emp_chain beta version ...

Discussion in 'Mapping' started by Silk, Jul 9, 2011.

  1. flasche

    flasche Member Staff Member Moderator

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    i too was asking myself if the HDR compile actually has finished - but silk knows his shit ...
     
  2. Silk

    Silk Mapper

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    Only one texture was affected.
    I just made a new 2048x2048 concrete texture and replaced it ^^
    It's compiling again now, i'll see the result in about 2 hours.

    Changelist:

    Gameplay:
    - Moved northern team first ref to 2nd resource spot
    - Added a comm build restrict and vehicleclip entity on top of the cliffs
    - Improved the engy restrict and playerclip entities in the city
    - Added two ramps for infantry to get up the middle hill
    - Added a playerclip over the stairs in city west for smoother movement

    Visually:
    - Fixed hole in the center building ceiling
    - Fixed some displacements on the east not touching the ground
    - Reduced the Yellow value of the light slightly
    - Reduced brightness slightly, and increased diffuse hdr light slightly
    - Swapped trees with Rappemongo's trees
    - Various improvements on stretched textures on cliff edges
    - Reduced size of several brushes in the city
    - Altered the mvalley skybox slightly to fit the lighting more
    - Added a new 2048*2048 concrete texture for the city floor
    - Moved around most trees a bit to prevent pitch black shadows
    - Added some more detail in the 3d skybox + moved one of the snowy mountains so it can be seen from both the south and north part of the map
    - Changed direction from the sun from 0° to 170°
    - Lowered draw distances for some groups of trees

    I really am pathetic. All i had to do was swap the trees, add a vehicleclip, compile and put it online.
    But weeks later i'm still here complaining it doesn't look right.
     
    Last edited: Mar 10, 2012
  3. ViroMan

    ViroMan Black Hole (*sniff*) Bully

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    dude... STFU. Your doing this map a great service. Making something already great... awesome. Thank you for being anal about maps.
     
  4. Silk

    Silk Mapper

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    The map is finished.
    Only stuff left to do is test everything, but for some things i'd need 2 people.

    Also if Trickster is right about making the map official, i wonder what to do with the material locations. The same goes for the trees Rappe made. If they get added as official empires models, they might move from the custom folder to one of the empires folders.

    Also; the nature textures are my own creations and free to use, but require a small .txt with credits to cgtextures.com where i got the original photo's from. With that in mind it would probably be better to leave the nature textures used in chain together in one mapfolder.
    Then there are the paint line overlays in the city and the concrete texture, which are completely self made and don't even need credits for free use. If the map becomes official, will these materials become as well, and where would they move to?
     
  5. Chris0132'

    Chris0132' Developer

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    If you were still wondering about the trees, you could set up their materials to use texture shadows and compile with those, it'll take a fuckload more time but it will allow some light through the leaves. If you've already tried textureshadows it won't actually work unless you add a line to lights.rad saying what material you want it to work on. I know it does work for sure because I used it on atomic to get the lighting in the southwest building to look a bit more interesting.

    The other thing you could try is messing with the bounce commands in vrad, OR seeing if you can add lines to your ground textures to make them more reflective, not sure if there are mat params for that. You could ALSO try setting the sun strength to something like a thousand or two? That produces really strong bounces but can make things overexposed. There is a finite amount of brightness you can actually get though, so if you set the colour right it might not look too bad.

    Oh and your lighting changes, you'll notice the ambient light isn't changed, as the bit of wall in the middle that is in shadow in both pictures is about the same brightness, and most of that image is in shadow now because of the sun direction change, so the walls will all be that dark.

    Generally, I would suggest not putting the sun at any of the cardinal directions because it'll react oddly with your brushwork (as brushes tend to be aligned to those directions more often than any other).

    I'd add maybe 10-15 lux to the brightness again and see if that fixes it.
     
    Last edited: Mar 7, 2012
  6. Silk

    Silk Mapper

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    @Chris
    I always wondered about the lights.rad file. The wiki sais it is required to alter it for it to work, yet even without there's some difference. I always wondered wether i was seeing the full effect as it should be or not. I might give this a try in the future, but the map was compiled the day i posted, and unless there's some problem it'll have to suffice for now.

    And yes i had changed the sun's direction from 180 to 170, but only untill after that post.


    New trees + new light:

    [​IMG]

    New concrete texture:

    [​IMG]
     
  7. flasche

    flasche Member Staff Member Moderator

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    sexy


    <filler/>
     
  8. ViroMan

    ViroMan Black Hole (*sniff*) Bully

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    fucking awesome wrap it up and lets play it.
     
  9. Silk

    Silk Mapper

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    It's been wrapped up for almost a week.
    I just need to bother a server owner to add the map so the .res can be validated.

    If all links are correct, the map is done.

    Apart from the vehicleclips everything was tested. For the clips i'll need someone to help 18 mine some vehicles.
     
  10. wealthysoup

    wealthysoup Lead Tester

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    I can give you a hand with that if you give me a shout on steam
     
  11. -Mayama-

    -Mayama- MANLY MAN BITCH

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    The brushwork seriously needs an overhaul, its basicaly only random blocks of concrete.
     
  12. Silk

    Silk Mapper

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    Go ahead

    I'll give you the vmf if you want

    Though if your changes make the gameplay or performance worse in any way, i'm not giving you permission to release it ;)
    Only graphical improvements allowed
     
  13. -Mayama-

    -Mayama- MANLY MAN BITCH

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    I really dont get why you put so much effort into the displacements but the brushwork always feels like an afterthought.
     
  14. Silk

    Silk Mapper

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    Because i have absolutely no feel for brushwork, ... at all. I can't make it better. It's a hundred times more work for less result then you get with displacements.

    It's why i worked together with flasche when we tried making emp_ward, he did the center building, i did the displacements.

    I was always honest about my brushwork skills.

    In this case ... the layout is to maximize performance on one hand and have the shape of the base look like it was following the shape of the original mountain. I'm no architect, ... i honestly can't find a better way to make a militairy base that follows this layout that looks less blocky.
     
  15. Metal Smith

    Metal Smith Member

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    Mind if I play with it?
     
  16. Silk

    Silk Mapper

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    Sure, i'll pm you the source file

    Remember that ALL the visible brushes in the ENTIRE map are func_details. The nodraw brushes that block visibilty are hidden inside the visible walls. As long as you don't touch these visibility blocks at all, i guess you can go wild with the visible brushwork.
    Also don't forget in the middle it has to match up with the 3d skybox, so if you change it, do it in a way (numbers multiples of 16) that it aligns properly when you alter the 3d skybox.

    Edit:
    Also if you can improve the lighting, feel free ^^
    And if you go through with it, decrease tickets from 350 to 250
    We're almost never gonna get 64 players on a server and for 40 players 350 is too much
     
    Last edited: Jan 14, 2013

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