spmfb_round2.zip (filefront)

Installation:
Extract the contents of the zip archive to your *\half-life 2\hl2\maps folder.

To load them type 'map snark' in console and use your arrow keys to select one, then hit Enter.

While you play pay extra attention to: Aesthetics (How good it looks), Craftmanship (How well it's built/runs), Creativity (How awesome the idea is!), and Game Flow (This one's a bit ethereal, does it flow well from one event or area to the next?)

Once you've played them all vote for your favorite!

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o

Am I missing something, they all were the same map?

They all start the same, since this is round 2 and each map was built with map 1 as the base. Keep playing and you will see that each of them diverge at a certain point into different maps.

It does sort of suck that people have to replay map 1 so many times just to see the round 2 maps.

Should've put in a teleporter that takes you to the start of part2, that'd be neat.

I have more to say about each of the maps later, but here is a .zip of some demos I took while playing the maps: riven's demos

Instead of just sending them to the contestants themselves, I figured everyone would get a kick out of seeing how someone else went about playing those maps. Don't laugh!

Enjoy!
-Riven

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Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202

Thanks for that riven and I will laugh if I feel the need.

Ok I haven't playin the round one maps and will do after this but here we go.

Fingers map: I thought this map was the most complete and had the most effort put into it. The goal was very strange though, Activating a teleporter. However this does leave open many possibilities of where you will end up. And maybe I wasn't listening or was to busy looking at the details but the goal was unclear. I also was unaware that the teleporter was up and active and walked into it by total fluke. And was that your voice I was hearing?

Reapers Map: It felt incomplete. The gameplay was nice and simple. I felt I was doing damage and moving forward through the map at a good speed. Thats very important in shoot em up games. Even at the end part where you face heaps of combine and manhacks I still felt that I was moving forward. However this gameplay can get very repetative and boring after a while.

Redwoods map: In this map, redwood decided to take a turn from the combine train station theme and go down under. This map to me also felt incomplete. The gameplay was simple and I felt that the map lacked ambient sound. It was very short to. But it was nice to see some zombies. But I think that you should have spent more time on this map.

To conclude: I feel all three maps had the potential to be better but I think that you guys ran short of time. My vote goes to Finger because his map was the most complete and felt finished. I had fun playing all three maps and you guys did a nice effort. None of these maps where crap they just lacked some lovin probley due to the very limited time that they had. By the way as I said before I haven't playin the other three base maps but your base map finger, is good. Its awsome how the civilians get shot in the back.

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Aaron's Stuff

I liked Finger's map the most. The ending was quite nice, and I liked the possibilities it allows other mappers to go to. I thought the flow was a bit poor though, since that one fenced off area with the grunts and headcrabs actually made me think that was an unreachable area. It wasn't until I ran up and down the tunnel about 3 more times did I realize that the right side of the fence wasn't clipped off :razz:

As far as Reaper's goes, I thought the manhack ending kinda, well, annoyed me. It didn't help that I had been fighting my way through tons of manhacks in the other maps (this is actually attributed to how all three maps have the same base (duh) and thus, all of them have quite a few manhacks in them). Graphically, some of the areas in the map needed some touching up, since the map seemed to suffer from a lot of redundant gray/concrete textures.

Redwood's zombie bit, like what Aaron said, was nice and refreshing from the grunt fest of the previous two maps, and I liked the cave theme a lot. Unfortunately, that semi-industrial area at the very end of the map needed quite a lot of work. Those random heaps of dirt came off looking giant blankets covering junk, and they didn't fit in very well.

So, I guess Finger gets my vote! :smile:

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Breaking the laws of mapping since 2003 and doing a damn fine job at it

Hey, thanks for the feedback. It's great to hear where people got confused; I felt the map could be potentially confusing at a few spots, so this info will help me make it better.

If you listen to the audio (which might be hard to hear at points), you should get an idea of what is going on, but I'm certain it could be handled better. I had initially planned a fully choreographed npc scene to help tell the story, but just didn't have the time to do it right, so I chose to go with audio over the intercom.

And yeah, that was my voice (ack).... though I messed with the pitch some. Npc dialogue/scenes is the real bottleneck for this type of stuff and could definately be improved, but hey, you do what you can in 3 weeks :biggrin:

This definitely is a tough one. All three open up the map to a lot of possibilities.

As a contestant, I could judge based on how I would like to continue the map. If I wanted to stay with the combine theme, I could go with Reaper's map, or if I wanted more of an open-ended urban battlefield, I could go with Redwood's. If I wanted something radically different, I could go with Finger's.

Since I'm kind of at odds with myself, I'll use some kind of scoring system and decide from there.

Gameplay:
Finger. I olny died once, and that was because I got hit by a train (oops). Not to say it was too easy, I almost died a few times, and I ran for my life as many times.
Reaper. A little too hard when the combine swarm around you with shotguns, I died a lot (hard mode).
Redwood. Nothing particularly hard, zombies are pretty predictable, after all. Plus it was too short.

Originality:
Redwood. Albeit rather implausible.
Finger. Varied environments and enemies.
Reaper. More of the previous section.

NPCs:
Finger. Plenty of them, plenty hard, pretty well done. Especially those headcrabs from the canister.
Reaper. Some of the combine who ran to locations didn't respond until they got there. ai_goal_assault?
Redwood. The antlion guard didn't break the wall until I was right up against it and he smacked me. Everything else was fine, but the antlion's more crucial than Reaper's combine.

Least Errors:
Reaper. None that I could see.
Finger. A few brushes inside of other brushes
Redwood. Some AI errors (see above), and I don't think you built the cubemaps. Plus some displacements that didn't line up, and that physics props went through, as well as a white background to one of the train tunnels.

Environment:
Finger. Lots of different places, not all of them polished as much as could be, but all of them good.
Redwood. It's different, it allows more varied expansion than Reaper's, but it is implausible that there just happens to be a hidden chamber there, and that it leads where it does, how it does.
Reaper. Still a combine train station, not much new there. It's solid, there isn't a thing wrong with the environment overall, but it isn't as exciting as the other two.

There's my opinion, I won't vote until I've read some others, though.

[Edit]
A funny thing happened while I was playing one of the maps. In the beginning when the citizens line up against the wall to be shot, the one in the middle of the first group ran to a completely different place, and then back to his spot. On his way back, he got in the way of the combine shooting the first citizen.
So he became the first to be killed, good job.

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Also change the texture of the dock. Docks are rarely tile. -Facepunch
As I Lay Dying

Riven thanks for the demo!

It was a real eye opener watching you play and my mistakes made me laugh quite a few times.

• The apc blocking the plug was murphys law in action. it sucked, and I'll try to find a way to keep that from happening.

• I think the story points were probably lost on most people. I should take the time to do a real choreographed npc scene. The audio was too long, and maybe not very direct. You seemed anxious to move on, rather than listen, which makes me think it didn't work so well. I'm compelled to improve it.

• You getting stuck in the door with a sniper shooting at you was great. Good bug finding, and luckily a fairly easy fix.

• that sniper nest is too damn high.... I didn't intend for it to take so many attempts. I'll drop it down or pull it closer.

• I need more audio prompting you to go into the teleporter. This whole sequence could maybe use some retooling.

• I don't know if it was just the demo or what, but when you went through the teleporter you ended up in the skybox, which is not where you were supposed to go. Let me know if that's where you actually went.....you were supposed to end up at the 'continue point sequence [spolier] A looped sequence traveling down dimly lit train tracks.How did it end for you?

Oh, I also saw quite a few little graphical bugs thanks to your playthrough.

Now that the deadline is up, I'll be tightening up the map quite a bit. Regardless of the winner, I'll be continuing this project. I have plans for where it is headed.

Well, that demo recorded correctly how it ended for me the first time, but I did play it again, and I did get to see the correct ending, but I think it messed up the first time simply because I jumped into the portal instead of just walking through it.

You don't have to lower that sniper nest just for me. I just suck at throwing nades .

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Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202

Same thing with the skybox ending happened to me. I did see the to-be-continued scene, but the sequence took a few moments to load. :/ I would also like to add that like Riven said, I don't think I walked into the teleporter; I jumped into it from a ledge.

On another note, one of the sniper nests isn't exactly high -- the one to the left of the trainyard might be a bit far away, if anything else. I recorded a few demos of me playing everyone's maps, but my current webhost is down at the moment, so I'll see if I can get the uploaded by some make shift means.

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Breaking the laws of mapping since 2003 and doing a damn fine job at it

hmm... I have no idea why jumping into the teleporter would change things. Good to know, though, I'll look into it!

Finger: Good as expected. I really liked blowing up apcs with the trains, that was a very cool idea. The voice acting was... interesting, but I didn't find the ending confusing in the least. The only major complaint I had was that custom skybox, which looked like something out of Xen and burned my eyes with its blueness.

Reaper: Suprisingly solid, but let down by the little things. For example, nearly all the doorways in the second half of your map are too big, mis-proportioned and without trim. Plus it was way too short and about half of your section is spent in a duct.

Redwood: This is so much better than your round 1 attempt. Thematically it made no sense and it was way too short as well, but was well put together and rather problem free (except for buildcubemaps not being run, which is a biggie). I liked the under construction basement area, just too bad it felt really out of place given Finger's section.

Yeah, I may have gone a little too nuts with the sky. Anyone else feel that way?

Ah, they arrived. I'm d/l right now and hopefully get to check them out this evening. Can't wait.

Thanks for the demo, too, Riven!

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Why snark works.

Yeah, I may have gone a little too nuts with the sky. Anyone else feel that way?

I thought the sky was a nice touch, actually. I can't say that it will fit in with most maps out there, but it was a nice break from the default HL2 skies.
Was it a bit extreme? Yes. Was it nice and refreshing? Yup :biggrin:

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Breaking the laws of mapping since 2003 and doing a damn fine job at it

Alright, I really enjoyed playing these! :smile:

Finger: So much content, it's really darn impressive. I remember seeing entities I never even heard of in the base VMF, while struggling myself with simply getting combines to move from point A to B. Again, the scripting is excellent. Especially the train crashing the tank and the rather oldschool but nice teleporter wind-up sequence (although I seemed to miss the end-scene as well).

The vent sequence appeared a bit illogical. Why do the turrets shoot the static vent and no more? I found some of the enemies and entities to be a bit stacked, like the 6 hopper mines in a row, the 6 million fast headcraps, or some of the goodies.

The voice acting is very OK, just too silent (I couldn't hear much of it, because of background noises). Until I played the part the second time I didn't hear the "red button" being mentioned so I had troubles finding out what to do next. I also think that I missed a few explanations for wtf is going on in general.

I agree with G.Ballblue, I like the fact that there's a new sky, it just looks a bit boxish because of the imperfect perspective.

Generally, I wished the map remained underground a little longer. I like the change of environments, but it came a bit hastily. It felt like as you enter the first new corridor the map changes from cold to warm in a split second. I also felt that the level was physically "streched" a bit until the sniper-scene with hundreds of meters of null-architecture and tunnel-walls (maybe, if more time could have been spent on them, the eye candy would have made up for it). But this is probably getting to ethereal.

RedWood: A really impressive improvement. The mine-part was done very well. Maybe the whole place was a bit too narrow. I also noticed a detail that I'd like to specifically mention here: You removed the ar2 from the start scenes, which is a smart move for reserving the weapon as a reward for the later game.

The way the part was connected felt slightly illogical. You could have made it clearer that this was supposed to be a new part of the underground station under construction or the like.

Facit: Finger pwns us with his left pinky.

I took a look at Riven's demo of playing my section and it's pure torture to see others walk by parts of your map you spend hours to create. MAN! It's clearly the mapper's (my) fault if it happens but still... :biggrin:

I noticed that:

• you never see the headcrap push out the vent grate because of the combine soldier fights back there which should have made it very obvious how to continue (I accidently turned of the combine spawns until shortly before the map's release, that way I never got to play this part enough to see them fight back there! I should have let the combines out)
• you never see (or it's not obivous enough) how the manhacks get sucked into the vent. The last five manhacks I always lured back into the vent and saw them getting smashed to pieces one by one... sigh)
• never found the magnum (behind the crashed trains) but that's OK
• the 3 elite soldiers that come in by train didn't attack while you where crossing the big grate, thus coming from nowhere in the last breen scene (they never came at this point when I tested this part, there always started - and ended - a fight way before you even pressed the button, thus reducing the number of fighters in the last scene drastically)

After experiencing this, I almost feel sorry for providing the demos I recorded :wink: :

http://www.1-filehost.midnightirc.info/index.php?t=dl&hash=502H53Np93vthAc1liBd2uEC53vkhAzw

There might be strange lags in-between (no idea whether they show up). My PC told me it's too hot for him today. I told him that it's only 23?C but he laughed at me and said something about pixel shaders and that he's a she.

But, honestly, I drew a lot from this project and I'm motivated now to look even more into SP mapping in the future. I saw this as a learning experience more than a competition, so all the nice things you guys had to say in face of the shining superiority of Finger's mapping skillz are really appreciated. Next time, maybe I'm able to deliver something more wild and elaborate!

Cheers, good night!

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Why snark works.

Your working speed is obviously grater than mine. Wow. While like Reaper i also wanted to see it stay under ground for a while longer i liked the way you took it. i ran into several errors though. witch killed the experience. The vent part was interesting but, when they started breaking up i back up and i never fell to the ground. eventually the turrets retracted and i picked up all the mines and turned them friendly. (Yeah, I may have gone a little too nuts with the sky. Anyone else feel that way?) the sky while interesting, though the first time i saw it i actually questioned if i was in zen. it didn't look natural at all. http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/1449/tunalerrordt6.jpg . the combine jeep did a good job at getting me to run to the room on the right but, being the type of player i am it caused a problem. I might be an oddball but when i play fps's my mission is to kill everything. i won't move on until everything is dead and after about 15 dead bodies and being down to 10 health i realized they weren't going to stop coming. as for the train knocking out the apc i never saw it. i push a button i herd a sound and i saw a train pass. when i got back down i saw a burning apc and put 2 and 2 together. then as i was walking down the same tunnel a train hit the wreckage and though it into me leaving me with 20 health. I'm not sure if this is what i was supposed to do but i ended up trecking back to those wood crates so i could jump up on that ledge. I found it odd that the snipers wouldn't kill the rebels. http://img260.imageshack.us/img260/2680/warpingvq6.jpg . the choper snook up on me and killed me (pissed me off). a simple fly buy could fix that. they whole things gameplay felt choppy and when i finished i was irritated. Sorry Finger, im not trying to be an ass. it's just the way it turned out to play for me. Still better than my entry anyway.

Reaper: Apparently i was the only one who voted for you. While short it was well done. the game play was smooth and well paced. i only saw two errors. the manhacks and when the supper solders entered from behind they moved to their, what i assume was their, scripted_sequence they weren't shooting. I liked the way you utilized the space, looping back around the way you did. I felt like i had freedom of movement. I actually liked the man hacks at the end and found them to be a nice challenge. with never actually leaving the train station/subway it still leaves enough room to go any ware from from hear. Nice job.

Me: I turned on sv_cheats to 1 and built cubemaps. what ells do i have to do?! Well apparently i didn't do a good job at getting my idea across again. I spent most of my time tweaking the round 2 base and didn't have enough time do detail my basement well enough. the idea was that the rebels had learned that the combine had been using the train station as a prison and they had dug a (unusually large) tunnel in the basement of a old rundown colonial house built into the side of the hill that the station was built into. but before they could go through with the operation head crabs had infested the house and turned them into zombies. O well i thought the transition was a little unbelievable myself.
Stradic:
"The antlion guard didn't break the wall until I was right up against it and he smacked me. Everything else was fine, but the antlion's more crucial than Reaper's combine." Uhhh, i never touched it. I thought it worked fine the way Finger had it. i don't even know how it works.
Aaron:
"the map lacked ambient sound" Yes, the one thing that i really suck at is sound. I should read a tut or something.

does anyone think the next round should be purely for tweaking what we already have and not being allowed to add any more sections. It would be a nightmare trying to go back and try to polish like 8 or 10 rounds all at once.

Redwood, Reaper - thanks for the feedback. While I appreciate the props given, I am really interested in the 'bad' playthrough experiences more than anything. Knowing where things fail is the only way to improve the gameplay experience.

Redwood: It sounds like 'all of the bad things that could happen did happen', on your playthrough. Which is actually great for me, because it shows me where to apply fixes. I knowingly tried some pretty tricky stuff with this map; stuff that isn't obviously difficult.

• pusing the player up, back, and around, to start the trains and take out the APC is a risky move and has the potential to be confusing, as you experienced. It's true that alot of people think the objective is always to move forward and throwing an enemy roadblock just feels like a tough setup they must fight through. Although the soldiers weren't infinite - it seems it felt that way. I'll keep thinking about how to make this setup better. Ultimately, what you would want to do is have some setups prior to that where the player had to start trains... then make the roadblock more obvious with something like a barricade... then try to make the connection between starting trains and breaking the barricade.

Also, I bet I could change that area somewhat so you are more likely to see the train smashing the apc.

• Snipers did shoot rebels that were trying to run across the field; that sounds like a bug. I'll look into it.

• It sucks that the Helicopter caught you off guard. I'll give it a flyby and have it shootint at an npc_bullseye for a bit before it targets you.

• The vent/hopper setup: I figured it would go down 3 ways, and either was acceptable to me.

1. player would see hoppers before they pulled the plug, and use grav gun to disable them.

2. Player would pull plug, back up when turrets started shooting, 'not' fall through the vent, and use the gravity gun to clear the ground.

3. Player would pull plug, fall with vent tip. then freak out as hoppers popped all around them.

Maybe I should change this a bit so the player always falls.

Anyway - great insight from everyone into what worked and what didn't. As a gauge, most professional developers have the very same experience at their focus tests. The only way you get to a shining, polished product, is to break it over and over until you can't break it any more.

You have a good point Redwood.... as this competition grows so do the bugs. It would be nice to have a week (once the winner is announced) before the next comp starts so the winner can polish things up and make the map as bug free as possible. Also, it would be nice to know how many rounds we want this competition to be.

I tried out the demo vid thing and i was surprised to find it didn't lag up the game. soo, i ran through Reaps and Fingers maps again. this is the link to recording of the second time i played through the two and a 30 second vid of mine. if you like, take a look at my vid and tell me if you caught this when you play my level.
http://files.filefront.com/demovidsrar/;7945849;;/fileinfo.html

Redwood when you run buildcubemaps it adds data to the map. If you don't zip up and distribute the version of the map sitting in your steam/steamapps/youremailhere/half-life2/hl2/maps/ folder you won't be distributing a map with buildcubemaps run. I've made this same mistake too so don't take it too hard. :smile:

Uhh, i don't remember ware i pulled it from. Thats probably the the problem. Won't happen again. Thanks Yak Fighter.

Also, if you re-name the BSP after compiling cubemaps it doesn't find them anymore.

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Why snark works.

My router is dead and I most likely won't be able to get a new one until the end of the week, so if someone wants to get round 3 going while I'm "away" I'd appreciate it. If not I'll probably have internet again this weekend and I'll start it up then. I'm posting from school, and I have another class tomorrow night so I'll check here then to see what's decided.

-Snickers

PS enjoy the fourth

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o

Well, is the voting over? Has Finger accepted? I think it might be a good time to prepare the next round.

Should we just let the winner (Finger) tweak the last two rounds as he sees fit and release them in a week or two? Since they're his maps and all...

I think (once the tweaked .vmf's would be ready) we should give our selves 4 weeks to work on the next round. Is that too long?

What do you guys think?

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Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202

4 weeks seems a little long. I think 3 would be fine....but I'm fine with whatever. I just hate to see the contest grow so long that people lose the urgency to get their stuff done.

I do want to tighten some of my stuff up before I release the vmf. Right now work is a little crazy (crunch mode as we finish up Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction 'end plug'), so it would be great if I could take a week to prep everything.

How about I submit the VMF this coming friday. This will give me some time to tweak, and everyone else time to think about what they want to do. After I submit the VMF, we'll start round 3 and give it a 3 week deadline (if that's the time everyone agrees on).

What do ya think?

Sounds good to me. It gives time for Baron to come back, plus I'll be done with my Gameflood contest submission by then, so I'll get to partake.

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Also change the texture of the dock. Docks are rarely tile. -Facepunch
As I Lay Dying

Do you work in the games industry finger?

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Aaron's Stuff

Does any els think for the next round that we should put a block on expanding the map and dedicate it to detailing what we have? It probably take 2 or 3 rounds to get the proper amount of detail. even the first half is still bare.

Well, call me anxious but, I'm kinda excited to see where else this single-player adventure will end up! While that may be a good idea RedWood, I believe that that idea could be taken advantage of after everything is done? Besides, Finger should go about making everything clean and nice for us in round 3 anyway.

Three weeks sounds nice.

But it might be a better idea to work on the detail...

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Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202

I think that detailing is best reserved for when we decide this contest is finished (and, instead of another contest then, allowing the winners to freely polish their parts for a final release). I agree with Riven that much of the excitement currently comes from waiting for what mappers would add in terms of new parts of the map. This is a huge motivation for both participants and observers.

But it would probably make sense to think about when we'd like this to end. Maybe say that there should be (about) 4 rounds in general, so that for the next round the events should go towards a finale rather than introducing any new questions.

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Why snark works.

Since Finger's map was the winner, how are we going to do the next round? The teleporter didn't have a specific destination, we could just make a whole new map (new .vmf). The only thing that would carry over from the previous contest would be the storyline.
I've already got my idea, but I promise not to start on it until the next round starts. :biggrin:

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Also change the texture of the dock. Docks are rarely tile. -Facepunch
As I Lay Dying

Stadric, I think you've got the right idea. Since my level ended with a teleporter to 'who knows where', the next round should start with a fresh vmf. Contestants don't really need my maps as a base.

I like the idea of 4 rounds. I also like the idea of detailing and polishing once the contest is over.

So, considering we don't really need my maps as a base; I'm fine with starting the next phase whenever. We could officially kick it off monday morning if you like, and give it a 3 week deadline.

Baron - you're the final authority on this. What do you think?

I was under the impression it was going to be much longer (like 45 min of play) but, if it's only going to be 4 rounds long i don't see a problem with waiting to detail.

This is what Baron thinks.

Are there any volunteers to take over the contest?

For continuation, I recommend we let contestants make the next map from scratch, not a base .vmf. If we do this, we can start the contest as early as Monday, and there won't be that much of an advantage for the people (read: cheaters) who start today.

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Also change the texture of the dock. Docks are rarely tile. -Facepunch
As I Lay Dying

I wouldn't mind hosting the competition. Actually I have access to a server to host the maps too.

I'm on all the time, so I'd be quick to update the threads...

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Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202

I think we can all agree on this naming convention for the maps:
snark_mfb01_round3_Name.bsp

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Also change the texture of the dock. Docks are rarely tile. -Facepunch
As I Lay Dying

Most definitelty; that's what I was expecting anyway.

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Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202

Stadric said:
we can start the contest as early as Monday, and there won't be that much of an advantage for the people (read: cheaters) who start today.

I started early, convinced Baron to move the deadline back a week, and still didn't get halfway done

Quick question, what's the material path we should use? I propose a folder called mfb and sub-folders of our names so that nothing overwrites.
Mine would be .../materials/mfb/stadric.

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Also change the texture of the dock. Docks are rarely tile. -Facepunch
As I Lay Dying

I've been using "snarkpit_mfb" even for models and such.

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Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202

I'll my files to that, but I still think we should have a subfolder with our name.

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Also change the texture of the dock. Docks are rarely tile. -Facepunch
As I Lay Dying

I nominate Riven, perhaps I'll jump in on the contest.

The name system sounds good too. So to clear things up, for each folder system (i.e. materials; sound; models; scenes; etc...) you will have the subfolders: snarkpit_mfb/yourname/(your custom files).

Thanks DrGlass, I'll post up the round3 thread in a little bit!

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Blog: www.playingarchitecture.net
LinkedIn: Eric Lancon
Twitter:@Riven202