Tels' Mapping Thread

[Tels]

2011-06-12:

 

Map info: 840 brushes, 35 patches, 165 entities

Current status: Map contains start pack, big terrain room, sky, and has 15% of building-outlines done

 

Info: Modelled after a real world location, but it seems I have to make some compromises:

 

• The AI cannot climb the very narrow spiral stairs, so I need to find a way to block them in a realistic manner (stairs are under repair? old tower was bricked off, so AI cannot access it?).
  
• Building in varying degrees off-grid works as long as you keep an integer ratio (like 5-to-3 units in one direction, 1-2 in the other), so you can join doors and windows at the right places. That even works if the floor is not level. However, as soon as you try to add the roof, you end up with 3D brush-faced nightmares...
  
• The map compiler seems to introduce random errors (missing faces, or player gets stuck in floor, or non-solid walls) if things get too complicated. Unfortunately, it is totally unclear what exactly "too complicated" means. Add a brush, and suddenly the error is gone. Remove another, and another error creeps in again...
  
• Most of the (real) rooms have now either modern (tourist-related) usages, or their usage was/is never known, or they are not accessible to the public, so I have no idea how they look. Likewise, some good-looking things were not existing even 1860, but the state of the location pre 1800 was just too plain, boring or in ruins (which are harder to model than a clean wall or I already build the modern equivalent and I am weary to tear it down...
  
• At least one location seems not to be properly sealed against the outside, so the game mixes up outside and that location. I can't find the leak, however...
  

 

Anyway, things progress nice, but very slowly. Don't expect any release or even screenshots this year.

[Baddcog]

Good luck.

 

But there's really no reason to build 'off grid', you're just asking for trouble. See random errors... hard to make roofs...

 

Go to file?pointifle and it should show you the leak (after a dmap with a leak)

[Sotha]

Couldn't you deviate from the original model so that the AI can manage etc. Don't try to clone the original location, but use it for inspiration and make a version of it that the AI can traverse.

 

But there's really no reason to build 'off grid', you're just asking for trouble. See random errors... hard to make roofs...

 

I agree.

 

You could build anything by using simple boxy geometry, which is in grid 8. Then you mash a layer of func_staticified details to make it look organic and trashed.

 

Making the basic geometry using small grid is very dangerous, I am certain I would not be able to pull off a working map like that.

 

But that's just me... Best of luck!

[nbohr1more]

Good luck Tels.

 

Some may fear that this will take away from your coding time but, if Springheel's mission is anything to judge by, the process of building may inspire you to add more mod code support so that your mission ideas can come true.

[Tels]

To answer the questions:

 

I can't really deviate from the original, because constructing the original in DR was mainly the goal There will be enough places where I need to deviate due to story etc, player being too boxy etc.

 

Unfortunately, it seems the towers would need to be at least 30% larger so the AI can navigate them. But if I make the towers bigger, I need to scale everything else, too, or it looks silly... but: I am now at 50+ hours, and I don't really want to redo that all

 

As for off-grid: I probably was not entirely clear: I am building on-the-grid, not just using 90° walls. Here is an editor shot:

 

 

Now you will ask: why not rotate the map so the walls a perpendicular to the grid? Well, even if I did this, the next building has a completely different angle, and will then be not-90°-to-the-grid

 

If you look closely at the walls above, you will see that their angle is set so they are at integer divisions of the grid (e.g. X units right, and Y units left, f.i. 6:4, or 5:3 etc.). That makes it possible to split them at grid divisions for windows, walls, etc.

 

This works very well, the only real problem comes when you want to add the roof.

 

Inside the buildings the floors are level (I am not that insane but outside, the terrain is quite bumpy, however, that is something that D3 sometimes not likes. I have a very sightly off-level floor piece, when you walk over it, at the end of the ramp, the player gets stuck. Have to experiemtn if covering it with patches fixes it, but I am still at the "get the rough outline done and see if it will work" stage, anyway.

[Baddcog]

Oh, well that's perfectly fine Tels.

 

Just select the brushes, hit V for vert editor. Select/drag over the verts and hit control G and they will snap to grid.

 

That way it still stays clean.

 

---

But yeah, roofs can be tough, the more angles you throw in there.

 

On angles I like to overlap the two angled roof brushes, select both, then clip the angle where they meet straight through both of them. Then Deselect the parts you are keeping, and hit delete to get rid of the excess.

 

You still may need to snap the verts to grid but it gets you close.

 

Dragging the verts out to shape is harder because brushes can deform and get really weird. Has something to do with the editor forcing the brushes to stay convex or something.

----------

 

even if the roof brushes are a bit sloppy you can work around it.

 

1: add patch trims (tiles) over any ugly weird edges.

2:sink the tops of walls into roof to seal

etc...

 

or make roofs func_static and just put horizontal vis portals at top of rooms.

 

-------

It's too bad you can't get the scale to be better for the ai. Might be weird to have ai stop at stairs instead of chasing. But still, it can probably be lived with.

[Tels]

@Baddcog: Yeah, that is basically how I build, and I get better each hour Also, after a while you start to figure out what will work and what not before spending an hour "perfecting" it

 

As for the AI, my plan is to "nail one tower shut" (with a sign "stairs under repair", and the other will simply hidden from both player and AI and the player an discover a "hidden" stair to find some hidden rooms. The tricky part is to make it believable (story wise) and to provide alternate access to every floor/room for the AI. But that still seams simpler than making the tower bigger.

 

Still don't know why a 90 unit wide spiral stair is not enough for AI - maybe they bump into the walls? Btw, the "real tight and cramped stairs" is part of the charm of that location

[Baddcog]

Well, when you rotate a model the bounding box gets bigger in editor. So a tree that's 48x48 BBox, rotated is like 96 BBox because the Bbox expands so the original BBox is still inside it it seems.

 

So maybe when ai turn their bBox actually expands, making them wider than they seem.

[Fidcal]

I would consider an inner no solid shell. If you look at how I did the manhole shaft in St. Lucia - ever wonder how it could be so narrow? There is a prefab of that might be quicker to look at. I often use that principle to squeeze AI and the player through narrow gaps. You can only pinch a few inches because of clipping but it might be enough for what you want.

 

It might not be size - AI often won't path for different reasons. I spent hours and hours making the spiral stairs prefab - most of the time was trying to get the AI to path it OK.

[grayman]

So maybe when ai turn their bBox actually expands, making them wider than they seem.

 

Nope.

[Shadowhide]

Don't expect any release or even screenshots this year.

 

Edited June 12, 2011 by Shadowhide

[demagogue]

I don't know if this is a good idea or not, but in some cases when you're building rooms and buildings at alt angles I found it easier to build the whole thing on the grid lines, then after you've built it all, select everything & rotate the whole building to the final angle you want. Then all the brushwork will rotate together and be flush. Better than trying to build everything at that alt angle itself. Depends on what you're building of course.

[Tels]

Here is another random question: The wiki says http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Objectives#Objectives that there are two location objects, COMP_LOCATION and COMP_INFO_LOCATION.

 

To make the "player must be in area X" objective, it seems COMP_LOCATION does not work - or at least I could not get it to work. So do I have to use the COMP_INFO_LOCATION objective type, or did I just do it wrong?

 

It seems the code only ever checks for COMP_LOCATION when the player drops an item, but not when f.i. the player moves.

[Bikerdude]

• The map compiler seems to introduce random errors (missing faces, or player gets stuck in floor, or non-solid walls) if things get too complicated. Unfortunately, it is totally unclear what exactly "too complicated" means. Add a brush, and suddenly the error is gone. Remove another, and another error creeps in again...
  
• At least one location seems not to be properly sealed against the outside, so the game mixes up outside and that location. I can't find the leak, however...
  

• If this map is anything like the last map you worked on you probably have loads of brush splinters all of the place, which will cause exactly this kind of issue.
  
• see above, but best thing is drop me a PM with a download link and I will fix both of the above for you.
  

[Tels]

• If this map is anything like the last map you worked on you probably have loads of brush splinters all of the place, which will cause exactly this kind of issue.
  
• see above, but best thing is drop me a PM with a download link and I will fix both of the above for you.
  

 

Er, no, sorry, the post you replied was from 2011 - I have long abandoned it. Only the last question in this thread is relevant

[Bikerdude]

LOL oh dear, sorry mista.

 

In fact I bet it was that very same map that Melan and myself worked on :-)

[Tels]

LOL oh dear, sorry mista.

 

No worries, I didn't realize either that my last post in this thread was a year ago - time flies like an arrow

 

In fact I bet it was that very same map that Melan and myself worked on :-)

 

No, I do think it was my (futile) attempt in recreating Burg Elz:

 

 

I spent ages trying to get the AI to walk in the stairs in the towers,and in the yard there is a place where the player gets for no reason stuck in the floor

[RPGista]

I quite like the shape, looks like an interesting castle, a shame you wont keep working on it... Maybe one solution for the stair could be to have it as a patch construction, no solid, have playerclip solid brushs keeping the player inside the patch surface, and have a much wider "actual" tunnel for AI to pass, behing the patch walls. If you did it just wide enough for them to pass in the middle, they probably wouldnt even clip through the patch. The same could be said about the floor, delete all pieces, create a patch construction and then just put nodraw simple brushes for AI to walk on where needed. In fact, I would do the WHOLE castle with patches, they are your best friend, with a very simple "collision" model inside, made of simple brush solids. Brushes are just too clumsy for an organic building like that, you would want rock formations at the botton of the outer walls, complex roofs, towers with windows, uneven coutryards, all of those are much easier and safer done with patches in my experience.

Edited August 23, 2012 by RPGista

[Tels]

Yeah, the idea was to use brushes as basics, then decorate them with patches. But I am really really bad at mapping, and I work like a glacier in hot summer time - moving slowly and melting before reachign the end

 

The project was simply toobig for me.

[rich_is_bored]

I stumbled on a pretty cool looking brush based level editor a few years ago that might make for a speedier workflow but I never bothered to see if it saved to a Doom 3 friendly format.

 

[Tels]

I stumbled on a pretty cool looking brush based level editor a few years ago that might make for a speedier workflow but I never bothered to see if it saved to a Doom 3 friendly format.

 

Wow, that looks prettyincredible powerful!

[pusianka]

Grid positioning looks like a badass feature! Wonder if there is such in UDK...

[Melan]

Burg Eltz would make for an awesome map, but it would take serious building skill and technological wizardry to pull it off. Still, after Zontik's attempt at Neuschwanstein in Dromed of all things, it does not seem entirely impossible.

[Tels]

Burg Eltz would make for an awesome map, but it would take serious building skill and technological wizardry to pull it off.

 

That's why I didn't finish it

[Tels]

Is there a way to modify objective's descriptions from scripting? I am thinking about a "Find X / Y things", where it says "You found 1 of Y things" if you find the first one, then "You found 2 of Y things." after the second and so on.

 

Reading the wiki (http://wiki.thedarkm...itle=Objectives and http://wiki.thedarkm...jectives_Editor as well as the scripting events didn't reveal anything that looks like this can be done.

 

Maybe I need X objectives, and then make them visible/invisible as the game progresses? (That would be a bit wasteful, tho)

 

Has anybody done this? How did the training mission handle the "find 10 potions" case?

 

Edit: Seems the training mission did not use an objective for that. Tracked http://bugs.angua.at/view.php?id=3217

 

 

Also, looking at the code, these three methods do not subtract 1 from the ObjIndex (as all other methods do). That means from scripting, you need to use them with "IDX + 1", which seems odd (and is not documented). Has anybody ever used these? Would that something we should fix, or would it break existing maps?

 

void idPlayer::Event_SetObjectiveVisible( int ObjIndex, bool bVal )
{
	gameLocal.m_MissionData->SetObjectiveVisibility(ObjIndex, bVal);
}

void idPlayer::Event_SetObjectiveOptional( int ObjIndex, bool bVal )
{
	gameLocal.m_MissionData->SetObjectiveMandatory(ObjIndex, !bVal); // negate the incoming bool
}

void idPlayer::Event_SetObjectiveOngoing( int ObjIndex, bool bVal )
{
	gameLocal.m_MissionData->SetObjectiveOngoing(ObjIndex, bVal);
}

void idPlayer::Event_SetObjectiveEnabling( int ObjIndex, const char *strIn )
{
	gameLocal.m_MissionData->SetEnablingObjectives(ObjIndex, strIn);
}