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legacy-advman
12-26-2003, 08:48 PM
Just uploaded beta 1 of my first map, "Sweet Death", to Unreal Playground. Download it at http://www.unrealplayground.com/download.php?mapid=4562

"Sweet Death" was intended as a remake of Adam "Senn" Bellfeuil's "Agony & Ecstasy" for Quake III. I always fancied this map for its gameplay. A relatively small map with two courtyards symmetrically linked via three pairs of connections, with three height levels vertically connected by two jump pads and a teleporter.

For my first map ever, I deemed it a good idea to rely on some tried'n'true layout and concentrate mainly on learning the editor. In the meantime the map has become quite large as - though I have kept Agony & Ecstasy's core - I have added additional ways, rooms, terrain, etc. In fact, it looks big though it isn't really. From any place of the map you are within seconds at any other place, still, it will take some bunch of players to fill it to its capacity.

Senn's map is vanilla Q3 Gothic, a style that has no exact counterpart in UT2k3 and, apart from that, I wanted something lighter, well, something like Mexican baroque or the likes. Oh my god, did I fail! I began searching for textures on the web, found nothing apropriate, turned to taking photographs and making my own textures in GIMP, found out that it would take me months to come up with a decent texture set and that I would still have no static meshes. Finally, as I was already busy mapping and wanted to apply textures, I did the unthinkable and reverted to ... Egyptian :eek:

So the word is out: "Sweet Death" is another egyptian map. Hmm ... not really, actually. Sure, textures and meshes are egyptian, but the BSP architecture (and - believe me - there is more of it than makes sense in UT2k3, anyway, you can't learn everything in one rush, so I skipped Maya PLE in the first run) is probably more Romanic, partially Gothic, than anything else. Let's call it a fantasy architecture and stop asking silly questions :D

The proportions of the map are probably a little on the small side, bigger than the original, but some UT2k3 players will still call it cramped. On the other hand, I'm quite sure some will like it. The map has all the gameplay of the original and maybe some more, well, I hope, at least not less.

See 28 screenshots at my showroom (http://advman.unrealplayground.com/)

This is a beta version, though you will likely admit that it would be much too late for major changes. Why a beta then? Well, item placement currently is mainly done to lure the bots to places they'd avoid otherwise. I think this map could benefit from being played by a number of human players :)

EDIT: Both bonuspacks (DE and Epic) are required!!!

http://advman.unrealplayground.com/sweet_death/SweetDeath_0006.jpg

http://advman.unrealplayground.com/sweet_death/SweetDeath_0004.jpg

http://advman.unrealplayground.com/sweet_death/SweetDeath_0010.jpg

Raffi_B
12-26-2003, 09:02 PM
Looks real nice :up:

I love that Island theme, and the custom skybox owns.

Really quick thing: add more random grass and trees to the island. It looks to unrealistic to have a bunch of trees in one place and none anywhere else. Or at least add a dirt layer to your terrain instead of all sand.

legacy-advman
12-26-2003, 09:14 PM
Originally posted by Raffi_B
Looks real nice :up:

I love that Island theme, and the custom skybox owns.

Really quick thing: add more random grass and trees to the island. It looks to unrealistic to have a bunch of trees in one place and none anywhere else. Or at least add a dirt layer to your terrain instead of all sand.

Good idea. I was a bit reluctant as this beast is already slightly on the slow side to say the least :D

I'll try it tomorrow and we'll see how it turns out.

legacy-P1nky
12-26-2003, 10:55 PM
You failed to mention that DE Bonus pack is required to play...

I'll post comments when I finish downloading the bonus pack.

legacy-foleypro
12-26-2003, 11:26 PM
Sweet will give it a try...

legacy-advman
12-27-2003, 02:20 AM
Originally posted by P1nky
You failed to mention that DE Bonus pack is required to play...

I'll post comments when I finish downloading the bonus pack.

Good point, big mistake :rolleyes:

Just edited the post. Btw: I am fairly sure both bonuspacks are required!

legacy-P1nky
12-27-2003, 02:36 AM
Gave it a game just a bit ago. Pretty interesting map, never played the original.

Some pointers:

-FPS is pretty dang low (in the 20s) at times for me, mostly in 30's or so
- Small water ponds are using a lot of polies, you could cut the amount of polies in half and probably see a good increase in FPS
-Some hallways are a bit skinny, dont know how well that plays though, could be good or bad, I never had to fight bots in those areas.
And converting some of your features to static mesh would be helpful of course (but im sure you know this)
One of the tunnels coming from down in the sand, has a really long and small hallway, maybe a shortcut to the top midway through would add some interesting things.

Other than that, good looking map, nice cubemaps on the water, nice skybox, nice architecture. :up:

legacy-advman
12-27-2003, 03:50 AM
Thanks :)

Well, the FPS problem is quite evident to me. I use an Athlon XP 2000 and a Radeon 9800 Pro. I get about the same values at 1600x1200 / 16xAF, no AA. Would be interested in your configuration if you don't mind. From my own tests I believe I am mostly CPU bound as AA doesn't make much of a difference.

As for remedies: hmm .. would hate to lose the ponds. Maybe I could make the fluid surface infos high detail and do some magic (a sheet?) to get a replacement surface. I'll think about it.

The hallways, well I'm fairly sure you mean

http://advman.unrealplayground.com/scratch/hallways.jpg

If so, well, this is a connection that I have inserted at a very late stage, just for architectonical reasons. Have a look at

http://advman.unrealplayground.com/scratch/facade.jpg

and try to imagine the inner doorways would be missing. I had that in the beginning, just like Senn's original, but there it looks better, because everything is in a box and this makes for different proportions. With the open sides the outer/upper doorways looked quite lonely. Hmm ... never was really happy with my solution though, besides what it did to the facade. Btw: no wonder you have not seen bots on those stairs. They don't use them as it is much faster to jump from an upper doorway down to the rocket launcher platform.

I'll try to come up with another solution for my facade problem, one that does not require useless hallways and still makes for pleasing visuals. This may even save some polies

Static meshes? Yeah, I know that. The only problem is, they need to be done right otherwise the vertex lighting makes them look artificial, popped onto the base structure. Any ideas for SM candidates? The support structures come to mind, of course. Anything else?

The long tunnel below is both a byproduct of its late introduction and something rectified for reasons of balance.

http://advman.unrealplayground.com/sweet_death/SweetDeath_0001.jpg

Look at it this way: you can reach the entrance of the tunnel from the building above via some quick jumps down along a cascade of rocks and there are three health packs along this way. Basically this is an escape route and if you take it you get penalized by the long way back. Survive easily but be far away from the action while others frag along :D

EDIT: Well, just as I thought. For a quick test I converted the small side supports (7 on each side) to a static mesh. Looks horrible :eek:

http://advman.unrealplayground.com/scratch/supports_sm.jpg

I would at least have to make the nearest (on the shot) move a little to the back, as to make it not level with the wall to the left.

legacy-Powerslave666
12-27-2003, 04:41 AM
Looks sweet, reminds me a lot of CBP-BlackJackal. :)

legacy-P1nky
12-27-2003, 05:38 AM
You've got to adjust your smoothing groups... or just get rid of them.
And then improvise on the corner.
Heres something I came up with:

http://www.unrealwarfarex.com/redorchestra/staff/pinky/01a.jpg

legacy-advman
12-27-2003, 05:56 AM
Originally posted by P1nky
You've got to adjust your smoothing groups... or just get rid of them.
And then improvise on the corner.
Heres something I came up with:
...

Wooh! Cool :cool:

I'll definitely experiment along this route. Just give me some hours :D

Btw: what are "smoothing groups"?

legacy-Odds
12-27-2003, 01:48 PM
For your first map this is very well put together. It looks pretty good, and some of the lighting is nicely done.

It's very power hungry though. Optimising needed.

legacy-MrUniq
12-27-2003, 02:45 PM
Well I don't know how this pertains to Unreal Ed but smoothing groups are groups of faces you select that can be smoothed (rounded) to remove hard edges. Usually results in an increase in polys.