Thankyou, my concern is though that whilst I like my idea and from a few small pictures it all looks ok - I'm not overly experienced at mapping and it'll not really live up to its potential. As long as someone does a nice remake i'll be happy :0) Overlays confuse me so far, I'll put decals on stuff. area portals are also weird, I tried them and got it horribly wrong
I've almost got this map working to a level i'm happy with (currently with no underground base, but it should be workable). How do I go around getting some hapless fools to try it either as a game or just driving around finding bits that dont work? I guess I have to upload it some place or other and jump around waving around here, but I was wondering if there was a better way. Does full rather than fast vis help the map much? If I get it to the point where i want people to play on it I should probably make the effort to compile it properly, but I was wondering if i could get away without doing so hmm, I still seem to be having trouble making the refineries stop - func_hurt following the water didnt work and made everything laggy, killing the refinery entity didnt seem to stop the res flow of existing refineries (assuming the timer fired properly, which it should have done) and using env_explosion to kill the ref didnt seem to work either (it didnt explode and/or didnt kill the ref). This may just be the timer not working, but that would be strange since most of them work. Ideally I'd like to link the killing to the water position but couldnt see how to (the water moves using a couple of random timers).
Hmm, i'm going to once again cry for help on this: http://rapidshare.com/files/75125189/sinking_silk.vmf.html could someone take a look at this in hammer and tell me why my timers dont seem to be working to wipe out the refineries please? I'm thinking its the timer rather than anything else as the timers in question dont seem to be firing anything (i added a few things to them to check). Currently I'm starting to make the map messier trying to solve this, which is annoying. The timers are physically located near the radar in central crater, or just use entity report. Sequence starts with a trigger at nf and be start points that begins the "kickoff2" timer, which waits for a while then starts water moving and enables four other timers, one controlling the water movement and three which ought to be controlling the cessation of the refineries (refery, refery2, refery3). But it doesnt work and I find that a pain in the bottom. any help greatly appreciated. Other than this, and a small gap forming between water on the map and in the skybox - and maybe updating the lights for Dizzy's prop - i think i'm ready to do a full compile. i hope
oh ok, i've no idea on the differences between the download places. i've had a breakthrough on the map - using a counter and enabling a trigger_hurt over the ref site seems to work. still no idea why the counter wasnt going / wasnt doing what i wanted. holy slowwhatsit batman, this compile is going slowly. I think I need to learn optimisation / outsource to a person with a faster computer and a few hundred cores. Whats the longest that a really badly optimised map can take? should i cut my losses (and electricity bill) and give up having already spent over half a day on it? The worst bit is not getting to see any sort of progress bar due to having set my screen to turn off so its blank when I reopen it. pah
essentially, you get 1 or 2 downloads from rapid share a day before they cap you and cut off your IP.
ok after a hugely long run at a non "-fast" vis, I'm pulling the plug on the vis thing. having reread the optimisation thread hidden in the community project, I think i need hint brushes to go with my nodraw brushes anyway. pah, that was a waste of time and electricity.
Right, I've added some more noclips and hint brushes, changed some more things to func detail and its now compiled with full vis. Its not perfect but i've uploaded to: http://www.hlrse.net/empiresvhe/SwampRat/ thanks to querty's free hosting thingy. It should be ok to unzip to the main empires folder if I didnt muppet it up. I'd be very grateful if people / people and a server could have a play on this and let me know their comments. Particularly if they volunteer to improve the map for their comments, but thats more of a long shot I suppose.
Hey swamp. If you: (1) Remove the rising water (2) Change red dots on minimap to yellow dots (3) make the dots in the correct locations (Jcw87 can help with the minimap) we will use this map in the league. Of course, keep a water rising version for public servers.
I'm just checking whether the corrections I put in have worked (with a quick compile) and then I'll set it off on a full one. The main problem I had on the minmap was that it was so far zoomed out (otherwise it clipped in to the displacements) that the refinery models werent drawn (I think thats what the problem was). I should be able to get around that but taking a few pictures and cross referencing. Thanks for the support btw
I'm going to assume that you are not using cl_leveloverview to make your minimap. You really should use it, even though theres a new bug which makes it harder to use.
I was using cl_leveloverview, just not being able to see where my refinery spots were. Anyway, by using screen shots of the areas I've managed to get them right. I've made the one or two changes people mentioned during the test (thanks Evan), and here is the non-sinking version - emp_atol Thank you Querty New: Shiny water New: Door now raising almost enough to let the comm through, but not (its a feature, honest) The refs are in the right places on the minimap too (well almost, the two starting refs are a smidgen out).
yep, unless you will really really hate the nf comm Vs door feature in which case you'd have to wait until next season since I wont be able to get it changed today really. I hope its up to the job since its going to get so little testing before being used.
Hey SwampRat, check out this thread for specific Atol problems. http://forums.empiresmod.com/showthread.php?t=4351 I'm loving the map, but it needs some work. Kylegar said he would help
I played emp_sinking the other day and i have a couple comments: -I really don't care for the lighting in the map right now. I suggest just making it noonish lighting and get rid of all the lightposts. -The minimap is really confusing right now. Because of all the lightposts theres a million dots on it. I have no idea where resources are or flags. -Resource nodes need to smoke. -The textures on the displacements are kind of boring and ugly, they could be improved. -Its too easy for one team to set shop up in the middle and basically fortify themselves in till the other one drowns. -Just needs a bit more polish in general.
With the penultimate point - would it be fair to remove the middle ref, or is it easy to control both the middle and one side? I'd hoped that having the middle would trap the taker there and let the other one get loads of res etc if they go too early. fair comment on the other bits, I just thought that having a non-noon map might be interesting for a change
