Lazarus

This looks amazing, (myself, i love making outdoor maps, so always interested in seeing how terrain develops), but can i give some tips? I find the terrain itself rather flat, never is a terrain truly flat, or truly sloped in every position. you may wanna look at that perhaps. I played around in my map with sprites which can create a truly awesome appearance, you could play with that as well, if you want i can share shaders and textures.

So i launched the radiant editor, and suddenly my editor looks weird. I can see a grid laid out over my brushes, which is super anoying

How do i turn this off, i am trying to search through settings but cant find anything

Never mind, figured it out, it was a filter in view (show 3d workspace). Not sure why it was on.

-- you can close this please --

Havent touched it in a bit, but played arround with a little environment. Added purple flowers in the equation and it now starts to really shine. (i also had white flowers, but decided to drop them, became a bit overkill)

and the money shot

On a different note, i did change a mountain layout a bit, due to LOS issues with a model on the other end, upped the mountain a bit so you cant see the model of a ship popping in at a certain point. The mountain hides the item until you move around it, which is then in range in the LOS visual.

8 hours ago, Futuza said:

Yeah, something like that also works very well, especially if the current is visible to the player so they don't just think they're being pushed away for no reason.  The important thing, regardless of how exactly you define the map edge, is presenting the player with the illusion that there's something real preventing them from proceeding beyond.  Nobody likes an invisible wall, its very jarring and brings one out of the immersion.

My what?  Which movies are you referring too?  o.O

That was a wrong quote, that last question was meant for SephFF

On 8/2/2021 at 6:56 PM, Futuza said:

Just to be clear, I totally think it's fine to use clip brushes when you have some sort of object/thing that physically appears to block the way.  For example, in the poorly drawn map below, you have some spikey rocks that are covered by a clip brush preventing the player from actually moving past them. 

But yeah Buoy's should work great with the fish, I was thinking something like this, but that works too.  Heck even map edges like water that just plummets off the edge of a flat earth might also be interesting.  Like this. 

 

What i did in mine (i have a cove in which you can technically go to open sea), is put indeed a clip brush there, however, in the water in front, a trigger_push in front of it, in the sea, so if you swim into it, it bobs you back like the current is taken a hold of you. Its not the cleanest solution, but still, i think it works just fine.

https://jkhub.org/images/nMXDnTL.png

btw, whats with the elevator music in your movies

22 hours ago, mjt said:

Most notable differences are in the toolkits provided - the gizmos / modifiers are a bit more advanced - the workflow differs in some areas quite substantially and coming from GTK, you'll have to relearn or reconfigure some shortcuts.

If you want a tour through the tool - I can help you set things up and show you around.

The q3map2 supplied alongside is vastly more modern than the one from GTK - it includes a bunch of custom fixes and enhancements documented on either github or the help documents supplied alongside.

If you want to take a look: https://garux.github.io/NRC/

I just got NRC as well installed, i find vertex modding a lot easier, though height and dragging is a thing you need to get used to by switching to the move tool, i got used to it now, and actually i felt i made a lot of progress. Also the snap to grid option when selecting everything is a live savior, which helps me filling the gaps i get when i used cut tool with drag vertex mode. This dragging tool is a lot more optimized than GTK.

I do still try to figure out, so if @mjtis making a public tour, i gladly tag along

The bigger the map, the more problems you are going to encounter, make it in sections, or better even, split in several maps (if you plan SP), For multiplayer, roaming NPC isn't smart, it will only cause server issues, and everytime a map restart if people kill all NPC's.

Blocky isnt necessairy. You can "fake" curves (phong shader, where you smooth the rough edges over like blurring hard lines) This means, you can "45" degree it with a smooth curve in it. A lot of different textures, lights etc will help with the admosphere.

Wrapped up the outer rock walls, the whole area is now nicely surrounded with rock wall.
Starting to combine this with my grass blending (got now 4 different blends, and I really start to feel this area...)

may gonna tweak the distance rendering of the sprites, but this really starts to look great. Maybe some occasional color of flowers in it or so.. gonna dig for that in it. I think the dry grass blended in the regular grass really makes it great. It pops, showing alteration that not everywhere the grass is green.

And i changed the sun shader as you see, less yellowish, more grayish now, wich makes other colors more vibrant.

I am bumping into a curious bug, where I set my disance cull in worldspawn to be 14500. For the map brushes it self this works fine, however, i find having models in the map, that the distance viewable of the model is about roughly 7500 units. Now i have a passage in which you can see up to about 9000 units, but the model (a ship) is a critical point to reach, which i want it to be displayed. This causes some problems, since you have to walk up to that 7500 unit point, in order for the model to pop in.

Is there a way arround it. Attached screenshots.

On 7/31/2022 at 9:41 PM, Circa said:

They just gave away JK2 for free on Amazon Games a couple weeks ago for Prime Day, did you miss it?

I did, since i was on holiday, and came back last week. I did see the message while on holiday, but no laptop with me, the beauty of holiday.

On 8/1/2022 at 12:55 PM, Padawan6 said:

https://mega.nz/file/Q4NwgDTC#mRD7Kedzy3qpJY37gNQklS8oUJ04HuJy12BZLaTBEhY

Kyle sounds. Enjoy.

Thanks!

Heh, gimmie that beach looks great.

I dont mind spending money on JKO at all, but does anybody have the kyle katarn sounds of JKO (so the whole singleplayer campaign voice acting). I am picking appart dialogue files to see if i can use it to create new dialogue for my mod, but the JKA dialogue with kyle is limited.

I am back from my holiday, and decided to work again on it. I changed editor (from GTK to NetRadiant) (thanks @mjt)and had to get the hang of it, since i am so used to work with GTK for the last 19 years. But i see the pluses now with a little thanks to the discord community i am again on my way in this project. Just a screenshot now. Filled the end area and now working on the winding path towards it. Gonna build an extension to this area (see already in the top view where i go out of the skybox)

--edit--

and the update 3 hrs of work later

There has been a 10 brushes contest on map-craft back in 2010 or so, was fun, since you had to be creative. (this meant 10 visible brushes, so your skybox didnt count). I can tell you, people started learning modeling like crazy

The more fun challenge was the 5 texture in a certain box challenge. You get 5 active textures, and you get a layout in which you gotta work.

You may be able to do this with an overlaying texture/shader at your camera point. Its done in JKA, 3 map when you go into the thermal station to disable the bombs. The camera has an overlay texture i think which is linked to a shader that makes it look like you are watching a live feed on a monitor.

If you can modify the shader it spins and swirls certain textures in overlay, you could portrait that. It sounds to me the easiest. You have to trigger this though with a target_activate and a target_deactivate on a brush with a func_static. Requires a bit of scripting, but since you already work with the camera, i doubt it would then above your head.

Personally I'd say out of a mappers oppinion, despite the bare surroundings, Tython looks like a fun challenge for me as a mapper with a love for outdoor terrain.

But honestly, why gauging? I think i said this before somewhere but if you heart lies into it, who cares what others think? If you personally want to create all of them, why not? I made maps in the past, none /few would play i deemed a masterpiece, or maps that people simply loved (my clan's swoopbike track was a killer back in 2005), while i thought it was a fun thing to do in between.

On 7/12/2022 at 1:20 PM, NumberWan said:

It's worth testing this NPC on various Difficulty levels too. As far as I know – various aspects of different enemies vary depending on the difficulty. On Hard mode it might be an almost impossible challenge, if some NPC specifics aren't reasonably set. 

True,test your npc always. My mid is a shooter, i like challenges

I agree with Circa on the visual distance part, thats is engine bound, however, you can work around it for a part if you are a mapper (its called a distancecull in the worldspawn) but still there is a limit on that (i sadly bumped into, since i am working on an outdoor map)

_min light is a no go, i ll try to add bounce to the compile and see fi that works... a compile for me at the moment is less than a minute, so i am patient

Is there a way to make a shader light not cast hard shadows 

I have always struggled with this, cause i find the shadows to hard.... anyway to soften them via a model key or something (cause when i start adding plant models, my map will become more darker). Shadows are okay, but no shadow is 100% dark on a day.

8 hours ago, ZanderNao said:

The brushwork is really nice and the ground level views are exquisite. The horizon blending is really superior too, although the contrast between the brown water and pristine blue sky makes it seem a little dirty, lol. Horizon blending is the mark of a superior mapper and you've got it down. I will watch your modding career with great interest.

"I will watch your modding career with great interest" .. Then you have to look back at least 20 years as well . 

The npc file indeed (ext_data/npc/npcname will help on that part.

for example, i modified stormtroopers in my singleplayer mod to make them more of a challenge

StormTrooper_Dorvalla
{
    playerModel        stormtrooper
    customSkin        officer
    customRGBA        88 88 88
    crouchheight        38
    headPitchRangeDown    30
    weapon            WP_BLASTER
    rank            lt
    aggression        4
    aim            5
    evasion            5
    intelligence        4
    move            4
    reactions        4
    playerTeam        TEAM_ENEMY
    enemyTeam        TEAM_PLAYER
    class            CLASS_SWAMPTROOPER
    health            300
    yawSpeed        70
    walkSpeed        55
    runSpeed        200
    snd            st1
    sndcombat        st1
    sndextra        st1
    dismemberProbArms    10
    dismemberProbHands    20
    dismemberProbHead    50
    dismemberProbLegs    20
    dismemberProbWaist    20
}

i updated the health to 300 (standard 100) and made their aim more reliable (5, instead of 1/2).
 

You are looking now at the starting area, not yet dotproduct applied, just the overal textures. As you can see from the glitching, on the left and right, i need to touch up on some stuff, but the main brushwork is done. You are looking into the cove here where the sea is gonna wash up into here. Behind me is the path that leads to the rest of the map and it's puzzles.   

Further: horizon blending at it's finest  @Szico VII, thanks for making it available as tutorial.  I did  had to play with the shader (ugh the lightmap stage cost me so much issues, but moving it around actually did the trick for me, instead of first pass being the lightmap, making the sand texture to bright, moved it to second stage, so it would blend in with my other textures. From there on the blue hue to actually blend it in the skybox, to early and the sand texture is too light, to late and you blend it into a green, rather than a blue).

I do have to look at the water texture again, may gonna switch it with a different one. (see topic on water texture in modding forum)  

Last but not least another pic of the corridor leading to the main area, this time grassified, playing with different grass blends.

Working on grass blending, that actually works propperly, this way you break up the repetitive terrain texture i am aware off, since i have 3 stages (i may end up adding another one) for grass. In the front on dry terrain, i use more dry / dead grass, while on the green patches i use a blend of dry and greener grass and there is a dense green patch with an occasional dry / dead. (also i need to find me some flowers as well).

I am in the progress of learning blender so i can start adding trees and bushes to it as well. My aim is to add at least 9 new trees (3 palm, 3 / 5 jungle, 3 bushes) to the map to break up terrain even more.

I have added last week a big chunk of map actually and now workign on the landing area / start of map. Also (not visible here) i have added near the end objective also a big chunk of terrain, and began slowly shaping the paths (yes multiple ways) towards the end objectives.

On 6/25/2022 at 1:50 AM, Botdra said:

Turns out we did have some progressive JPEGS that we had to resave as Basline Standard JPEGs in Photoshop. Doesn't explain why Kalek could load the map in base JA and I couldn't, but at least this info is here for anyone else who runs into this issue. Also, NetRadiant-custom was very helpful as it was the only software that told the user, upon loading a .map file, that there were progressive JPEGs and specifically what files.

i believe GTK does it too, when you compile, you may see it in one of the lines, that it cant load that texture. During applying it doesnt tell you jack tho.