Maps in Development

[Thranduil]

I'm pretty sure of this as well, since there is nothing in the map editor to help you manage what the engine will try to render.

Love the prelims on the castle in the sky :-)

EDIT:  I tried implementing extremely high/steep elevations on another map with deadly ravines that we were discussing on the old forum.  I found that there were some serious glitches in the game engine when I tried to walk or jump off these extremely high cliffs.  Something to do with how the game engine tracks a characters movement over the terrain map.  Just a heads up that you should be prepared to make many of the deadly ledges out of scene props instead of a very sharp drop off of the terrain field.  I experimented slightly with putting little barriers as lips on the cliffs, but nothing conclusive about whether this really helps.

Thanks. 

Yep, I've already encountered that issue about jumping off cliffs.    I'm going to try to make it obvious where you can and cannot fall off, like the railing, you cannot fall off the edge there.  I'll try that idea about putting barriers as lips on the cliffs.  I will try to make sure that wherever you can fall, if you do, you will die.  I know sometimes landing on a slope actually saves you just barely, so I've implemented a barrier to serve for a flat surface to fall on, just in case.

[Kong Ming]

I look forward to trying the fruits of your labor.

[Nasturtium]

Changes coming to Caverns:
(special thanks to Xavier for the pics and suggestions.)

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Cover for archers and infantry on ruined tower top, chain raised to a level where it does not intefere with jumping onto cages.

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Bridge gets a plank on it. Many passages widened or removed entirely to focus gameplay. Alot of bug fixes including teleporters ^^

[Kong Ming]

Hey Nast, have you fiddled with this at all?  It could just screw everything up, but I remember you talking about how to get the lighting more moody.

Add the "sf_indoors flag to the specific scene you want, in module_scenes.py, like so:

  ("multi_scene_1",sf_generate|sf_indoors,"none", "none", (0,0),(100,100),-100,"0x00000001300389800003a4ea000058340000637a0000399b",
    [],[],"outer_terrain_plain"),

Using this method the only ambient lighting in the scene will be what you add to it. Hope this helps.

[Nasturtium]

I only wish I could fiddle with it, but since I am stuck using a Vista machine I can't get the accursed compiler to work  didn't your brother or someone have the same problem? Were you able to work around it somehow?

[Kong Ming]

Oh of course, I'm an idiot.  No we just did things the same way you do hehe.  I'll try compiling a few maps today with the indoors tag in them to see if there's an obvious output you could add to your txt file.

EDIT:  Okay I tried it out on one of my maps.  Simply change the 256 value in you map's scenes.txt code to a 257.  It reduces ambient light dramatically.  You'll probably want to add some torches and what not.

scn_rudi_horseshoe rudi_horseshoe 256 none none 0.000000 0.000000 100.000000 100.000000 -100.000000 0x00000000d00785630004cd160000492d000003fc00006478
  0
  0
 outer_terrain_desert

EDIT:  I'm also assuming you don't have any other tags in the code so you do in fact have a 256 in your map's lines.  If not let me know.

[Kong Ming]

Alright, so the swamp map I was experimenting with was clearly too demanding on my computer for it to be viable.  However, I decided to instead utilize the swamp terrain on a small scale in a section of a new map I'm working on.  It's called Aqaba.  A walled desert port city straddling the harbor.  Lots of elevation, rooftops, bridges, swamp, etc.  It's currently in my 1.0 state, meaning totally playable but not yet playtested on the servers and still in need of a lot of aesthetic additions and tweaking.  The basic structure, however, is in place.  I'd love any feedback people have.  It's now packaged on the repository with my most recent (and barring disaster, final) version of Horseshoe.  Here's the link and some screens.  Teams spawn in the lower right and left corners of the city in the Bird's Eye screen.

Repository

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Bird's Eye
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The Market
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The Mosque
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The Harbour
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[CtrlAltDe1337]

I will post mine here as soon as I finish updating the last one, should be tomorrow.  I've updated two, one in progress, and made a brand new map.

[Moofed]

My WIP: River Fort

A pseudo-symmetrical map for battle mode.  Currently takes the peasant ~28 seconds to get to the dummy in the fort from spawning by the carts.  The perimeter fence is a barrier (I hate invisible walls).

This is my first attempt, so please point out any obvious defects or hate.  I still need to add the flags, but not sure where to put them.  I'm also not sure if I like the fort design.

How can I test with equipment?

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[Thranduil]

My WIP: River Fort

A pseudo-symmetrical map for battle mode.  Currently takes the peasant ~28 seconds to get to the dummy in the fort from spawning by the carts.  The perimeter fence is a barrier (I hate invisible walls).

This is my first attempt, so please point out any obvious defects or hate.  I still need to add the flags, but not sure where to put them.  I'm also not sure if I like the fort design.

How can I test with equipment?

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Looks good.  All I can think of for you to do it two things.

1:  Check the center of your bridges (which you've probably already done) to see if you get stuck walking across them where the two pieces meet.

2:  The fort seems a little small and narrow.  Make it a little wider at minimum, and I think it should be fine.



It's a little difficult for me to see any problems though, but then again, I specialize not in the normal, but in the strange. 

[zagibu]

Looks good for a first attempt. Maybe use the smooth tool on some of the terrain elevation and texture jaggies. Haha, but who am I to give advice for cosmetics?

Maybe consider adding some ruins north of the fort, could be a sniper position for archers.

Oh and about the invisible map limits...just make sure players always know in which direction the opponent is located and leave some space from their spawns to the edge, and you should be fine. An artificial border would bother me even more than the invisible edge, to be honest.

[Moofed]

Thanks for the feedback!

No problems with the bridge middles, but I will thoroughly test them again.

A ruined tower on the island has crossed my mind.  Would go well with the ruined bridges.

I'll tweak the fort some, maybe try a different set because the "small_wall" for this castle's texture is not small at all, or even shaped right, so I cannot easily add cover to the stairs and walkways.

Invisible walls aren't usually an issue unless you're cavalry and get drawn away from the central area.  But since I hope for this to be a cav friendly map it's a concern to me.

I've used the smooth tool often, but I do see some places that need it, especially the shorelines.

Thranduil, I like your Sky Castle, reminds me of the PC game Stratosphere. 

[Kong Ming]

It looks good Moofed!  I agree that smoothing shorelines would help, a brush size of 6-7 with a weight of .02 and low hardness should do the trick.  Also agree that some small structure to the north would be a good idea.  Just something to offset the main building and set up a bit of a crossfire for ranged players will keep them from focusing too heavily on incoming infantry.  The fort may or may not need work, I'd say it needs to be playtested first to know for sure so don't stress about it too much.  An alternative to your edge fence could simply be an elevation jump of a couple of meters.  Keep it fairly steep, use the brown stone texture on the slope, and slap some rocks along it from time to time.  It will create a clear visual barrier that may appear more natural than the fence.  Then just use invisible barriers to make it real.  That's purely aesthetic though and for my two cents the fences are fine if you don't want to do more work in that department.  Keep up the good work and thanks for contributing!

Edit:  Just to elaborate on map edges for everyone.  It's been my experience that people don't mind invisible walls.  They mind running INTO invisible walls.  The edge of the map can be tricky because options feel limited for keeping people inside.  I've found though that invisible barriers are fine as long as there is SOME visible element to define where that wall is.  A line of trees paired with an invisible wall works.  The first time someone tries to go past them and can't they say, "Oh, can't go past those trees," and they never think about it again because they now know where the map's boundaries are even though it isn't a solid, impassable obstruction.  Just my observation on the subject.  Other opinions?

[zagibu]

I think it doesn't even need the visual cue, if you make sure the player always knows where he should be headed, and if you leave enough space from map features (spawn, cover) to the invisible border. If you do add visual cues, I'm sure they work exactly like you've described. It's kind of hard to place visual cues along the whole map border, though, especially on larger maps.

[Thranduil]

Luckily (or not so luckily), classes have been cancelled for today and tomorrow!  Which means I had a little more time to make one more mistake in life. 


Pueblo Village:

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All that's left are barriers to prevent people from trying to climb out and I'm finished.  Oh, and a few rocks here and there around the barriers, just for looks.


***EDIT***

And it is finished!


http://www.mbrepository.com/file.php?id=2501


Now to add it to my all-in-one download on the Finished Maps thread.