Yay, images galore:


Main changes here so far: I'm splitting up the floors into individual planks. Since most of the map is just displacement map and prop model, I think I can spend the additional poly's (they're all func_detail - the solid brushes of this map are less than 50 I think :smile: ).


Some of the smaller prop models I've been doing recently. I plan to do some medium-sized props such as a portable power generator and an accompanying jerrycan model. Anyone got idea's for replacing all those cover blocks without using too much crates? I think I'm getting stuck there a bit... rocks and bags full of crystals are easily overused too...


A nice sunset after playing with the gravity gun. :smile:
Notice the lack of a 3D skybox. I'm thinking about putting in a canyon-like background. What do you people think?

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

Varying between rock piles, bags of crystals, generic crates, and crates of crystals could be enough variety in all-purpose cover. If not you could consider making a mine cart model maybe, though if you don't have any cart tracks that might seem out of place :biggrin: I really like the sky you are using and the view out to it, and I think a canyon view would be pretty awesome. Glad to see you back working on this :smile:

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[img]http://card.mygamercard.net/sig/Default/reno84.png[/img]
Designer @ Haiku Interactive | ReNo-vation.net

Been to long, I cannot remember my past comments. :sad:

Anyway, you seem to be incorporating some digging tools? Will you be making the rocks appear to be dug "into?"

The cave looks to worn/tidy.

I will avoid commenting on the stretched textures at this time. :wink:

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The best things in life, aren't things.

Looks good to me. So far that is.

Thanks for them comments guys. :smile:

No mine-carts, there's no rails. I'll see what I can come up with - perhaps an additional stack of valuable-stones-with-ancient-runes and such. I guess it'll do. :smile:

Stretched textures and low-detailed area's are still being worked on. About the rocks, some carving details are a good idea. I'm not an expert with rocks but I'll see what I can do.

Anyone in for a playtest within a few weeks bytheway? :smile:

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

I will be :smile:

I'm not hosting ever again though, that's an experience I don't want to repete.

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Dark_Kilauea
DVS Administration
http://www.dvstudio-production.com/

Playing Half-Life 2 again after reinstalling my HD and reading some recent Snarkpit threads motivated me to take up work on Mudanchee again. It's been idling on my disk for almost a full year now, and that while it's almost finished...

So, I want to finish this map quick, nothing too fancy anymore in terms of custom stuff. I'm turning all the platforms into planks and I'm replacing the grey/orange blocks with crates and props now, and I'm adding a small 3D skybox, and that should be it. Oh, I've changed the rock texture in favor of a more wet looking one. This one also has far more relief because of the normal mapping applied to it. I think it's a good improvement. :smile:

Here are some screenshots, and the current version (v0.26) is available for download (6.3 MB).


The planks and new rock texture.


Another rock shot, 3D skybox not done yet here.


Overview of the tomb cave, crates still need replacement.


Central cave overview, platforms not 'plankyfied' yet.


Another central cave shot. Some models still need to be skinned.

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

Sexy rocks. And promising lighting.

It's very hard to read screenshots with even the slightest bits of dev textures in them but I'll download and have a 3D look. I like the theme a lot.

[edit:]

I just had a quick run through the map and it's filled with so many great details I don't know where to start. The waterfall (although screaming for a DX9 pass) works wonderfully. I could almost smell the cool, wet air. The custom props, although untextured really stand out. The lighting is done very well. Some of the halls have great vertical views.

Finish this quickly for an official release, but leave it at a beta state because this map is clearly worth a few more layers of polish (should be quite fun, actually).

Things I noticed (unsorted):

- It's too easy to fall down those cliffs. Handrails (probably higher than jump height) should block this off much more.
- Lighting is good but needs extra brightness. Most lamps could be twice as bright. Some parts lack contrast for clear view at daylight/bad monitor situations.
- Maybe this is a HL1 instinct but the brush-based boards for the catwalks look terribly inefficient (like 200 boards with 3 polys each ect.) This could need optimizing. But you could be totally right about the displacement argument.
- Some of the corridors are too long, disintegrating the layout a bit. There are 2 ones that you could consider deleting. I'll post a screenshot or something tomorrow to show what I mean.
- The RPG can be camped quite well.
- Source can only show 1 water effect (at least for me) at a time. This causes the water down the lowest waterfall to sometimes flicker with the upper water.

I'm quite tired. Hopefully I can explain more tomorrow, this is just a very quick impression.

I'm so glad to see such a promising HL2DM map resurrected.

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Why snark works.

Thanks for the comments. :smile:

I've heard others complaining that there's too little places to fall off (push off others actually) so I don't know, but there are a few places to get stuck that I need to adress, yeah.
The RPG is placed in the tomb for a reason: fire at the big circular button above the tomb to spike those campers. :smile: I need to provide a visual clue about the button though.
The planks didn't have too much effect on performance actually, it's holding up nicely. At least for me. What average fps did you get?
And I'll investigate the water issue. I thought I used cheap water for both, but I'm not sure about that now. Do you have these issues in other (official) maps as well?

And yeah, the waterfall needs some work. Almost forgot about that. :smile:
As for those long corridors, I assume you mean the one running between the waterfall cave and the central cave? From what I remember from the playtests, it was used a little less than the other connections, but it's still a nice alternative connection between the two caves. Perhaps some more cover is needed there?

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

i remember playtesting this with a bunch of people. great little level with a great feel. now the normalized rocks make it more realistic too. nice work.

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These words are my diaries screaming out loud

One more thing: I found it a bit irritating to have a filename that doesn't start with "dm_". I had to think a while when typing "dm_mudanchee" (well, "dm_mu") and it said it cannot find the file. Just for conformity. :smile:

The water always had this issue when I used it myself. I don't know if we did something wrong or if it's always that way. I'd keep the full reflections for the top part. The performance loss is OK for most cards that can actually render it. And it fits very well.

I think there'll be at least 2 or 3 angry moments for newer players where they accidentally fall off those cliffs or mistaking them with ledges they can actually jump on. This could be avoided. You can leave the death falls but make sure it's always other people or stupidity and not unknowingness that causes players to die.

I'd like to show you a screen regarding the layout idea but Steam decided to not let me play my games today so I'll have to wait.

Don't forget about the brightness, also. Besides finishing touches this is the only thing that seriously hurts the map right now. I could imagine this map to be unbearably dark when played on a brighter day or with bad mointor settings.

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Why snark works.

Yes, mudanchee_v.. is just the working name. The final version will be named dm_mudanchee.

I'm looking forward to those screenshots. The Steam servers seem to be taken down due to a storm in Seattle, were they're located, so I can't map at the moment either. I'll up the brightness once they're up again. :smile:

I'm thinking about organizing a playtest soon. Anyone interested?

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

I'm game.
Let us know when.

The new rock texture looks good. I'll reserve further comments till after I've had a chance to look over it. I would definitely like to participate in a mundachee playtest.

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o

Anyone interested?

me!

PS: The brighness is something I've been working on for my current map within the last few days. And it's still too dark, I bet :smile: . It can be a real pain. I'll probably upload a tutorial sometime, explaining a method I used to track down too dark parts of my map (that look fine with my standard monitor settings).

[edit:]

Here's the screen.

Basically, the back part, consisting mainly out of corridors, distracts from the three main parts. I think you could get rid of all the area with the red stripes. If you like some details there I'm sure you could place them in some other parts.

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Why snark works.

Hmm, I see. I can't remember any negative feedback on that part from the playtests, and I think removing it would make the level too small and leave too few focal area's and route choices out.

Well, I'll see. I got a comment on the Steam forums about the RPG being too accessible so I added a brush in front of it, grav grabbing is impossible now so players have to risk getting spiked to get it. The spike button is now also more obvious.

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

A small update: I've been working on the waterfall cave and besides a few things (some support beams standing in the way, the waterfall needing some blinking material effects and no 3D skybox yet) that cave is done.


Yay! Planks!


The waterfall. When moving it looks ok, but still quite plain materials.

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

Beautiful. And a bit brighter, too? I think, you can't make the place "too" bright yet.

I don't remember if I posted it already but from the first time I walked by this waterfall I could feel a cool, humid breeze. I thought it was my heater not working correctly but then I turned to the left and the right and felt the breeze at the respective side! A 3D, thermal illusion. Quite powerful, atmosphere-wise. :biggrin:

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Why snark works.

I've used -bounce 150 to add some more light ray bounces (default is 100) but I couldn't find a parameter that ups the brightness such as ZHLT's tools had. Perhaps some more bounces will be sufficient, otherwise I'll have to up all the lights a bit. :S

Heh, funny, that illusion. I really like the sound the big waterfall makes, makes it feel much more waterfall-esque. I don't feel a breeze though...

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

Crap. I got a filesystem corruption so I had to reinstall my computer. I'm currently trying to recover my files, but if that's not going to work, I will have lost about a month of work. I've still got backups from v0.26 I believe, and perhaps I can retrieve a later version I sent to a friend (which means I'll have to decompile it), but yeah...

Basically all that's lost is plankify work, the 3D skybox and the waterfall textures. But it means I can't spend this holiday on mudanchee as effective as I hoped... :S

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

You won't let this beautiful map die because of one system crash, will you? :eek:

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Why snark works.

Eh, no... not because of a system crash. I've had a busy time, rounding up my internship (got 2 published games under my belt now :razz: ) and taking up school again, and various other responsibilities.

I just don't know when I'll get back at this map, but when I do, there's not much left to do on it, so yeah... let's hope I find some spare time for this in the near future. :smile:

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

I found out about this cave in Mexico which reminded me of this map somewhat. It's funny how I thought the crystals to be quite surreal yet there are caves in the real world looking far more surreal than this. Anyway, I just found it pretty cool.

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Why snark works.

I remember seeing this map ages ago, it looked sweet back then, and it sure looks sweet now pmargin=2 leftmargin=2>

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Hell, is an half-filled auditorium

Can you please fix the download for this map. We tried to include it in our latest map pack and put it on our server but we are missing textures/sounds with the .bsp version we have. If you fix the download link we can feature it in our next map pack. Thanks!

Good work Captain P. Anyone who can make a realistic rock gemoetry deserves a golf clap. clap clap clap calp

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Aaron's Stuff

It's almost like kicking a dead horse or however the saying goes, but finally...

After more than 2 years - and a few more if you count mudanchee for HL - this map is getting done. I've skinned the last few models, worked out a few more details and it's now in a state that I can call it finished.

I would like to ask you guys to give it some tests: please report any issues so I can fix them. It'll be the last time I'll work on this map. Yay! :smile:

Enough with the boring talk, here are some screens and a download link. That's what this thread is all about, after all:


Entrance to the spiky rocket tomb


Sightseeing through the canyon


The big waterfall cave

Download! (.rar, 6.7 MB) (updated to v50)

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

Some images in this post have been automatically down-sized, click on them to view the full sized versions:

Probably some of the best rock work I've ever seen. this is really good looking Captain!. As for glitches or problems:



I jumped out of the cave into the water and walked right out of the map.

So, pros: Excellent rock work. Cool custom models, great layout, awesome ambience, attention to detail is just amazing.

Cons:A minor tad repetetive visually. And, nothing else that I can think of.

A truly great map worth waiting for.

P.S. Fix the offmap thing and I will pitch the map at the next [FF] playtest!

Thanks for your hard work!

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

Looks nice, I'll check it out later today.

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Aaron's Stuff

<html><head><link rel="stylesheet" href="themes/standard.css" type="text/css"></head><body topmargin=2 leftmargin=2>

I remember this from when hl2 was new to me , lol. Getting very impressive too I will say. Movement is good, lighting is very well done considering the dark nature of the theme. I was going to point out the unclipped water zone but Juim beat me to it.

The only thing that puzzled me was the presence of trigger_hurts underneath some of the catwalks, I don't see how that would help gameplay really. Plenty of times you get knocked around by nearby spam splash, would be frustrating to die when a chance of survival should be granted. Also, throw a prop in there, it's gone for the rest of the game. Maybe a clip with a metal grate or something...

Anyway your horse isn't dead I would say, far from it.

Oh. My. God. You're actually finishing this! :biggrin:

++ for stick-to-it-ness, I'm d/l right now.

EDIT:

I had a look and it seems pretty much flawless, except for the little glitch mentioned before.

If you want to give this another layout pass: I still think it's a little too big. I remember suggesting this a while ago:



I still think you should consider tightening the corridors in the back area. The map is still huge without them and excessive map size is among the main complaints I hear for HL2DM maps these days.

I think the layout works well the way it is, though. This is just a suggestion for tuning the flow. Imagine this map with a (very realistic) 4-6 player count. You could run around for minutes without getting into a fight. And even if cut in size, this map should be able to handle a crowded 16 player server.

Just something to consider. I love the look, feel and all the little details. Beautiful.

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Why snark works.

Thanks for the feedback guys. :smile:

@Juim: The waterfall-that-leads-to-nothingness is a problem I encountered a few times before: the compile tools ignore hidden VisGroups. Toggling player clip brushes back on again should do the trick. Thanks for pointing out. :smile:

@haymaker: I put those trigger_hurts there to penalize players for falling in, it's done on purpose. Kinda gives the map something unique, sort of a harder difficulty if you can call it that. However, there's a few player clip brushes spread around to prevent players from getting stuck or falling in annoying places, so it's not that bad. I hope. :smile:

@reaper47: I remember you suggesting that. I'm a little hesitant on that - it's a part that I've worked on for some time and that has been around for a while, you grow attached to it. For this release, I'm not going to touch it, but I'll give it a try. We could always see whether dm_mudanchee_mini is more popular than dm_mudanchee... :wink:

Anyway, I've updated the download link to v46: Download! (.rar, 6.7 MB)

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

I played the map and it was quite good. The different lighting gave me a sense of being and helped me navigate the map "Oh now I'm in the green light area". The rocky brush work was good as was the wooden paths with the hint of human presence in the map (chairs, tables, mining tools...). My only request is with this area:



Now listen Captain P, this is the perfect opportunity to build an awesome looking vista to distract players. What you have done with it is, I would say acceptable, but you could really turn this into an awesome vista. Maybe like that muddy creek winding away into the rocky area with some light vegetation or something. Here is a little drawing. Kind of like this I guess but more in tune with the theme of your map. And I think that the vista shouldn't damage that awesome looking sun. I just think that you could do more with that nice area.

I guess some of them waterfalls and pools of water could use a bit more tweaking up, but all in all, I like it.

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Aaron's Stuff

I know what you mean, Captain, I like the place as well, I'd definitely keep the details and just move them forward a bit to one of the other corridors. But it wouldn't hurt if you keep the back area either, just a suggestion.

I also agree with aaron. You could have a more spectacular view there. Once again, no big deal if you keep it this way, but if you are in the mood for some extra detailing, this would be an ideal spot.

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Why snark works.

About the vista, how's this? Personally I think it's a bit more open, but it's also pretty dark and the far-off horizon is a little empty still. What do you guys think?

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

The vista is better but how about some vegetation. Maybe some dead logs in the water below.

I had a run around and i really like it. Weapon placement is good. Flow is easy going. I like the openness. AR2 alt fire isn't vary effective in this map, so if you like, don't be afraid to add some more.

There was one bad thing that really stuck out though. The wooden floors were far to reflective. Beat up, dirty, wood plank floors don't reflect crap. Everywhere i went i could see a reflection of the sky box on the floor.

I assume its time for nit picking...

The air is far to clear for the light spot to stand out so much. I'm not expecting you to change it but i think if be cool if it was a little misty in there.

I don't know how this works but it looks like the 2 sections that im aiming at are flowing in the opposite direction. and think it would look better if the water flowing over the rocks was moving slower than the main stream.

Spawns so it looks like its floating.

Wires need slack.

The shadow on this box are to dark. (pitch black)







I normally wouldn't point out something so trivial but it just stuck out for me. The wood hear is way to clean. Maybe add a overlay of some debre or something.

This rock is casting a odd shadow.

I hope this helps. Any idea on when you could have a final?

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Reality has become a commodity.

Captain P, the vista is looking nice. Something looks wrong with the lighting in it though. Shouldn't there be some nice looking shadows cast there and such? RedWoods idea of logs in the water is good, go ahead and mass out that area with props and other things :wink:

As far as the cliffs in the vista are concerned, I think that the left side looks good and probably dosen't need to be touched anymore, but the right side still needs a bit more work. I think that the right side should curve left more and should vary more in height more than the left side, so I think that after the water curves to the right and begins to curve to the left, the right cliff should get either shorter or taller than the left side cliff, I think probably shorter looks better.

And don't forget to add some stuff on top of those cliffs too. You could do a few things with the top, the most obvious would probably be to put some trees there, but you could have a distant mountain or distant skyscrapers, or stick a bridge over the creek or something, whatever you thinks best.

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Aaron's Stuff

I like the new vista (damn you Microsoft for taking that word!), just add some texture variation (blend to a different rock-style, some vegetation, etc.). Maybe some sandy areas around the water. Looks too homogeneous and flat, texture-wise.

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Why snark works.

@Redwood: I noticed the uber-shinyness too, on my brothers system. Turned out to be a DirectX 9 specific part in the .vmt file, that's why I never noticed it. It'll be fixed in the next version. :smile:

Thanks for the other comments/nitpickery, too. I'll fix what I can. As for the final version, I've set the end of this week as my deadline.

@aaron_da_killa & reaper47: How's this? A road alongside the cliff, a parked van (from the archaeologists), a spare tree, different (lighter) rock texture...

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

Cool, looks good Captain P. I suggest you put a block light brush to make the left cliff side cast a nice shadow :smile: .

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Aaron's Stuff

It looks good, but I see potential for true greatness in this shot. So, let me do some nit-picking:

First, I'd make one cliff much higher than the other. Obviously, the right one to leave room for the sun.

I'd also get rid of the street lights, to have more of this "middle of nowhere" feel.

Thirdly, I'd make a very, very simple blend-texture between the original cave-rock texture and the alternate one you used outside. Then displacement-paint the alternate texture only at the top and bottom parts to get a nice transition.

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Why snark works.

v50 is here. Please check it out and see if it's better (it should be, heh): Download! (.rar, 6.8 MB)

There's two or three minor fixes I still want to do and then it's dm_mudanchee, no more _v postfixes. :smile:

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Create-ivity - a game development blog

Beautiful map, not only visually but regarding sound ambiance as well. Layout works better than in the previous version thanks to more differenciated lighting, and the addition of custom props completes the theme.
The only problem I see is that you compiled without the -novirtualmesh parameter for BSP, which makes your displacement surfaces ignore any physics objects you throw at them, including grenades. You might want to recompile.

That's odd... because dismaps behave just fine here, and you're the first who mentiones the problem. How comes that on some systems, there's no problem, while on others, dismaps misbehave?
Either way, I'll give it a recompile. We shall see.

+ Displacements
+ Lighting
+ Wooden pathways
+ Nice multiplayer flow
+ light use of ambient sound

• stretched crates

The most obvious thing for the map for me was the displacement work, it was quite good and I imagine that was a few hours of tedious work right there.

As I said in the forum thread, the lighting was nice and it gave me a sense of being- I knew where I was. There was also some clever ways in which you lit the map with those little lamps.

The wooden pathways where constructed quite nicely and along with some props, it gave a nice human presence.

That little vista was good, but I thought that the little sand bank with the dead tree that was next to the creek was a bit...mmm.. rushed. The texture seemed a bit stretched and it looked flat, 5-10 minutes of work on the little sand bank could have improved it alot and made the vista area feel more complete and overall better imo, the sand bank really stood out and afraid to say, maybe detracted from the vista a bit, BUT thats not to say that it shouldn't have been there. But I liked the nice cliff geometry and how it casts a cool looking shadow.

The water in the cave was good, it was nice how it had a little steam effect to it, but I think it was missing something. Maybe a bit of reflectiveness in the rock near the waterfall, some moss, some sort of ambient sound or something else seemed to be missing that made it seem less "wet".. I don't know.

I felt that the map had a nice flow for multiplayer as well, although it can be difficult to judge when you play a map briefly with no other people on it.

And what about them crates huh? Dude, they where stretched, well some of them but again, thats not to say they shouldn't have been there, because they should have, but some of them where stretched and you could tell.

I would also just like to point out, that I'm sure you know that the map was mainly wood and stone, I'm just thinking about what the map would have been like with a bit of metal in it, would a bit of metal such as some metal trusses or metal sheets improve the map or not?

But over all, it was a good map, a worthy addition to your profile, I'm going to give the map 8/10, well done.

BTW, I had no problems with displacements and props, everything was bouncing off just fine.

You have rebuild your HL1 Mudanchee map that isn't unleashed

Jep, that's true. That HL1 map however, was far from finished. I ran into too many technical problems, so that map would never have been so great anyway.

I should add that I played the map under HL2sp instead of HL2dm, but I'm not sure how that could be related to the problem I had. As I said, the displacements worked fine with player collision but not with physics objects. Random Source engine problems I guess.

Nice map guy, really nice... How have you get the rock texture? Have you developed it or it's part of HL2? How have you get that crispy texture? Moreover, great work.