OCD2

3 minutes ago, NAB622 said:

Does that wall surface z-fight with any other brushes in Radiant? If it does not, I think this is a q3map2 bug. Your map is probably making a blocksize-related slice directly across that wall. To see if this is the case, open the prtview plugin and load your map's portal file up. If you see that wall running across a larger slice, then yes, that is your problem. There are two ways to fix it: either move the entire map to the side a little bit, or change the blocksize in the worldspawn.

One other thing to check, is to make sure your areaportals are done correctly. They should be textured with system/skip on all sides but one, otherwise they will create a void inside the door that might mess up the vis compile.

 

I've seen this once before, but I don't remember who posted it or where.......otherwise I would link it.

I do not see any z-fighting in the area.  (other than the areaportal flickering inside the door if you look up at it from below with hidden floor brushes)

Ive not tried anything with prtview ever, so Ill have to give that an attempt and see what I can find.

I am a newer hobbyist modder,, with lots to learn -  My area portals are strictly brushes with the area portal texture.    They were working as they should before today, but clearly one of the changes I made around the map had an impact. 

I would like to try the proper way of area portal creation you mentioned as a fix - Does it matter what side is textured with area portal?  

20 minutes ago, ZanderNao said:

I'll share pictures as soon as I have any, lol

Im going to have to sneak your name in Aurebesh onto the map somewhere as a tribute!    Maybe on a control room monitor?

I had a nice block of time today to work on my map project.

So I clean up a few areas, made some small changes and adjusted some textures around the map as a start, with intentions of making some larger changes soon afterward.   

But ran into a problem in an area that I did not touch today.      (As seems to be customary when I have time to work on my project!)

Now in testing the map ive found that in one C shaped corridor near a door that contains an area portal,  if you look towards that corridor, one wall is producing a hall of mirrors effect.

The strange thing about it, is if you open the area portal-ed door,  the hall of mirror effect stops while the door is open - but then returns when the door closes.

What might cause that to happen?

Approaching the area:

Opening the door with the area portal removes the "hall of mirrors":

The area portal door closes, and the "hall of mirrors" returns:

Things I did to trouble shoot:

I ran Bobztoolz, which found 4 duplicate plane brushes (not on the problematic wall).

I removed entity lights from the area.

I slammed my fist on my desk, but nothing happened.

Im stumped!

58 minutes ago, ZanderNao said:

I commissioned a 3D model maker to create the droid so that it could be rigged into game, but I haven't heard anything in a couple weeks and have no progress pictures yet. It's the same artist I had create the heads for the different R-series astromechs and the Pyke Pack.

!!!!!!!!!!!

Thats amazing and completely unexpected news!        

Now ill have to put every extra effort to make the Prison ship map top notch!    I shall redouble my efforts!

Found this page about the creation of the droids, by the studio that did the special effects work.   

It has sliders that you can move from right to left where you can see the basic grey 3d modelled droids,  or move the slider to the right and you can see the final textured product.

Might be helpful to any prospective modeller.

https://image-engine.com/case-studies/the-mandalorian-season-1/

Also, a video of their special effects work from season one.    The droid footage begins around 3:28.

https://image-engine.com/portfolio/the-mandalorian-season-1/

Very interesting just to see the production process.

Hey there, are you still working on this project?

Was looking forward to seeing this one, your early pictures really had me hooked.

I wish I was able to complete my entry in time.

Everyone did a bang up job.

Doughnuts model is perfection,  a definitive version that no one could likely top.

The spider is very cool, I would love to see a companion map for it as well some day.

The calodan map is a good rendition.  Its very cool and would be great if someone built a model of the Magistrate to duel on the bridge with Ashoka.     

The boba fett was full service, all of the costumes from the show in one pack.

Good job to you all!

Had some time to work on the connective corridors further today.

Here is the current approach-  the ceiling is simplified to be almost mirrored from the floor.    I think something practical looking makes sense for a military/industrial utility type spaceship interior.      

Still needs better textures of course, keep in mind that these are still just quick mock up textures.

19 hours ago, bigphil2695 said:

Decided to stop screeching into the void on my wall. Will be moving my WIPs over here. 

 

Speaking of WIPs

Here's a model I got done, and forgot to finish the rest of the file.

Commander Karbin from the Vader comics. A very silly looking character. The model is pretty much done, all he needs is team support, an NPC (the one I'm using is compressed into a large NPC file for optimization reasons) Bot support, and possibly sounds. But Karbin is ready for launch here soon. 

 

Body Textures are custom. I saw in the source material Karbin had a TON of different body designs. I picked the gray and brown Grievous look from Vader down. Maybe I'll add a four armed version, and a version from where he was wearing pants. Either way this particular model is ready to go.

 

 

I'm not joking, this is a real character lol

 

Its a fun mash up character, but its reflective of one of the things I do not like about current Star Wars - why does everything have to be a near identical re-hash copy of something else?

The force awakens was extremely close to being just a full new hope clone.

Kylo Ren was made very Vader-like - which okay storywise he was a descendant;  but then they make him part of something new,  the Knights of Ren, but then do nothing with the new characters or Kylos association to the unknown group?

And the Last Jedi rehash of the Hoth seige of an rebel base by atat, but it takes place on "salt" instead of snow, which had to be pointed out by a throwaway line by a random actor.

Not to mention Rise of Skywalker doing much from the Return of the Jedi, the join me or watch your friends die in space scene...

And baby yoda, which is just yoda, but a baby......    

As well as countless other rehash.    George Lucas liked to say "its like poetry, it rhymes".    But its reached the point where "its like self-plagiarism, its copied."

Lol, silly rant aside, its a fun mash up character and its nice to see you keep working and coming up with new characters and ideas.   To plagiarize a bit of dialogue, as is customary in the new Star Wars : "I will be watching this thread with great interest.".  

Some surprise downtime today, so I optimized and simplified the connecting corridors, and did some work in the access shaft area. 

With the exception of the corner room "light panel" position, I feel the connecting areas are clean and uniform to the rest of the level, all while including an easy to areaportal doorway.

The rest of the map can be propagated soon, and that should go fairly quickly as it is a lot of mirroring with minor alterations.

The biggest piece left is to build the control room to scale.   I have some diagrams and photos, just need to do the math, and then build it out.

Early connective corridor build.

At the end of the main hallways, this type of C shaped connector will be applied to connect the subsections of the map.

This area being shown is near the attackers starting point, and an alternative route to the maintenance shaft that will lead to the area above the control room via ladder access.     Its a risk/reward area - it will lead directly to the 1st objective, though there is little to no cover available along the path.    It does require some backtracking to access, so its not quite a perfect navigation choice.    If an enemy makes it to the secondary ladder access point and enters the shaft, they will have a clear line of fire to anyone in still the shaft.

The area is incomplete/bland currently, and my intention is to decorate/spruce up the corridor with decorative/inaccessable doors to either the engine bay or a droid bivouac station. 

Progress!

Small reprieve from rebuilding the house today!        So gtkradiant is open and forward progress continues on the project!

Someone recently mentioned interest in making the Type 1 security droid, the ultimate companion piece for this map,  and got me excited.   I already spent hours yesterday fighting with Doughnuts amazing Din Djarin NPC around the map and it was a blast.    Completing the map and its set pieces, as well as having the main antagonist droid model would really push the project to the next level. 

Already began the process of further building out the connective joints this morning.    The project will see the light of day eventually!

8 hours ago, mrwonko said:

Switching the editor's mode will give you access to the singleplayer-specific entities, but won't delete existing multiplayer entities like team-specific spawnpoints etc. You may have to manually remove those.

Keep in mind though that a singleplayer map has different design considerations from a multiplayer one. Multiplayer maps usually loop back on themselves, avoiding dead ends, while singleplayer maps are often linear with a start and an end. A map built for one may not work well for the other. But it can certainly work, maybe with some small changes here and there.

Thank you for the information!

I think I should be able to repurpose my creations into single player with (hopefully) minor adjustments - and significant work with entities, scripting, "cutscenes", etc and all the work it would entail.

My creations are going to be based off the Mandalorian show.   My tentative plan is to make scenes from the show playable as Multiplayer maps,  and then afterwards if time and energy allows,  convert them into single player experiences that recreate the episode(s).   

It's a far out plan, but it's good to know it's a possibility.

I've been working on a map as a multiplayer project.     

I have intentions/hopes of making the map into a Single Player experience after completing the Multiplayer version.

My question is:    When im ready to start working on the map as a Single player experience, can I simply open the map in the editor, and change it from Multiplayer project to SinglePlayer project and start building/editing?

Or is it not that simple?  

51 minutes ago, Noodle said:

I'm very interested in doing the turret eventually, just need better sources. I also want to do the new republic droid once I get clear well lit sources. 

! 

I posted a few photos of the droid in the request section.  

I'll try to get more photos, it's challenging getting clear shots.

All of the submissions are great, everyone wins!

4 minutes ago, Noodle said:

 

Yes! The turret from the first episode used to blast the door and the tusken dog

Good stuff!

I have interest in making some of the smaller scenes from the Mandalorian.    Would love to have the eweb available, might tempt me to make a Grogu rescue scenario map.

Do you think you will complete those models?

2 minutes ago, Noodle said:

Sorry guys, didn't make it to the mandalorian contest. Still going to share some of the ideas I had and see if anybody guesses what they were supposed to be. 

 

 

Sexy Eweb and tusken raider dog?

To show a bit of the tentative plan for the map, here is a rough sketch of the layout.

The Purple Circle indicates the attackers starting point, and end point to escort the NPC prisoner for a win.   

The Gold Circle indicates the defenders tentative starting point.

The RED Star is the 1st obj, entering the control room.   The BLUE Star is the 2nd obj, the NPC prisoners cell location.

The Correctional Transport has a large spline ridge across the top centerline, which im going to use creative license to adapt to be an in-ceiling maintenance shaft for gameplay enhancement purposes.    The episode shows Din Djarin ambush Burg the Davarionian in the control room, from an in-ceiling grate - the maintenance shaft will be the way to access that location, and a way for the attackers to flank and breach the control room (1st obj).   The Blue Line represents the upper level maintenance shaft, and the Green Circles indicate ladder access points to enter the maintenance shaft. 

The Red Lines indicate doors that will be included to divide the map into sections and help with portal-ing  and VIS.

The Orange Lines indicate extra unlockable flank corridors, to help attackers breach the control room.

Its a relatively straight forward layout that reflects the source material closely, but has a number of possible routes to keep players moving and flanking.     With inclusion of the security system that will drops doors on player detection, im hoping there is never be a single choke that dominates the map, and each play through can potentially feel dynamic and new/different.

Doughnuts outstanding Din Djarin model has really inspired me,  having the proper model is starting to add immersion to the map.

Its starting to feel like youre playing scenes straight from the episode.

9 minutes ago, NAB622 said:

Yes. Use a func_door, and instead of caulk, use nodraw or nodraw_solid.

Thank you, that makes sense.

Its the first day in about a month ive been able to sit and try to work on my project, feeling rusty!

11 minutes ago, mrwonko said:

Where do you need this? Can you put it on a moving brush? A func_bobbing might work, I don't know if that can bob sideways.

Perhaps it could be on a moving brush...      Never thought of that as an option.

I was hoping to have a trigger cause the sprite animation to activate.     The intended effect would be to have the "sprite" come from out of a wall/brush, and then return into the wall.

Would it be possible to make an alpha shader "sprite" texture, and put it on say a caulk brush and have it move from left to right and back, on a trigger?      

I would like to try and make a two sided sprite (visible from both sides),  that scrolls out of a wall from right and stops, then back to the left starting position.

Start:      |           Scroll:    |----*          Return:    | -*        End:     |

What are the best options to achieve that effect?

An animap sequence seems like it might be choppy, could you use a tcmod scroll?   Can you control scroll distance, and make it reverse?

Just as an update to let anyone who watched this thread, know that it looks like I will not make the contest deadline in time.

Had some personal setbacks in a home disaster that occured on New Years eve which ruined part of the house and some of my things, and temporarily shut down my workshop.    Ive been extremely busy dealing with the aftermath since!

I intended to at least push out a "beta" version of the map for the contest, though nearly all of my waking hours have been dedicated to restoring the house and my workshop etc.

I do plan to follow through with the project, when time allows.

I have a ton of ideas for the map,  things I think people will appreciate.   I have a lot of photos, diagrams and notes ready for when I am able to take up the project again at a quicker and more focused pace.

Thank you to everyone who has been guiding and helping me along the way,  and will probably be helping me again in the future!

Just to show a bit of the minor progress I made during my disaster:

Remade and optimized the  entry point ladder for the attackers to be closer to the source material.

Added a access hole above the ladder and a small "Razor Crest room" (its a placeholder grey textured room currently).   Still need to make the ladder "scalable".

Fiddled around with the alarm system functionality.

An iteration of the connecting corridors that will lead to the other sub-sections of the map.  The connective areas are not shown in the episode, so there is going to be some creative interpretation to achieve symmetry with the rest of the map.    I think this half-wall and beam structure that I made fits well already, though needs some refinement (last 3 pictures show the area).