INF_AFTERMATH ( v1.05 )

[Dr.DR4IG]

 

I N F     A F T E R M A T H

HUGE OVERVIEW HERE

 Tweaked the land and added some platforms to the buildings in ALPHA territory where needed. Some waypoint tweaking was done as well. Bots now cap and defend well, And BRAVO bots are even pointed to push into ALPHA territory as needed to make things a bit harder. There isn't a roof so camping the rooftops from BRAVO  is possible as well.

D O W N L O A D     L I N K S :

TMS LINK!

SKYDRIVE LINK!

( Not sure how to move my posts, So left the 'idea' thread and posted the usual map details here. )

[DarkCrusade]

The right side looks like you just threw everything together and stopped working on it. There is no shading, no dynamic lighting. Sometimes the scenery just doesn't fit (e.g. blue lamps) or it's not big enough (sky). Additionaly, it looks better to use black fades if you want a black border instead of only a black border and scenery being cut off "violently". Do you get me?

The layout will work, but it's nothing special and nothing new. Maybe you should think more about a decent layout before starting to map. I know that's boring but it helps and if you really want to create good maps it's necessary.

[Dr.DR4IG]

The right side looks like you just threw everything together and stopped working on it. There is no shading, no dynamic lighting.

 If you're relying on the overview to point out the shading, I flat-colored the bricky areas for the overview image only so it'd look better as a small snapshot against it's background. In-game it's shaded. It wasn't 'thrown together' as much as it was me trying to place some proper platforms around to give more areas to defend from. The scenery is darker and better meshed than it appears in-game. Mostly due to the stupid white halo effect for PNG images in SOLDAT. Without that particular bug the effect looks better in the editor.

The layout will work, but it's nothing special and nothing new. Maybe you should think more about a decent layout before starting to map. I know that's boring but it helps and if you really want to create good maps it's necessary.

 That's the problem though. People telling me 'It's nothing new' and no one telling me what they'd LIKE to see in a map to make it new. Pretty much everything's been done at this point.

[Suowarrior]

Actually the layout is probably the best part in whole map... I think it's giving slight advantage for bravo to have defense as there's only one way to get into base.

You attack, you kill enemies, take the flag, while you try escape, then enemies respawn, then there's pretty huge difference in flagger's chances if defenders spawn at top, far from flagger or into bottom base, where defenders can shoot the flagger down right away. This is adding a bit randomness and luck into game. Good/bad, dunno.

I agree with DC on that the scenery doesn't look good at some places. More importantly, the background work is too heavy, there's too much different bright colors, too much too huge fancy stuff, which is giving me headache in no time (and well then theres dark background which makes damn painy to find the black flag). Also I know that it's gonna cause fps problems for many who got worse computer. Also I had a couple issues to see where the actual route goes, for example I could bet that the brown mountain scenery at top of bravo spawns would collide. LESS IS BETTER!

For the looks I recommend you to check some of these maps, check how they are produced: http://forums.soldat.pl/index.php?topic=36652.0

They don't have s**tload of stuff at background work, but the look is still stunning. I don't say that copying one's style is the best thing to do, but comparing to this "fulfill bg with everything you got" style it's way better. I believe with your skills with producing new scenery you will have your own 'playable' style right away.

And well seems like you've forgotten the polygon overlapping and other polybug fixes I showed you in other map... The same things still cause bugs!

Might sound harsher that I meant, but at least you should understand the point.

Edit: At the Asteroids map you had endurable bg scenery, not too distracting.

[Monsteri]

Yeah I agree with suowarrior, scenery on background is too bright and colourful, I thinked too that some of them were walkable. I hope you fix that thing, and if black flag weren't flashing, it could be almost imbossible to see it. I think Layout is good, and all, but those sceneries. Fix them, and it will be much better.

[Dr.DR4IG]

Actually the layout is probably the best part in whole map... I think it's giving slight advantage for bravo to have defense as there's only one way to get into base.

You attack, you kill enemies, take the flag, while you try escape, then enemies respawn, then there's pretty huge difference in flagger's chances if defenders spawn at top, far from flagger or into bottom base, where defenders can shoot the flagger down right away. This is adding a bit randomness and luck into game. Good/bad, dunno.

   Thus why I moved a LOT of things around. It was actually much harder before as the BRAVO spawns were hosted more around the entrance and first STAT gun on the BRAVO side. Now they're pushed a lot further back and up from the BRAVO flag area.

   I did this as a means of trying to balance how impossibly hard it could be to get into the BRAVO bottleneck. Same reason I added the PlayerCollide platforms about the outside (ALPHA Territory) sections and added STAT guns to the two slopes of the sewers area. In our own games a lot of time was spent rushing to either the STAT positions to hold them for our own troop movements to slip by easier, Or manning the platforms or roof (You can get up there with a LAW or M29.. It's sweeeet.) near the bottleneck for similar reasons. Simply running from one end of my maps to the others pell-mell almost never works. I always try to place terrain, Colliders and STAT guns/Grenades  to force at least a couple pointmen on each team to rush and hold important places.

I agree with DC on that the scenery doesn't look good at some places. More importantly, the background work is too heavy, there's too much different bright colors, too much too huge fancy stuff, which is giving me headache in no time (and well then theres dark background which makes damn painy to find the black flag).
Also I know that it's gonna cause fps problems for many who got worse computer.

Yeah I agree with suowarrior, scenery on background is too bright and colourful, I thinked too that some of them were walkable. I hope you fix that thing, and if black flag weren't flashing, it could be almost imbossible to see it. I think Layout is good, and all, but those sceneries. Fix them, and it will be much better.

 The contrast was a bit tricky as I had to try and guess before seeing it in-game what the white-halo-pngbug would do to the textures. The blue lights, Fences, Screens in actuality were much darker in the editor. My monitor is set on 'proper' gamma values, Due to that %^&* crap Adobe creative suite does with my gamma settings so black and dark grey are actually visible on my end. I'm sorta trying to set up a separate smaller PC in the corner tonight to double as a test machine/SOLDAT server if I can figure out this bloody unintuitive router. THAT one I'm not installing ADOBE on XD.

 If by 'Walkable' you mean can walk ON the few with that set should be on the ALPHA territory side for helping push the flag but they should be playercollideonly..

 IF you mean instead they're ABOVE the bullet layer, Yeah that's stupid and I noticed it this morning.. Either way I'm going to DEL that layer and just use invisible playeronlycollide polys for the same reason but better look. The reason those plats are there besides offense/defense positions for the Soldaten, Is because half the time I was falling towards the roof or platform, I was expecting to land on it.. And they're my own $%^& sceneries. XD So.. Yeah..

 For the most part, The textures for the grass and such are the same I'm using for geothermal and should be in the same brightness/tone as that map was. It just SEEMS brighter because of the dark background. As I said it looks fine on my end but I have 'proper' gamma on the card. (Again, Not my words but this ADOBE gamma thing.. ) It shouldn't be too hard to just go into polyworks and just PAINT the offending layers with a grey tone to darken to taste. Might be a useful feature in later SOLDATs to have the scenery toggled via layer as it seems the most part of a map's hit or mis seems to be personal taste in textures.

 You can understand my hesitation to change one or two small things like that, Seeing as how each 'large' background segment consisted of me painstakingly moving single sprites of grass and such into position. And to give an idea, Each three blades of grass was one sprite. ;} I had three of those grass tiles to work with, And about 5 ranging from flowers to fungus. I am working on from-scratch darker-looking sceneries, Trees and such but I'm taking my time with them, And will likely take weeks before they see any similarity to a useable, Distributable pack.

 As for the FPS issues, I try to keep my large background pieces (The BACK layers) 256 color image PNG to save on size/rendering to avoid this. I hate to point out bugs in other's work for examples, But a recent TW map showed how full-color backgrounds make a difference from lowres ones to me rather simply. Basically I played both that map and Geothermal while trying to figure out a basic INF/TW map which became this one with 24 bots. (Yus.. 24.. I always test with a 'full' load to try lag)

   That map lagged terribly just trying to move about or do anything till I was out of range of the bots on the same screen as me. On this and geothermal with that botload, There was no difference between my FPS now and before. I'm actually on an old-as-dirt machine. (BARTON class CPU, No sse2/sse3/dualcore stuff) The only thing 'recent' on this rig is the videocard. Still trying to build that smaller-spec test p3 tho so I'll have another machine to test on.

Also I had a couple issues to see where the actual route goes, for example I could bet that the brown mountain scenery at top of bravo spawns would collide. LESS IS BETTER!

   Not entirely sure what you mean by this..? If you mean the contrast should be less on the section of background meeting the sky at the far --> right of the map where the cliffface meets the sky I agree with you there. I thought I'd added a roof there but I must have forgotten to save those changes. But It'd be easy enough to change the contrast a bit more bland to relegate it more to the background.

For the looks I recommend you to check some of these maps, check how they are produced: http://forums.soldat.pl/index.php?topic=36652.0

They don't have s**tload of stuff at background work, but the look is still stunning. I don't say that copying one's style is the best thing to do, but comparing to this "fulfill bg with everything you got" style it's way better. I believe with your skills with producing new scenery you will have your own 'playable' style right away.

 As I've pointed out before (And no offense to the authors, I actually have a lot of these maps in my circulation because they're quick and fun.) if you were to only look at the thumbnails you'd come to the same conclusion that they all have a similar appearance. You can look at them and say, "Hey.. It's a soldat map" without seeing a single object or sprite on it. I was trying to get away from the usual "Dirt. grass. Random bunker. More grass. SPOTLIGHT. Truck. More dirt." looks a lot of them have. What I think you're TRYING to get across to me is the geometry of my maps as opposed to the scenery. Not nesessarily the layout either. The way I'm constructing my land and such..

And well seems like you've forgotten the polygon overlapping and other polybug fixes I showed you in other map... The same things still cause bugs!

 Not forgotten, Still working on. I had this map up in the IDEAS section for people to help me nail things like this but in the few days it was there no one really said anything, So I posted the bloody thing here. Plus this map has taken longer than usual. I am still fighting a cold here and I have two other maps for people on the side to help with... XD

Edit: At the Asteroids map you had endurable bg scenery, not too distracting.

 I actually consider Asteroid "S" one of my junk maps. I much preferred the look I ended up with in Facility better. (Thus why the two maps are similar in layout..)

 The background purplish-blue stuff I used in Asteroid "S" was a 5-minute photoshop tiling and marquee cutting job with filters thrown at it while the multitexture itself was also a 5-10 minute jobby thrown together from 8-bit tiles and my older Quake2 textures. XD I don't consider it 'good' but I guess some like it. XD

 Go easy on me though, I AM thick sometimes but I'm quick to make nesessary changes and if enough are warranted do a REDUX.

[Blacksheepboy]

I played it. The coliding cactuses are a downer and that grass scenery in front of the player is probably too heavy. You seem to really like scenery in front of the players.

Edit:

So you play this online with people? If that's the case, jealous . I just test everything with silly bots

[smiluu]

I know you were cautious of being similiar with majority of the mappers. That's a cool thing and all, but heavy sceneries for main dish mixed with awfully matching polygons (let alone colors), tossed with some spice of overdoing and a side taste of endless neglect in layout and gameplay unfortunately is just so seen thing in soldat mapping community already. I'm not implying to the suckage of the layout here or anything, I'm just dissapointed in the visuals that you managed to nail off quite nicely back here. There the scenery looked more original, organized, thought through and it was not much of an eyesore nor fps problem. I'm drunk and I'm only looking at this map so it's given I have no clue what I'm talking about. Atleast follow my tips as far as giving that background scenery a rest already just for lulz cmon