[WIP] LC_Iceworld

[Lord Canistra]

Hello to everyone.

I'm working on LC_Iceworld, my first map in Radiant. It's currently in beta stage.
I faced lots of questions during workflow, some were easy to find answers to, some not, here's what remains ::

:: How can I determine if texture/texture directory is standard resource for Nexuiz or not? I already have lots of custom maps with own textures, Radiant loads all of them and I need to know if I must include those I used into my .pk3 or not.

:: What is exact use for highres external lightmaps (.tga files in maps/mapname)? If they were generated by compiler tool, should I include them into archive and why?

Also, I'd like to ask you test the map and tell me what you think about balance, item/weapon placement and so on. It's my first map for Nexuiz, so gameplay may be messed up pretty much. I want to know opinion of experienced mappers/players.


Screenies ::








Link to map :: http://omploader.org/vMzU2Yg/LC_Iceworld.pk3

[Sepelio]

Yes, you need to include both the external lightmaps and any custom textures you used. Things dont work properly otherwise, people end up with the checkered 'missing texture' texture everywhere. For the lightmaps I haven't tried deliberately not including them but I assume it just screws the lighting up.

As to the map itself it looks nice enough but the layout seems fairly simplistic. I also don't see any way to get up to the outside area where all the weapons are without using the laser. This is bad, since there are no weapons anywhere else.

[Lord Canistra]

I know what happens if texture is missing. The checkerboard also appears in GoldSource, Source and other Quake-based engines.


I've used now textures from these directories ::

:: ame7_evil8
:: cmp1-dm8
:: evil_lights
:: evil8_grate
:: evil8_wall

If those are standard texture dirs, I don't need to include them. It would be a waste of data space because everyone already has these. Otherwise, they have to be in my archive. That's what I want to find out.

Thanks for hint about outside area, I'll think about placing some pads or teles. Though it's not impossible to get on the border area without laserjump, for player can spawn there.

[esteel]

Well to be sure you could either remove all pk3 files (exept data****.pk3) from your data dir OR (sorry typo) open that data****.pk3 with a zip program and search for the textures..
I'm not into mapping but i'm doing something similar.. create a Nexuiz/maps directory, put all the "extra" pk3 files there and start Nexuiz with the following paramters:
nexuiz -game maps -game data
That will load all pk3 from maps and THEN all remaining pk3 from data. That way Radiant only finds the pk3 and textures in data, a third party map can't screw with official files as they are loaded last (famous examples: broken shader files)

[Ronan]

so far only the ame7_evil8 directory isn't part of nexuiz :
http://svn.icculus.org/nexuiz/trunk/data/textures/

About the highres external lightmaps, this option was added later to improve quality of static lights and shadows, because the resolution is limited inside a q3bsp to 128x128. If you don't provide the generated files, the engine will fallback to a vertex lighting mode, i.e. with much lower quality.

Your brushwork look already interesting, I can't tell you about the gameplay from there yet. :)

[lda17h]

BTW: The map looks great

[Lord Canistra]

Thanks for reference, I'll look there for standard resources if in doubt.
Now I'm compiling the map with added teleports and some fixes. On the first (BSP) stage compiler gave me a strange warning ::

Code: Select all

block size = { 1024 1024 1024 }
BSP bounds: { -1616.000000 -1808.000000 -16.000000 } { 1616.000000 1808.000000 1712.000000 }
Lightgrid bounds: { 99999.000000 99999.000000 99999.000000 } { -99999.000000 -99999.000000 -99999.000000 }


What could these weird numbers in "Lightgrid bounds" mean?
Also, is there good reference for Q3Map2 errors? I didn't find any yet.

BTW: The map looks great

Thanks =^-^=

In a great map though, looks are not everything.

[lda17h]

Oh and regarding the main question.. If you are on linux you can do it like this:

EDIT: See post below this one..

[lda17h]

Ok, i just read a bit in the darkplaces sources. There's an option called

Code: Select all

-userdir


It takes as argument a directory which is used as the user profile source. So forget my previous post, just do

Code: Select all

nexuiz -userdir ~/.nexuiz.plain


Judging from the code, that should work for windows, too.. Oh "nexuiz" is a script on my machine.

Code: Select all

tapas@olive:~> cat `which nexuiz`
cd /media/cryptbackup/Games/Nexuiz/
./nexuiz-linux-x86_64-glx $*
cd -


It basically only passes all arguments along to the game, changes to the install dir and in the end changes back..

[Lord Canistra]

erm... what's this all about? I just was looking for list of standard resources and Ronan gave the link.
Now I need to know if I can ignore error mentioned in previous post and how it can be avoided.