CTF-Rollercoaster

[Freakish]

w00t!!

The castle is tiiight! The reworked looping sequence is fun too!

Ok so here's the bugs that I noticed..

1)The kicker isn't strong enough; if you don't push any buttons (ie forward/backwards) you undershoot the mouth and splat far below. If the player holds down forward, they'll barely make it into the mouth but will nick the edge and take ~40 damage.

2)The entrance of the castle (the pillar room) gave me very low fps.

3)When you enter the castle and try to go up the corner staircase immediately to your right (it's one of the circular staircases that leads to the battlements), you can't get past the 4th step or so; I had to translocate to get past some invisible barrier.

4)You can't translocate up to the shield belt; there's a sheet under it..maybe intentional?

The castle is really complicated and tight..I like it thus far but look forward to seeing better flow. And yeah I found the hollow pillars that let you down to the basement to the secret elevator..way cool. What's the switch at the top for? It'd be sooo cool if you could somehow leave those in (I'd suggest making the pillar where the lift is have a solid exterior b/c going up you get a flash of the pillar room when you go by); but if they don't fit into the larger plan, that's cool. One thing..the down pillar (I guess I'll call it); if you fall from far above, you can accidentally hit one of the edges of the floor in the main room and splat instead of safely hitting water; dunno how to remedy that (unless it's with some teleporter that's not visible and doesn't make a noise). And falling down a few different towers, I noticed that there are tiny lips in the wall you can hit and stand on..minor things.

Anyways..the beta is cool!! Thanks for letting us see your progress..

 

[Luggage]

d/ling now

 

[Astyanax]

Re: w00t!!

Originally posted by Freakish
The castle is tiiight! The reworked looping sequence is fun too!

Ok so here's the bugs that I noticed..

1)The kicker isn't strong enough; if you don't push any buttons (ie forward/backwards) you undershoot the mouth and splat far below. If the player holds down forward, they'll barely make it into the mouth but will nick the edge and take ~40 damage.

2)The entrance of the castle (the pillar room) gave me very low fps.

3)When you enter the castle and try to go up the corner staircase immediately to your right (it's one of the circular staircases that leads to the battlements), you can't get past the 4th step or so; I had to translocate to get past some invisible barrier.

4)You can't translocate up to the shield belt; there's a sheet under it..maybe intentional?

1) I allready warned you for that! Strange thing is, at one computer the kicker is just right, at another one it's too slow... But I'll make it faster; slowing down your horizontal speed is very easy.

2) I've converted all pillars into meshes, so the polycounts are fine in there.... however the nodecount in that room is 3x the polycount What to do??

3) Ah those collision errors... one of the main reasons I never released CTF-CastlesOnTheRocks. The collision errors come and go every rebuild; they may disappear by themselves, or I may have to remake those stairs.

4) It's glass... I think I forgot to make the glass texture Unlit. You need to translocate to the roof to get it.

 

[Astyanax]

Re: w00t!!

Originally posted by Freakish
The castle is really complicated and tight..I like it thus far but look forward to seeing better flow. And yeah I found the hollow pillars that let you down to the basement to the secret elevator..way cool. What's the switch at the top for? It'd be sooo cool if you could somehow leave those in (I'd suggest making the pillar where the lift is have a solid exterior b/c going up you get a flash of the pillar room when you go by); but if they don't fit into the larger plan, that's cool. One thing..the down pillar (I guess I'll call it); if you fall from far above, you can accidentally hit one of the edges of the floor in the main room and splat instead of safely hitting water; dunno how to remedy that (unless it's with some teleporter that's not visible and doesn't make a noise). And falling down a few different towers, I noticed that there are tiny lips in the wall you can hit and stand on..minor things.

It used to be way more complicated! I'll dig up CTF-CastlesOnTheRocks from my other computer and upload it at SDP as beta, so you can see what all those hollow pillars are about!

The switch: I guess you mean the visible Trigger? Try looking UP after triggering it! (The flag is supposed to come down on a mover as well, but I haven't made a new mover yet.) The room needs a floor first anyway... there's not much to stand on up there...

I also noticed you easily hit an edge when falling down through a hollow pillar.
I tried making a solid hollow pillar, but that looks very weird among those pillars with meshes.
I tried making an invisible collision hull (a hollow cylinder), but that made the mesh of the pillar turn totally black, even though the collision hull was totally inside the mesh.
The original idea was to make those hollow pillars a way down, out of the castle. But since that doesn't work as well as I hoped, why not make it a way UP? And I'm not talkin' 'bout velocity zones here; I was thinking about more flybys! Like in the Unreal ending sequence, you go a long long way up in a very cool way... what if I made something like that to cover the huge vertical trip up inside the big rock?! The flyby would take you through the hollow pillars without problems, because your collision with the world is disabled while interpolating!

If this is "the larger plan", there's not going to be any basement or lift taking you up in the big tower. But well... I was going to delete those anyway.

What d'ya think of more flybys, taking you up to the castle?

 

[Freakish]

Something I just thought of with regards to flybys and the coasters..they ought to all be about the same speed (and no teleporters) so that people can't see a flag carrier jump in, find another route, and be waiting on the other end to cap the poor sap who just got popped out.

Another flyby, if not too slow, ought to be cool..
Too bad you can't get those pillars to work right. Ah well.

 

[Luggage]

W00t! Nice!
But: The flybys have to be mucho faster! The acceleration before the jump is (not a flyby, I know, but) much too slow! After being kicked you're about twice as fast = doesn't fit.

Hmm, and maybe you should use less Interpolationpoints in the looping, it feels a bit, hm, choppy? IMO 4 or 5 would be enough - it's interpolation, right?

The pillars: Don't use the meshes, use brushes - but only 6-sided ones, or maybe 8-sided. And try to make the base as low-poly as possible. Meshes also have to be rendered, you know? Although they can be rendered faster than geometry, they still require cpu power.

Maybe the castle should be even more reduced: As to focus less on the castle and more on the rollercoaster! What about a rollercoaster around it? I know how hard spirals are to do, but that's like it is in theme parks: The beautiful scenery just outside the coaster. I think it would feel more coasterish hehe

Gimme more!
-Lugg

 

[[DecoY]]

Originally posted by Astyanax
He he... the trick is to make ppl wait as long as possible to they start longing more and more for the map...

I uploaded CTF-Rollercoaster_b11 at SDP, because it's too big to attach it here.

If your name is PeaceKeeper, click here to download the map...

ok...
/me is clicking here

 

[Zarkazm]

Originally posted by Astyanax
If your name is PeaceKeeper, click here to download the map...

My name isn't Peacekeeper, so I didn't click here

 

[[DecoY]]

Originally posted by Zarkazm


My name isn't Peacekeeper, so I didn't click here

If you're name's Zarkazm, You'd better click here!!!

 

[Astyanax]

 

[Astyanax]

OK, I've just uploaded CTF-CastlesOnTheRocks at SDP so you ppl can have a look at the castle as it was supposed to be.

Whatever your name is, click here to dowload the map.

BEWARE: bad lighting, worse framerates, worst collision errors!

That's why I've never finished and released that map: it's fun to walk around in the castles and to find all routes to the flag, but it's not playable...

LOL CTF-Rollercoaster_b11 has been downloaded 32 times from SDP in just ONE day! Please people... follow the example set by Freakish and Luggage and gimme some feedback!!

 

[Freakish]

A bunch of those people who dowloaded probably hang around the SDP forums..start another thread there (or bump an existing one).

I saw Castles and damn it's too bad the level didn't work; you had a great start on things! I haven't even figured out half of it, but it was pretty cool (dunno how gameplay would've been, but the map is neat). Cool.

 

[Astyanax]

Originally posted by Freakish
Something I just thought of with regards to flybys and the coasters..they ought to all be about the same speed (and no teleporters) so that people can't see a flag carrier jump in, find another route, and be waiting on the other end to cap the poor sap who just got popped out.

I'm glad you bring up this point, but I have to say I disagree. I think not all tunnels should take an equal amount of time to pass through. Some tunnels are more 'safe' than others. The jump through the titan's mouth for example: this is a very dangerous jump. You could splatter to your death or take lots of damage in his mouth. To compensate for this risk, this route has to be the fastest route to the blue base! Otherwise nobody would risk his ass to take the jump if there was a route that would be just as fast, but far less dangerous.

Another example: a tunnel with lots of bends or with a flyby should take longer than a tunnel with long straight parts. It's very hard or impossible to aim with lots of bends or a flyby. If a flag carrier would jump into such a safer tunnel, he shouldn't be surprised to have enemies (who have taken a risky tunnel, but survived) waiting for him at the end.

Tell me if you disagree!

Originally posted by Luggage
W00t! Nice!
But: The flybys have to be mucho faster! The acceleration before the jump is (not a flyby, I know, but) much too slow! After being kicked you're about twice as fast = doesn't fit.

Hmm, and maybe you should use less Interpolationpoints in the looping, it feels a bit, hm, choppy? IMO 4 or 5 would be enough - it's interpolation, right?

The pillars: Don't use the meshes, use brushes - but only 6-sided ones, or maybe 8-sided. And try to make the base as low-poly as possible. Meshes also have to be rendered, you know? Although they can be rendered faster than geometry, they still require cpu power.

Maybe the castle should be even more reduced: As to focus less on the castle and more on the rollercoaster! What about a rollercoaster around it? I know how hard spirals are to do, but that's like it is in theme parks: The beautiful scenery just outside the coaster. I think it would feel more coasterish hehe

I've made the acceleration before the jump faster now. You can easily adjust the speed of the flyby: before going into the flyby, type "admin set interpolationpoint ratemodifier 2.5" at the console (without the quotes of course). 2.5 is the current speed; try increasing this and let me know what you think the perfect speed is! (you can quit the flyby by typing "walk" and use your TL to touch the kicker to get back to the trigger in the blue base.)

LOL @ choppy I'll try to make the ride smoother.

If I'd use brushes for the pillars, I'd be back where I started! Play CTF-CastlesOnTheRocks and ph33r the killing framerates they cause! True, Meshes have to be rendered too, but the speed gain is well noticable! The only thing making the main hall a bit laggy is the nodecount (not the polycount!) of the ceiling (and maybe the stairs). Not sure what to do about it...

A rollercoaster around the castle huh? Hmmm that might look cool from the rollercoaster, but it'd look very wierd from outside! Maybe a rollercoaster curling up around the big rock?


What about a quick (but dangerous!) way to escape with the red flag: a small tunnel entrance just sticking out of the lava at the front of the castle; jump down from the top of the tower, fall a long long long loooooong way down and try to make it just through the small tunnel entrance instead of incinerating...

 

[Astyanax]

I've just done some scripting and I've been successfull in solving the InterpolationPoint bugs!

You can now safely translocate while interpolating, and also if you die before finishing the path you respawn normally. I also fixed the bot problems. A bot would 'freeze up' after a flyby, he wouldn't reacting to anything until you killed him. The bots now go on with whatever they were doing after finishing a flyby, or when they die in a flyby. At least, I hope so... I haven't tested yet what will happen if a bot is carrying the flag. Also UT doesn't seem to crash anymore when a bot starts a flyby. I'm not sure why UT stopped crashing (I haven't made any changes regarding this problem), but I hope it keeps working the way it works now. I have absolutely no idea if the flybys will work in multiplayer as well. It would be nice if some could start a multiplayer game for me some time so I can join and test this.

 

[Freakish]

w00t on fixing the interpolation bugs!

You bring up good points on tunnel speed..I'm not sure what I think is best now. Not that many maps have things like this..so it's hard to predict the dynamics of gameplay. It's your map . I'm sure whatever you do will be fine..

A coaster curving up around the rock would be cool (would hafta be really fast - in CTF people hate getting stuck for long periods while a flag is out); you might be able to just have it protrude from the rock partways up and then go around to shorten it. ooh..you could have one going through the lava below (or can people be hurt while in there?).

As for the pipe to jump into..sounds fun! LOL...suicidal flag carriers..will the pipe warp them somewhere safely or will it preserve their speed and have them splat in return for their fast getaway?

 

[Luggage]

I just read through my previous post again, and it seems like I missed the point with the pillars lol: They're ugly. They do look a bit green, which doesn't fit at all. So maybe give them a different texture, or use much less but CSG pillars. Respects @ Scripting btw! I probably wouldn't even manage to script a better mouse trap...

 

[Astyanax]

It's been quite some time since the last update... Last week I had to study for 2 exams and this week I haven't worked on CTF-Rollercoaster.... at least not directly!

As I had already said in the flyby thread, I've been working on a new way of interpolating, and well.... I got it up and running!!

Your view rotation is no longer fixed while interpolating, and bots no longer have to go in 'stasis' to take a flyby! You're free to look around and up & down (but not too far up or down, otherwise you'd be able to prevent yourself from going upside-down when going through the looping ), and to aim at your persuers. The bots won't go upside-down, 'cause that would confuse the hell out of 'em, and you do want some worthy opponents, don't you?

I know, there's still a bug: your weapon hand sometimes rotates the wrong way, but there must be a way to fix that.

I think, with this new way of interpolating, I can throw away most velocity zones and just make lots of twisted flybys, inside tunnels of outside!

Originally posted by Luggage
And I think you'd be able to do that thing with velocity in curves not smashing players by getting yourself a nice neat vector angle calculator... and then calcing what vector you need to get from the long speedy straight to a short speedy curve... (Phew, got some Maths exams tomorrow...)

Well Lugg, it seems you got what you wanted hehe.

Oh and I've attached a testmap (the looping terrain with the titan) to this post so you people can test my new interpolation stuff. Try it, it's soooo cool!

 

[Freakish]

MUCH BETTER!!

The flyby is wayyyyyyyy more like a rollercoaster now!! Nice!! It's all fast and smooth..and nice!!!!!!!

 

[Chrysaor]

:tup:

 

[Horton'sWho]

w00t!!! Dude, that is awesome. It's great that you can look around while zipping through. FABULOUS.