WIP The Order Academy Ruins UPDATED

[TwinHits]

**UPDATE ON PAGE 2**

 

Hello everyone!

 

This map is a work in progress that currently is in beta testing by The Order.

 

It's designed to be an all purpose, easy to navigate, themed clan map. Every room has a function and the whole map is designed to be easy to navigate so that rooms are not ignored simply because they are too far, or hard to find. It's pretty much impossible to get lost on this map.

 

My favorite part is that the map is themed, it tells a story. It's an old academy built into the side of a cliff, but something happened to cause a huge earthquake-like event that split the academy in two with a huge chasm. This even broke down most of the hallways and some of the rooms, leaving the academy in disuse and in ruins. What happened and why? Well, explore the map and find out!

 

 

Each broken section of hallway leads to a different room. Here are some of the rooms that are in the beta:

 

A classic style dueling arena formed by the ceiling caving in. The release version will have actual damage on the ceiling showing where the platform fell from. The windows are also temporary, they are going to look down into another room later.

 

 

A narrows style dueling arena formed by the collapse of the floor and the floor of the room below it.

 

 

Outside landing and spawning area (under construction due to bugs). Also serves as an environmentally challenging dueling arena.

 

 

The central "hangout" room.

 

 

Classroom and dueling arena:

 

 

FFA Arena and all purpose room:

 

 

Any room that does not have a functional use like these will be in some way hidden and is there for the purpose of telling the story of the map.

 

I want to include in release a jump test room, a jar style dueling room for trials, a ceremony room, and a council room. Please let me know if you have any other suggestions of functions that I haven't covered! I'm staying away from NPC spawns and such because it doesn't fit into the theme of the map.

 

Another thing I am going to do is add lots of graffiti to the walls of the hallways. I've never made a font before, but I would like to get a galactic basic font and change the lines so that they are the saber marks that you make on the walls. Is this easy to do? In my mind it seems easy, I have intermediate photoshop skills.

 

Finally, let me know if any music suggestions pop into your mind from seeing these screenshots.

 

And, of course, any feedback you have is always welcome.

 

Special thanks to {TO}Odeyseis for the screenshots!

[afi]

What Caelum said ^

[Ruxith]

Looking pretty sweet so far.

[Szico VII]

Biggest stand out for me is that repeating yavin stone wall texture - needs something to break it up!

[Delmi]

I'll echo what Szico said, but other than that looks pretty cool. Great concept!

[TwinHits]

Yeah, it's bothering me too, on my To-Do list is better walls.

[CaptainChar]

not bad, makes me want to step my game up

[Inyri]

The lighting needs a lot of improvement (although it's by far not even remotely close to the worst that I've seen) but I really like the fundamental look of it. Looks very nice and with some really nice environmental lighting I think you'll have a real winner on your hands.

[TwinHits]

Yeah, I know almost nothing about how to do good lighting in GTKRadient. Do you have any suggestions on anything I could read about it, or any tips on how to do good lighting?

[CaptainChar]

im still learning how to use the sun and moon as light sources, everything else is low ambience lighting, and have realistic sources, like lamps, torches etc if you use ambient lighting at all, i'd say keep it low or use the _minilight, as this will give weapons items etc, light effects, its all trial and error for me, to see which lighting gives the most mood etc

[Inyri]

Yeah, I know almost nothing about how to do good lighting in GTKRadient. Do you have any suggestions on anything I could read about it, or any tips on how to do good lighting?

For user acceptance all the lights should have SOME kind of source (example a blob of light shouldn't appear by itself, but a blob of light coming from a torch or lightbulb would make sense). As for HOW to technically do it, I'm not a mapper so I have no clue. We do have a lot of good mappers here that I'm sure can give more insight. Being able to do good lighting would be an invaluable skill and can take a map from good to astounding.

[TwinHits]

I have random mapping questions!

 

1) What's the difference between the different types of compiling? Why would I need to use one of the ones that's not the first (test) or the (final) compile?

2) Whats a flipped triangle? When I compile I get a warning in the log saying one is detected.

3) Why doesn't .bak compile everytime? It seems like it shows up every couple complies.

4) What's the most important to save on? Brushes? Faces? Vertices?

5) I know detail brushes are important, what would happen if you surrounded your map in a giant box and made everything detail?

[MUG]

1) What's the difference between the different types of compiling? Why would I need to use one of the ones that's not the first (test) or the (final) compile?

Basically, they effect the level of detail in your vis and lighting steps, as well as letting you set lots of other stuff. This i'm not an expert on, but basically, lets you set levels of detail which effects compile time and FPS

2) Whats a flipped triangle? When I compile I get a warning in the log saying one is detected.

Not sure, I guess one of the faces of a brush have got fucked up somehow. If its a problem, find that offending brush and remake it.

 

3) Why doesn't .bak compile everytime? It seems like it shows up every couple complies.

.baks aren't actually compiled, they are just copies of the .map renamed to .bak. Its an automatic backup.

 

4) What's the most important to save on? Brushes? Faces? Vertices?

This depends. There are different limits on each, but as a general rule, I would say faces, as brushes are basically a collection of them, and vertices are just their boundaries. Most compiling errors I have run into are related to having too many visible faces. Basically Caulk all non-visible faces and you will be fine.

 

5) I know detail brushes are important, what would happen if you surrounded your map in a giant box and made everything detail?

Short answer? You get 0 FPS. In the vis step of compiling, the compiler breaks the map up into areas, based on what other areas of the map you can see from them. Then when you are in that area, it only draws the brushes you can see from there, rather than the entire map, this saves FPS. Say I have two rooms separated by a wall, when I am in one room, only that part of the map will be drawn. If you set the wall to detail, the compiler ignores it when working out what can be seen from where, so the game will draw both areas. If you detail the entire map, the game will always draw the entire map. Basically, only ever detail...well...details. Anything that doesn't effect what can be seen from where (eg detail trims, chairs, small pillars etc. Not walls, floors etc)

 

Hope that's helpful. Might want to get some answers about the flipped triangle and the different types of compiling from someone who knows more.

[Polterninja34]

It's looking great so far! I am looking forward to see how time transforms this map into something epic

[TwinHits]

More questions!

 

1) When you look through a sky shader and there's brushes on the other side, you can see them =(. Is there any way to block this?

 

2) What's an Area-Portal?

 

3) Anyone know, or can very briefly explain, how to do water and waterfalls?

 

4) Any tips/tricks to using sunbeams from windows properly?

[MUG]

1) When you look through a sky shader and there's brushes on the other side, you can see them =(. Is there any way to block this?

Maybe with Area Portaling xD

 

2) What's an Area-Portal?

When you compile your map with vis, that step calculates what parts of the map can be seen from where, by breaking the map up into Area Portals. This allows it to only draw the areas that the player can see from where he is, making your map run faster as it doesn't have to display the entire map constantly.

 

This could also refer to a type of shader which you can place in your map, which lets you tell radiant manually how to break up particular areas.

 

3) Anyone know, or can very briefly explain, how to do water and waterfalls?

This part is dead easy. It's just a case of using the correct shaders. First off, load up system and apply Caulk Water to the brush you want to be water/waterfall, then apply a water shader(I think these are in common? I don't recall.) to any visible sides (usually the top). For a waterfall, you just need to use a different shader that makes the water appear to flow downwards. The base water shaders don't look all that great, so you may well want to make your own. I'm sure there are plenty of people about who will instruct you on making a good water shader. It was discussed here http://jkhub.org/top...darkjeditv-wip/

 

4) Any tips/tricks to using sunbeams from windows properly?

Its just a case of rotating, aligning, and scaling the shader correctly.

 

Hope that helps.

[Astral Serpent]

This is looking pretty cool =D

[therfiles]

Very nice! I think I tried to achieve something similar along time ago, but it was sloppy and just plain bad. Yours is just really cool!

[TwinHits]

Thanks for the answers to those questions!

 

Here's another one, I'm working with fx_runner and it's not working quite right and I can't find a very good tutorial for it.

 

 

The waterfall's effect for hitting the water appears to be all the way over there, not at the target_null I've created.

 

The target_null is a little to the left of where the waterfall is currently hitting.

 

Here are the properties for the fx_runner:

 

angle -1

classname fx_runner

fxFile effects/world/waterfall.efx

Origin -1260 68 692

target water (target_null's targetname is water)

[MUG]

The waterfall's effect for hitting the water appears to be all the way over there, not at the target_null I've created.

 

The target_null is a little to the left of where the waterfall is currently hitting.

 

Here are the properties for the fx_runner:

 

angle -1

classname fx_runner

fxFile effects/world/waterfall.efx

Origin -1260 68 692

target water (target_null's targetname is water)

I suspect the angle -1 you have set is taking priority of the target_null you are telling it to point at, try deleting that key, however, I recall having similar problems myself trying to get water to shoot in the direction I wanted to so there might be something else going on here too,

[Azatha]

I like that water.

[TwinHits]

I threw it down as a temporary water shader, I'll fix it when I finish getting the fx_runners to work. I'm still having trouble with them, I have no idea why part of the effect is way over there on the left.

 

Deleting the angle didn't solve the problem. As I understand it, the fxFile effects/world/waterfall.efx when targeted to an info_null is supposed to draw the effect from the fx_runner to the info_null, but apparently its not working, am I still missing something?

[Szico VII]

I think some effects have the orientation coded into the .efx file - you may need to edit the original so it goes the right way.

[MUG]

If so, try using a target_position maybe instead of a info_null. *shrug*

Pretty sure info_null, info_notnull and target_position are all identical.

[Szico VII]

Pretty sure info_null, info_notnull and target_position are all identical.

 

Theyre not - the main difference is that a target_position/info_notnull remains ingame as an entity after compile wheras info_null and the like are removed at compile time and simply serve to give the engine an exact set of co-ordinates. Go with info_null wherever you can to save entities.