the ledge outside.
If you want any more testing, feel free to shoot me a link to the latest. I'm being a lazy bastard until the new year and faffing about doing nothing much. *raises beer* Ok this was a stupid idea (from a technical point of view), but it was something I thought would be cool (in my headTM) so I decided to try it out. I wanted to have the Guardian portal show where you are going, so I created a special model of the outside of the castle and then pointed the portal at it. After a lot of work trying to make it look good and match it all up to the insides of the building I finally got it working.
OMG it is freakin awesome, the screenshots do the whole effect no justice. As you walk up to the portal it fades into view, a closeup of the outside of the castle and then the camera pans outwards as you get closer to the portal. You can slightly turn the camera left and right by moving left and right and get the whole depth thing of the model. Plus the electric shader effect on the transformer in the first room you can see working correctly through the front window. Need to add some more moving fog/mist layers around the bottom and across the front and it should be complete. Walking up towards the portal as it fades into view http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/maps_q3/moteof1el1.jpg The final view when you are next to the portal http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/maps_q3/moteof1el2.jpg A framerate killer for sure, but who cares when it looks that cool.
Sock, I'm perpetually in awe of your mapping skills. Here is a an update to the close up of the portal. I have added some dirt and a glass bubble effect to the outer edge of the portal window.
http://www.simonoc.com/images/design/maps_q3/moteof1el3.jpg The frame rate drops from 125 to 80 on my laptop when I have the portal in full screen view (1600x1200 res) on a 2Ghz IBM laptop. The outside model is only 3K polys and the room has no combat or AI. It is certainly much better visually than a static screenshot for the portal background and it does look awesome when in motion. great idea and go for it, its not a playable dm map anyway right, so framerate drop in sp puzzle mode is not a big deal.
Well that is a noticeable fps drop, but my point was that it doesn't matter if the map is not-action oriented. Actually I misunderstood about it being just a model, and not the whole map seen from the outside.
Jago, not everybody has uber-computers, especially people who play 9-13 year old games. It is very unlikely my map will work on hardware that is 5+ yrs old. Even if the screen resolution is lowered, all of the textures have been doubled in size and this will strain most old video cards with slowdowns as the textures are swapped in and out of video memory.
There is no bot/dm style gameplay just exloring and button mashing puzzles which should help a little bit with frame rate issues. Most of the rooms are 20k polys with plenty of multi-layer shaders around and a couple of areas even spike as high as 30K polys. This map was designed to have lots of detail with stuff to look at and explore. The people who could run this map (have good enough hardware) are no longer play Q3 (moved on to better things) and the people left playing Q3 have old machines so this map is really in a dead zone. Coupled with the fact that the 'gameplay' is puzzle based, I fully understand that this map will only played by me and 3 other people (the beta testers). So 4 then . . .
Even if it's only played by a handful of people the thought and time you've put into it makes you a better mapper - it's not wasted. Otherwise nobody here would bother.
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