Emp_TropicVendetta_RC3

Discussion in 'Mapping' started by [lodw]keef, Jan 19, 2013.

  1. [lodw]keef

    [lodw]keef Hobbit

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    [​IMG]

    Tropic Vendetta
    Version: Release Candidate 3
    By: John Shandy` & [LoDw]Keef

    Tropic Vendetta is a map featuring a tropical island at which the Brenodi Empire and Northern Faction have both arrived in their respective blimps! Unlike any other Empires map, these blimps contain and safeguard the command vehicles. Your objective is to spawn in your team's blimp and either parachute or swim to the mainland so that your commander may begin establishing bases as you gain territory. To conquer the opposition and lay claim to the island, you must capture the enemy team's defensive SAM site (surface-to-air missile) and use it to blow out the bottom of their blimp, dropping their command vehicle into the sea to its watery death!

    Worry not, for blimp balloons have been moved to the skybox so they don't obstruct the commander view, and capturing the SAM sites to win the round is easier said than done!

    This is our first map for Empires, and my first map ever (Keef used to map back in the day for Natural Selection). I have been learning Hammer and the Source SDK as I go. I have [LoDw]Keef to thank for helping a ton with many things along the way. He made the blimps and customized them quite a lot. He also made the SAM sites, as he's far better with brushwork and special effect entities than I am. He's been an excellent friend and he's worked on this map as much as I have. Without Keef, Tropic Vendetta may not have come to fruition - at least not so quickly, as I started on this map around December 15, 2008 and it's come a long way in just over a month. Alpha 1, 2, 3, and 4 were used for private testing on the Nachos and Test server. Beta 1 through Beta 4 were used for public play testing on various servers (thank you to all who run Tropic Vendetta on their server).

    Please enjoy emp_tropicvendetta and provide as much constructive criticism as possible! Keef and I love feedback! We are expecting many negative and harsh remarks, but we hope that most of you will bring complaints & concerns to us in a civil manner that we can use to actually find solutions to any problems that occur. We will actively develop and maintain this map. We will do our best to not let older, problematic versions accumulate dust on servers!

    emp_tropicvendetta_rc3
    Tropic Vendetta RC3 is mainly being released to fix the starting res. We set it to 700 res because the barracks used to cost 400 res for awhile and it ruined beginning gameplay in our opinions so we upped starting res to compensate, but now they are back to 200 res and the map has been stuck at 700 res making people just drop a VF at the beginning of the round. So while updating that I figured I would get some of the planned features from long ago in, like the blimps and particles Empty made for me ages ago. NF has a new blimp as well. They're not done as polished as I would like but I don't really have a ton of free time to spend on them, I would really like the blimps to be models with death animations.

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]


    NOTE
    I personally thank Crazytalk, Founder & Project Lead of the Pirates, Vikings, and Knights II team for authorizing the use of PVKII's beautiful textures. The grass2sand blend, grass, sand, water_caribbean01 textures were designed by the PVKII team. Please give credit where credit is due: http://www.pvkii.com

    DOWNLOAD emp_tropicvendetta_rc3
    -Mirror 1 : Sendspace
    -Mirror 2 : John Shandy's Blog


    Special Thanks
    BumGravy
    --------
    Suggested func_breakable as a candidate for the blimp CV floors, to allow the CV entity to fall into the water. Later on had to change it to func_wall_toggle though.

    Cyber-Kun
    --------
    Occasional slightly helpful sarcastic remarks.

    PwnedYoAss
    --------
    Shark model and animation.

    Vess
    --------
    Shark texture.

    Nauz
    --------
    Palm Tree models.

    VoEC
    --------
    Wave textures

    CHANGELOG
    Release Candidate 3
    ------
    -Finally added Empty's particles he made for me ages ago
    -Made blimp undercarriage blow up and balloon sink into the ocean
    -Fixed starting res back to a reasonable value.
    -Added waves
    -New NF blimp

    Release Candidate 2
    ------
    -Fix by [UK]Steve to make work with empires patch.

    Release Candidate 1
    ------
    -Reconstructed the Brenodi blimp to defeat lingering radiosity issues. Shadowing and lighting on the blimp's balloon is now correct.
    -Decreased the lightmap scaling for more detailed lighting and shadows.
    -3D skybox improvements - realignment and defeating of shadows that were being casted onto map terrain from the 3D skybox. Improved seamlessness.
    -Starting resources increased to 700 to accommodate Empires 2.2x's barracks cost increase.
    -When a blimp is shot by a SAM site, its corresponding CV's health is reduced to 25% (previously, CV health was reduced to 80% upon this event).
    -Various optimization.

    Beta 5
    ------
    -Don't ask... *facepalm*

    Beta 4
    ------
    -Achieved a final solution to the instant CV destruction upon SAM site capture.

    Beta 3
    ------
    *Note, Beta 3 was susceptible to CVs being destroyed instantly upon SAM site capture due to the new brush-based entity used to fix the server-crashing exploit from Beta 2. It is strongly recommended that servers run the latest version.

    -Addition of 2 sharks that circle the South East island which eat players and laugh, while a loop of the Jaws theme song plays in the areas surrounding the South East island.
    -Various optimization.

    Beta 2
    ------
    *Note, Beta 2 was susceptible to a server-crashing exploit fixed for Beta 3. It is strongly recommended that servers run the latest version.

    -Retexturing.
    -New palm tree models.
    -New rock models.
    -Resource node output adjustments.
    -Starting refinery & resource node for each team relocated to be near the corresponding SAM site.
    -Displacement adjustments.
    -Displacement grass sprites and fern models.
    -Various optimization.

    Beta 1
    ------
    Initial Public Release
     
    Last edited: Jan 19, 2013
  2. [lodw]keef

    [lodw]keef Hobbit

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  3. complete_

    complete_ lamer

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  4. vipervicki

    vipervicki Member

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    wow cool gonna upload it now thx Keef
     
  5. BroT

    BroT Member

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    Looks awesome.
     
  6. Grantrithor

    Grantrithor Member

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    Now that is cool.
     
  7. ViroMan

    ViroMan Black Hole (*sniff*) Bully

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    Thanks for the work.

    Some observations:
    The BE blimp looks sexy... NF blimp looks like led zeppelin. Pixy dust keeping it floating?

    Also... no prop engines on the blimps? How they get around tow boats?

    Suggestion:
    Would it be possible to have the blimps circle their corner of the map? That would seem nice. That way its even possible to have the CV land on the ground.
     
  8. Beerdude26

    Beerdude26 OnThink(){ IsDownYet(); }

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    Now I really want to ask
     
  9. [lodw]keef

    [lodw]keef Hobbit

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    ah yes lamer good call


    lol I actually cant remember what was wrong with that one, something really basic like not building cubemaps or compiling HDR or some such.
     
  10. w00kie

    w00kie Mustachioed Mexican

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    very very cool. Don't lose hope in us playing such stuff :|ove:
     
  11. Freaknovich

    Freaknovich Member

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    looks cool

    I like how the water looks near the shore. Also the NF blimp kinda looks like a pig in a blanket from the front view.
    [​IMG]
     
  12. Silk

    Silk Mapper

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    Yeah, i wondered how you did that in the end
     
  13. w00kie

    w00kie Mustachioed Mexican

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    NF blimp -> short fat cock
    BE blimp -> longer thinner cock

    but in general that's what blimps are, no idea how women would have designed them :)
     
  14. [lodw]keef

    [lodw]keef Hobbit

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    3 layers of displacements with no physics collision on, different scroll textures on each. I also put them 1 unit height difference but that isn't really necessary, I just did it to help it blend into the sand better. Subdivide is pretty required to make the waves blend together from one displacement to the next, else they meet at like 60 degree angles.

    Also as a side note you need to have $nodecals on the textures or as LordDz found for me when you shoot the sand it will put bullet holes in all the wave textures floating in the air.
     
  15. [lodw]keef

    [lodw]keef Hobbit

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    Also as LordDz pointed out you dont have to use displacements, you can use overlays instead. But I really didnt want them to be textures painted on the flat-ass-water-you-cant-make-do-anything-in-source so I made them displacements so the waves could flow up the beach a couple feet.

    If I was doing this on a smaller map(or just smaller beach area) I would make the displacements smaller and increase the power of them and make 3 dimensional(waves) in the displacement so the scroll texture would ride up them like they were actual waves, you can also screw with the stretch of each displacement to change the speed of the wave as it comes into shore. for instance you could stretch the waves out the further out into the water you are then scrunch them up and make a 3 dimensional wave at the shore edge so it looks like the wave is coming into the beach then crashes into shore and rises against the beach. But tropic was way to big for this and it would take way more time than I have to do this map. Coast would be a good place to try that out though.
     
  16. Silk

    Silk Mapper

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    Very interesting

    Like seriously interesting

    Must try to remember this topic when i ever make a map with water.
     
  17. [lodw]keef

    [lodw]keef Hobbit

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    Also silk I should note that I think this texture could be improved for use with displacements by making the alpha texture transparent so you could fade the waves into the water instead of of making the displacements sink below the water line, its just not as smooth that way. But I couldn't be fucked to go around testing the texture and paint all the alpha right now.
     
  18. RappemongO

    RappemongO Member

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    Couldn't the alpha be painted into the wave texture instead of each displacement?
     
  19. [lodw]keef

    [lodw]keef Hobbit

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    No, else the transparent part would scroll as well, which would look a bit awkward to say the least.
     

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