Siege Shop Redux

[PranQster]

Please take the multiple choice poll. I'd like some feedback to help me improve this mission.

[Bikerdude]

As Myself and Fid's helped you with the first version, I am happy to help you with this version.

[Berny]

another suggestion: I'd would be cool to see some new rooms, secrets or extras

[Aprilsister]

Use a shrubbery to break up the lower hall.

[PranQster]

As Myself and Fid's helped you with the first version, I am happy to help you with this version.

Thank you so much!

 

another suggestion: I'd would be cool to see some new rooms, secrets or extras

Point taken. I too like secrets, and my map had none.

 

Use a shrubbery to break up the lower hall.

Heh, now there's an idea.

[PranQster]

I think I prefer a non-urban setting, with the fort built into the mountainside.... the level, flat grass is only temporary.

 

 

Will play with it a bit and see what kind of player start works well... perhaps emerging from a cave/tunnel through the mountains. I'll also need to make some sort of large tunnel through which the catapult can be deployed. I hate the idea of it being boxed inside the workshop, to large to move anywhere.

[Sotha]

The things I'd like to see changed (in the order of importance)

1. The light/brush optimizations.
2. Ambient music choices were maddening, there are a lot better alternatives.
3. The air balloon idea is fantastic, but it was not a good idea to let the player so high up that the city looked cardboard. That mountainrange setting would work if the mountains are higher than the fortress. I also firmy believe that the city setting CAN be made to work. I think that this kind of setup would work and look reasonably well.

It is not very difficult to create either. While the mountain range is easier, the cityscape building would be a terrific way to practice important cityscape building for your later missions. Also I think it -if successful- would create the "ooh aah!" effect you probably wanted to have when you made the balloon in the first place.

4. IIRC the balloon rose to the correct height and just stayed there without any reason. Maybe there should be a rail system or something to explain why the balloon does not get blow away?

5. Do cut the long corridor, this is very important.

6. Conversations? Just something simple to bring the mission a bit more alive: "William, where did you put the catapult part 453? I can't find it anywhere.... It is on the manifest but not in the box.. Damn taffers in the packaging department."

7. path_anims for the guards to make them do something interesting?

 

Fixes and a little bit candy into the mission.. I think it can be made easily into an excellent one!

[PranQster]

The things I'd like to see changed (in the order of importance)

1. The light/brush optimizations.
2. Ambient music choices were maddening, there are a lot better alternatives.
3. The air balloon idea is fantastic, but it was not a good idea to let the player so high up that the city looked cardboard. That mountainrange setting would work if the mountains are higher than the fortress. I also firmy believe that the city setting CAN be made to work. I think that this kind of setup would work and look reasonably well.

It is not very difficult to create either. While the mountain range is easier, the cityscape building would be a terrific way to practice important cityscape building for your later missions. Also I think it -if successful- would create the "ooh aah!" effect you probably wanted to have when you made the balloon in the first place.

4. IIRC the balloon rose to the correct height and just stayed there without any reason. Maybe there should be a rail system or something to explain why the balloon does not get blow away?

5. Do cut the long corridor, this is very important.

6. Conversations? Just something simple to bring the mission a bit more alive: "William, where did you put the catapult part 453? I can't find it anywhere.... It is on the manifest but not in the box.. Damn taffers in the packaging department."

7. path_anims for the guards to make them do something interesting?

 

Fixes and a little bit candy into the mission.. I think it can be made easily into an excellent one!

 

Thank you much for your input. At this point I'm going to go with the mountains for this mission. I'll save city for a future mission. The mountains look fine when high up. I re-built them since the screenshot and they are a little higher now.

I'm not sure about conversations right now. If I find some private time when I can practice appropriate voices and get them recorded without being bothered by anyone, maybe I'll try that.

As far as the rest of your suggestions go, I'm going to be doing all of that.

One very annoying thing about this mission is that I believe I built the drawbridge off-grid. I basically started with that and built walls around it. I ended up with walls and floors all over the place which were only on the 1-unit grid, sometimes the 2-unit grid (and a few brushes on the 0.5 grid, or worse). LOL, trying to tidy those up is going to be a pain.

Edited August 14, 2011 by PranQster

[Sotha]

Thank you much for your input.

You welcome! I'd love to see this mission in all its possible glory.

 

I'm not sure about conversations right now. If I find some private time when I can practice appropriate voices and get them recorded without being bothered by anyone, maybe I'll try that.

 

Why do it yourself when we have talented voice artists like Bikerdude, ocn and BrokenArts around? Plus then you get the conversation voices to match the character's other voices. I'm pretty sure they will help you out if you ask them. But be sure to save their time and have the conversation scripts in perfect&final state when you give it to the actors.

 

One very annoying thing about this mission is that I believe I built the drawbridge off-grid. I basically started with that and built walls around it. I ended up with walls and floors all over the place which were only on the 1-unit grid, sometimes the 2-unit grid (and a few brushes on the 0.5 grid, or worse). LOL, trying to tidy those up is going to be a pain.

 

Not necessarily. You could force them in-grid using the snap-to-grid functionality in DR. That works for func_statics and other entities as well, if you select the individual parts of the object.

[PranQster]

Not necessarily. You could force them in-grid using the snap-to-grid functionality in DR. That works for func_statics and other entities as well, if you select the individual parts of the object.

 

Yeah, what I meant was that I was not yet in a habit of using snap to grid when I started this mission, so I had slapped the drawbridge prefab into it and just started building around it and ended up with strange brush dimensions as a result.

[PranQster]

Much improvement has been made already.

• About 1/3 of the lighting has been replaced so far, switching from the func_static models with auto-lighting to regular models coupled with a light entity. After replacing the rest comes much light radius tweaking.
• Many huge brushes have been carved and/or re-sized/csg-merged to fit individual rooms. More yet to do, but I did the ones which bothered me most.
• Lantern Bot removed for several many reasons.
• New lower floor texture to replace the grassy brick.
• Long lower hallway has had arches replaced with proper doors, effectively splitting it into 3 areas.
• The town has been replaced with a mountain scene and a few seed trees. Needs much more decoration, but the basics are done.
• A few AI path tweaks so far.
• Sewer start area removed (no town) in lieu of a tunnel carved through the mountain.
• Nearly all aesthetic location audio has been replaced.
• The balloon now has a docking area where it stops.
• Moat re-textured to fit better with the rock cliffs surrounding the fort. *that reminds me... the player can now fall into the moat and needs an escape ladder.
• The Builders' banners removed. Pagan-Builder link shall be removed from the readables... that wasn't working for me.
• Nidstang poles have been erected... awaiting some custom textures (decals for runes of power & curses)

More to come

[nbohr1more]

I am getting pretty excited about this revision.

 

[PranQster]

I am getting pretty excited about this revision.

 

 

I'm going to have to drastically reduce the size of the outside area, but improvements have helped. I found a mysteriously broken visportal on a door in the lower hallway. It was positioned properly and fit the floor and brushes surrounding the door, but it was still not showing in-game, neither open nor closed. I replaced it with a new one in the exact same place and the new one worked... go figure.

I'm out of town on business now, so going to take a few days away from working on it.

[PranQster]

Updating this mission is on hold while darkradiant is broken for me.

I just changed linux distros, installed all prerequisites, etc. But I can't get a pre-compiled version to run and get an error when building the version from svn.

[Aprilsister]

Lantern Bot removed...

 

Ah.

 

A real shame -- as it was the defining feature.

[jaxa]

More like the defining appearance. I haven't seen it any missions I've played. (didn't play Siege Shop yet, waiting for v2 now for freshness)

[PranQster]

Ah.

 

A real shame -- as it was the defining feature.

 

The biggest issue with the lantern bot was that it could fit through the archways I had, but it is too big to fit through a regular doorway. To get it through my arches, I had to put a lot of monsterclip on the sides to force it right through the middle. I have not tried double-doors yet, but I think it would look a little strange having doors automatically open for it (assuming it can even open doors??).

 

Once I get DR working again, I'll experiment with the lanternbot once more.

[Aprilsister]

Well, I was just saying... for me that was the coolest bit of the mission -- the thing that really got me going forward just upon the hearing of it...

 

Though, as you know, I appreciated them other featured features as well.

 

I was just saying.

 

I was never going to go back and replay anyhow. I just can't do it, the replay thing, in general.

 

As a player (and as always thus so) I wish there were less of this rehashing/rebuilding/recycling stuff going on. Sure there might be a call to squash some big bugs with some missions some times.

 

...But more news is better news to me!

[Summer]

I agree with the others. The lantern bot was the best part of the mission in addition to the balloon ride. It would suck if you lost either of them in your revision. I'd have to keep the old version around just for those things

[PranQster]

I agree with the others. The lantern bot was the best part of the mission in addition to the balloon ride. It would suck if you lost either of them in your revision. I'd have to keep the old version around just for those things

 

Balloon ride is still in. Lantern Bot..... hmmmm. I'll see what I can do. I suddenly have about 3 ideas for it.

[PranQster]

Performance progress has been made.

In the lower hall, bottom of first elevator, the archway has been replaced by a doorway and a broken visportal fixed. Lighting has been changed. Light radii do not overlap, but it looks too dark right now, so I'll have to tweak with it a bit. FPS on my machine in that part of the hallway has gone from ~20fps to 45-60+(I have sync on). Center hall, with gate to workshop, has fps around 30 and the workshop is at about 45. I may have to get rid of that arched entry/gate and replace with a more traditional door setup.

Outside needs more work. When I first tested it with my first mountain patches in place, I was getting about 9fps outside .

I've made new mountain/cliffs, and got it up to ~25fps, but I loaded up siegeshop v1.0 and found the outside area to also be around 25fps on my machine. So, basically, no performance improvement outside yet (but it looks much better than my poorly done flat cityscape). I can advise to look up or down while moving and get full frame rate, lol. Will work on that tonight.

 

I still have to finish decorating outside, as well as a re-do of the upper floor archers barracks.

Once I get those things done I need to tweak light color and brightness on the torches, as well as enhance the dungeons a bit.

[PranQster]

Tonight I inscribed my curse poles with runes

[nbohr1more]

Sounds like you're making some great progess PranQster. :)

 

If you are at a loss for options, the one controversial optimization is "excessive caulking of unseen faces". Though the benefits are (hotly ) debated, I can't help but think that it's a great way to tell the map compiler what YOU want to render.

 

 

I've probably mentioned this before, but I added many recent additions to the Performance wiki:

 

http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Performance:_Essential_Must-Knows

 

...if you're looking for extra weird stuff to try.

[Bikerdude]

hey Pranqster, if you need me to do a run through as per last time just drop me a pm.

[PranQster]

Sounds like you're making some great progess PranQster. :)

 

If you are at a loss for options, the one controversial optimization is "excessive caulking of unseen faces". Though the benefits are (hotly ) debated, I can't help but think that it's a great way to tell the map compiler what YOU want to render.

 

 

I've probably mentioned this before, but I added many recent additions to the Performance wiki:

 

http://modetwo.net/d...tial_Must-Knows

 

...if you're looking for extra weird stuff to try.

Cool I'll check it out. Also, I am one of those who will caulk every unseen surface (debate or no debate)... if for no other reason than to make the unseen surfaces easily visible in DR.

 

hey Pranqster, if you need me to do a run through as per last time just drop me a pm.

Thanks a lot. I appreciate it. Will pm you when I'm closer to being done.