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

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.

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.

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)

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. :)

BTW: The map looks great

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.

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

EDIT: See post below this one..

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..

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.

You wrote:

:: How can I determine if texture/texture directory is standard resource for Nexuiz or not?

I should have maybe said it explicitly. Test your map with the plain nexuiz dir and you should see missing textures, etc. Basically this way you create a test environment where your map appears as it would to any other old user just downloading your map.. I should have been more clear about this. If a texture shows as missing via this method you know it's not included in nexuiz

That's nice way too, I'll keep it in mind.

Very nice for a first map

Ok, now here's version with teleports added :: http://omploader.org/vMzVmMg/LC_Iceworld.pk3

Please test it and if there's no serious gameplay issues or bugs, I'll release it.

Hi there!

Wow, very nice map! Is it a quake3 conversion, or made from scratch?
Anyway, here are my two cents and suggestions:

-remove the shotgun. The shotty is a starter weapon, you don't need to pick it up.
-add more ammo / replace some! Those 4 cells give and incredible amount of ammo, it's just too many in one place.
-one sniper weapon is enough! So either remove the rifle or the nex.
-the teleporter destinations are facing the wrong way.
-this map needs some realtime lightning love
-minimap image is missing for teamplay mods.
-in case you can work it out, the map would be imho pretty good for domination too.

In it's current form, I'll add the map to the minsta port of the DCC servers.

Thanks, that's the critique I wanted.

fy_iceworld is one of the first DM maps for Counter-Strike and probably the most famous of all. I made my map from scratch, keeping only the basic layout of fy_iceworld. Original map is simple as hell, though giving incredible fun to CS players.


Then I have the following questions ::

:: Where should tele destinations point?
:: How realtime lighting is set up in Nexuiz (reference to some article would be very useful)?
:: Why can be minimap missing for some mods and how it can be enabled in those?

Lord Canistra wrote::: Where should tele destinations point?
:: How realtime lighting is set up in Nexuiz (reference to some article would be very useful)?
:: Why can be minimap missing for some mods and how it can be enabled in those?

The teleporter destinations are facing the handrails, so when you exit the teleporter, you get stopped bye them. Simply rotate them where it's free to go.

Realtime lightning is either created ingame, with the handy realtime lightning editor mode (r_editlights 1). That might be a bit long process, but you'll see exactly how it'll look like. After you have some experience, you can create the rtlight file outside the game too as it's a simple txt file that contains the coordinates of the lights, intensity, color, style etc. One of the best method is to place info_null entities for your lights in radiant, and then just simply copy out their coordinates.

The minimap image is fully missing. I don't know what program you use, but netradiant (viewforum.php?f=23) has a built in compile option for q3map2:

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[q3map2] -minimap "[MapFile]"


The created minimap file will be under gfx/ . Just package it with the reast of the map.

Oh. I thought it's being embedded into BSP after creation.

Now going to experiment with lighting.

Okay, I've placed some dyn lights in most suitable places (as it seemed to me).
Now I have fps rate lowered by almost four times in some areas (mostly on border corners, where you can see entire map). Is it ok for realtime lighting or I'm doing something wrong?

.rtlights file is here :: http://omploader.org/vMzV4dA/lc_iceworld.rtlights.zip

Despite of the fact that I've pretty powerful graphics card (Radeon HD 4890), my CPU is quite old. Can it cause graphics lag because of lack of calculating power?

Really good looking map, going to test it now. The "error" you posted before is probably just a normal message that q3map2 spits out at each compile, nothing to worry about. q3map2 might say a lot of things, but unless your map looks bad/plays slow etc there shouldn't be anything to worry about. One exception: map leaks, those are always good to fix...

Edit: VERY nice indeed! Not sure about those teleporters on the ground, I think i'd just place the teleporters on the nearby walls instead to avoid confusion

I'm afraid that placing teles on walls would screw up looks totally. Trigger_teleports are really small now, so there's minimal probability that you'll teleport yourself occasionally while fleeing or chasing someone.

Looking good with the rtlights! And yes, don't worry, it's a very hardware eater thing, it's realy ment to be an on over the edge eye candy for those who have the machine to handle it (but that doesn't meant you shouldn't use it!).
I just love this part:



But imho some rtloghts are still missing here:



and here:

I think a replacement of sorts for those jump pad textures is needed if possible. The map looks great other than those. Also you might want to try and embed them into the ground rather than having them sitting above as they are now.

I couldn't add more rtlights here or make these ones more intense; for transparent texture that I use on spikes cause Nexuiz lag really hard when dynamic lights drop on it.
I've added static lights above border pads, after compile will try to add rtlights as well and see what will come out.
In general, I like pads as they are now. Thinking of how they would look as just a circles in ground I dislike it. But I'll make them look a bit more complex.

the minsta guys are going to love this.

Maybe it's because I am Minsta one too.

Replaced some weapons, added new rt/lights & waypoints. Everything is included now (I wanna think so ><).
Link :: http://omploader.org/vMzZudg/LC_Iceworld.pk3

Map, um... screenshot is also updated now.

Excellent! Though there are still too much cells in a pack

Do you know hwat would kick ass?

This:



Don't worry about the lighting, it's just a dull test compile from me. Or better to say, this happens if you don't add the external lightmaps to the package

Here are my changes in map format: just copy paste them into the original map in radiant, if you happen to like this little change. You'll need a full recompile though, as I've added new brushes too.

http://pastebin.com/f27fb28b1

Thats a great idea! Not nearly enough people use the lasers yet

I really do like this map quite a lot, I can't wait to test the latest revision tomorrow (I'm on my laptop right now). Speaking of revisions....... If you're posting multiple downloads for the same map, it is a VERY good idea to mark the map with *_rX, where X = revision number (That means for all files with this name, btw... Including the bsp and etc.) This is very useful for those especially who are testing your map and attempting to give feedback, or simply keeping track of the changes between the maps.

Anyway, back to liking this map a lot. I wonder how it would work as a 1v1 map since there really isn't many places to hide. Actually, this map reminds me a lot of shipment from CoD4... Could be very interesting. Also: Since Nexuiz could really use some good DM/1v1 maps, I don't see why it would be a bad idea to include this map as long as everything with it is GPL. I'll have to ask morfars' opinion on that next time I see him on IRC.