Just a small CTF map for the holidays

Released: December 24, 2009
Nexuiz CTF level

Download: http://omploader.org/vMzJoMQ (20.3 MB)

Credits

Models and textures (GPL)
by Oblivion

Tree models
by morphed

Music "Sixty Four" (GPL)
by blckrbt

Water shader modified from
map 'treasureisland_v2.pk3' (GPL)
by sev

Screenshots:

Quit making the rest of us look bad!

Looks very nice, I'll try it out tomorrow if I get the time.

LOL. I can't take credit. My work on this map is only on the boring terrain stuff. The pretty stuff (trees and water) are from morphed and sev.

Wow, nice. In case I can find time, and I can find a method to upload and ssh from windows to DCC, I'll upload it to the holiday server.

C.Brutail wrote:Wow, nice. In case I can find time, and I can find a method to upload and ssh from windows to DCC, I'll upload it to the holiday server.

winscp. It works.. Google finds it. I'm too lazy atm..

very nice map, but my trees are not under GPL license, just "use them in your map if you wish" license

I disagree with the first reply, make the rest of them look very bad so the standard increases
But, very very nice map other than a few small problems.... #1: Way too white With bloom, it's... well... it's pure white almost. #2: I get low FPS on this map for some reason, it also is regardless of my effect settings so I would assume it's something to do with CPU usage. #3: The mapinfo only allows for ctf game type, I should point out that ALL maps are capable of at least: LMS, TDM, and DM. -- You should allow these in your next revision of the map? :X

Morphed wrote:very nice map, but my trees are not under GPL license, just "use them in your map if you wish" license

Oop. Sorry. Edited.

Samual wrote:I disagree with the first reply, make the rest of them look very bad so the standard increases
But, very very nice map other than a few small problems.... #1: Way too white With bloom, it's... well... it's pure white almost. #2: I get low FPS on this map for some reason, it also is regardless of my effect settings so I would assume it's something to do with CPU usage. #3: The mapinfo only allows for ctf game type, I should point out that ALL maps are capable of at least: LMS, TDM, and DM. -- You should allow these in your next revision of the map? :X

#1. I never play with bloom. Hurts my eyes and gives me migraines LOL. But then again isn't the real thing like that? Blindingly white? (You must realize I've never seen real snow ever! LOL). Making it darker would make it stand out like a sore thumb from the midday-lit background too. (Hm... a night map in the snow sounds like fun tho )

#2. Hm. It might be the water. I'm using the new water shaders taken from Sev's map, and that had issues with 2.5.1's release (the dpwater thing I think). I think setting your renderer to OpenGL and turning on reflections fixes it somewhat I think. I certainly get decent FPS's even in the 'problem areas' (the areas near the water) with the water effects toned down a bit. Previously I was getting horrendous logspam with 2.5.1's water because I had set it to DirectX and had turned off reflections. But yeah, I really should learn how to balance looks and FPS. It seems like Nexuiz seems pretty much incapable of making pretty and open maps without killing most of the FPS. T_T I've been already toning down the model and texture qualities severely without much impact it seems.

#3 How? :/ I have tried googling on what those lines in the mapinfo say, but no such luck. I had to resort to opening the mapinfos of existing CTF maps. And I only play exclusively CTF maps (most from HOCTF) so that probably accounts for why the copied mapinfo values only permit CTF. If you can tell me how though, I'd happily make all future maps compatible for more than just a CTF gametype.

Cooool map

Yes, snow in mid-day with sun shining on is blindingly white, so it makes sense, though it's harder to play on...

As for the mapinfo file: have a look at ~/.nexuiz/Docs/mapping.txt

Balancing a map (looks <> performance) is a pain in the ***, from my experience it's trial and error. It helps to make a demo and run timedemo after changes to see how it influences average performance.
Basically, triangles and high quality textures are not too bad, but detailed models with spawnflags 2 and 4 can cause quite a performace drop (it's better to leave them non-solid and put simple clip brushes over them). Shaders can have great influence, as well as deluxe map effects (bump/norm).

Awesome map but two things:

1) The white is very bright and I think this might bother most people
2) Ice water is very cold, I think it should hurt you a little bit.

The low fps is definately due to the water. When you look away from it fps goes up.

[-z-] wrote:Awesome map but two things:

1) The white is very bright and I think this might bother most people
2) Ice water is very cold, I think it should hurt you a little bit.

1) yeah, nothing I can do about that without making the map look like shite. :/ I mean there's no gray snow. Heh. And changing time of day means I'll have to render another skybox which will introduce problems with balance because the sun's angle will make shadows between the two bases uneven.

2) YES! If you know how, please tell me. That was the original plan! It's actually why there are ice floes.

But I remembered that mapping rule about never making brushes intersect with each other because it causes problems. So I can't just place a hurt brush inside the water parts. :/ In the end, with christmas approaching I just had to release it. So I left it as it is without hurt brushes.

And Sev, yeah from now on, I'll make extensive use of clip brushes. Demos however won't be possible for me. :/ Full compiles for me takes hours in which I must not run any other mem hogs in the PC or i'll end up breaking something, and that gets tiresome if I have to final compile every time I make small changes. There's no way to gauge performance for me really, since test compiles are also quite misleading. I also do want to be able to use gloss and norm without having nexuiz suffer. Things just don't look right without them. I'm restricting my textures to 512x512 (I'm normally used to working with 1024x1024 and 2048x2048 textures), but even that doesn't seem to help. Anyhoo. Trial and error.

[-z-] wrote:Awesome map but two things:

1) The white is very bright and I think this might bother most people
2) Ice water is very cold, I think it should hurt you a little bit.

Oblivion wrote:1) yeah, nothing I can do about that without making the map look like shite. :/ I mean there's no gray snow. Heh. And changing time of day means I'll have to render another skybox which will introduce problems with balance because the sun's angle will make shadows between the two bases uneven.

haha, well, one solution would be a white and blue styled checkerboard pattern and more trees... maybe a different skybox to take the edge off (like a sunset).

Oblivion wrote:2) YES! If you know how, please tell me. That was the original plan! It's actually why there are ice floes.

This has to do with using a shader. If you look at another liquid that hurts you (like the toxic green stuff), you can probably copy the shader and tweak it how you need.

A more experienced mapper may be able to help you better than I can.

Sweet looking map Oblivion =)

Oblivion wrote:...
2) YES! If you know how, please tell me. That was the original plan! It's actually why there are ice floes.

But I remembered that mapping rule about never making brushes intersect with each other because it causes problems. So I can't just place a hurt brush inside the water parts. :/ In the end, with christmas approaching I just had to release it. So I left it as it is without hurt brushes.
...

That only hold true for visible brushes, its totally ok to have a trigger_hurt with the same volume as as a water brush.

very nice you're redefining the standards of nexuiz map making

Very nice map!

I only wish this was for nexrun, as it looks way cool

Great Map! BTW: It's simple enough to get some gameplay on public CTF servers ;D

Another great artistic map, looking absolutely awesome.

Though I think it might be nice if you could develop a better feel for how movement works in Nexuiz. A lot of places could be tuned just a little bit to allow trickjumps and getting more speed without laser. You could watch demos of good players or have a go with some maps that do have lots of trickjumps, for example Bloodrage by cortez has this a lot. You can move about on the map quicker and you rarely get stuck, making it a lot more fun.

In this map the trees are very useful as you can jump on them, and jump again to get quite high. However all the trees are placed in such a way that you cannot really benefit from it. The snowman guarding the flag looks stunning, but it really just blocks peoples path. It would be nice to be able to use the snowman to get up on the platform behind it.

my suggestions are flatten the corners of the stones and the ways up to the flag so you can move over them.
One thing in general try to use more brushes instead of models that would support a higher fps rate. if you want to do terrain use savageX terrain generator. instead of a model or the bridges can be easily repleaced with brushes. try to use models only as additions and not as main parts that will you ensure a constant framerate and if you add something frame eating like reflecting water and then add also some hint brushes they will make sure that the framerate wont drop heavily