[map] The House of Chthon

[Ed]

This is not a remake but is a port of the original .map file to Nexuiz. Porting was basically a big load of find/replace operations on the .map file.



I'm trying to keep it true to the original (some of their errors have been left in, look for the two lamps in the teleporter room that are aligned differently) but have made some changes that should make it better suited to DM:
- Retextured
- Less health pickups
- Playerclip added to a couple of areas to prevent people getting stuck/camping
- The deployable stairs will withdraw after 20s
- Teleporter points back to the beginning as Nexuiz doesn't have level changes
- Lighting turned down a lot, colours introduced
- Map scaled by 1.5 because Nexuiz players are roughly 1.5 times bigger
- Some z fighting issues fixed by removing duplicate brushes
- Pickups added in teleport room

It's no way near finished but it's difficult to see what to do with it. The geometry really can't be touched so that it stays more or less true to the original but everything else can be.

I'm not sure what to do with the electric pylons. They work but the electricity doesn't (and won't ever) and it's really got to stay more or less true to the original. Should you be able to get up on the pylon area? You can mortar jump there or grappling hook but it needs to be easier if that area is to be accessible. Or I could playerclip it all off.

It's currently set up for DM and Arena, think I'll stick with just those.

Comments and suggestions all welcome.

Edit: link pulled, see end of thread for latest.

[dfkgmasdfnasodrg]

nice work, looking forward to playing that again

[leileilol]

Carpet in the lava? :S

anyway it ported to OpenArena fine


oddly there's a bug when playing it in oa. The teleporter destination changes position mysteriously when one of those buttons are pushed, allowing the player to get stuck :\

[Ed]

Carpet in the lava? :S

That texture just looked a bit convenient to use. I think it doesn't particularly look like carpet (if it had a nasty flowery pattern on it then it would) so I used it as it looks a bit like a bed of cinders. It's not the worst lava related problem though as the join in the brushes is really crap. Need to use another lava texture that doesn't give transparency.

[Asraniel]

are you allowed to do this? i was thinking that the maps from q1 where proprietary. If it isn't legal, i think a remake would be done quite fast, since it is a small and simple level (and it is great)

[C.Brutail]

Map sources (only the map file) is GPL-ed now too. John Romero released them recently.

[Asraniel]

this is realy realy nice. could someone also port the other dm levels? i dont remember, but either q1dm3 or q1dm6 was great (the half life deathmatch classic mod has it too)

[Ed]

q1dm6 was great

Darkzone is already in Nexuiz but currently it's a remake with a number of geometric differences from the original. I could port the original to Nexuiz but the there would only be a point if the current dm6 was to be replaced, otherwise it would be confusing.

I was intending to have a go at some other levels. I'm also going to post a quick how-to for porting .map files as it may not seem that obvious.

[Asraniel]

then i missed that one. strange. well, a remake is always better, since it takes advantage of the new possibilites of the engine

[Ed]

well, a remake is always better, since it takes advantage of the new possibilites of the engine

I think you've misunderstood me here. What I am doing is porting the .map files to the same format. All that is being ported is the basic geometry. I've adjusted lighting to make it coloured, retextured, fixed a couple of things and recompiled it using q3map2. Therefore it takes advantage of all the new things that a remake would. The difference is that it is geometrically correct. The Darkzone remake in Nexuiz always seems to be slightly wrong as it's not exactly the same shape (there's even a bit missing) as the original. If you want gameplay to be similar, it's got to be the same shape.

So port > remake.