A while ago I had the idea of taking Bloodprison and doubling it up to make a CTF map. I've now given it a go and here's a very alpha version of it.

Current problems with it:
- The lighting is crap. The BSP needs building properly.
- Only one jumppad works currently, the other had to be disabled as the targets went crazy after the copy, should be easy.
- The teleporters are disabled, partly because it broke in the copy but also because I'm not sure where to point them to (the opposite end?) or I could axe them altogether.
- Probably some texturing problems at the join, some brushes have been merged which might not have worked too well.
- Nothing CTF about it yet, except for the red/blue coloured bits just so that you can tell what end you're at.

What I want to know is what people think of the layout. My other idea was to join them so that the teleporters go entirely and the stairs at that end point at each other which would reduce the complexity.

Edit: Link removed as it's out of date. See below.

Very nice idea. Did you have texture lock enabled when copying the thing? That usually works (well, not always).

I like it.

I could only take a very quick look at it and It looks very interesting. But your pk3 file is broken. Its missing the maps directory..
Also maybe its a good idea to switch the name later on to bloodprisonctf similar to runningmanctf.
Thanks for your effords!

I like the way you connected both bases.
I also made a quick suggestion what you could do with the teleporters (only on one side)

get it here: http://strahlemann.pdk.cc/doubleprison_test.map

btw. where exactly do you want to put the flag ?

I'd suggest the place over the RL (where the JP points to), but there should be some more space to manouver.

Thanks for the comments guys.

I think texture locking might have been the problem. I've since fixed the 2nd jumppad texture which was the most obvious texture problem, I'll see if I can spot any more.

I'll post a working pk3 next time. I think the name might be better off as bloodprison-ctf in the longrun, the doubleprison name was just to show that it's a doubled up bloodprison.

Straglemann's idea of replacing the teleporters with jumppads is nice. The only problem I see is that it would increase the number of joins to 6 which could be too much for good gameplay, once the flag was gone, you'd have difficulty chasing the carrier. I could block up the 2 little tunnels again though to do that. Before I do anything with the teleporters I must get the 2nd jumppad fixed though as the targets are a mess.

I had 2 ideas on where to put the flag:
1. Above the RL: Run in on lower level, hit jumppad, take flag, run
2. On the centre of the floor: Run in on either lever, take flag, hit jumpad, run out on upper level.

The lower level is more accessible so would give faster gameplay. Once the map is playable I can try both and see what happens.

I can't seem to be able to find the map in Nexuiz. I redid the .pk3 file to point to the maps\ directory, I also unpacked and put the .bsp and .map files separetly in maps\ also have the broken version too outside maps\ but no matter what I do Nexuiz doesn't like me to be testing the map. >.<

The PK3 doesn't have a mapcfg or textfile for the menu, so you'll have to start it manually from the console with "map doubleprison".

I've made a whole load of changes now:
- It's properly lit including deluxe maps. Might need to change the lighting in the join area still as it's a bit darker than intended.
- Both jumppads work properly.
- Teleporters have been reintroduced but point to the opposite base, this doesn't really get you much closer but is a nice way of getting back up to the higher level.
- Some texture lock fixes.
- Flags in bases on the ground floor.
- It works as a CTF map through the menu. No picture as yet and .txt file broken but it launches OK.
- Name changed to bloodprisonctf, given credit to original map and allows a whole series of doubled up maps to be made without having silly names

Still to do:
- Another light in the join perhaps?
- A trigger_push is broken somewhere and edict given on map start
- Fix .txt file, add pic
- Start points are a deathmatch related mess, need CTFing.
- Support other game modes?
- Bot waypoints
- Add more team colour markers, current ones are too hard to see.
- Needs optimising

This version is playable but not suitable for serious use yet as you tend to spawn in your enemies base. Comments still appreciated.

Here's a link:
Edit: link pulled because I've fixed a few things and am rebuilding it now, beta version to come.

I've now made a version worth playing.
Edit: obsolete link, see end of thread for latest

This is now considered a beta and if anyone wants to put it on a test server let me know so I can see how play testing goes.

Things fixed:
- Light added above gap in central corridors. The gap jump is now more obvious so people shouldn't be falling down on it unless they intend to.
- That spare trigger_push has gone. I'd accidentally duplicated one at some point, the remaining jumppads should now be exactly like the one in Blood Prison.
- txt file and .mapcfg fixed so will now show in the menu properly and launch properly
- Screenshot added. 300x200 (correct aspect ratio) JPEG 85% quality, can probably do with less. Nice stylised effect used.
- CTF spawnpoints added. 6 either end.
- Colour coordination more widespread.
- Some more texture locking fixes
- pk3 compacted with advzip to save a bit of space > quicker map download

Some more tweaking needed. I noticed that one bit of red coordination is missing just after I finished a 2 hour long build!

Very nice. Apart from misaligned floor lights at a ramp at the blue base I found nothing obviously wrong.

Personally I'm not sure if it's good to have the flags at the lower level - you can basically runn in a straight line from flag to flag. This could underline the value of a good defense though, so it may be actually a good thing.

The map pictures are supposed to be 256x256 so no video memory gets wasted (300x200 will use the same amount of memory as a 512x256 picture). Just resample that pic to 256x256 - in-game it'll stretched to the proper aspect ratio.

SavageX wrote:Apart from misaligned floor lights at a ramp at the blue base I found nothing obviously wrong.

Fixed. Thanks for pointing that out, almost certainly means something else will be the same so will have a search round when playing.

SavageX wrote:Personally I'm not sure if it's good to have the flags at the lower level - you can basically runn in a straight line from flag to flag. This could underline the value of a good defense though, so it may be actually a good thing.

It was a tough decision and I put them down there partly to test a hypothesis. One of the major problems in CTF is when both teams capture the flags and everyone runs round the level looking for the opposite flag until the 2 meet. By making a level so that the route between the bases is simple and obvious, this is less likely to happen as the flag carriers are more likely to meet. At the same time it is just a straight corridor so anyone going down it is likely to encounter stiff resistance. There are also multiple ways of dropping in on the corridor to recover the flag.
The routes around the top of level are intended more for attack so you have to put more strategy into your attack than your get away.
We'll have to see if it works, if not I'll move the flags up to the ledge. The problem there is that room is tight and there could be more camping defence.

SavageX wrote:The map pictures are supposed to be 256x256 so no video memory gets wasted (300x200 will use the same amount of memory as a 512x256 picture)

Forgot the menu is all done in the 3D rendering stage. Will fix it, had thought that the 256x256 was a bit odd for the aspect ratio. All of the standard Nexuiz ones look a bit funny as they're 4:3, not 3:2 as the window would appear on most peoples monitors. Perhaps the screenshot area could be rewriten to always be the same ratio on every monitor?

I really like the map.. hope to be able to test it online soon. Though your map is smaller then the original Bloodprision is scaled up by 1.2 in the compilation phase.

esteel wrote:Though your map is smaller then the original Bloodprision is scaled up by 1.2 in the compilation phase.

I saw the 20% scale up being talked about but I didn't know it was done in the compilation phase. Thought it was a bit small. How is that 20% done? It might be better to do it to widen some of the corridors and make it how people will be used to. It's not supposed to be a particularly small map so I should probably adhere to the original size wise.

Simply by adding -scale 1.2 when calling q3map2. There is a script used to recompile all the nexuiz maps. For reference the currently latest version is here: http://svn.icculus.org/nexuiz/trunk/dat ... iew=markup
I remember that there were problems in trying to use radiant to resize the map. Think it destroyed the texture alignment so it was done in the compilation phase.

Ed wrote:I saw the 20% scale up being talked about but I didn't know it was done in the compilation phase. Thought it was a bit small. How is that 20% done?

I'm not a mapper, but according to http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Q3Map2#Switches you need to run q3map2 with -scale 1.2.
div0 has put a script to compile Nexuiz maps in SVN, which supports scaling: http://svn.icculus.org/nexuiz/trunk/mis ... iew=markup

Edit: d'oh, to slow

KadaverJack wrote:Edit: d'oh, to slow

But you were faster in the other thread

Another update:
Edit: obsolete link, see end of thread for latest

Fixed:
- 20% bigger, that's 44% more floor area and 72.8% more volume! Thanks to esteel and KadaverJack for the -scale 1.2 help.
- Realigned light texture on ramp in blue base. Thanks to SavageX for spotting this.
- Changed screenshot to 256x256, optimised compression a bit. Actually it's from the previous version but the scaling is the only thing different.
- Some more colour coding. Should be finished now.
- Fixed deathmatch start points in blue half so they no longer point at walls.
- Added dm, tdm, lms, rune, arena game mode support. Not all are that useful but they work and are only a few hundred bytes just in case someone somewhere wants to play one of them.
- Bot waypoints. This was a fun one! I wanted the two halves to be identical so I took the bloodprison.waypoints file and calculated in a spreadsheet their displacements from a point in the red base (taking into account the scaling) and then converted these displacements into positions relative to the corresponding point in the blue base. It worked very well and all I had to do is add a few for the join areas.

Still to do:
- Add dom support
- Get tdm spawns to happen at the team points used in ctf. This would make the tdm game base vs base which would be fun. Currently this doesn't seem to work and tdm uses deathmatch points (possibly it's using CTF points also). A minor problem but one that does kind of ruin the gametype on this sort of map. Is this possible or not?
- Tweak bot waypoints. The join is hard for them and they only use the lower level. The upper level they look at and run away, possibly because the jump is too big, maybe it needs cutting a little or is it just too optimistic for a bot to manage this sort of jump? They do look at the side tunnels occasionally but I've not seen one go through them even though they do grab the armour. Maybe they need the bottom lowering so that they can run through better,
- Some optimisation stuff. I've noticed that the roof of the upper corridor is not caulked on top and there's probably a few others.

Anyone noticed it up on a server yet? This one is a big change from the last and probably the last release before a final so if anyone has any gameplay reports I'd like to know.

Good work there Ed !
I think having the flag down there will give some intense fighting and the straight connection between both bases is really dangerous to take for a flag-carrier.
This will hopefully provide very exciting matches.

I noticed some more misaligned textures here and there:



Also the corresponding lights in the red base should get a red touch instead of a blue one



And add some _glow to these lights:


This hallway is definitely too dark:



And there's the old "black items"-bug which was caused by scaling up the map.
I don't really remember how that got fixed, iirc it worked on my machine but not on some others...., maybe you just need the latest q3map2 version (should be 2.5.16) and try again.

well, q3map2 is buggy. It sometimes will destroy the lightgrid, so items can get black.

The solution:

- do the bsp stage
- then scale the .bsp
- then do vis
- then do light

So the level is first scaled, then lights will be calculated.

Problem: q3map2 removes the light entities from the .bsp file and reads them direclty from the .map file (which is *not* scaled). Thus the light positions will be wrong.

Solution:

Define "_keeplights 1" in the worldspawn of the map. This way q3map2 won't remove the light entities from the .bsp and place them correctly.

Thus q3map2 will read the lights from the .bsp (if it does not and the lights are at the wrong position you have to move the .map file aside to make sure q3map2 doesn't use the light positions defined there. Not sure if this step is necessary).

This is a bit complicated

Strahlemann wrote:I noticed some more misaligned textures here and there:

Fixed. Those ones at the top I'd been putting off and hoping no one noticed them.

Strahlemann wrote:Also the corresponding lights in the red base should get a red touch instead of a blue one

The blue was the original light colour. I've changed it now so that they're red and blue coordinated. They're only hints at 1 .75 .75 and .75 .75 1 now. The central area lights are a mixture of pale yellow (the original) and white.

Strahlemann wrote:And add some _glow to these lights:

I've tried that now by setting the entities _glow to 0.5. That made no difference. Am I doing it wrong?

Strahlemann wrote:This hallway is definitely too dark:

Fixed. The one light wasn't enough so there are now three. I've also modified the gap jump to be a bit smaller.

Strahlemann wrote:And there's the old "black items"-bug which was caused by scaling up the map.

I've seen this too. I don't really understand SavageX's explanation of how to fix it so it's going to have to stay as is until I work out what I need to do to fix it.

Ed wrote:

Strahlemann wrote:I noticed some more misaligned textures here and there:

Fixed. Those ones at the top I'd been putting off and hoping no one noticed them.

Strahlemann wrote:Also the corresponding lights in the red base should get a red touch instead of a blue one

The blue was the original light colour. I've changed it now so that they're red and blue coordinated. They're only hints at 1 .75 .75 and .75 .75 1 now. The central area lights are a mixture of pale yellow (the original) and white.

Strahlemann wrote:And add some _glow to these lights:

I've tried that now by setting the entities _glow to 0.5. That made no difference. Am I doing it wrong?

the _glow Strahlemann is speaking abt are proly a texture. Darkplaces uses aditional textures to produce varios effects, glow is one of thise. The proccess if fairly simple, just make a texture named basetexture name + _glow.ext (ex coollight.tga -> coollight_glow.tga) and do your glow image (represent what parts of the texture that glows, just look at the included ones for an example)

Strahlemann wrote:This hallway is definitely too dark:

Fixed. The one light wasn't enough so there are now three. I've also modified the gap jump to be a bit smaller.

Strahlemann wrote:And there's the old "black items"-bug which was caused by scaling up the map.

I've seen this too. I don't really understand SavageX's explanation of how to fix it so it's going to have to stay as is until I work out what I need to do to fix it.

1. select some brush not assosiated with a door or any other ent, hit the "e" key to bring up the entity editor. in the key/value part enter "_keeplights" as key and "1" as value, hit enter and close that window.

2. compile your map's -meta stage with the param -scale 1.2

3. rename/move the map source, just to make sure.

4. run the -vis and -light stages.

In form of a sequence of shell commands:

Code: Select all

q3map2 -bsp -meta ... mapname.map
q3map -scale 1.2 mapname.bsp
mv mapname_s.bsp mapname.bsp
q3map2 -vis ... mapname.map
q3map2 -light ... mapname.map
rm -f mapname.srf


HTH

Thanks for the compile tips. I've tried doing this and it's not worked properly at all. I've ended up with a map where the world isn't lit properly at all.

I first tried doing as divVerent suggested and the BSP produced at the first stage and some very strange collision problems so instead I ran the -meta stage through gtkradiant. This gave a BSP with good collision.

I then scaled it:

Code: Select all

q3map2 -scale 1.2 ~/.nexuiz/data/maps/doubleprison.bsp

It still worked fine. I then vis'd it:

Code: Select all

q3map2 -vis -saveprt ~/.nexuiz/data/maps/doubleprison.bsp

It still worked fine so then I ran the lighting:

Code: Select all

q3map2 -light -deluxe -fast -super 2 -filter -bounce 8 ~/.nexuiz/data/maps/doubleprison.bsp

There everything goes wrong and the lighting comes out all dark. I tried as tZork suggested by moving the .map file but the same thing still happens.

Right now the best I've got has been with the scaling done last and the black entities as at least there the world was lit properly.

This thing is bugging me and I want to get it fixed so I'll keep trying but for the moment here's my latest map file and anyone who wants to try compiling it properly can give it a go:
http://www.rofltech.co.uk/media/bloodpr ... .5.map.zip

Just to make this extra clear:

when tunning q3map2 -scale # you end up with yourmapname_s.bsp

So the aditional stages (light, vis) sould be run on the _s .bsp (or rename the file like divVerents script does)

tZork wrote:Just to make this extra clear:

when tunning q3map2 -scale # you end up with yourmapname_s.bsp

So the aditional stages (light, vis) sould be run on the _s .bsp (or rename the file like divVerents script does)

Yes, I was doing it on the _s file, I renamed it to do so as otherwise it looks for the _s.map file. This means that I was using the scaled up version but that still wouldn't explain what was happening. The lighting stage just did not work properly for some reason. Now I'm trying building the map normally in radiant then I'm going to scale it and see if relighting it then fixes it. There clearly is a way as it's been done before, it may just be a problem on my setup. I'm running the latest q3map2 2.5.16 in case that helps.

Did you set _keeplights to 1 on worldspawn?

divVerent wrote:Did you set _keeplights to 1 on worldspawn?

It's 1 and seeing how the map is a direct descendant of the original Blood Prison, it always should have been, assuming that the bloodprison.map that comes with Nexuix will build correctly by this method.

Right now I seem to be getting something different. I'm watching the output from the lighting phase and I've got a completely different size from the broken versions I have had. It's larger (as it should be because the lightmap is bigger). I'll see what happens when it's finished.

The lightmap problem is shown on map loading and it points out that the lightgrid is the wrong size and what it should be. If this is the case, could the DP engine handle the error better by upscaling the lightgrid? Would that work? Right now the wrong lightgrid size is actually the best of the better outputs I've had. It's better having black entities rather than a black world.

Recompiled it and it worked:
Edit: obsolete link, see end of thread for latest

Changes:
- Dom support added. 14 points symetrical across the two halves.
- Bot waypoints tweaked in upper corridor. They should no longer pause here occasionally and are now encouraged to carry straight on and take the drop to the megahealth. Bots don't like jumping though.
- Some recaulking around the join.
- Some misaligned textures in the blue base realigned (thanks Strahlemann)
- Lights in bases now given hint of colour coordination. Hadn't been sure about doing this but it works well. (Thanks Strahlemann)
- Lights in bases glow. Previously I had expected them to glow but they weren't because I was using the _glow texture as the texture so it was looking for a _glow_glow texture. Silly mistake. (Thanks Strahlemann) This effect looks very nice and if you were impressed by deluxe mapping with white lights, this is something else entirely!
- More lights in upper corridor. Now three instead of 1. Looks a lot lighter and people shouldn't miss the gap jump although it is still meant to be dim relative to the rest of the map as it has no light from the sky shining in to it.
- That black items problem fixed. Lots of terrible broken builds along the way but I worked out a really easy way to do it:

Code: Select all

1. Build as normal in radiant
2. Scale map on command line
3. Open the q3bsp.sh file in .radiant/something/something/ and copy the last line to the command line, and run that.

- Name changed in Worldspawn to Blood Prison CTF
- Reduced width of central gap jump. The top edges have been moved in so that there is a slope on either side of the gap. This means that jumps into the gap fire the player downward whilst keeping forward momentum rather than stopping them as a vertical face would. This should allow new players to take the top corridor easier (3 long jumps in succession was a bit too much) whilst not obstructing transfers to the lower level.
- Step in side tunnels replaced by slope. This should stop bots from turning back and is less annoying than hitting a big step.
- Added some ammo to the join areas. This should entice bots through the side tunnels and make them take the central drop.

This is not yet a final version for a few reasons:
- I haven't yet had any game play reports so have no idea whether it works or not.
- Arena mode seems strangely broken in this version for me. The files are correct (the version numbers have been incremented and that's it) but on loading the game it says it can't find the previous arena version and removes it from the database yet I have previously removed all older versions. Doing g_maplist doesn't list it and in fact doesn't list any arena maps. Something odd there. Possibly with my game config. Will have to try a fresh install and see if that does it fine.
- The scaling and relighting has lead to the map growing in disk footprint by 25%. It's only sensible seeing how many hours of compilation I have put into it to put some time into recompressing it for smaller file size so I'll do that for the final release.

Good work Ed !
The glow adds a lot.

I had a quick round with some bots and it's really fun.
Using the straight way is suicide

And i encountered some more misalignments.






Use a red jumppad for the red base and a blue one for the blue base


Also try to use some more base-specific lighting. Some parts look nearly the same in both bases. There shouldn't be blue lights in the red base at all and vice versa imo. This'll
make things much clearer for players and it helps to find your way through the map faster and easier.


Apropos base-specific lighting: Would you mind trying to use a red skybox for the red base ?
I'd really like to see it (ok, maybe it'll look like crap but maybe it won't. Please give it a try once )

Ah, and Arena mode works fine for me