CTF-DG-PineRidge by DGUnreal [pics & download]

[DGUnreal]

A high-quality outdoor terrain-based map by DGUnreal.

Name: CTF-DG-PineRidge
Version: 1.0 final
Requirements: UT2004 (patch 3369) and ECE1.1
Players: 2 to 16 (18 playerstarts)
Download: Main map download page.
Mirror: Mapraider
Additional Mirrors will be up soon.

See the map's web page for full map information and additional screenshots.




Deep within the emerald forest, far from civilization, where the pines rise like majestic rulers over the flora and fauna. The clouds drift in, delivering with them their sun-showers, drenching all things in their passing. In the midst of the tree-lined ridges, the battle for the flag begins...

This map was designed to look like a realistic paintball game area in the wilderness, or a hunting spot or military training and excercise area.

[legacy-Axeman3173]

Beautifully made map, DG....as is always the case with your releases.


-Axe

[DGUnreal]

Thanks Axe. :up:

[legacy-kiddailey]

Four additional mirrors (Direct download, FileFront, BitTorrent and Gnutella/P2P) are available on Mapraider:

http://www.mapraider.com/maps/?fileid=3774

[DGUnreal]

Yikes - that was a slow download

Mapraider mirrors are on the way - just waiting for the uploading to finish. I'll edit this post when complete.

My Server is on a T1.
Everything above that is too expensive up here (would love a T3 or better).
I'm pulling the file off at ~160KB through my ISP... not sure why you were slow (maybe multiple download connections from others at that time...).

Thanks for submitting to Mapraider for me, I was just about to do that. :up:
The map submission is also in at FileFront, just awaiting approval, so that mirror should be online [hopefully] by tomorrow.
FilePlanet is being slow and buggy today, I'll submit there asap. :bulb:

[DGUnreal]

Four additional mirrors (Direct download, FileFront, BitTorrent and Gnutella/P2P) are available on Mapraider:

http://www.mapraider.com/maps/?fileid=3774

Thanks! :up:

I'll also update my map's web page with that mirror link.

[legacy-Juggalo_Kyle]

Looks great from the screenshots. I'll have to check this one out!

[BuffyTheSlayer]

wow yes Beautifull Map !

thank you ... :heart:

[DGUnreal]

Thanks Juggalo_Kyle and buffytheslayer.
I hope you like the map.
Even better ones are on their way, with a few maps in Alpha and Beta, coming soon. :up:

[Xyx]

Very cool! :up:

[»madMar†y»]

I noticed that because of some small trees in your map you can get below terrain sometimes when the disc of the translocator bounces of those trees with a steep angle. Apart from that ..great map.:up: I wonder where you'd get the level music from, maybe they also have something suitable for me

[Xyx]

I do find the tree collision to be a bit off, though. The description you give suggests I can fire between branches, but only if they're not close together. The collision appears to be a bit wider than the branches. I've suffered many translocator errors and even a rocket suicide because of invisible collision.

I also have trouble envisioning why some pine needles would stop a bullet. Collision on the thicker branches is good, but on the thin branches, needles or even empty air makes little sense.

[DGUnreal]

I noticed that because of some small trees in your map you can get below terrain sometimes when the disc of the translocator bounces of those trees with a steep angle. Apart from that ..great map.:up: I wonder where you'd get the level music from, maybe they also have something suitable for me

Thanks madMarty.
Interesting glitch.
It never showed up in many hours of beta testing by myself and the numerous beta-testers I have. You must be hitting the angle just right.
The map is high on collision data, so it will be possible for the engine to be late on some tests.
The music is from Epic.

I do find the tree collision to be a bit off, though. The description you give suggests I can fire between branches, but only if they're not close together. The collision appears to be a bit wider than the branches. I've suffered many translocator errors and even a rocket suicide because of invisible collision.

I also have trouble envisioning why some pine needles would stop a bullet. Collision on the thicker branches is good, but on the thin branches, needles or even empty air makes little sense.

Thanks for your post.
I can't believe I'm having to explain this and justify the design... :weird:

First off, this map is using almost 2000 tree sections, totalling almost a million polygons.
This is just for the main pine trees and doesn't include the deco sapplings, grasses, rocks, buildings, or the terrain.
At any one time in the map you can have 100,000 polygons or more in the frustum (the "camera" rendered view), making this a map that pushes the limits of what the Unreal Engine 2 can do.
This degree of design puts a strain on the rendering and collision systems in the engine.


The tree branches are created using a masked texture on a set of polys, this is how all standard trees are done in games. It would be too complex on current engines to attempt to do any tree branches (or grass or shrubs) with true full poly design. Imagine how much power you would require to render grass as numerous polys for each grass blade.

So if you look at the branch texture from this map, you can see where around the edges you won't get a perfect fit.



This specific tree uses more than 20 polys per branch to get as close a match to the outline shape of the texture as possible, by clipping off the corners where it can (I drew imaginary angled lines just to give you a basic idea).
But there will still be a few areas where there will be poly edges slightly past the texture edge. This is unavoidable.
If a true "branch" style collision shape were made instead of a simpler flat sheet, the amount of collision polys would be between two and four times greater than what it currently is, putting an enormous strain on the collision table and most likely causing collision errors in the map.


You can fire between branches. You just have to be a good shot.
In many hours of beta testing, numerous times bots on higher AI levels take kills shooting through the tree limbs.

You can see in this example screenshot of the main tree design, where in the wire view there is spacing between the tree limb poly sheets.
You can also see if you were to overlap the full rendered tree over the wire tree, that the edges of the branches match up pretty close, with very little "invisible collision" around the edges.

It would be extremely taxing on the engine if I were to attempt to make the tree limb collision even more complex by creating a full solid collision in the shape of the three branches and the larger areas of pine needles.

Or if I were to replace the current collision with a straight low-poly cone, as seen in the third shot, you would never be able to shoot along the edges where there would be clear and visible space.


Click for a larger image.

So until game engines advance beyond UE2 and UE3, don't expect 100% perfect complex objects like trees.


This is not a flame against your post, we all just have to live with the capabilities of the current game engines.
If we don't like a specific map, or if we find it too difficult to adjust our playing style to the limitations of the engine, then we don't have to play the game.

[Xyx]

Very interesting. I certainly did not have a "perfect tree collision" in mind when I typed that post. I merely meant to remark that your earlier statement had raised my expectations to where I thought I'd be able to shoot between branches without too many troubles. Which, more often than not, I could not.

What I was hoping for was rather more like a lightweight collision model, though not as simplified as the cone. Maybe just a 4-poly cone for the trunk and a few more 4-poly cones or sheets for major branches. That way you couldn't just ignore the trees, but you wouldn't encounter as much resistance from a simple sheet of pine needles either. Would that be performance intensive compared to per-poly collision?

Or how about *gasp* destructible trees? No tree should be able to block more than one rocket, if you ask me. Performance would gradually improve as the number of trees goes down.

[DGUnreal]

Very interesting. I certainly did not have a "perfect tree collision" in mind when I typed that post. I merely meant to remark that your earlier statement had raised my expectations to where I thought I'd be able to shoot between branches without too many troubles. Which, more often than not, I could not.

What I was hoping for was rather more like a lightweight collision model, though not as simplified as the cone. Maybe just a 4-poly cone for the trunk and a few more 4-poly cones or sheets for major branches. That way you couldn't just ignore the trees, but you wouldn't encounter as much resistance from a simple sheet of pine needles either. Would that be performance intensive compared to per-poly collision?

Or how about *gasp* destructible trees? No tree should be able to block more than one rocket, if you ask me. Performance would gradually improve as the number of trees goes down.

Hey Xyx.

A "perfect tree" would be nice.
I wish we had the technology to make that possible right now.

I would be happy if I could have at least doubled the number of polys for the tree quality and grass/decos. The map would have looked even better.
Plus twice the poly count on each tree branch would have made their collision much cleaner, with no edge mis-match to the texture.
But there would be no way to push that number of polygons on UE2.
I was surprised at how well this map did actually play during beta, when I was seeing over 100k polys on-screen with stat render.
Note that those pine trees are basically the Antalus trees, with some minor modifications by me, plus some additional new trunks.

Poly reduced collision that merely simulated the three thick tree branches of the texture could have been used, but then you are at more of a disadvantage... bots use line-casting to see and target players, which is why they can see through fog while you can't (and also why they can see you when you have invisibility, which is silly in my opinion), so while you might not see a bot through a bunch of branch needles, he'll see you and take the kill. So full branch collision is as much of a defense as it is a hassle to accurately shoot through.

A real-time deformable tree system would have been perfect, where the branches would bend depending on the force of the object striking it (player or projectile).
So shooting a rocket would actually cause the branches to move, whereas assault rifle shots would simply be stopped or deflected (or lob off a piece of tree limb would be cool).
Unfortunately UT2004 won't do this out of the box.
Some special karma actors might pull it off, but then the replication would kill the networking speed.

These were all things I considered when designing the map.
And I tried going with the most reasonable abilities with the UE2 engine's capabilities.

Destructable trees might be fun.
The landscape would also get pretty bare as all of the trees fell over from rocket blasts, and provide you with very little cover from enemies, but that would look kind of cool with all of these fallen trees all over the place as the game went on.