Errors, weird things and such

[Siliconmaster]

So I decided to pick up an EXTREMELY old project, that maybe one or two of you remember from the EP forums, Precipice. Of course back then it could have been called Air Wars. Can't remember. Anyway, I'm wading through massive piles of modeling fail and tesselated faces (blame me 4 years ago), but somehow the map seems to be in game and actually looking pretty nice.

Here's where this thread comes in. It was inevitable that strange things were going to happen with me converting an ancient gmax map into halo then back to max, etc. However, I didn't expect them to surface so soon. It's probably related to how I've been developing it parallel in 3ds max and sapien- build, compile, check for errors, place new scenery, repeat. And stuff is happening. Lol. Some of it sapien, some of it max-related.

Weird thing #1 FIXED: Warthogs spawn, banshees don't. My first and obvious thought is globals. However, I checked those and banshee_mp is in there. It spawns with "cheat_all_vehicles", but nowhere else. The vehicle spawns themselves are set to all games. I'll worry about this one later, but it's still strange.

Weird thing #2 FIXED: The flag. I just set the ctf points yesterday, and I've run into the flag model glitch where the flag falls off the pole. I've seen it in other maps, but I've never been on the receiving end of it. Is this fixable?

Weird thing #3 FIXED: Phantom geometry. Only happens in one section, next to one small hill. You drive off the hill in a hog, and instead of falling back to the ground it floats on an invisible plane straight off the cliff, where it happily drops again. It's actually somewhat entertaining, but also bizarre. Reminds me of that old Immure 2 (or was it 1) glitch where the warthog could back off the ramp and float there. There are no faces there in max- I double checked. Could this be some sort of geometry echo? Since it ends at the cliff, could it be an invisible clone of the ground a few feet off the ground? And if so, how can I fix this? My thought is to just get rid of the jump- if you're not in the air you can't float. Lol. However, it would be nice to fix this while keeping the geometry.

Any suggestions? Other things will probably surface, but for now these are the ones that are happily messing with my map. Thanks for the help!

[klange]

I remember this... Do it.

#1: Did you check your gametype to make sure it has "banshees" set to 4?
#2: Don't know.
#3: Not sure.

[Siliconmaster]

Haha- I had a thread about this on gruntmaps, didn't I? :P

Hmm. They still don't spawn. I'm going back to triple-check those settings...


Edit: ...and figured out the problem. The banshee_mp vehicles was indeed in the globals. As were 6 other vehicles. >_> We'll just pretend that never happened.

The other two issues are more interesting, and have yet to be solved.

[Rentafence]

For the flags im pretty sure the level needs wind for them to do their thing. Try that maybe?

[Siliconmaster]

I added the geph wind to the map, but nothing seems to have changed. Flag still slides down the pole and through the floor. :/

Edit: Correction: I created a wind palette. -sigh- Applied it and it works now. Thanks a bunch! Looks like I need to focus on the details more. Precipice never actually got past tool until the other day, so I'm actually pretty new to sapien and guerilla. It's like I know a lot of details, but little things escape me. Such as that. :P

Edit Edit: I decided having a jump wasn't as important as fixing the geometry. I leveled it our a bit so the hog doesn't go so high off it, and now I can't seem to replicate the glitch. I'll count that as a fix. For now, all my problems are solved. However, I'm sure I'll be back with more. And of course a hopefully finished map. :D

[Rentafence]

Is it worthy of pictures yet?

[Siliconmaster]

Is it worthy of pictures yet?

I love that question. :) Definitely yes, disregarding the obvious texture/smoothing/modeling errors that still abound. Also placeholder grass. And missing lights. Actually treat every one of these as WIP. :P Also, my modeling skills have never been brilliant, and while I have recently done my best to modify existing stuff to look more forerunner, there are definitely sections that defy all architectural standards. I know that, and I accept it. Please keep this in mind.



First off, this is what I was working with in gmax.
http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/4287/precipice2.jpg
http://img188.imageshack.us/img188/3141/precipice.jpg
More extraneous polygons than anything I've ever seen and the uvw coordinates of chicken scratchings. And I had to get that sealed in gmax before even being able to convert it into max. Note the 4 year gap between its construction and now.

And now, for (semi)-current pics. I'm moving through this map changing all sorts of things all the time, so it already looks somewhat different than this.

Machine front
http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/9127/precipicemachine1.jpg

Machine back
http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/6179/precipicemachine2.jpg

Inside wip detailing (from sapien)
http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/2305/precipiceprettylights.jpg

Exterior of red base
http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/8347/precipicebeamsa.jpg

The canyon itself has smoothing issues unfortunately, as you can see around the wall behind red base. Those should be lined up exactly, but for some reason sapien lights those particular faces differently than the rest. I'll fix it at some point. The massive forerunner building thing on one end of the canyon is just a texturing/smoothing mess right now, and the other end of the canyon just ends. Hello skybox. So I have a lot of work to do. The good news is, it's playable. Almost all I have left to do is graphical. Which makes me happy. :)

[Rentafence]

It's huge! Everything looks way too open, though you probably have something in the works to make it playable. I kinda like the outside of red base though. Looks interesting. To be honest I can't see any game play anywhere, however.

[Siliconmaster]

Haha. It was always meant to be very vehicle-based, hence the large open spaces. The original concept was two platforms floating in mid air with air vehicles on them. Hence the original name, Air Wars. Over the course of 2004-2005, I began to learn mapmaking and over-ambitiously expanded it into what it is now. As I've been working on it the past week or so I've been thinking the same thing.

As it stands, the bases are set quite a ways back in the rock. When the player emerges, a banshee is on each of the two raised platforms. From the interior of the base, players can also climb to higher banshee roosts. I'm considering changing the lower banshee spawns to shades to cover the long, narrow connecting bridge between the two bases. That way, players must go an extra distance to reach the banshees, and the middle bridge is extremely hazardous.

Teleporters also stand to make things interesting. From the interior bases players can go to the surface above the base, where warthogs allow transport to the other base's top-side and the teleport back downward. This creates a parallel movement arena to the primary bridge.

Gameplay-wise, 4 areas are a bit hazy.

-One is the forerunner structure on one end of the canyon. It can be reached by banshee, but not by foot. I'm not sure what I'll do with it yet- maybe some limited power weapons or other reason for going there, or maybe another teleport system between the two bases.

-The second area is the rock bridge farther below the main areas. I'm not sure what I was originally thinking, but I'm going to do my best to make it both useful and interesting.

-The third area is the far underground. This will almost certainly be outside normal gameplay, but I may allow some way of accessing it for fun reasons.

-Area 4 involves the hanger bays. I believe I designed these for the designed-but-lost forerunner carrier things that I worked on long ago. Now they're massive holding bays that could probably fit 3 pelicans easily each. I'd rather not delete them, but I need to do something with them. Maybe a pelican spawn?

I'm not sure if this map has any gameplay benefits whatsoever, as you mentioned, but I'm going to finish it anyway and test it to try to balance it as much as possible. I owe it to myself to finish at least one of the two gigantic projects of the past 4 years of my life. The other was Dust to Dust, and that is happily sitting next to me in script form, but not much else.



Edit: I did some timing to see how long it would take me to get from one base to the other using various methods. Each method is exactly mirrored- no mixing once the player reaches the opposite base- i.e. banshee roost to banshee roost, doorway to doorway, etc.

Walking directly from one flag spawn to the other: Exactly 60 seconds

Using the teleport/warthog/teleport system: About 40 seconds

By banshee (base exterior variant): About 50 seconds

By banshee roost (farther back version): About 1 minute 40 seconds.

Based on these tests, I'd say if I make the base exterior banshees gun turrets and only have the banshees on the farther-away platforms, then that should even out vehicle whoring right at the beginning of the game. After that depends on the weapons, I suppose. But walking is actually not all that bad. Just extremely hazardous since it involves the main bridge.

So yeah. I won't be sure how it plays until I can actually play it with people. But for now, I'm making it look good while trying to take into account things to make it fun, not just pretty.