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The Builder Compound


peter_spy

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Oh man, right on! I will definitely take a good look at this set once I'm finished with my current FM. Looks amazing! We sorely needed a good builder themed module set, thank you so much for taking the time to create it!

My Fan Missions:

   Series:                                                                           Standalone:

Chronicles of Skulduggery 0: To Catch a Thief                     The Night of Reluctant Benefaction

Chronicles of Skulduggery 1: Pearls and Swine                    Langhorne Lodge

Chronicles of Skulduggery 2: A Precarious Position              

Chronicles of Skulduggery 3: Sacricide

 

 

 

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Wow, those modules look great! I'm very impressed particularly by the low drawcalls and CPU load. That's usually the "limiting reagent" when I'm mapping, quite often having to cull things to bring DCs down, and I feel like the game is pretty CPU heavy in general. Great work!

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My Fan Missions:

   Series:                                                                           Standalone:

Chronicles of Skulduggery 0: To Catch a Thief                     The Night of Reluctant Benefaction

Chronicles of Skulduggery 1: Pearls and Swine                    Langhorne Lodge

Chronicles of Skulduggery 2: A Precarious Position              

Chronicles of Skulduggery 3: Sacricide

 

 

 

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This will be really useful.

 

A couple of minor concerns (aside from whether the inscriptions read well; that's a matter from the other thread): (1) the open grilles at the bottom of the doors: I can see how a player would use them to his/her advantage, or be disadvantaged by light passing through, so for gameplay and aesthetics it's an interesting feature (and I expect it might cast some dramatic shadows), but as a mapper you'd have to treat such a door as a door containing a window and set it up not to close visportals.

 

(2) I see the banners have ladder surfaces built in. That's good for consistency in that all banners sharing that appearance will be climbable, but bad for consistency in that the banners in the core mod aren't set up to be climbed, and I'm not sure how one would convey to players that these are climbable banners. (There's a T2 mission that expects players to realise they can climb a banner near the start, and it caused a lot of confusion.)

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Some things I'm repeatedly thinking about...

 

- louder scream when you're dying

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Open grilles were frobable in previous iteration, and you could go under the door. But the whole set looked oversized, so I had to abandon the whole idea after scaling all the models down. Even when fully closed, the door don't cover the whole arch space, so you can't use them to close visportal. You can use a func_portal to make it a proximity-based occluder, or do the same for particular entities behind doors with LOD system. I find func_portal and LOD system very useful, and I think it should be used more often, as it gives you almost direct control over what appears in player's visleaf and when. It does take additional time to set up, but performance benefits are great.

 

I want all my banners to be climbable, as this enables more interesting traversal options. I had an invisible tutorial in mind to include with example map, but that would have prolonged the release. Now that you brought it up, I think I should include it in the next release, so mappers have an idea how to teach players that rule.

 

Thanks for the feedback, it's really useful!

Edited by Judith
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Kind of a tangent, but how would someone climb a banner in real life? There's literally nothing to hang on to.

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Congrats on the release. Im sure the community will use these a lot. You have to appreciate the methodical approach taken on planning and creating the assets, the attempt to use the engine to its full capacity in terms of shader design. The result is very expressive. I also noticed that your textures have a slightly stylised look to them, it appears that they are made in a procedural way, instead of based on real life photos. This gives the scenes a unique feel. Great work.

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Very nice work.

 

Regarding the climbable banners: there isn't much consistancy in what and what not should be climbable in FM's anyway, so if you want it like that it's fine imho. What may cause issues though is that if you are planning other mission authors to use those models, then it may happen that they don't realize they are climbable, as typically most if not all models aren't climbable by default and a specifically textured brush needs to be added to allow for climbing. As your approach with having them climbable by default goes in a different direction, you may note this in the comment section of the specific entities.

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FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

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Thanks. Textures are indeed not based on photos. I mix patterns, colors, and dirt to have better control over the final look.

 

Banners will always show their yellow ladder hull when placed in DR, so mappers will notice that right away – you can't turn it off with filters. I was thinking about making two versions, but I want these banners to be systemic, so if player notices it, their first instinct will be to use it. Having both climbable and not climbable version would probably cause confusion among players going from mission to mission.

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You included the ladder texture right into the model itself? That's interesting. I thought those textures were like monsterclip, and wouldn't process properly if they weren't worldspawn.

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You included the ladder texture right into the model itself? That's interesting. I thought those textures were like monsterclip, and wouldn't process properly if they weren't worldspawn.

 

Yeah, for some reason it works perfectly fine, in similar way to collision hulls. Have you tried adding clip or monsterclip as additional material to a model too see whether it works?

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Yeah, I've tried adding monsterclip, but that texture doesn't seem to work on models. Regular clip textures work for collision, but not for pathfinding.

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Ladder surfaces don't even have to be static: see the stepladder prefabs.

 

Banners will always show their yellow ladder hull when placed in DR, so mappers will notice that right away – you can't turn it off with filters.

Actually you can make a custom filter that hides textures/common/ladder(.*) -- I just tested and it works. You're right that there's no such built-in filter though.

Some things I'm repeatedly thinking about...

 

- louder scream when you're dying

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  • 2 weeks later...

|Fixes|


- Fixed lamp01_blue light source entity which was actually orange (thanks VanishedOne).

|Tweaks|

- Material type for floor01 is now surftype15 "tile".

- Fixed collision for woodpanel01 pieces. You can now strafe along it while crouching, without collision issues.

- Fixed collision for carpet pieces. Walking on folded parts is now smooth for both player and AI.

|New content|

- Additional length variants for woodpanel01 pieces. Now you don't have to combine pieces to have intermediary length values like 168, 144, 72, etc. This way you can use fewer models and lower the drawcall count even further.

- Modular roof parts and roof truss.

Edited by peter_spy
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