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.

nice work, looking forward to playing that again

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 :\

CheapAlert wrote: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.

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)

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

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)

Asraniel wrote: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.

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

Asraniel wrote: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.

An update:
Link pulled, see end of thread.

Changes:
- lava no longer transparent so fixes bug where boundaries showed up from above lava
- new screenshot
- bot waypoints. These are pretty hopeless as all the bots do is suicide into the lava every time. I've tried lots of things but haven't got a decent set of waypoints out of anything. Funny but silly.

Still got a problem with the shape of the teleporter which I may replace entirely as it seems to be a problem introduced by scaling.

There seem to be small problems with two guns:


The first one is even lower, i had item bobbing active..

Another update:
Link pulled, see end of thread.

Changes:
- Fixed the submerged items problem esteel saw. This was because the original Quake item placements were kept and Quake obviously handles them slightly differently if they are in the floor than Nexuiz does.
- Fixed the holes in the teleporter. It was a bit of a mess down there so I rebuilt the teleporter and found it was some single player introduced anomaly in the original map
- Did some recaulking, reduces the disk footprint and may improve speed
- Got rid of some more ridiculous brushes that were hidden in side of other brushes in the original. Can't say for certain but I think they were planning on having the ceiling of the mortar end as a set of slopes going up towards the centre. Then they just blocked it off with a set of cubes instead.
- Fixed (properly) the boundaries of lava problem, they're caulked now.
- Improved some minor textures

Hope this is almost done, I've got a bigger plan for it next.

Cool, thanks for the fixes.. downloading

This map brings back a few memories...

Spotted two bugs with the 0.4 version:

A missing surface


Some z-fighting near the crosshair


Overall, nice work though.

I must have overcaulked that wall as it's not easy to see, will fix.

z-fighting has been my enemy on this map. You have no idea how bad it was at first! It's because in software Quake you can get away with it but it just won't work in any of the new engines. I've already fixed literally dozens of z-fighting issues and these are hopefully the last.

I won't bother updating just on these two issues, I'll wait until I've got a few more things fixed.

Yeah, I really liked that part of Quake, nice work

Is there a way to make the buttons do anything useful?
The lightning thing from the quake version was nice to kill that boss monster.. maybe it can also be used in DM mode?

esteel wrote:Is there a way to make the buttons do anything useful?
The lightning thing from the quake version was nice to kill that boss monster.. maybe it can also be used in DM mode?

I think it would require some coding. Could that be done without requiring a mod as such, just a few files in the pk3? Currently it links to an event called lightning which obviously Nexuiz does not have. A superweapon would be one idea with electric beams going everywhere but I'm not sure a one hit death button would really improve the game and the deaths would surely count as suicides. A death button could just be done by dropping a deathbox on top of the upper floor when the button is pressed, that would not require coding.

An update:
http://www.rofltech.co.uk/media/chthon-0.5.pk3

Changes:
- Fixed some overcaulking
- Fixed that z-fighting
- Lots of external work, deleted lots of junk brushes, it seems like they were intending to have another room on the other side of the big door which has gone, I've resized the lava down and deleted another load of crap round the tunnel, some additional caulking
- Hint brushes, first attempt and that tutorial makes no real sense to me so if hope I've done it right
- Playerclip brushes added to all steps, stops the bots from leaping up and down on them
- Bot waypoints redone from scratch. They no longer leap into the lava at every opportunity and will actually patrol round the level rather well although they do seem to suicide with the RL rather a lot, think this map is very bad for bot AI
- Redid the jumppad so it's angled and the landing moved slightly in, means the bots will take it rather than getting confused.
- Music loops track 4