BlueAmuse is set in a power Cell refinery and packaging plant. The blue liquid holds much power and is unstable, it will release it's energy and kill you if you touch it: don't.

BlueAmuse version 54, beta 1:
https://cat2.dynserv.org/data/blueamuse54.pk3 (4.64MB)

(Note: don't mind the invalid cert, I made it a long time ago and kept the same cert)
(Note: License is GNU GPL v2, same as nex viva fully freesoftware )

People asked for more ctf maps, I noticed that the map I was making was big enough for ctf and added CTF for it, however it is not just tacked on (I didn't just add flags to existing rooms, I placed new areas for the flagbases)...

The two bases are dissimilar, but both have 2 enterances: a hard way and an easier way.

The red base is basically a hallway with the flag and defence area at the end and crates , I did it this way because I wanted to have a hallway shoot out area... I wanted it to be hard. The red base is near the packaging/crate holding warehouse area. There are some computers to track the stock of cell-filled crates. The crates are made of metal rather then wood for good reason (and reused, it's drop-shipped to the customer, the cells removed, and the empty metal crates picked back up). There are two enterances to the red base room: through the door or... some other way I'll let you find out. The area can be well defended by the red team, I tried to make this a hard map.

The blue base is situated in a power-cell liquid holding area (one of many, there is a very large demand for powercells), it's a dangerous place to be running around: the blue team can use their lazers to good effect (simply push the enemy into the blue energy goop). There are two ways into this area: the doorway at the top and the sewerway at the bottom.
The sewerway requires atleast 3 perilous jumps over blue death to reach the flag.

The map is not symmetrical in design, nor are the bases, I hope people enjoy this.

Remeber this is the first beta, that means that please give feedback so it can be improved greatly. Yes it is somewhat dark also , blue is a dark color (the eye doesn't pick it up well). Be attentive or be shot!.

This map is free/opensource media. It is GPLd

SShots: http://cat2.dynserv.org:81/other/stuff/ ... blueamuse/

(also, question: what is the prosedure for setting bot paths, how far away to set each node?)

(thirdly: I would be very grateful if someone would mirror the PK3 (it includes mapsorce, and CTF, DM, and Arena configs) Thankyou for this game .

Alright, I have mirrored the .pk3 to the location below. Later I'll post new critic if needed besides the one I and Demitro (or what his nick now was, forgot ) already gave you. Plus, I think it's nice to also have it on the forums so if you forget something one can always check it. And I am very certain more people will say something too However, for the mirror link for the map:

http://www.origionstudios.com/ai/nexuiz ... muse54.rar

Btw, did you change your forum nick or are you some other guy?

Thankyou. For mirroring and giving criticisms while we were playing . I'm trying to make alt paths seem more scrumtious now . Also I'm trying to make the blue base more difficult.

As for nickname: for messageboards and games I just use whatever nick that's in my mind. When I make a work, though, I sign it with my main name.

PS: do I use these path_corner things for bot cookies or something else? (I'd like to get bots working OK atleast in DM).

Even though you don't like it - this is an anonymized log of what was said on my server. The players have decided, the map disappeared from the map selection again...

http://mensa.ath.cx/~polzer/temp/blueamuse-log.txt

Maybe that helps you a bit - in what to change. Personally, I'd say you should color the walls so you see in which base you are... that would help much.

New verison:
https://cat2.dynserv.org/data/blueamuse58.pk3

Additions: more weapon placements. Made blue base easier to defend. Added an "attic area". Etc.

[17:53:09] <TiberiusGracchus> that was a ofdd base
[17:53:47] <TiberiusGracchus> ffs
[17:53:53] <TiberiusGracchus> THIS MAP SUX DONKEY BALLS
[17:54:17] <TiberiusGracchus> non symetric .. CITE is wat this is
[17:54:21] <TiberiusGracchus> not a ctf maep
[17:54:31] <TiberiusGracchus> tbye bye
[17:54:43] <TiberiusGracchus> whos the idiot who made this .. im gono mailvbopmb him

This person doesn't like it because it's non symmetrical and he is going to mailbomb me for that. This, I am not going to change because I purposfully made this map to be non symmtrical.

[17:46:54] <STOP0x0000000A> shitmap
[17:42:06] <GreenExplodingShit> a rubbish map
"blue lava"

No reasons why it's a 'shit map', not good cricisism. As for "too big", yes I purpously made a big map. The 'lava' is blue energy liquid, the stuff in the cells... it says this in the map description. Most of these are opinions that will differ depending on weather the player likes large maps or small simple maps. A twitch player or a methodical player.

Thank you for posting the log, though most players didn't give reasons for why they hated the new map... and one guy is going to try to mailbomb me: please give him my email address, I'd like to see if he makes good on his threat.

This new version should play better due to more weapon placements, and areas where there is health and armor. Some paths have health, some paths have ammo.

I hope you give the map another spin, though your players probably would hate anything non symmetrical and anything too complicated: two things I like. I found it to be much better with the new weapon placements.

This is still in beta 1 so much can be changed.

Thankyou .

https://cat2.dynserv.org/data/blueamuse58.pk3

How do you run it? I feel like a noob because I am using linux right now

copy pk3 to /nexuiz/data/

then start it from the menu (or from console) like every other map.

Dunno why you should feel yourself like a n00b, it should not work differently under linux then windowse

I've found that the lighting level is good at gamma setting 1.25
I guess this means I should increase the light put out by the light 1.25 times.
Is there a batch way I could do this all at once in gtk radiant. There are hundreads of lights.

You can use perl on the .map file to multiply all light values by a factor, as in

Code: Select all

perl -pe 's{^"light" "(.*)"$}{"light" "@{[$1 * 1.25]}"}' input.map > output.map

Well, the main problems the players had:

• too dark
• no team colors (so you don't see in which base you are)
• "lava" looks like as if it could be a floor

As for "it says this in the map description" - this is an online game. You download the map when playing if you don't already have it... you have no chance to read the map description before!

Well, and PLEASE fix this message spam. It is so annoying on the server console. It is caused by func_rotating entities that have no associated brushes - just delete these entities because they don't have anything to rotate anyway.

divVerent wrote:You can use perl on the .map file to multiply all light values by a factor, as in

Code: Select all

perl -pe 's{^"light" "(.*)"$}{"light" "@{[$1 * 1.25]}"}' input.map > output.map

Well, the main problems the players had:

• too dark
• no team colors (so you don't see in which base you are)
• "lava" looks like as if it could be a floor

As for "it says this in the map description" - this is an online game. You download the map when playing if you don't already have it... you have no chance to read the map description before!

Well, and PLEASE fix this message spam. It is so annoying on the server console. It is caused by func_rotating entities that have no associated brushes - just delete these entities because they don't have anything to rotate anyway.

Thanks for the perl script

The func rotating entities I have are the fans and the things in the goop. They rotate around their center axis. Did I do something wrong in making them? (I followed quake3 tuts). Is there a way I can get the editor to highlight them.

To make the blue stuff look less like a floor I'd need to have a shader added to it to get it to be a little bit translucent... and maybe act like blue slime I guess... though I'd like when you hit it for it to do an energy explosion like the electro does (is this possible?).

Having played the map online with a few others, I found it far too big as a CTF map - it was more "Find the Flag" than "Capture the Flag". A large map is not always a bad thing, however making big maps symmetrical makes life a lot easier - this map is too complex as well as too big. I suspect very few players are likely to have the patience to learn this map, and although most players wanted to check it out, everyone was glad when it finished.

That's the harsh bit over with! On the positive side, I thought the map look was good, and there were some very good ideas in places - nice high-risk laser-jump escapes and so on. For me I found the frame rates stayed within a good range, and in fact seemed very stable compared with most Nex maps. The overall look seemed consistent, (although the flow of the map wasn't.) Lighting was good in parts, although other parts were very badly lit.

I would be interested in playing this map as TDM (with at LEAST 12 players!), but for CTF I found it didn't work. I would definitely look forward to trying out other maps you make, and would encourage you to keep on at it.

being wrote:The func rotating entities I have are the fans and the things in the goop. They rotate around their center axis. Did I do something wrong in making them? (I followed quake3 tuts). Is there a way I can get the editor to highlight them.

No, you made some working func_rotating entities - and some "empty" ones without brushes. Just delete the empty ones as they don't do anything useful anyway.

To make the blue stuff look less like a floor I'd need to have a shader added to it to get it to be a little bit translucent... and maybe act like blue slime I guess... though I'd like when you hit it for it to do an energy explosion like the electro does (is this possible?).

No, this is not possible.

divVerent wrote:No, this is not possible.

odd. It's a crazily good idea IMO, wow!!!!

First of all, here's an updated mirror: http://www.origionstudios.com/ai/nexuiz ... muse58.rar

Secondly I agree with litting the bases up with their corresponding colors, for example where the red base is on that jump platform where the corridor is there's a blueish light which confused me at first. Like first I was thinking "Yay cool, I found the blue base!", but to my suprise it was my own base again, "Lool! Damn" , though I found it to be very funny heheh..

And then have another suggestion as how to make finding the bases easier.
Make some sort of red and blue light arrows on the floor or walls to each bases and then they would meet somewhere in the "middle". Now I don't know how to do that in that map as it is unsymetrical but I think it would work in some way. Or at least make is easier to find the bases in a way. I for one have the patience to check out new maps and like both symetrical and unsymetrical, and as this is the first one to be one I like it very much.

I haven't tried out the update and will as soon as I have time, I'm at "work" right now, and when I do I come back with more critic if need be more than the things I just mentioned.
Keep it up, I know this can be a great fun map. ^_^

This map shows some funny games...

http://www.informatik.uni-frankfurt.de/~polzer/temp/blueamuse/

BTW... needs more worldspawn!

Ok, this map has a lot of potential. Problem is that it is too large and has a lot of unecessary complexity.

For example, I just found your hidden secret tunnel area...I mean the really crazy one with lots of pitch black rooms, (not that simple one L-shaped tunnel). That hidden rooms stuff is really cool in theory, but I think it's way too much for a CTF map. If someone wanted to stall the game, they would just climb in there and get lost forever. It's like a whole new map inside of a map. There are many places in this map where people could hide. Too many hiding places. Having a map that large already makes gameplay slow because people have to find their way around the map. Add to it that 1 or more people might be hiding in the tunnels with the flag. That would just bring the game to a screeching halt.

I like about 2/3 of the map design. The good parts are really cool. You put a ton of work into the detail and used a lot of creativity. I like ai's suggestion about giving color clues as to where the bases are located. It doesn't have to be HUGE clues, just something saying blue base is in this direction. I like what you did with the blue base changes with the cage in the middle.

I suggest scaling back on the design of the map and take some of your ideas and use them for a new map. You probably could've made three very decent CTF maps in the time that it took you to do this one very huge map.

If anyone wants to play it, I have it in-rotation on the Fusion FTP server. I think I saw it on a couple other servers as well.

Thankyou for the criticisms .

divVerent: the ramp goes to a health pack, and you can jump to the girders from there too.
The dark area with the armor is intentional so you can hide there and kill the person going for the NexDamage. The dark corridor... well... yea. I gotta think about that one .

As for the sv_push mode messages: I cannot find the empty entities, is there something I can grep for in the .map that shows empty entities? (I don't want to delete the rotating brushes that work).

Dokujisan: I intentionally made it large and complex. We have many small and not so complex maps, I wanted a change . The last time I mapped was in 2000 for UT99, that was the era of HUGE CTF maps (infact if a map wasn't huge it couldn't be a CTF map), that's where I come from.

Here's a new release:
https://cat2.dynserv.org/data/blueamuse69.pk3

Additions include more sewer pipe areas (though it's still mostly 1 path, with exits here and there, this is so the blue team can defend against from-the-pipe attacks), the addition of a main ventalation shaft (with the big fan). I also made it harder to get the red flag, you can't (as easily) just drop down ontop of the flag, you have to go forward abit (or concentrate to drop down). Crates were added in another place (opposite the glass enclosure in the main
room).

New game modes: dom and lms. The map has about 6 domination points. I also added another DM spawn, another hagar, more ammo on the ammo side (for machinegun), a second megahealth in a newer area, a second nexgun (as requested) in a new area of the sewer, another electro in it's own room (on the opposite side of the map of the other electros).

I didn't find any red nexflag textures or red nex glyph textures, are there any, I could put these in the red base and blue ones in the blue base to make the idea more apparent.

What areas need more detail? What kind of detail do you suggest (ex: take a SShot and mark it up with your ideas). What areas need more cover etc (not all areas will have cover ofcourse).

I'd like to get this fully GPLd map upto nexuiz quality so when people come in it they don't think anything negativly about the amount of detail or quality.

Thankyou again

https://cat2.dynserv.org/data/blueamuse69.pk3

ramp: no, I mean the texture rotation. It makes one think the ramp goes another way than it does...

sv_push: well, why not grep for "func_rotating"?

as for general darkness - you NEED to fix that. If an area is still black when using v_gamma 100 and r_hdr_scenebrightness 100, however, you can as well replace the textures by caulk...

And - put some lights in that extra outside area with the long pipes... I need to enable r_showsurfaces when going there, since it is PITCH black.

I understand where you are coming from re: huge CTF maps. There is something interesting about it. There is still the issue of someone being able to completely stall the CTF match by hiding in those hidden areas. There are just a thousand places to hide on that map.

Speaking of the pitch black hidden areas, why not put SOME kind of minimal lighting in those areas? Like some small night-lights to help give some direction. Perhaps have some mild floor lights.

Colorizing the different flag areas...hmm...perhaps that could be done with blue and red lighting rather than markings on the walls?

I'll load v.69 on the fusion server later tonight.

Other then reducing complexity, (this map is supposed to be complex, my upcoming map, dastower, is much more simple and tailored to domination), lighting (I'm working on that ), and the blue energy goop what can be done to improve gameplay on this map?

Where is it too easy for one team or another? How can this be fixed.

Where do you want more cover and of what type?

Also: where is there more detail needed in the map?

Where did you find the map unfun

Also, for the engine programmers, could a new key be added: playerintersecteffect so that you can set, for instance, playerhiteffect energyexplosion, or playerhiteffect normalexplosion, etc so that one can specify that whenever a player walks into, lands on, etc this brush this effect will occur?

Thankyou all .

My thoughts are, especially with grapple, that the red flag is too easy to get. I wanted more people to try to power their way through the main enterance to the red base rather then just often going up through the little vent, secondly I expected a player on the red team to guard that vent (up there is a good camping area). How should this be fixed? More cover needed somewhere?

Also how do I make clear to the players that this map is an energy-liquid/gel refining and packaging plant? (Said energy explosion effect would work ).

Thirdly... I saw a server with 12 people (full server) playing the map, how was it when they played it? What did the players say and how was the gameplay.

I think this map is best with manyplayers as that way you can have 2 people defending each base etc.

Thankyou for your criticism . I have used the suggestions given to try to improve the map, please continue .

(Also please tell which rooms were most fun, and why, and which were less fun, and why)

(Also there are other gametypes then CTF for this map: dom, and dm, how do they work out?).

Thankyou again.

PS: What does an empty entity look like in the .map file that I can surely delete it, I looked but I wasn't sure and didn't want to delete anything that is used.

Well before doing more stuff on your map you should really fix those two technical problems which were mentioned by divVerent. The numerous worldspawn's and the empty func_rotate's. You should be able to fix both with an texteditor and its search function. The mapformat is easy to understand so its easy to find the wrong ones.
Only then you should start doing stuff like adding colors for the bases, lighten up some areas, making it NOT slowdown a CTF match by allowing too much hiding and such things.