Work-in-progress - some screenshots

[IronMonkey]

For your delight and edification , I thought I'd post some screenshots from the current work-in-progress. This still very rough (I estimate perhaps 1/3 complete) and only shows the top level of the map. As you will be able to see, the builders have promised to come by a week on Saturday and finish (well, it was originally intended to be a crypt entrance) what will be a bell tower. There are still some walls textured with one of Parser's brick textures from when I was going for the "UK Municipal Park" look.

I anticipate some major surgery in order to give the players some reason to do other than huddle behind the choke point. I've found that this is a problem in general with the FHI game type. For example, Hillfort - one tends to end up clustered near the howitzer/shield/health and ignore the rest of the map (bar brief excursions for the damage amp).

On the list to be investigated (but if someone knows the answer immediately then feel free to tell me) is if it is possible to trigger on and off the monster start points by wave number (or time or player proximity or phase of the moon). The effect that I would like to achieve is that the monsters advance gradually. In straight FHI one relies on the monsters spawning some distance away. If they gradually spawn closer and closer then the difficulty can be ratcheted up. Similarly, if picking up an damage amp leads to several monsters spawning around you then the risk/reward possibilities are interesting.

The other area that I would like to see FHI expand in as a game type is to encourage more team reliance. What I was thinking about was to have the ammunition or health spawned by being triggered by some player action. However, the location of the trigger would be nowhere near the ammunition/health. The idea would be that as the players tend to congregate near the spawn points of the ammunition that they would be forced to do occasional "runs" to pick up (i.e. cause to spawn) more ammunition - naturally, these runs would be best done by a single player ("No! - you go first") but would benefit the whole team (giving them (say) enough ammunition for another 50 monsters). Suggestions on the appropriate trigger arrangements would be welcome

 

[Venuswarrior1221]

What about making some types of switch triggerable only by performing a certain type of combo; i.e. speed or attack, or by using a certain weapon? It might add a interesting dimenson to the FHI game.

 

[IronMonkey]

My general rubbishness at combos means that I'm not likely to be the one that adds triggers based on them

There is absolutely nothing wrong with your suggestion in its own right but I don't think it furthers my aim of enhancing the team and co-operative aspects of FHI. I also want to move away from the tendency in FHI maps for players to find a "sweet spot" (usually behind a choke-point) where it it possible to hole up and just let the monsters come to them.

 

[lvlorpheus]

From the shots the atmosphere looks good, kind of reminds me of the original DM-Peak :tup:

 

[IronMonkey]

From the shots the atmosphere looks good, kind of reminds me of the original DM-Peak :tup:

I can see what you mean. And once I add the physics volumes to make all of the edges slippy then the resemblance will be even greater

I am trying to keep to the Nali Castle texture set from UT for buildings and interiors. Peak did use predominately Nali Castle and Crypt so that will add to the similarity.

Oddly enough, DM-Peak is a map I never play (and I play UT almost daily). I hate maps where one has to go with dodge dis-abled.

Most of the atmosphere comes from Hazel.H's fantastic skybox. I started from that and the rest followed. I just love that moonlight.

 

[DeathAdder]

Hi IronMonkey,

It looks really nice so far. I don't have any answers to your questions. You just have to experiment with things to see what happens I guess.

 

[IronMonkey]

Some more screen shots

The more I work on this map the further away the end point seems to be

Scale is an annoying issue as scaling the ceilings so that one can guarantee that all of the FHI monsters can get through spoils the scale for where one wants to put the wall ornaments. Suggestions welcome!

Alert observers will be able to pinpoint the moment where I decided that I had to do more with the 2D Shape Editor and Bezier curves

(What they won't spot is the point where I discovered that a detail level of 20 was a Really Bad Idea)

I am starting to understand the attraction of crates...

 

[DeathAdder]

wow that's nice

 

[Darky]

It looks very nice...

 

[Cybog]

Your lighting looks great. You have done a great job setting "The mood".

My suggestions:

1. You really...really need to randomize the size and relative direction of those trees in the outdoor scene. Nothing says "noobie" than 500 trees in a row all pretty much the same size and shape. Change up their X,Y,Z a little, rotate them around, and maybe bend a couple over here and there. You will be surprised how quickly 50 of the exact same objects can look a little different with a simple change like that.

2. Texture tiling, indoor and out. Look at your snow from the top view. See how often the texture tiles? Get rid of some of the black rocks from your texture and then re-apply the texture. Make the ground mostly white and then paint in the details of rocks or grass or dirt by hand. Over-tiling textures gives away your "fakeness" of the terrain really quickly.

I would suggest a very subtle distance fog with an offgray white color. This will really help set the mood for a cold snowy night.

Your indoor shots look really great, but I would work on making the stones for the ceiling a little different. Think about bricks and what would hold them up - Throw some archways for support and some hanging lights from the ceiling up there. This will help breakup the long mundane ceiling and make it look better and more believable.

Overall looks great and you are off to a good start!

 

[IronMonkey]

Thanks to all for their comments.

You really...really need to randomize the size and relative direction of those trees in the outdoor scene. Nothing says "noobie" than 500 trees in a row all pretty much the same size and shape. Change up their X,Y,Z a little, rotate them around, and maybe bend a couple over here and there. You will be surprised how quickly 50 of the exact same objects can look a little different with a simple change like that.

I know! The trees have already been randomised (display scales in the range 1.75 - 2.1) but clearly that is not enough. I do want the trees as a boundary because I think that fits the scheme. It is not inaccurate to describe me as a n00b - this is only my second large scale original map (i.e. not counting remakes of UT 5 cubes maps

2. Texture tiling, indoor and out. Look at your snow from the top view. See how often the texture tiles? Get rid of some of the black rocks from your texture and then re-apply the texture. Make the ground mostly white and then paint in the details of rocks or grass or dirt by hand. Over-tiling textures gives away your "fakeness" of the terrain really quickly.

Noted - time permitting something will be done about that. Indoor textures are slightly limited by my desire to use stuff from NaliCastle, SkyTown etc. The original textures are small and some tiling is inevitable.

I would suggest a very subtle distance fog with an offgray white color. This will really help set the mood for a cold snowy night.

This was on the agenda - just hadn't gotten round to it (still haven't )

Your indoor shots look really great, but I would work on making the stones for the ceiling a little different. Think about bricks and what would hold them up - Throw some archways for support and some hanging lights from the ceiling up there. This will help breakup the long mundane ceiling and make it look better and more believable.

I am somewhat constrained by the available smeshes (3D modelling being still a fair bit down the agenda - I tried Maya and found it almost willfully unusable so I am restricted to UED for making meshes and that somewhat limits what I can do at the moment).

What I really wanted for those long ceilings was ribbed vaulting but that (realistically) requires a smesh and I didn't get permission to use the ones that I found

I suppose also that there is a stylistic decision here that if I "clutter up" the long ceiling then I have to give up the torches at the side. Not sure that I want to do that (yet) but I've still to go through the optimisation phase and so might have to give up some of the torches anyway (too many emitters ). Also, for what I have in mind for the FHI map, long properly pathed sections are quite cool - the monsters advance quite ferociously. That hall will be hard to defend - not much cover (yet but still quite clear lines of sight.

The earlier bits (with the green walls) currently have temporary ceilings (although you can just see at the back where I have put support structures across the ceilings)

I confess myself reasonably happy with the room that has double vaulted ceiling

Overall looks great and you are off to a good start!

Thanks.

I've said it before but I think it worth repeating - a lot of the atmosphere comes from Hazel.H's fantastic skybox.

Current completion estimate - 75% of the way to an alpha layout test.

 

[IronMonkey]

Improved ceiling thingys

Not that I wanted to but I did know that I was going to have to do something about the number of emitters on the map so I bit the bullet and broke up the long ceiling and removed a lot of the torches. Before and after attached.

If you think that the shadows look sharp then you would be right! Anything above a shadow detail level of 4 led to nasty dark bands running along the vertices of the ceiling.