dm_pipeload_beta

Re: dm_pipeload_beta Posted by haymaker on Thu Apr 10th 2008 at 3:05am

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Posted 2008-04-10 3:05am

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haymaker

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( edited for relevance )

Don't forget to jump as you fire your ggun at the pads! Again, I do not know where this map came from; it's a Uwe Boll storyline with a dash of various map chunks.

Re: dm_pipeload_beta Posted by Le Chief on Thu Apr 10th 2008 at 5:20am

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Posted 2008-04-10 5:20am

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I like the first screen shot the best. Something seems missing from the second and third pictures, they seem flat for some reason. I'd also rethink the choice of textures, especially in the third screenshot, too much concrete imo.

If the map was mine, I'd start to think about adding in some props, just the usual stuff like barrels, creates, rubbish, wires .....

I'll download the map and tell you some more of what I think.

Aaron's Stuff

Re: dm_pipeload_beta Posted by reaper47 on Thu Apr 10th 2008 at 9:34am

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Posted 2008-04-10 9:34am

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haymaker, this map is amazing! There might be some rough edges to polish but there always are - besides that it's loaded with great ideas and layout-bits.

First thing I'd do: Make those jump-pads very obvious... ideally with a custom "shoot ggun down here" icon right in front of them. For how important it is to see them clearly, I'd up (or better - remove) the close drawing distance. They seem to appear only if you're in a 3 meters radius. Their impact on performance, on the other hand, should be near-zero.

I didn't quite understand the role of the indoor jumppads, though. I like them in general, but I couldn't find a good place to jump.

I agree that the composition is a little wild, still, but some of the ideas you put into this map are great! The battery-dispenser? I don't know how useful it is the way it currently works, but the idea behind it alone - nicely done! I also got a nice Black Mesa vibe from playing it, which is always a big plus in my book.

Why snark works.

Re: dm_pipeload_beta Posted by RedWood on Thu Apr 10th 2008 at 4:10pm

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Posted 2008-04-10 4:10pm

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I'm loving those screens. I'll have a run around soon.

Reality has become a commodity.

Re: dm_pipeload_beta Posted by haymaker on Thu Apr 10th 2008 at 11:11pm

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Posted 2008-04-10 11:11pm

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<div class="abouttext">Message submitted 15 minutes after original post:</b></div>
Hey thanks Reaper.

yeah the pipecap model I forgot about the fade thing, I meant to fix that. I tried using a combineball model instead, looks way cooler but eats up 10 fps in the ditch compared to the pipes. Too bad there's no model of those xen-pads from BM!

I agree, someone ignorant of their function would likely keep going by. That inside pad, I was trying a way to get into the green room without a ladder, but it's a bit clumsy. The one on the "bridge" I've found is useful as a brake from fall damage and as a way up to the sides ( Ggun secondary seems a lil easier to control ). I wonder if a couple more on either side of the vertical pipething would help gameplay. That's the most important thing to consider atm, is placement of those things...

As for construction LOL I should post a screen of just the hint brushes, omg. I'm actually really surprised i get any fps out of this at all.

Oh ya, you didnt mention if you tried the taps...I wanted to know if they were too obscure an idea. I guess so, if you didnt think of it.

Re: dm_pipeload_beta Posted by Juim on Fri Apr 11th 2008 at 2:39am

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Posted 2008-04-11 2:39am

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Nice stuff here Hay. I really feel like trying harder after looking at yours and reapers work. This one is no exception, even considering its early stage of development. Super layout, good z-axis play, top notch all around. Some questions though...

1. Those big red-ish pipes overhead, are they brush based?
2. Also, one of those pipes drops down into what looks like a stainless steel tank. Is that a model?, 'cause I sure would love to have that texture! :rolleyes: .
3. The health spicket rocks, can you post a tut please?
4. The Nuclear reactor in the skybox is a displacement right?

Now one of the only visual problems I have with the map are the spiral stairways. The pipe models you are using as the center post just don't do them justice. They seem out of place. Perhaps a nice brush cylinder of some sort, with a diffferent texture?. I'm sure if you func_detail it , it would'nt hurt performance much.

Also, I agree with Reap about the jump pads.

Super map so far!

Quote from Nietzsche....God is dead
Quote from God....Nietzsche is dead

Re: dm_pipeload_beta Posted by Le Chief on Fri Apr 11th 2008 at 4:39am

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Posted 2008-04-11 4:39am

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mmm.. forget my comments from before, this map is quite good. I was mislead by the screenshots (I think you need to put some better/more ones!!).

I quite enjoyed this map. I really liked all the cool areas that the player could see, but not get to, this is a pretty important thing in most maps. You had some nice ambient sound in the map, but I still think that the map needs more sound, such as outside, maybe some ocean/wind or seagull sounds, I don't know.

Juim said:
Now one of the only visual problems I have with the map are the spiral stairways. The pipe models you are using as the center post just don't do them justice.

Yeah, I think that too, you should probably replace those pipes with something else.

Aaron's Stuff

Re: dm_pipeload_beta Posted by haymaker on Fri Apr 11th 2008 at 7:50pm

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Posted 2008-04-11 7:50pm

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<div class="abouttext">Message submitted 2 minutes after original post:</b></div>
Much thanks for the quick feedback, you guys are awesome :smile:

Juim, your questions;

The red pipes are brushes, yes, actually if you look closely you'll see some bad joinery in there too. It seems impossible to clip at 22.5 deg without putting the end clip point across the map somewhere.

-I'm not sure what you mean by steel tank, there are 2 pairs either side of the mini-bridge; one pair is a laundry model I think, the other is a brush with an HL2 pipe tex on it. The model I diabled vertex lighting on, so it may look a lil different than usual.
-The health tap, here is a vmf of it, easier to show you it than type it.
http://files.filefront.com/htapvmf/;9991040;/fileinfo.html
I have to ask, did you instinctively try them or were you tipped off by my previous post?
-Yes the tower is a displacement. I can not take credit for that entirely, here is a post I made about it some time ago. I did retool the displacements a bit to make it look like it does now.
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=594387&highlight=geometry+challenge

While I'm responding to you Juim I will say that I took abit of inspiration from your freestylin' mapping ethics on this, the original maps were completely obvious in layout. I kind of threw some of that to the wind after playing Striker a few times, thank you!

Funny you guys should mention the pipes in the stair cores, they are so old I completely took their existence for granted. I will put some brushwork in there, good suggestion.

Aaron, with regards to sound: I agree, for ambience it makes a huge difference BUT in this particular game care is needed. I've actually turned the low roaring down to 1.5, two reasons being 1) enemy sounds are very important to listen for, 2) I find loud maps annoying after awhile. There is a map dm_abyss, great piece of work except there's too much loudness, it gets deafening after a spell. And this is coming from someone who was making mashup cassettes when they were 14, I have always been fooling around with audio my entire life. This game in particular must have its needs addressed. Intermittent things are good though. Did you hear the flies in the toilet? Seagulls not a bad idea, I hadn't thought of that; that leads me to surmise that you think there is ocean out there beyond the dyke, which is what I was hoping for.

I can't believe how much friggin' work these things are. Someone's gotta invent a headset where you can just think what you want into the program.

Re: dm_pipeload_beta Posted by Le Chief on Fri Apr 11th 2008 at 11:05pm

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Posted 2008-04-11 11:05pm

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Here is something I wrote on twhl:

Subtle detail is just as important as normal/obvious detail, don't ever question that. Obvious detail makes the level interesting and subtle detail makes the level more like a real place. The mind will subconsciously pick up these subtle details and it will add to the over all realism. In fact, it is a lack of these subtle details that the player will pick up. The same rule applies for sound design, you need your obvious more louder sounds, and your quieter subtle sounds.

So the next time you think about adding a piece of rubbish here, or a tiny crack there, or some tiny detail or subtle sound that you think its not worth because not many players will notice it, you had better add it in and add in some other subtle detail as punishment for even questioning its existence.

So I guess what I am trying to say, is that your map is mostly populated by the more obvious sounds. I think that you need one ambient sound that you hear in all indoor areas, like a corridor sound or something, it should be pretty quiet and change in pitch or echo depending on the room type, however you do that in source.

And a sound that you hear outside like wind or ocean waves (or whatever is out there).

Obvious sounds with a small radius (eg: machines with "bleeping" and "beeping" sounds) do have a nice effect. And maybe some like rat sounds would be cool. Or echo-y sounds of material (wood, metal..) falling.. spooky.

But I think that you need a sound for indoors and outdoors to kind of blend all the other sounds together, so as you walking through the map, you don't hear: machine sound.. silence... silence.. flies.. flowing water.. silence.. etc.

BTW, I thought the map had ocean beyond because of the sky box.

Aaron's Stuff

Re: dm_pipeload_beta Posted by haymaker on Sat Apr 12th 2008 at 5:02pm

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Posted 2008-04-12 5:02pm

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OK I did a bit of investigating with regards to sounds, you've piqued my curiosity. It's odd that you say there is no "play everywhere" sound, because there is. It is actually a wind sound, downshifted in pitch by 20 points or so.

I think it's because sound in this game seems highly hardware dependent, as it is with any media. I asked somebody to start lostvillage and listen, he says he can't hear any BG sound, while on my system the wind is quite noticeable.

Running around Overwatch and Zeta just showed me that my map doesn't fit that model. Vault and Island17 have barely any sound at all. Backbone has a pile of hl2-sounding soundscapes that are pretty loud and don't seem to fit the map somehow. Inevitableconflict has a similar "setting" ie quasi industrial, uses a few of the sounds I do, better blending than backbone yet is mixed too loud I think. ( I wish the author would finish that one, so much potential. ) And so on.

The soundscape system in general actually bugs me in that the sound fades are too unrealistic between zones. I can see what the designers were thinking, but I actually prefer using plain ambient_generic, for local sounds at least. Drawback being the way they can drop out at a null point. As for overall ambience, I guess you get a little more control over scripting, but it's supposed to support the map, not take away from it.

So anyway I'm thinking you didn't "feel" the sound because a) your system responds differently than mine ( component quality not being a factor ) or b) the sound is just wrong, and your personal response was to relegate it to non-existence. Either way, I will adjust the level, and try a different sound.

Also here's a pic of a replacement pipe in the stair core, looks the same to me lol, kinda plain jane but it works.

Re: dm_pipeload_beta Posted by haymaker on Sat Apr 12th 2008 at 6:05pm

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Posted 2008-04-12 6:05pm

Post #146222

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Can't seem to get on the right track for the ggun pads, I'm stubbornly resisting the custom content idea again. I had thought of extracting the VGUI model of the ggun but I am not sure how I would use it.

Re: dm_pipeload_beta Posted by Le Chief on Sat Apr 12th 2008 at 10:20pm

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Posted 2008-04-12 10:20pm

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I found a nice little effect in regards to sounds. I was makeing a map with a machine and it just didn't sound realistic as you walked up to it, so I placed 3 ambient sounds. One of them had the sound at volume 7 with a small radius, the second one had the sound at 4 with a medium radius and the other had the sound at 2 with a large radius.

In regards to the new pipe, I was thinking something along the lines of a concrete pillar or something, I mean, how does a pipe support the stairs in real life?

Aaron's Stuff

Re: dm_pipeload_beta Posted by Juim on Sat Apr 12th 2008 at 11:04pm

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Posted 2008-04-12 11:04pm

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I agree, concrete seems to be a better more realistic choice, unless the stairs are meta, which I think they were, and in that case a metal texture, but one without all the rivet action on it. More of a solid rusty type.

Also I too prefer the locally placed ambient generics. Aaron, did you not here the dripping water all over striker?, or the steam venting at two different pitches?, or the wind sounds outside?. There were actually several ambient generics throughout the map. I have to agree with Hay, your system specs might be keeping you from hearing the good stuff.

Re: dm_pipeload_beta Posted by Le Chief on Sun Apr 13th 2008 at 7:38am

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Posted 2008-04-13 7:38am

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Juim said:
I have to agree with Hay, your system specs might be keeping you from hearing the good stuff.

... really? I sure hope not and maybe I just wasn't paying attention to the sound or I didn't have my speakers loud enough. I'll try again.

Aaron's Stuff

Re: dm_pipeload_beta Posted by reaper47 on Sun Apr 13th 2008 at 10:08am

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Posted 2008-04-13 10:08am

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Aaron, I think you've got some very low sound volume settings, I just checked dm_balcony_beta3 and it does have correctly embedded soundscapes which I can hear clearly and others have commented on as well.

About ambient_generics: I've pretty much given up on them, so I don't know whether they are fixed now or how exactly they work, but I remember ambient_generics only playing on the client's computer but not anyone who joins the map from a server. Maybe that's just plain wrong, like I said I haven't really tested it in years. If it works nicely, please tell me, I think they are pretty useful entities in the end...

Why snark works.

Re: dm_pipeload_beta Posted by Juim on Sun Apr 13th 2008 at 11:06am

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Posted 2008-04-13 11:06am

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Yes Reap,I had that problem as well with reguard to ambient_generics, and I found out that Linux based servers require the whole path to be used in the sound name box in it's properties.Like:
ambient/explosions/explode7.wav
In hammer when you use the sound browser in the ambients properties, simply selecting a sound gets you a kind of short cut that only windows based servers seem to be able to use.

I find ambients can be quite effective and simpler to use than a soundscape. More localized and directional.

Re: dm_pipeload_beta Posted by reaper47 on Sun Apr 13th 2008 at 3:22pm

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Posted 2008-04-13 3:22pm

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Juim, I heard that before but totally forgot, thanks! I'll use that in the future.

Why snark works.

Re: dm_pipeload_beta Posted by haymaker on Sun Apr 13th 2008 at 5:11pm

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Posted 2008-04-13 5:11pm

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<div class="abouttext">Message submitted 24 minutes after original post:</b></div>
Wow I had no inking of such a thing, thanks guys! That engine in the ship had two pairs of 6 amb_generics in a similar cfg to Aaron's machine, trying to hide the charger sound. Plus there was a triggered sound in the hull heard everywhere. I'll feel stupid if those were never heard.

I have to say though that I've never experienced this. I've joined random servers running both balcony and striker and they all seem functional...plus my server is linux, all maps seem to work fine there...

On the topic of sound, I would LOVE it if there was a sound preview in Hammer. It seems rather simple to me to include some of the sound engine and just call on it, it's not like they're prerendered like in the lighting preview. It's not a huge deal to do a bsp-only compile and check out your pitch-shifting and whatnot ( even though I've found vvis will alter spatialization somewhat ), but it would be way cooler inside of Hammer.

Another thought I had was in regards to performance load. I really don't think you can take the sound engine for granted. Is there a special showbudget for that?

Let's say you have 10 amb_generics and 4 soundscapes calling 1 sound each. That's 14 static channels, say there is an effect on 2 of them. Now add 6 players with 4 dynamic sounds each ( walk, run, fall, die ). That's 38 plus fx. Now add in weapon and physics sounds, which are dynamic but still could add up to 8 or more sounds at any time. Factor in advanced players who can double the average data pace of a game, that is a fair amount of sampling to be done, say 46 active channels at peak. Cubase can handle that with barely a flicker, but it's not running a game engine too.

Anyway sorry for the long-winded post, should probably be in a different thread!

Juim OT question, if you read this, how did you get your rocket to spawn in the water in Hiatus? I'm having difficulty with a battery and a puddle.

Re: dm_pipeload_beta Posted by Juim on Sun Apr 13th 2008 at 5:59pm

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Posted 2008-04-13 5:59pm

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Well to be quite honest, I don't know really. I do know that weapon placement was done after the water had been put in place, and I made sure that the weapon was about 4 units off the ground there as well.. You're not the only one to ask me that either. Also, in answer to your earlier question, I instinctively use all items which seem usable when looking around a new map. The spicket seemed so prominently placed, I just tried it, and of course, was pleasantly suprised. I also really liked that other thing....(cough!) :razz: .Very cool effect there. A bit anti-climactic, but amusing to be sure.

Re: dm_pipeload_beta Posted by haymaker on Fri May 9th 2008 at 11:55pm

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Posted 2008-05-09 11:55pm

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changes from b1;

Name change. It occurred to me only recently that a reference to drug use might be made with the original title. That was never my intention, the name came from the idea that I wanted to festoon this place with a thousand pipes but soon ran into problems. I do not condone the use of hard drugs in any shape or form.

Mag-room health concept changed

Identifiers placed close to the health-taps

Custom texture instruction for jump pad use installed, hopefully easy to understand

Fixed several spawnpoints that were tripled (!) on top of themselves somehow

Minor adjustments to lighting

Otherwise it's the same as it was.