UT3 WAR-Araja][ Released! [PC] [Download&Screens]

[minifloppy]

WAR-Araja][ Second Edition Released! [PC] [Download&Screens]

WAR-Araja][-SE

I have released a Second Edition of the map. No new features here, only bug fixes.

Changes in Second Edition:

• fixed blue team not getting the orb
• fixed central bridge collision error
• fixed collisions near the core, no more camping problems
• fixed missing killing volume in a canyon near the blue base
• fixed problem with folder structure zip package, you're now able to extract the map to your UTGame folder

The map was previously called WAR-Araja2, I decided to use square brackets instead of the number to give it a more unreal feeling. Also, as all beta versions were named WAR-Araja2, switching the map file name to WAR-Araja][ should also solve some problems with servers and different versions of the map.

Description:
"When the first Skaarj mothership arrived on NaPali and spread death and terror on the surface of the planet, a lot of Nalis fled in the lost valleys of the Araja Mountains, searching for the power of the sacred crystals. But mountain passes became dangerous, infested by strange and obscure creatures, and no one of those who left their houses ever came back. Now, only the wind that blows in these valleys still remember the sound of their lost chants."

Comments:
This is a remake of my UT2004 map ONS-Araja. I tried to stay true to the original gameplay/atmosphere as much as possible. The map features a custom music track by Simone 'MrFerroni' Ferroni.

Features:

• Crystal Strike: when the enemy team owns one (or both) your primary nodes you can trigger a "crystal strike" to regain control of the primary nodes and have one more chance to win the match. Just go to the big statue in your base, push the button and enjoy the animation.
• UT2004 style, animated map selection screenshot!
• Same node layout as UT2004 version:
  
  

Second Edition Download:
FileFront
Mapraider
minifloppy.it (please use this one only if the previous mirrors are down)

Original Download:
FileFront
Mapraider
ut-x.net
FilePlanet
minifloppy.it (please use this one only if the previous mirrors are down)

Screenshots:
[screenshot]http://www.minifloppy.it/maps/araja2/shot01.jpg[/screenshot][screenshot]http://www.minifloppy.it/maps/araja2/shot02.jpg[/screenshot]
[screenshot]http://www.minifloppy.it/maps/araja2/shot03.jpg[/screenshot][screenshot]http://www.minifloppy.it/maps/araja2/shot04.jpg[/screenshot]
[screenshot]http://www.minifloppy.it/maps/araja2/shot05.jpg[/screenshot][screenshot]http://www.minifloppy.it/maps/araja2/shot06.jpg[/screenshot]
[screenshot]http://www.minifloppy.it/maps/araja2/shot07.jpg[/screenshot][screenshot]http://www.minifloppy.it/maps/araja2/shot08.jpg[/screenshot]

Version: 1.1 - Second Edition

Compatibility: PC, Patch 2.0 (or major version) & Titan Pack required. There will be no PS3 cook of the map, as explained here. Sorry guys.

Credits:
Francesco 'minifloppy' Camarlinghi (me): level design, models, textures.

Simone 'MrFerroni' Ferroni for the music track, test help & support.

Hourences for the sky textures.

ExilesOfUnrealEd - RennyManJr, *il_beppe*, EvilAlien, aeternus, Gush, nex
TitanOnslaught - Zeus.T32, SlipStreams_65, Zofo
UT3GOW - GOW_PacerX, GOW_Nootsac, Poker, Sbouby
UTForums - Arfa, Sanch3z, aznstyle11
BeyondUnreal - Ignotium, Kantham, keaukrine, acapulco, Waffnuffly, cosmix, Darkdrium
EgoLounge - Eric Maslowski
Hourences and ArcadiaVincennes for their amazing tutorials

Thanks guys for all test infos and troubleshooting help!!

(Sorry if I've forgotten someone..)

NaPali is back!

 

[Waffnuffly]

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeah downloadin the snot out of this

Sorry I didn't get a chance to test Beta 3, but I'm sure you got rid of any last bugs. This is a great map.

 

[Ignotium]

Hey! congratulations, this one sure looks like a kickass war map, and it does bring back a lot of memories from UT2k4.

grazie for the mention e buona fortuna per il MSUC

 

[minifloppy]

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeah downloadin the snot out of this

Sorry I didn't get a chance to test Beta 3, but I'm sure you got rid of any last bugs. This is a great map.

Thanks Waffnuffly!
I spent the last two weeks catching bugs, I hope I fixed all of them!

Hey! congratulations, this one sure looks like a kickass war map, and it does bring back a lot of memories from UT2k4.

grazie for the mention e buona fortuna per il MSUC

Thanks Ignotium! Do you speak Italian?
Anyway, buona fortuna anche a te!

 

[Ignotium]

Thanks Waffnuffly!
I spent the last two weeks catching bugs, I hope I fixed all of them!



Thanks Ignotium! Do you speak Italian?
Anyway, buona fortuna anche a te!

I did my primary school on a bilingual school named after Agustin Codazzi, and so I grew up among italians and calcio and pasta and so on. so yeah, Io parlo qualche cosa, ma non troppo though google translate kicks in at times

 

[minifloppy]

I did my primary school on a bilingual school named after Agustin Codazzi, and so I grew up among italians and calcio and pasta and so on. so yeah, Io parlo qualche cosa, ma non troppo though google translate kicks in at times

LOL, you forgot pizza!

 

[[VaLkyR]Anubis]

Oh man, that one looks fabulous. I loved the UT2004 version and that looks even better. I just wished my UT3 would like my graphic card! Anyway, nice job. Thanks for bringing Na Pali back!

 

[Bantis]

Looks awesome man! You should pat yourself on the back and I bet... get some sleep.

3 thinks I really like about this map:

- Frame rate (excellent through-out)
- Lots of rocks/height where you can jump high with the hover board (I am a sucker for that
- This; I love this area you made:

Nice.

 

[minifloppy]

Oh man, that one looks fabulous. I loved the UT2004 version and that looks even better. I just wished my UT3 would like my graphic card! Anyway, nice job. Thanks for bringing Na Pali back!

Thanks Anubis! Hope you get a chance to play it soon

Looks awesome man! You should pat yourself on the back and I bet... get some sleep.

3 thinks I really like about this map:

- Frame rate (excellent through-out)
- Lots of rocks/height where you can jump high with the hover board (I am a sucker for that
- This; I love this area you made:

[....cut....]

Nice.

Thanks for playing the map Bantis! Yep, I definitely spent too much time on this.

• Luckily the big mountains static meshes occlude large parts of the map. That, a CullDistanceVolume, and fog did the job pretty well.
• Yeah, I love hover board jumps too!
• Thanks . Unfortunately I couldn't find a way to properly light the big statue in the middle. As you can see it is too bright, oh well .

 

[Firefly]

Review is up.

Really nice map.
Thanks for subbing it.

 

[Waffnuffly]

I just played a game on the final against 20-something bots. Really great map here. I love all the detail, the atmosphere, and the little details you added that make it very Na Pali-like, such as the ruined Nali huts and the little crevices leading to other hidden canyons and the like. Very nostalgic, but also very much its own thing. And the gameplay is great; I managed to steamroll the enemy the first round, but then they came out and pushed me back quite hard and brought my core down to the 60s while theirs was in the 80s, and from there it was a constant battle to control the primes, lasting well into overtime. I think my core health had dropped to about 40 by the time I finally got in and finished off theirs. Great stuff!

This is exactly the kind of quality standards I would expect from Epic. You need to make more stuff this good!

 

[Darkdrium]

Hey, you can't pass under the bridge at the centre node. Something makes the flying vehicles glitch out.

[video]

 

[minifloppy]

Review is up.

Really nice map.
Thanks for subbing it.

Thanks for the nice review Firefly!

Speaking of performance, before releasing the map I and MrFerroni tested it on different graphics card:
- Geforce 8600 M GT
- Geforce 8800 GTS 320
- Radeon 4890

We never had performance problems on the last two cards but we were forced to play it on Medium detail settings on the 8600 GT to get good framerate, but I think this is normal given the size of the map, the big amount of detail, and the fact that this card is 2/3 years old.

The map is optimized in a way that a lot of emitters and meshes do not spawn at medium and low detail settings, so that it will be playable not only on high end PC.

Also, a lot of people tested the map during the beta and no one reported performance problem. So.. I'm a little surprised and I don't know why you get those really bad perfomances. At which detail level did you play it?

Again, thanks for the review. I really appreciate your support to the community!

Hey, you can't pass under the bridge at the centre node. Something makes the flying vehicles glitch out.

[video]

Wow. I have to admit that I never tried to pass under the central bridge with a flying vehicle.
Also, that bug is really strange. It seems like the Cicada hit something that force it to go up, even passing through the brigde itself.
I've given a quick look in the editor to the static mesh collisions but could not find any issues. The only thing I can think of is a BSP error as the bridge is made of BSP and SM. In this case this would be very difficult to fix..

Any suggestion?

I just played a game on the final against 20-something bots. Really great map here. I love all the detail, the atmosphere, and the little details you added that make it very Na Pali-like, such as the ruined Nali huts and the little crevices leading to other hidden canyons and the like. Very nostalgic, but also very much its own thing. And the gameplay is great; I managed to steamroll the enemy the first round, but then they came out and pushed me back quite hard and brought my core down to the 60s while theirs was in the 80s, and from there it was a constant battle to control the primes, lasting well into overtime. I think my core health had dropped to about 40 by the time I finally got in and finished off theirs. Great stuff!

This is exactly the kind of quality standards I would expect from Epic. You need to make more stuff this good!

Yep, bots are very aggressive on adept and above difficulty level, they never stop to attack the center node and your primary. This leads to interesting situations where both core are vulnerable and your team must attack and defend at the same time. Thanks for taking the time to play the map!

I'm in the planning stage for another map atm, but I don't want to tell more about it till I get some more consistent ideas. I hope that MrFerroni will be helping me with the new map as well (in that case expect another custom music track!). The problem is I will be really busy with exams soon, so I can't say how much time I will have to map.

 

[Darkdrium]

I don't know how you built the bridge. Perhaps it is a brush you added and then subtracted a large portion of it? What would it do if you only used the portion you are currently using as the added brush, without any surplus? Can you try to rebuild the bridge by doing that?
You already have the shape, it's just being patient and matching up the vertex of the builder brush with the corresponding shape of the bridge.

Sucks, but it's far better than the glitch or putting vehicle repeller volumes (Don't know how to call them, the same thing as in VCTF-Suspense in the building at the base ), the latter not making much sense as there is visually plenty of space for the vehicle to pass through.

 

[Firefly]

Thanks for the nice review Firefly!

Also, a lot of people tested the map during the beta and no one reported performance problem. So.. I'm a little surprised and I don't know why you get those really bad perfomances. At which detail level did you play it?

Again, thanks for the review. I really appreciate your support to the community!

Glad you like the review and thanks for a great map.

The performance isn't really bad and is still playable.
I would consider 15 and below really bad and would have scored far less. The stock maps (including the big warfare ones such as torlan) run at 30+ frames on this PC.

I have all the settings on max. I need to keep everything constant so that each review is fair. It wouldn't be fair If I dropped the detail settings down and then give a high performance score.

It's a pleasure being part of this community.

 

[minifloppy]

I don't know how you built the bridge. Perhaps it is a brush you added and then subtracted a large portion of it? What would it do if you only used the portion you are currently using as the added brush, without any surplus? Can you try to rebuild the bridge by doing that?
You already have the shape, it's just being patient and matching up the vertex of the builder brush with the corresponding shape of the bridge.

Sucks, but it's far better than the glitch or putting vehicle repeller volumes (Don't know how to call them, the same thing as in VCTF-Suspense in the building at the base ), the latter not making much sense as there is visually plenty of space for the vehicle to pass through.

Yes, the bridge is built with two brushes, one subtracted to the other. I will make some tests in the next few days, do not have the time to do it now. Thanks for your input

Glad you like the review and thanks for a great map.

The performance isn't really bad and is still playable.
I would consider 15 and below really bad and would have scored far less. The stock maps (including the big warfare ones such as torlan) run at 30+ frames on this PC.

I have all the settings on max. I need to keep everything constant so that each review is fair. It wouldn't be fair If I dropped the detail settings down and then give a high performance score.

It's a pleasure being part of this community.

Yep, I was asking just to make sure it wasn't an issue with your specific hardware configuration that also other may have. Epic has done a great job optimizing stock maps, but all of them do not have a lot of vegetation which is the killing thing here.

It would be nice if you could also test maps at lower details settings, just to see how they scale to lower system specs (speaking of all reviewed maps here, not only of this one). I see it can be a lot of work though.. But well that's only a suggestion and not criticism!

 

[Waffnuffly]

I played this with every single thing maxed out to all hell and I have a 7600GT, a pretty old card, and it ran just fine. Normally I have Bloom, DoF, and dynamic shadows / composite dynamic lights off and it runs a little smoother, but really, this map is solid in the performance department. That and this engine is incredibly optimized.

Firefly, do you run UT3 with any other memory-consuming applications in the background, like Firefox or anything?

 

[Firefly]

I switch stuff off as normal when playing anything. As Minifloppy said it's the extra vegetation that hit the frames.

Maybe I could do a "I had to lower the details/resolution to medium to get 60fps" style section with a screenshot to show how well it's scaled. Trouble is I'd have to go through all the reviews and re-score them. A lot of work.

I'll think about it though.

 

[Firefly]

Normally I have Bloom, DoF, and dynamic shadows / composite dynamic lights off and it runs a little smoother

I have them switched on.

 

[Waffnuffly]

Me too, and I only had slight performance dips. Weird.