I finally finished the beta version

This is my first CTF map, and any helpful and/or positive comments are much appreciated.

Cleft Village
UPDATE: Get the latest version here

Screenshots



Work in progress
The things that are not yet finished...
- The clipping in the 2 chasms is my "plan C" (because I hit the MAX_BRUSHES limit). I will work on that.
- The clipping at the beach (opening to horizon) will be replaced by a trigger_impulse (wind/current)
- The lighting
- The item placement
- And basically every model/texture/shader

...and the ones that are not even included, but will be in version 1
- A "secret" room/cave
- Sounds
- Some more details (inventory for the huts, fish in the water)
- Some effects (particles), which are easier to include thanks to NetRadiant

... There are probably some things I forgot to mention ...

Have fun and happy fragging

AWESOME map, such great use of effects and attention to detail. You are a mapping artist!

One thing that bothers me however, other than the clipping which you mentioned you'd be working on, is number of cave paintings. When I first saw them, I was like "ZOMG TOTALLY AWESOME!" but then they kept repeating :-\. I think it's a little overkill. Along these lines, it's a little hard to tell which base is which. Perhaps the cave paintings can give more hint as to which color base you are at?

The waves are awesome and so are the tiki guys


AWESOMESOMESOME!

Exceptional attention to detail, and a great layout. A few things could be changed, but they are relatively minor.

• The areas in the pathways and the tiki hut are quite nice, but they aren't well enough lit- I suggest adding some tiki-torches (or something) which will cast light throughout those areas.

• Arg, sprites for the tree foliage looks really un-natural- it would be much better if you just had them stay static (with that wavefunction of course).

• The beach could use some detail- it's a bit barren. This is a nitpick, but I think the beach would greatly benefit from:

- Some driftwood, other misc beach things (rocks, etc).
- That sand texture is really un-convincing, imo. It would work better if you used something more like beach sand (that's like dune sand), and then used dotproduct2 to blend the beach into the ocean floor, which would be a sort of rocky texture.
- Larger, maybe more complex beach area? It still seems a tad small, maybe because of that awesome structure in the middle of it. (less important).

• Cave paintings, as -z- said, could be more sparse, and maybe hint at the path to the base. Also, it would be awesome (IMO) if you added some glowmaps to them.

• The water in the tiki hut area is sort of strange- I feel like it should be a real water shader, and the same one (or maybe a less chaotic version of) the sea texture).


Aside from those things, it's great! Framerate is solid even with effects turned up, and it has a very distinct visual style, while remaining playable. Keep up the good work!

8.8/10

FarCry in Nexuiz.

Thanks for your responses so far
With Treasure Island you helped me a lot with good ideas, and it seems to be not different now

torus wrote:• The areas in the pathways and the tiki hut are quite nice, but they aren't well enough lit- I suggest adding some tiki-torches (or something) which will cast light throughout those areas.

Because this is the Beta version, I decided to try my lighting concept without any compromises , but I will light it up a bit in version 1.

torus wrote:• Arg, sprites for the tree foliage looks really un-natural- it would be much better if you just had them stay static (with that wavefunction of course).

This was a performance over awe decision. Static leaves would require a lot more leave textures to have the same effect, and would require "cull none", which in all would cause quite a fps drag.

torus wrote:• The beach could use some detail- it's a bit barren. This is a nitpick, but I think the beach would greatly benefit from:

- Some driftwood, other misc beach things (rocks, etc).
- That sand texture is really un-convincing, imo. It would work better if you used something more like beach sand (that's like dune sand), and then used dotproduct2 to blend the beach into the ocean floor, which would be a sort of rocky texture.
- Larger, maybe more complex beach area? It still seems a tad small, maybe because of that awesome structure in the middle of it. (less important).

Noted. You gave me a good reason now to learn about dotproduct2
The size is kind of static (either I could scale the whole map, or nothing... It would be a lot of work to change all the models of a single area now...)

torus wrote:• Cave paintings, as -z- said, could be more sparse, and maybe hint at the path to the base. Also, it would be awesome (IMO) if you added some glowmaps to them.

Noted. I intended them to be a bit overwhelming, but I will work on it. The problem here is that I have 4 paintings, and 1 texture... Maybe I will create different textures for each painting...
Hints to the bases is good, I will add that.
There are glowmaps already... That's why you can see every painting (with very few lights in the caves)

torus wrote:• The water in the tiki hut area is sort of strange- I feel like it should be a real water shader, and the same one (or maybe a less chaotic version of) the sea texture).

That's because it is supposed to be a swamp. (Inspiration from Edanna, Age in MYST III - Exile, for those who played it )

some additional stuff: you should also try to use the dotproduct2 on the transitions between the hallways and the outside.


-i think i'd prefer non-autosprites for the teleporters and instead do a second layer rotating in the other direction behind the swirl.
-give the edges of the cliffs at the top some variations. they're all on one level. changing the height here and there won't change fps but will give a nice variation on the top.



looking forward to the next version!
This will be a hot candidate to be included in an official release.
Great work so far!

That's the map I've been waiting for!

Great job.

I managed to get out of the playable area of the map while I was typing (and thus sinking down) at the invisible wall, and when I was done typing I was OoB. I managed to do it once more, but I still don't know how.



I guess the part the RL covers the rock is the part I went trough.

Thanks for reporting this. This once happened to me too, at the beach. It seems to be connected with the water shader, because from an editing point of view, there is just 1 big player clip, and it should be impossible to get past it.

I will try to solve this problem in version 1.

@ Strahlemann, thanks for your tips, they are noted

zomg! <3

A map that looks good and doesn't crush my FPS, a rare sight indeed! Good work!

sev wrote:I finally finished the beta version

This is my first CTF map, and any helpful and/or positive comments are much appreciated.

It's a really pretty map.

I played a round of CTF on it this afternoon, and imo it's too large, and it has too many hiding places. It's too easy for the FC to hide. I made the same mistakes with RustVents (anybody remember that thing?). It was a fun game anyway (probably because I was the FC in hiding ). I'd suggest two ways of reducing the size of the map:



The first way is to remove area 1 and one of the area 2s. Let the remaining area 2 be a bridge between the area 3s.

The other way to reduce the size is to remove area 1, both area 2s, and one of the area 3s. The remaining area 3 can then be used as a middle-ground between the bases.

In addition, you can use areas 1, 2, and 3 to make at least two separate CTF maps: One being area 1 and both area 2s in the same way they are now, with a base in both area 2s. The other by using an area 2 as a bridge between two area 3s, with a base in both 3s.

That's ideas for four different CTF maps made entirely of sections of your one CTF map.

Taiyo.uk wrote:zomg! <3

A map that looks good and doesn't crush my FPS, a rare sight indeed! Good work!

Yeah, the FPS was a lot higher than I would have expected. Kudos for that.

I agree with cluelessnewbie.

The map is wonderful looking and has a lot of really cool features, but it's too large for gameplay.

"- The clipping in the 2 chasms is my "plan C" (because I hit the MAX_BRUSHES limit). I will work on that. "

Use the netradiant q3map2.
Or: https://cat2.optus.nu/cat2/q3map2.bigvi ... oreplanes2
(linux binary of increased limit q3map2)

Yes, playing on it I realised that it is very big for a single map...
So Clueless Newbie, your ideas are great

Exactly for reasons like this, I constructed it in a very versatile way. The shell is a very simple construction with caulk brushes, and the ase's are modules that fit together even when turned and moved.

So I will build different maps with these modules, focusing on specific aspects of the original map (beaches or huts, for example).

I'm glad it seems to perform well on other systems too. With the experiences from Treasure Island, I could concentrate on a well-performing map from scratch this time.