trees grow in small bundles because once a sapling is growing, by it breaking up the airflow, it will make airborne seeds fall down near it, and those seads will not fly off again quickly due to the same wind breaking effect and once all the seeds have become saplings they will have a better chance to survive the elements by the support they get from each others roots, the wind breaking effect (sheltered from one or more sides due to the other saplings) versus a tree that is standing on its own in a field when i plant vegitation in a map i look at how the wind would go if it came from different directions, what problems said vegetation would have on a certain spot, and if it would look pretty (for example, a Forrest against the underside of a rock cliff may look nice, but is realistic due to the rocks preventing strong root growth, rocks falling off the cliffs occasionally would kill most saplings, trees would get few light depending on what angle they stand, water running down from the cliff would wash away saplings, few creatures live near a cliff that could transport seeds ect... basically this all comes down to a couple of meters or so dead space next to any rock cliff depending on the factors where trees would grow very sporadicly, then after that space a Forrest can grow
alright. I'll work on that for the final release. The gameplay is pretty down pat. I'd say it's rotation worthy atm. that area I'm not too sure what to do with and wasn't sure how exactly to go forwards with it. main reason it was more sparse than it should have been is because my hammer doesn't always show the tops of the trees, so its hard to tell exactly how close together they are without compiling it first.
Please add more light so it is playable. Maybe then I will play it and give u gameplay feedback etc, but atm its just too dark to be playable.
never said it doesnt happen, just that its less likely due to it being less user friendly for the trees thank you for keeping me humble
New Release. Overview: Delta, as in the land area at the end of a major river. It spiders out and webs across the land, when it swells it floods above the area, but usually it doesn't. New Release: Emp_delta_rc1: http://www.sendspace.com/file/ezdztu Special Thanks: Flasche and Aranjedeath - Supported, playtested, Critiqued. Cyber-kun - Encouraged. Jipple - Probably wouldn't have even tried mapping if I hadn't been invited and encouraged. MAD - Prompt hosting on their server on the latest release Nachos Servers for hosting the original release. Update includes: New Minimap! New textures! More Trees! Less tank stoping bushes! Brighter! Map details are now listed out in the readme file that comes with the DL. It is kinda long winded, but this map isn't normal as far as empires norm goes. Update: Alright, This will be RC1 Things that have changed: Texture was redone, and a lot of blending has been done to break up the grass texture. The bridges can now be owned by capping the flag on the other side of the bridge. When one team owns the bridge, the other can deconstruct it. Middle area across from infantry area has had some major flattening added to it. Trees now use the Orex tree skin. It works much better than the light trees. The middle flag in infantry that gives 3 res now has orex trees instead of light tree cluster. This solves the annoying Z clipping issue with those clusters. The .res file is correct this time. I think. It has the right file names in it at least. Jipple trees near the bridge in the main bases have been removed. There is still the original jipple tree next to barracks in either base. Added some rocks. Fixed some walkable surfaces next to river. Screen shots: http://img184.imageshack.us/img184/5209/empdeltabeta80042sl3.jpg http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/6581/empdeltabeta80016lg8.jpg http://img177.imageshack.us/img177/7177/empdeltabeta80017lt9.jpg http://img174.imageshack.us/img174/8372/empdeltabeta80020pc4.jpg http://img170.imageshack.us/img170/7794/empdeltabeta80027mg7.jpg http://img243.imageshack.us/img243/4056/empdeltabeta80029fc9.jpg Concerning the lighting: The idea of the map is to have it take place early morning, about an hour before sunrise (twilight in other words). This being when the sky is bright blue, but the sun isn't on the horizon yet. It sorta leaves the world feeling like it's in an erie glow. This is also the time you have the most fog when you live out of town and in the middle of nowhere. Anyhow, that's what I was going for. If you don't like it, too bad. I really don't want to hear about the darkness unless you have a visibility concern.
i have a visibility concern for you: you cant see anything if its close to the horizon, and this map is raping my eyes (penis INSIDE pupil) due to the contrast of sky box and dark displacement this is how an hour before sunrise looks like: http://www.netsalvo.com/touristinparadise/img4104.jpg ether make the sky darker (<<<--- do this if its really hour before sunrise) or the displacements lighter, currently they do not match personally i would do it like this: add 2/3 brightness to the skybox light and make its color dark blue (so its still dark, but people can "see stuff") change the skybox texture to a sky like this: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/mjpowell/Astro/Naked-Eye-Planets/venus-the-morning-star.jpg disable all shadows (any shadow cast in this environment is going to be so thin its not worth rendering it) add WAY more color to the ground, like sand, rocks, earth, ditches, etc etc etc
no one likes the skybox, and that's alright, it will probably be changed. This is what I was going for though. http://www.ece.vt.edu/news/fall03/noctilucent.jpg as far as the "Eye rape" goes, that's probably the color of the fog, not the color of the skybox. i think the fog is a little bright for the map. or maybe this http://gallery.photo.net/photo/2271446-lg.jpg that's more of the goal. It's not perfect. I'll work on it. As for the color. I'll troll through the files and see if I can't find overlays that would fit the map and help bring more than a 2 texture blend. AFAIK, you can't have more than a 2 texture blend for one displacement.
but you can use other blend textures in diff. areas of the same terrain disp's as long as they share one texture (check the invert alphas on all the blend tex's)
My main goal is to avoid problems like with what emp_cyclopean has with the middle and the water area. i've seen some major graphical errors with the alpha paints where it'll flash back and forth. I'll play around with it. Fog will be darkened to match skybox color.
This is a quick drawn out explanation of the map. 1/4 describes the res you'd get if you capped the one closest to you or furthest away from you. 1 res for the close one, 4 res for the far one. the purpleish dots are spawn ponits that pop up with the flags. the outlined purplish areas are places that a full base can be built. the red marks areas that infantry cannot get out of the water and that tanks can not cross.
Small update on my progress.... Flipped the map so that the infantry area is to the south, and the forts are to the north, rather than the east/west orientation. Added some trigger_push to the water in the northward direction TOWARDS the forts. This may look to be against the natural flow of a delta, but I thought it was necessary for the gameplay. This also means infantry move faster in the rivers than on the ground ^_^. Just a note, areas of the river near the bridges or the route between main spawn and the infantry areas do not have the push trigger as to not piss people off when trying to cross in areas they have to cross in. There are now flags both on the bridge and on the sides of the bunkers to show who currently owns it. Bridges can now be owned. This is toggled with the cap points on top of either bunker. Bridges do not need to be possessed. Possessing a bridge only makes it possible for the enemy team to deconstruct. Bunkers, though, do provide a spawn point. So either a vulnerable bridge or a spawn on the other side. Cap points in the infantry area have been reduced both in time to cap and in their cap requirements. All opposite team flags (the ones that did require 4 people to cap) now require 3, and 5 seconds has been removed from the cap time. Brightness has been greatly increased. The light_environment entity has been moved to a 10:00 position rather than a 6:00 position, removing a vast amount of shadow from the map. the previous water texture wasn't changing the water to it's own below surface water texture. The texture has been replaced completely by a more transparent water. Underwater visibility is not "correct". The rim around the outside of the level has been smoothed out. A 3d skybox has not been added yet. There are now barracks in 2 locations a the start. First is in the original starting base. Also, there are a pair of barracks in each team's corresponding sides in the fortresses. Both barracks have been placed in positions that would not normally be possible I think. If you lose them, it will be less convenient to place another, but won't really hurt too much. I have 1 small issue to fix before I provide a new overview pic of the map, but for now, here are some pictures of the new features. There are flags now on the prebuilt part of the bridge. This is so you can see possession easier if it is unbuilt. It is also to draw attention to the fact that the bridge has a flag cap point near it. Picture of the banner flags on the bunker. Picture of shallow water near the NF fortress. Hard to see at that angle, but I thought the transparency would help people figure out where water was shallow and were it wasn't. Deep water just goes black after the bottom isn't visible.
/cry I forgot about the fog. on the bright side, "Sponge bob" is gone off the side of that damned cliff. Lighting and stuff is such a pain to test. Have to do some sort of compile every time to see how it looks. kk, got it so that the secondary fog is the same rough color of the grass. no more white in the distance. I'm not going to update the first page yet. It's being uploaded to JPL server to make sure the minimap DL's properly this time. If you want to look at it, http://www.sendspace.com/file/f7oi5j.
Alpha Paint The Displacements Asap D: D: D: Or The God Of Mapping Will Descent From Heaven And Punish You!!!
there's a shit ton of alpha painting on the displacements -_-'' unfortunately, alpha paint only comes in 2 colors. Rock or grass for this map.
