First attempt at an RMA slice...

[Quidgiboo]

Hi everyone,

Wanted to contribute a bit to this project, so I spent the weekend learning a bit of Radiant (even more respect for the map makers now..) Anyway, my first attempt at an actual slice is a crashed Supply ship in the frozen set, seemed appropriate after shooting so many of them down over the antarctic. Please let me know what you think, and if anyone with more talent could have a look and tell me if i've started with any bad habits, that'd be awesome...

Cheers!

[H-Hour]

Quick glance: construction looks solid and on good principles. I don't have time now for full comments but if you don't hear from me or ShipIt in a few days send me a PM to remind me to reply in more detail.

[Mattn]

I like it. I will apply this to master

Thanks a lot

[Mattn]

it's not yet added to the ump - but it's now in master. thanks again

[ShipIt]

Hello Quidgiboo,

you did a nice job with this. I added the missing entries, so if you play the latest master you can now check out your work in game. Just choose the frozen_crash_medium_industrial or frozen_crash_medium_nature maps in the single player skirmish menu - or keep on shooting down Supply UFOs in campaign mode  .

There are only few things I noticed that need some more work. First, all brushes need to have correct levelflags. Second, the main texture of the terrain (snow002) has a different scaling than the other tiles. Also I would like to have the border textured also, to stay consistent within the theme. Also there is a gap in the brushwork next to/below the broken right wing of the UFO.

Beside that I recommend to copy some trees from other tiles and place them on the map. This will help to break the lines between the different map tiles and give the assembly a more consistent look. Same goes for the snow particles.  Another thing is the fire (misc_fire) that is burning out of the snow. I think you will notice this stuff yourself if you do some playtesting.

Just in case you want to dig even deeper:
There are two different battlescape models for the Supply UFO. First is without a roof (so one can look into) and is shown on level two only. Second is a complete model which is shown on level three and above. The inner part of the UFO is brushwork, which is also visible on level two only. As on your map one cannot walk/look into the UFO, you could remove the first model and the brushes.

[H-Hour]

ShipIt, mattn: did you check the pathfinding? When I looked briefly last night I didn't see any actorclips to properly obstruct the player. Maybe I'm wrong, I just had a quick look. But perhaps we should make sure it functions properly before adding it to the UMPs. (The issues ShipIt raised about texturing, etc., could be fixed first, too.)

[Mattn]

afair there were nodraws used

[ShipIt]

ShipIt, mattn: did you check the pathfinding? When I looked briefly last night I didn't see any actorclips to properly obstruct the player. Maybe I'm wrong, I just had a quick look. But perhaps we should make sure it functions properly before adding it to the UMPs. (The issues ShipIt raised about texturing, etc., could be fixed first, too.)

I checked and played it. The stuff I mentioned is easy to fix and I could not see a reason to not add it. About the pathfinding I am somewhat confused, as from my experience it should not work this way, but it does. Still investigating this.

Of course if we encounter any problem Quidgiboo cannot fix himself, I will help him out. For now I think we should just give him some time to see and play the map in game and fix stuff, if he wants to. Some misaligned textures in a single map tile should not shy away too much players  .

[H-Hour]

Sure, I just had a look at the pathfinding and it doesn't seem too bad. Still I've added some pictures that show some problem areas -- places where the player can reach and shouldn't be able to, or where model geometry might overlap with solder/alien/civilian models on certain grids.

Typically, for any areas that are questionable and might lead to inconsistent results from the pathfinding code (which automatically determines what grids a unit can or can not reach), I like to add actorclip boxes. This way I can be sure the grids I want to be inaccessible are and I can better plan the other geometry. I made an image with a rough mockup of how I might block off the engine area as an example.

Again, nice overall construction on the tile. If you can clean up the items ShipIt mentioned that'd be great.

[Quidgiboo]

Thanks for the tips everyone, am working on them at the moment. One stupid question though: how are you able to bring up the pathfinding info to show the problem areas? Am I missing something obvious in Radiant?

[H-Hour]

If you have compiled the map into a .bsp that is in the same folder as the .map file, then you can go to View > Pathfinding. Note that this information is only as updated as the .bsp file, so if you make changes and want to check them you will need to compile again.

[Quidgiboo]

Ok, attempt 2! Textures and trees have been changed so that everything is more consistent, have filled a couple of bottomless holes in the ground layer, and cleaned up the inside of the UFO. I've also followed H-Hours method of actorclip-boxing off potential problem spots, though I'm now worried I've gone a bit overboard on that.. (the pictures were very helpful by the way, maybe worth including in the mapping how-to section?)

One odd thing though: when I look at this section in UFO it has very ragged shadows cast from the main UFO, and the shadow effect on the ground brushes sometimes causes an odd blob effect at the edges. Does anyone else see this, or is it due to the graphics settings on my computer?

Anyway, thanks for the advice, now to start thinking about the next piece!

[Mattn]

i've applied it to master - though there might be a small glitch with the trees - most of our leaves are only visible from the upper side. did you check that in-game from different angles?

[H-Hour]

Looks good, but I think you'll have problems with the trees that have been knocked over because of what mattn said.

Also, see attached for how you can combine your actorclip brushes. Actorclip brushes are special so it won't actually effect performance to have separate brushes like you have done, but in the future it might be less work for you to create fewer brushes.

[ShipIt]

I made some small changes, and this ^ is how it looks in game now.

Quidgiboo, I don´t think you need to put more work into this, but if you want to, you should use the version that is in master now and start from there.

Nice job, well done.

edit - I linked to the map in our repo (master) and removed the attachment, so it will always be the most up-to-date version of the file, even if it is later changed by someone else.