Purple is cool. But green is too.
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Purple is cool. But green is too.
ftwQuote:
Originally Posted by Lateksi
For forerunner stuff, green works. However, maybe I'm just too much of a creative arts major, but red and green clash like hell, and due to the blending between the three colors, the green and blue would look nice together, but the red and green would look hideous. Take for example that long hallway in the tunnels where you can see all 3 color bands. Right now they blend logically. But green- *shudder*
Yellow. A dull or pale yellow. Goes with red a much as blue.
Hell, why not white?
White generally doesn't show up that often in forerunner stuff- if it does, it's on a blue texture. On Bungie's shaders, blue and yellow are "blue base" colors, and red and orange are "red base colors". Gephyrophobia actually has a whole set of purple bitmaps made and ready to go, which is what I've been using. This would suggest that at least Gearbox liked purple. :downs: I'm also changing the light emitted from the geph_purple lights to match the inv_purple shader that can be seen in the warthog tunnels. The inv_purple shader is much darker, more of a violet than a pinkish-purple. I really like the darker color, and already the banshee pit in the control room looks gorgeous, yet simple. Give me some more time to finish the bsp- then we can argue more about colors.
Ah okay. Thats good.
It's 5:30am EST, and time for a quick update. Though the thread has been quiet for a while, I can assure you all that the map is making considerable headway. Optimization continues, uv errors are being fixed, and the last major strides are underway. I've begun in-depth portalling, and the topside terrain is in its final tweaking stages. I won't be posting any new screenshots until I have something screenshot-worthy, but I'm fairly certain that I'll be able to show off some goodies relatively soon. Can't say much more than that since I myself don't know how things are going to turn out. Stay tuned.
Frustrated double post after a full day of trying to set up Aether lightmaps. Light emitting materials: biggest headache of all time. I'm going to ignore this issue until I have everything else about the map done. Otherwise it's going to bug the hell out of me. If someone else wants to come along and help me set up a render situation simulating outside light and all the indoor stuff, please feel free. It really comes down to the materials and the render setup, and the sunlight system.
You shouldn't be doing anything with aether until the maps done. To be honest I really don't see the need it in much, considering Halo can make perfectly fine lightmaps on its own.
High-res light maps always look weird in a low-res game like Halo.
this is true
I knew I needed to finish everything else first, but I had some free time and wanted to mess around with it and at least get a lot of the stuff set up, so if I wanted to use it later I wouldn't have to do all the work then.Quote:
Originally Posted by higuy
As for my reasons for wanting to use advanced lightmaps, Halo isn't rendering the canyon correctly- sunlight goes all the way to the bottom, where it should stop as soon as the sun dips below the rim. Using a more accurate renderer would fix this. Also, the map takes 7-8 hours to do a quality 0 lightmap render in tool, and I don't even want to know how long a quality 1 would take. I'll try it, of course, when the time comes, but it seems to me that even if I keep the resolutions the same, and just overwrite Halo's own bitmaps, I'd have an easier and faster time tweaking it in max.
You could probably render the same quality of max lightmaps in 5 minutes as tool makes in 4 hrs.
My thoughts exactly.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dwood
Update:
Time for a screenshot or two. Thanks to Con for the sky. <3
Still needs some background distant thunder sounds to match the lightning flashes in the sky, which are hard to show off in stills.
Looking good
I thought this was a pretty cool view...
Wat wat motion blur? Looking really good.
I am also interested in that first part. Is that motion blur for srs?Quote:
Originally Posted by Lateksi
I talked to Con. He says it's Firescythe's OS plugin. Of which I am redownloading the newest version, because I want that moblur. :P
Really nice map. I think the lighting should be a little more yellowish.
I think it's fine as it is. If it's more yellow it's like too many other outdoor map.
I was going for an eerie look, something out of the ordinary. That and the little flood hints around the map help create the atmosphere.Quote:
Originally Posted by Inferno
I talked to SM on xfire. I was just noting that the sky looked brighter than the lightmaps. He said it looks normal it was just he angle of the screenshots.
Ohay sum1 check hbo.
i like the "errie sky"....along with the thunder and lightning ,it should be pretty cool
Little late to the party- there have been at least 15 people viewing the thread at any given time since noon. :P Who submitted the news post, btw? I'm fine with the publicity, but I'm curious.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dwood
Glad you like it. I'm currently working on the background sound palette. I figured out how to do most of the stuff I needed- now it's a matter of tweaking settings.Quote:
Originally Posted by ghk
Wow Silicon, this is great! It's almost inspirational and it gives me an idea for my own MP map!
Wow, awesome sky con. I think the lighting fits, like an overcast with some light spots coming out the clouds. Good job!
I told you OS was cool. :pQuote:
Originally Posted by Siliconmaster
Lookin' good, like the new sky.
I fucking love the color of the sky, it is unique, interesting, and the green hints at a coming storm...
I want to play this when you guys beta next. Make sure you bug me on xfire SM. :downs:
Just had a fairly entertaining playtest, with myself, Con, ShadowSpartan, and CodeBrain. Sadly, Inferno and Pyong were busy with H2v stuff, Llama couldn't join because of tech issues, and others were just busy at the time. Either way, slayer proved a bit too chaotic with just 4 people, and ctf was definitely fun, if ridiculous.
New list of changes:
-Make wind and rain noises louder up top
-Fix the stupid flag animations- anyone have any idea about this one? (Flag remains visible when in a vehicle, and if you "shoot", you drop the flag)
-add some exterior spawns for ctf- too easy to camp the base spawns
-increase the respawn time on the splaser- way too powerful right now.
-portalsportalsportals
Spam me up on msn next time so I can bitch about lag :iamafag:
Shit, if I had been on XFire I might have beeped you to join...but Steam has largely replaced XFire. :saddowns:
All right, in the dumbest and most obnoxious issue ever, I can't do much further work on the map because red base refuses to allow itself to be portalled. Just to make sure, I deleted all portals, and started again from scratch. I exactportalled red base only, then added portals elsewhere until the map compiled. EXACT. SAME. PROBLEM. Red base passes tool with no errors at all, but ingame, the game doesn't stop rendering stuff outside red base like it should. Has anyone ever heard of this happening? If I can just get red base working, the rest of the map will come together nicely.
My guess is that there's some hidden geometry issue somewhere. I tried welding all vertices in the map together, to remove any floating faces, but it said there were none to weld. So.... it seems to me that I might be able to fix it by rebuilding red base, which I could theoretically do by mirroring blue, but that's a lot of work that I'd rather not put myself through, especially if it doesn't make any difference.
Ideas?
Exactportal each individual section of the base and test until the problem area is found.
That only works until I hit an area so large I can't really split it up, like the main are of red base. However, I'll do what I can. Thanks.
Edit: Oh hey, flag room portals right, main room doesn't. Frak. Time for some bizarre-looking portals.
DOUBLE POST FOR EPIC.
It is fixed.
I extracted red base and performed complex and grueling tests on it separate from the rest of the map. Eventually, by mirroring blue base and replacing almost all the forerunner geometry in red base, I managed to convince Halo that red base was awesome and should be portalable. Cool new word right there. Anyway, it works now, thank god. I can have the map fully portalled and basically ready to go by this weekend. After that, I merely need to fix up the thunder sound effects and playtest again to double check everything. Then maybe I can take a look at those custom lightmaps. I'm looking forward to having no ambient light messing up my base lighting. ^_^
I'm also giddy because Hobophobia, a film project from last semester, won 4 awards at the FDU student film festival earlier this evening, including best picture. And Humans Vs Zombies has been announced for next week on our campus. So that's three awesome things in less than 6 hours. Too much to handle. I'll consider it an early birthday present. :)
yayyyyyy
good job...if you need an extra hand for a playtest just send me a pm...if not... hope it turns out ok
Too bad the rules for your schools HVZ are laaame. With zombies being stunned, not killed, it's more fun and you can have crazy hordes, like the ones I had to fight off the other week, it was nuts.
Agreed, but it's better than the Dean refusing to let us play at all. Now I just have to finish up what I can with Precipice before the game starts next week. :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Reaper Man
Get a nerf gun with a drum mag, thank me later.
Great work! I am eagerly anticipating the release of this map!
:jibbly:
Looks pretty sick man.
As am I. :PQuote:
Originally Posted by POQPrince
Thanks. Now if I can just get the portals to fully cooperate, we'll be all good.Quote:
Originally Posted by stilts
Edit: I've finally gotten the background ambient sounds working, which is great. Now the last big hurdle is the portalling. I've done everything I can to try to get them working, and I'm at a total loss. I know Firescythe is too busy to physically help me with them, but might anyone else have some free time to assist? I really want to finish this project before the end of the semester so that I can play it with everyone- otherwise, I won't be able to play online again until September, when I get back to school and good internet.
Post on Halomaps requesting help - perhaps someone will be able to help there?
SM talk to me on xfire when you get the chance.
Don't do it, he's gunna put a Carbine in your map.
Curses! He uncovered my true intentions!Quote:
Originally Posted by Llama Juice
How's it coming, SM?Quote:
Originally Posted by Siliconmaster
There are some members of my clan who might be able to help get this thing done soon.
Thanks!
:cd:
I haven't gotten much work done on it as a result of frustrating portalling and the end of the school semester. As I've said before- if I can get the portals working right, development on this thing is nearly complete. I just need:
Portals
Fix flag animation glitch
Double-check respawn time on Splaser
(If possible) Change HUD on Splaser so it matches the default HUD instead of the CMT HUD
(Optional, but preferable) Custom lightmaps
And that's about it. Then I have a promo video planned. I want to finish it before the end of the semester so I can play it with people, but I don't know if that will happen now. :/ We'll just have to see.
So any progress?
Nope. Lol. Finals week is next week, and college is turning into a work clusterfuck. I might be able to take a look at the portals next week some time, but no promises. Once summer hits I'll have more time, but that's when I have no good internet, so even if I finish the map, I can't play it with you guys. D: It makes me sad.
Hey Silicon...
Don't forget that there is free high speed wifi at McDonalds now.
=)
BTW, I can't wait to try this map!
*Good luck on your finals!
Haha- thanks for the reminder. And thank god finals are almost over- tomorrow I head home to good oldNew HampShire, dwelling place ofHobbitsHillbillies and Cows.
Still need a classic version of that HUD for the Splaser?
Yeah, actually, I do. That and the flag animation glitch are the only two tag-related things left to fix. Can you help with that? It would be greatly appreciated.
What exactly is the flag animation glitch? Did you add wind?
The glitch is related to the vehicles- if you grab the flag and get in any sort of vehicle, instead of disappearing and allowing you to shoot (if in an applicable vehicle like the ghost or banshee) the flag sticks out of your head, or sideways out of your body if in the banshee. In addition, if you try to fire the vehicle weapon, you drop the flag. It's led to some rather loud strings of expletives from ShadowSpartan in gameplay tests. :P
Edit: Also, thanks for the tag fix- I won't be able to test it until after this weekend, but hopefully it will work.
Are you using the stock biped? The only map I know of that does that is Coldsnap. As I think that was on purpose. Might be in the flag.weapon tag, look around in there to see if its different from the stock one.
I'll check around the same time I can test the splaser tags. Too much going on at the moment to do much now. Thanks for the tips!
this may have been addressed, (idk iv just been skimming, mainly for pictures) but this map looks enormous for gameplay. youre definitely either going to need another long range weapon or sniper rifles up the wazoo
The splaser pretty much rapes banshees, and there are enough snipers to keep things interesting. At this point it's got decent gameplay, it's more the technical side that's failing.
Update:
I have a secret.
Red base is portalled.
:neckbeard:
Stand by for more updates.
Did you finally get some help with the portals or did you do enough experimenting yourself to git r done?
Did it mostly by myself, with some advice from Firescythe. I sat down, and for the past 3 days I've been compiling and recompiling the map. During compilations, I've been playing Red Dead Redemption. Pretty nice combination.
Update update:
...and now so is blue base. Holy shit.
I'm liking the sound of this progress. Since the map calls for portals, I'm assuming it's a LOT larger than it appears in screenshots, making vehicular warfare an intricate part, correct? Also, I'm in the process of making some of my own maps and I want to know about how large a map HAS to be to where it calls for portalling.
Basically you should portal stuff anyway, but necessary portals are related to poly count, not size. You can have a massive 6 sided cube for a map, but you'll hit the default engine render distance before the game will start complaining about portals. And vice versa, you can have a really small, detailed map that MUST have portals. It all depends on how much stuff there is in your map.
For Precipice, most of my exterior stuff has no portals whatsoever, because it's fairly low-poly. However, my interiors have a lot more detail. My big problem has been my bases- optimized, each one has 20,690 faces. That's right, all in one room. 17,000 of those are on one wall. And you wonder why I've been struggling to get that room working right. However, now all I have to do is tweak the portals in red base to fix one very small problem, and then all the portals are done, thank god. Then I can move on to fixing glitches like the flag animations, figuring out why the spartan laser fix didn't work as planned, and tweaking spawn points and weapon spawn times. The end is near.
Oh yeah, and I still want to do custom lightmaps. Might as well go all out on this thing.
wtf.Quote:
Originally Posted by Siliconmaster
Quote:
Originally Posted by higuy
That. And believe me, that's optimized- I just spent quite a few hours cutting out a few more thousand polies the other day to make sure none of it was poly waste. The entire map is now optimized.
Add trees now so you can add lightmaps via 3ds max at high quality.
There are trees. And bushes. And stuff. But lightmaps come last- I want to make sure everything is where I want it first. That means a playtest, which I might be able to do next week at my friend's house.
Edit: Finally- fixed the last stubborn visual error. Precipice is now (as far as I know) 100% portal-error free.
Okay thanks. I think this advice will become greatly in handy, since one of my maps is completely an interior and the other has a part of the a30 BSP interior (2nd part by the cliff), which is beyond an astronomical amount of faces.Quote:
Originally Posted by Siliconmaster
Been doing some custom lightmap prep work. Got a lot of the outdoor stuff lit, and working on red base now. I think it looks pretty damned good so far. Of course, it's taking a shitton of lights to replicate the look of Halo's strip lights, and just to render a frame it already requires more than 4 Gb of ram. Thank god I upgraded to 8 Gb and Windows 7 64 bit.
Of course, I won't actually be able to render or import the lightmaps until I'm sure the bsp is finalized, which means a new beta test. No idea how I'll pull it off, but I'm sure I'll find a way.
That looks... ominous... I like it a lot.
I like how you are being original with the lighting.
That looks really nice!! Keep up the good work.
Finished the red base sniper roosts.
Edit: And the flag room:
That lighting is crazy.
Looks very classic. I hope it is perfectly legit for gameplay. You wouldn't believe all of the pretty maps that don't play out well.
That's insanely awesome lighting silicon my man.
It might not be the best map ever, but people in the playtests say that they enjoyed playing on it, so I'd call that a success.Quote:
Originally Posted by DarkHalo003
Glad everybody is liking the lighting. Do remember that these are just renders- no clue what it will look like ingame once it's imported.
I like how you can't see the entire cave, just the ring around the platform. It makes it look even more epic because you don't know how deep it goes or where you are.
I'm finally able to pull off some of my original ideas for the lighting- I just couldn't figure out how to do it in Halo because the trial and error process is so slow. Here, I can throw something together, render it in 15 seconds, and then modify it as I see fit. It's wonderful.
Just stay aware of the limitations of Halo's lightmaps. There is a limit to the amount of bitmap data that can be stored in a bitmap tag so most of your lighting will look blurier than it does when rendered. You can do test lightmaps for a single area if you want to get a rough idea of how things will actually look (using Halo's UVs that is).
Looks fantastic!
I can't wait to play it. Any estimation on the DOR?
:woop:
When it's done. :downs: Hopefully not that long.
I'm getting really excited for this now, I have no doubt it will be hosted on one of my Clan servers. I'll help spread the word about the map.
From someone in the education of graphics design (Hai Stormy!):
I totally agree with the statement!Quote:
I'd say it is on par with, if not better than, official Bungie maps.
You're nearly there, keep it up!
*delays release by convincing silicon to redo parts of the base*
muhahahah take that
http://www.modacity.net/forums/image...avatar4_66.gif
Ftfy.Quote:
Originally Posted by Con
Bastard.
That!? Why!?Quote:
Originally Posted by Siliconmaster
And, Con. That avatar was extremely appropriate. ;)
Looking awesome, the outside better be lit to the same standard~
No, I told him there was no way in hell I was messing with the front of the base. More like this:Quote:
Originally Posted by Vadam930
Don't ask. I'll have a mockup done in a few days, and maybe then it'll make sense, and we can see if it's worth the change.
How's this for a start:Quote:
Originally Posted by Reaper Man
moar - You could try a precipice during the night, which would possibly look beast.
<-- would have to make a new sky
Yeah, I personally like the current lighting scheme- topside it's a late cloudy afternoon/evening, and in the canyon it's much darker, so all the lights look brighter. Basically below the canyon level it is nighttime.
I hope you plan on lighting the canyon a bit better, lights running down the wall or something vOv
Remember that a lot of lights are missing from that render. Anywhere that the player will be will be well lit- the base platforms, the lower land bridge, etc. I'm contemplating ideas for making the canyon more interesting/well lit, but it all depends on how many free polies I have after the new restructuring. I also have to try to estimate how much tag space the custom lightmaps are going to take up.
And as for the mockup, here it be:
I just thought of something. See how you have the bridge damaged near the centre? Maybe create some damage on one of the canyon walls. For example in this sort of area:
http://i49.tinypic.com/oho1tl.jpg
It just seems a little strange to me that there is a gaping hole in the middle of the bridge (looks like something has cut clean through it), and there is no damage sustained anywhere near it.
Just my 2c.
Though, that jump looks like it's going to be fun! =)
Some damaged areas would be good- I have a list of stuff that I want to add in for detail reasons if I have enough poly space after the new base modifications. That's definitely one of those items. Maybe not right there though- might be more on the main canyon walls- those need to be broken up a bit more.
