i would like to apply as betamapper (suprise!)

[Theothesnopp]

yes ive played t2x it was great but i only got to play the first mission then i upgraded to vista and now i dont have it installed :/

 

yeah that would be a great idea! but im not making a passanger train this will only be moving crates barrels and stuff like that i dont know the word for it ^-^, but it would be hard to move the environment since there is a city with a few interiors :/.

 

but great idea

 

 

oh btw. is it possible to make it go slow in the begining and then speed up?

other wise it would look really weird

[Flanders]

What I am thinking of is making an environment made out of sections that move controlled by a script as this tutorial explains:

http://www.doom3world.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=8811

(there is a explanation on acceleration and deceleration times)

 

With a fog in your level, if a section is out of sight it can be removed. Another section should be spawned in front of the train and so on.

 

Easier is to make a train with no visportals and make it follow a NURBS curve. Visportals should then be included in the static environment through which the train passes.

[Theothesnopp]

okay i just now realized i have taken a long time for this, how much do you expect from beta mappers?

 

cuz i im very happy with ive come up with so far but i dunno how much you expect of me?

 

 

 

edit: 100 post!!! woo Xd

Edited December 4, 2008 by Theothesnopp

[Baal]

I'm not a team member ("only" a beta mapper) but i think the best thing to do is to try and get a small map (or only a section) in a playable (and releasable) state. If you're able to do everything that's necessary for that (architecture, visportals, scripting, lighting etc.) they should give you beta mapper access along the way.

And, of course, you can always ask for help when necessary.

[greebo]

Yes, at this point in development we're mostly seeking for people who are able to pull off a playable map. The team has seen many many beautiful screenshots of newcomers in the past years, but so far only a small part of them has been able to get a map past the "geometry" stage.

 

One could say that our standards have increased since then (or at least the expectations), but it's obviously not enough at this point to just produce nice rooms in DarkRadiant in order to become a Betamapper. The people who can produce a proper mission (we're not asking for a large one, a small in is perfect enough) are the ones who can give us the most valuable feedback for our toolset at this stage in development.

 

In need of playable maps we are.

[Fidcal]

I second that. Don't be too ambitious. Many newcomers get great ideas like a huge mountain top castle or a balloon journey across the ocean to infiltrate a submarine facility run by zombies to return the dead head of Prince Olaf to the king of the fairies but these rarely get finished. What would impress us more is a small heist, say a moderate sized mansion that is either complete or realistically completable. Building a mission is not just about being good at building terrain or some exotic, technically difficult feature but managing all the assets - story, AI, patrolling, readables, lighting, objectives, and gameplay, etc. Avoid any complications that might trip you up like rain, fog, large views, etc. Something not much bigger than Thief's Den that can be presented and we can play through it. If some part is not finished like no readables, no objectives - that's OK - they can be added and we can help.

[Flanders]

That cave map you've showed was good, not too big. I would improve that map.

[Theothesnopp]

That cave map you've showed was good, not too big. I would improve that map.

 

 

i forgot my login info for a while back so i havent been able to reply.

 

i've abondoned the cave map, right now im working on a city + mansion map wich is kind of big i know i shouldnt make it too big just for a trial but it was so fun (lol) so i couldnt stop ^^ well its soon finish anyway, i wont say when it will be finish since it was a month ago maybe i said i would befinish in a week, well well

 

were should i send my map for testing later?

[Theothesnopp]

I second that. Don't be too ambitious. Many newcomers get great ideas like a huge mountain top castle or a balloon journey across the ocean to infiltrate a submarine facility run by zombies to return the dead head of Prince Olaf to the king of the fairies but these rarely get finished. What would impress us more is a small heist, say a moderate sized mansion that is either complete or realistically completable. Building a mission is not just about being good at building terrain or some exotic, technically difficult feature but managing all the assets - story, AI, patrolling, readables, lighting, objectives, and gameplay, etc. Avoid any complications that might trip you up like rain, fog, large views, etc. Something not much bigger than Thief's Den that can be presented and we can play through it. If some part is not finished like no readables, no objectives - that's OK - they can be added and we can help.

 

i see, the mission im making isnt very complicated really the train will not go very far and im trying my best to fix it to work with visportals. the size thing you mentioned is to late im afraid its about 3000 brushes, but its so hard to stop since radiant is so addictive lol.

 

and so far its playable right now im trying to track down a nasty leak but otherwise everything works gr8 ^^

[Fidcal]

the texture show up fine in radiant. but then after that i saved a few times some side starts to turn into "_default" and then i keeps on going like that, this happens to all textures ive used that is from "other Materials" in the media browser.

 

Edit: yes i use radiant :]

This has happened to me now. Before Christmas I made a patch mattress and gave it sack1 texture. I did some other stuff then in game I saw a black cube for the mattress - probably I changed the func_static name and didn't dmap. I then dmapped and mapped and the mattress is all black. Huh? Looks OK in DR. But DR mostly uses reduced editor images so I checked out the model texture. It's fine. (as you'd expect since it works on model sacks OK.) I saved the map again in case I hadn't saved it but could only get black surfaces on the mattress in game. Later that day I loaded the map again in DR and a couple of surfaces of the mattress were the blue of default. Huh? How could I have missed texturing those? They stand out so obvious. Must be going crazy. It happens. Retexture them sack1 and save. I still see black in game. Used a different test map. Same thing. Away over Christmas day. Come back today. Load in DR. All surfaces of the mattress are _default. Texture again sack1 and save. Now I see the surfaces correctly in game for the first time.

 

So, did DR change these or Doom? (I believe in some situations that doom can change and resave the map.)

 

Made an even simpler test map with just a brush of sack1 but so far can't get it to go wrong.

[Theothesnopp]

This has happened to me now. Before Christmas I made a patch mattress and gave it sack1 texture. I did some other stuff then in game I saw a black cube for the mattress - probably I changed the func_static name and didn't dmap. I then dmapped and mapped and the mattress is all black. Huh? Looks OK in DR. But DR mostly uses reduced editor images so I checked out the model texture. It's fine. (as you'd expect since it works on model sacks OK.) I saved the map again in case I hadn't saved it but could only get black surfaces on the mattress in game. Later that day I loaded the map again in DR and a couple of surfaces of the mattress were the blue of default. Huh? How could I have missed texturing those? They stand out so obvious. Must be going crazy. It happens. Retexture them sack1 and save. I still see black in game. Used a different test map. Same thing. Away over Christmas day. Come back today. Load in DR. All surfaces of the mattress are _default. Texture again sack1 and save. Now I see the surfaces correctly in game for the first time.

 

So, did DR change these or Doom? (I believe in some situations that doom can change and resave the map.)

 

Made an even simpler test map with just a brush of sack1 but so far can't get it to go wrong.

 

 

okey.. ^-^

 

i found a replacement for the rtable im using bc_coatackwood instead it works fine ^-^

[Fidcal]

This bug is fixed now (I've not checked yet though) so you should be able to use your original.

[swordbreaker]

I couldn't find all of 700 loots I wonder where you hided it but anyway your first map looks promising and I will try your city map when you released.

Edited January 4, 2009 by swordbreaker

[Theothesnopp]

sorry been gone for a while :]

 

but im back now and i dont have very much left to do im sry but i made the map bigger then i am supposed 2 but it will be fun 2 play i hope :]

 

anyway i think i owe u one or two pics i coulst enter it since i havent fixed all leaks yet but i will do it soon, the only thing i will need to do now is 2 put 2 things together, than i need to fix leaks and fix some entity thingys :] and then the map is all done :]

 

and i think the visportals will work better here than on th e first map, i think i have improved alot while making this map :]

 

how many brushes can the game (?) render be4 it starts to lagg?

 

anyway here are a few screenies from the editor :

 

 

 

[Theothesnopp]

the radiant seems to hang almost everytime i take of the lights so everytime i want to add ligth i have to copy the part of the map i wanna light and then copy the lights into the game. what can i do to prevent radiant from hanging like this?

[greebo]

the radiant seems to hang almost everytime i take of the lights so everytime i want to add ligth i have to copy the part of the map i wanna light and then copy the lights into the game. what can i do to prevent radiant from hanging like this?

Steps to reproduce? What does "take of the lights" mean?

[Theothesnopp]

Steps to reproduce? What does "take of the lights" mean?

 

 

eeuw sry i dont know the word for it, when i press f3 it usually hangs :]

[Flanders]

Good to hear from you. I was afraid you were one of the guys that just disappears after a few weeks.

It's nice to hear you're working on a big map. But doing so without testing it is not a good idea. Not just for performance issues, but also to determine if the way it looks in game is the way you want it.

I'll be glad to test your map if you can make it playable.

[Theothesnopp]

Good to hear from you. I was afraid you were one of the guys that just disappears after a few weeks.

It's nice to hear you're working on a big map. But doing so without testing it is not a good idea. Not just for performance issues, but also to determine if the way it looks in game is the way you want it.

I'll be glad to test your map if you can make it playable.

 

 

yah thanks i was worried u guys/girls would think so so i thought id have to say something :] its like 6000 brushes now so i have done it a bit to much i expected it to be like max 1000 but its too late to go back now :]

[Flanders]

yah thanks i was worried u guys/girls would think so so i thought id have to say something :] its like 6000 brushes now so i have done it a bit to much i expected it to be like max 1000 but its too late to go back now :]

6000 brushes is no problem, SL has more. The number of brushes says nothing about performance.

[greebo]

Also, be aware that there's a 95% chance that your map will never see the light of day. Sorry if this sounds harsh, but that's what my neck hair is sensing here.

 

Like Fidcal said earlier, the number one mapper mistake is to keep adding geometry and more geometry and more rooms and more stuff until you can't help but vomit when thinking about fixing it up to a playable state. It's not a newbie mistake, it's a general mapper mistake.

 

The geometry is not the problem, it's the rest which takes more than half of the work (objectives, AI placement, conversations?, scripting?, readables, loading screen, difficulties, playtesting, monsterclipping, loot placement). These things are adding up to your workload pretty quickly.

[HappyCheeze]

Also, be aware that there's a 95% chance that your map will never see the light of day. Sorry if this sounds harsh, but that's what my neck hair is sensing here.

 

Like Fidcal said earlier, the number one mapper mistake is to keep adding geometry and more geometry and more rooms and more stuff until you can't help but vomit when thinking about fixing it up to a playable state. It's not a newbie mistake, it's a general mapper mistake.

 

The geometry is not the problem, it's the rest which takes more than half of the work (objectives, AI placement, conversations?, scripting?, readables, loading screen, difficulties, playtesting, monsterclipping, loot placement). These things are adding up to your workload pretty quickly.

 

I can't agree more with Greebo. It would be a good goal for all of us mappers to make at least one map that has a start and a finish

[greebo]

This was also one of our (angua's and my) motivations to start that outpost map. It was built in less than one week, from start to finish (and we couldn't even work all that week on it), so I'm definitely not preaching water here. Of course, oupost is nothing mind-blowing, but it has fun stealth gameplay in it, nothing more and nothing less.

 

Trying to match Calendra's Legacy with your first time map will just lead to failure.

[Theothesnopp]

well i could make a small map now just to show what i can do and stuff,

but after that i want to finish my big map since ive been longing to play it lol :]

 

or what do you think?

[Fidcal]

Theothesnopp: Can you upload your map somewhere so we can take a look at in the editor at least? Then we can advise you better.