|UR| Littlefoot More RedBull and doughnuts for the duck!!!!!
|U
choongsta yo whatup fellow map makerzzz
zimm BEER for duck
BugDave lub is in the air
Dierth wily is still pimptastical, w00t!
punkinseed looks very intersting. I look forward to seeing it
Karib I will begin my map :p
zimm you must make GREAT MAPS!! and you do. duck ROCKS
choongsta greetings
zimm where's this new map eh?
Karib I will try a map myself :)
FSK405M imma goin to quak con next year, i promise!
Havoc
[DiE]rth wily makes maps for the people!
FSK405M i will download an 80 Meg version on superman!!!
no-1 nintendo
nintendo the day after2
PowerRAV can i be a superman_beta tester? =P
FSK405M Kick Ass
Nonus I know I rock but I dont know about the others
FSK405 wily duck you all rock!
M yay
Nonus Someone just went for a pee in the pond
BugDave I Lub You
FSK405M brb going for another beer
FSK405M I sell maps for beer money
Hybridesque *squeek!* *BANG*, was that my shotgun?
el kabong ferget koth gimme Giant of the Valley
FSK405M beer = money
FSK405M money = beer
Soft2 Quack!
FSK405 KAG Pirate HAR HAR HAR Lighting-Of-Gonads
FSK405 SPIDER As usual ur maping skills is amazing me
Scotsman Holla
FSK405M ut_temple2...... mmmm
FSK405S Deer season is over, is it duck season yet?
[C-88]GO-GO Dam U...... Dam U all.
Dragonne{TRIAD} Try using EZGen for terrain.
BugDave FUCK YOU JOE BOO!
Tetrahydro awsome fun with 30 bots,head,head,head,head,head,h
FSK405E mushroom 2 pints of beer and half a duck please
Coinbird I want some coins
Marsupilami Do the Kirby dance <( ' ' )> <(' '<) (>' ')>
FSK405M YARRRRRR KAGG MANNN
Elmo The Sniper
Nonus Lord of Doom and Hatred a life lived is a life wasted
Nonus Lord of Chaos A blending we shall go
Nonus stop stealing my bah foof
FSK405N .:nugjar:. doh!
KAG Pirate HarHArHAR YAR Givey me, all be coins there mateee!!!!
FSK405 Earl Can't wait to play it man!
Packrat Ducks of a feather flock together!
foof add some softtrucks on the outside of the buildin!
FSK405|SPIDER Rock on man the map is looking cool!
Apoofoof this map pwns!
FSK405 Dubya oops ...
Apoofoof bah!
FSK405M
FSK405 a wily duck Shoutout to everyone at the pond!
06-27-2003
I've been working on the lobby for the main tower, which I'm calling tower 1 for now. I moved the whole
elevator shaft back to the back wall, and added a back access door. The overpass now works and you can
travel to and fro quite quickly on it. The blue flag has been moved to the top of tower 2. All my tests
with the arch falls have proven to work as I liked them to. FPS is still high.
I'm going to be MIA for the next two week or so (maybe less). I know many of you are salilvating over a beta 2,
which I'll be working on via pencil and paper during my off time. Actually a lot of the design work has been
away from the computer. Creating the brushes and such is the easy part right now.
I'll see you all when I get back. GG!
06-23-2003 late
I fixed the overbright shader bug problem! Thanks to the map-center forums. See this thread for details.
And since the shader now works, I did some testing falling down the arches. HOLY FUCK. That's all I have to say.
I'm bringing a whole new strategy with this map. Yes, that is my characters' boots. No, he is not about to lemming.
Yes, he's moving very, very fast. No, there is no synthetic push assisting him.
06-23-2003 early
So I was laying back, concieving what to do with my map. Then it hit me. "Everyone loves overpasses!" Yes, in
a brilliant flash of light, I came to the realization that everyone does in fact love overpasses. Give it some
thought and you'll probably agree. Right? Sure.... well either way, I schemed up a great idea involving
using an overpass for 2 purposes: first, run under to prevent being sniped from above. Second, run over to
acheive maximum speed between the front and backside of the map. Both will be great for flag running. Not to
say any other paths won't be just as good or better. :) For you dedicated fans, I bring you a new screenshot
of what is developing as superman_b2.
The arches have a nodamage shader applied to them, and as you see is suffering from the "overbright bug". I'm
trying to fix that. However, with the shader applied, falling now takes on a new strategy...
06-22-2003
Couple quick updates. I've upgraded my primary machine to a gig of ram from a half gig. Compile times seem to
be lower. Also, I ripped out the offending shader statement that was causing so much compile time: the skybox
had a surfaceparm_light line on it. Since the skybox is so big, it has to think about a zillion little light
emitting pixels. Not any more...
I've spent the past couple days mapping, but haven't touched a computer to do it. Pencil, paper, rulers,
marker board, research, etc. Wow, I almost sound like a real mapper ya think?
06-19-2003 late
Whoa, the popularity of my map superman has exploded! Great! I'll be working on the second beta which will
feature many improvements over the first. For all that have played the map thus far, I have a
thread in the
forums for feedback. If you have any feedback, I'd appreciate it!
06-19-2003 early
Had some business to attend to. Meanwhile, I have released the first beta of my incredibly large map, superman.
Ghozt, adwg, and myself fragged for a while on the map a couple nights ago. I got good feedback from adwg which
will help improve my map. Give it a shot yourself, the beta is floating in the pond.
Of course, don't be expected to be wowed just yet. There is much more to do, and this beta signifies that the
map CAN be played on both sides. Tis a milestone. The front stairs are going away because I just don't like them,
and for some reason at the last minute the water shader wasn't behaving. If you load the map now, please note
the following important items: stand on the midpoint of the stairs and jump; climb either side of the building;
climb up the elevator and jump; fall into the water while kneeling.
I'll have improved the map by next release, both play and visuals. Enjoy for now!
06-12-2003
Ho ho! You've got to check this out. I've been working on this map I lamely called "ut_superman". The initial
idea is ctf OVER two towers. Now since I started building this map, I realized I had no architechural inspiration
for skyscraper design. After sitting down and sketching out ideas, I resorted to building with legos. That didn't
work out either, as I have mostly mindstorms which have very few basic lego blocks. So for now I whipped up a design
in gtkradiant that looked alright.
After some experimentation, I started wondering how tall I could build a tower. What I came out with was a 70
story tall monstrosity that takes a half hour to compile! That's why I set up my other machine to do compiling.
While this is going on, I checked out ThorN's new teh_tower for design inspiration. I'm going to tell you straight
out, this is one of the best looking UrT levels out there. As I'm writing this, ThorN has generously given me
permission to use his skybox for my map. :) Ok, here's the goods:
Yes, that's a SR8 maximum zoom screen capture there. Ants!
I'm going to do some more design to the map to make it playable, then let the masses have fun with it. If all goes
well, I'll have a pk3 up within a week!
06-11-2003
Ah so much going on in the life there's no doubt I missed a few days of updates here! I've been scheming up
plans for my first playable map. Momentum will be put on hold for now.
My new map is large, and takes a lot of time to compile. Thus, I have used my networks' power to harness my
spare machines' cpu.
Not much more to talk about right now. Should be an update tomorrow though.
06-05-2003
Well I haven't slept since um, yesterday, so I'm a bit off today. :) I spent my sleepless night swimming in gtk,
trying to recreate this bug I made. Again. Ok, first, tip of the day. How to make water: create a shader with
surfaceparm water and cull none, add your map textures/etc/blah shader pass and voila, you have a texture
that makes a brush water.
First, good news. I just discovered that there is such a thing as an overbright bug. Here's the
proof and solution. About damn time I
found proof that this is a bug.
Now the next thing that I'm trying to prove, replicate, and fix. After I cut and pasted a shader with a new
blend function from q3ase into my shader, my texture went to hell and hasn't been recoverable. Now my water
texture renders as notex. However, if I dupe the shader, dupe the texture, the new shader/texture works fine.
The only thing I possibly can remember breaking, and I'm pretty sure of this, is when I pasted the shader I might
not have deleted the original thus having two copies of the shader. I compiled the map at that point and that
was the end. I've spent quite a few hours now trying different methods to recreate the problem... nothing works
so far. Nor does that texture work in any map now. I'm suspicious of gtk somehow corrupting some config file
somehow. Parsing through the map file in wordpad, going through my registry, searching files for any
occurance of my texture, etc, STILL no answers.
I could take the shortcut, rename the texture and use that, but that doesn't fix the problem. What if that's a
wall texture applied to 100 brushes, and the wall texture breaks like my texture did here? I'm not going to
retex all my brushes!! Screw that. I'm going to figure this problem out. Any ideas, let me know.
06-04-2003
Today I'm going to talk about jumppads. There is one specific thing I want to discuss right away. GtkRadiant does
not build the entities for trigger_push and target_position correctly!!! Also, a little trick. The trick is the
trigger should be assigned to a caulk brush, rather than an origin brush. Q3 gets adgetated with a trigger_push
assigned to an origin brush for some reason, and will fail to load the map. There's probably a reason for this,
but at this time just use a caulk brush.
The trigger_push entity will have the key/pair required for target_position and vice versa when you create and assign
these two entities. You will know that a jumppad will work when the 3d window in gtk has a green line attached to both
entities. If there is no line, or a grey line, then look closely at the entity view (use the N key) and be sure that
the key/pairs match what commands are available for that entity.
Doing a little testing with jumppads, I found that trigger_push doesn't push downward. In other words you can't spike
people into the ground. Too bad, I was looking forward to that. You can however splat people on a wall. I tried midair
combos of different jumppads plus the addition of the surfaceparm nodamage shader property to my floor texture. In
the end, I'm leaping through the air, and falling gracefully to the ground. Lots of fun. :)
06-03-2003
Woot! FSK405 Ghozt linked me on our clan's homepage. Yeah!
Ok, on to more recent developments. Urban Terror beta 3 is on it's way. |NV|S has a new bomb model
to be used for bombmode. More notable for our purposes, he also has some nice tutorials on his page. You should
check them out.
I've got terrain down now. I tried adding phong shading, but haven't been successful. I wasn't even aware that
phong shading was an option with Q3. Want to see it in action? Check the detail in rommel, red flag side, in the
building front right of the flag with two platforms. You'll see the floor "reflecting" the light above. Awesome
detail. With terrain, it's just a matter of cutting the ground into triangle meshwork, then moving verticies. Simple,
eh? FSK405 Resident has been working on terrain recently as well. He's got an idea for a map that I think would
be a kick ass ctf map, has to do with an old fort. Props to another n00b mapper scaling the learning curve. :)
my terrain
I'm starting to get ideas for simple maps that would be good test grounds. I had an idea a while ago about releasing
a fun map a week for a while for a FSK fun day. My fun map ideas are just short of insane, probably a bit more suited
for Q3 rather than UrT, but I like UrT better. :)
I also cleaned up the pond a little bit, moving old files into stuff/ and adding a file filter. Sign the pad on the left
so I know ya love the pond!
06-01-2003
I haven't brought you any screenshots in a while, but don't worry, that's not a sign of impending doom. I'm doing
a lot of n00b testing, like making a room with skybox textures, lots of breakables, more shadering, circumventing
various bugs, etc. It's a lot of grunt work. Nothing pretty about that.
There is one aspect of real life that I'm trying to capture in my map. At night, I do sit-ups, push-ups, etc in my
living room, in the dark of the night. However, there is one streetlight outside that casts a really awesome orange
glow through my stained glass window, creating this very interesting light casting on my wall. Honestly, I think
it's beautiful. Strange eh? As I said, I'm going to attempt duplicating that. I haven't figured out the time of
day that my map will occur in yet, so it's still set at night.
I broke down and shoveled a bunch of questions into #urbanmappers. Big props to all the people there, always very
patient and helpful. I tried to convince |NV|S to release two versions of upcoming ut_streets2, but he let me know
about the challenges of mapping with guidelines, per SID's
standards. It makes me think. I've seen creative limits all around in gaming. Usually it's due to hardware/technology
requirements. But now that I face the situation myself... yuk. Hey, it's a challenge, and isn't the challenge part
of the fun? (I hope so! :)
Finally for today, I've shown off my map to a few friends. They love it. Then they go tell their friends "ya gotta
see this thing Dan's making!" and I eventually show them. My friend that lives upstairs (also my land lord), has had the best quote of them
all so far. "My house is a video game!" LOL. It's the astetic value of being able to frag at home, at home. What a
great map to start with. I wonder where I'd be now if I had been able to get DeHackEd to build a map of my old house
back in the day like I wanted?
05-30-2003
Twas a long night last night. The behaviour of my shaders are suspicious. There's a hole I made in a wall which uses
a texture to look like the shards of the wall are scorched. In order to climb through the hole, I decided it would
help to make the shard brushes non-solid, so I made a shader for the texture with surfaceparm nonsolid. Without me
specifying, the texture then become overbright. Looking through the shader manual, it says that all texture map
passes have rgbGen identity included as a default. I haven't found a way to circumvent that yet. It's annoying.
I was testing out the best way to lay an image over a wall, like a poster. Laying a brush face (the poster brush we'll call it)
up against a wall brush and adding cull none in the shader is not the answer. I thought maybe bring the brush back a little with polygonOffset would
work. But, alas, it did not. It would be really cool if things actually worked as advertised! I'm probably screwing
something up though. This is my rant where I say "dammit would shit just frickin work already???". :)
I spent a bunch of time last night playing with brush placement, lighting, and shadering. Besides trying to figure out
these shaders, lighting is not working the way I want it to either. I have so many questions, tutorials dodge around
the answers, and it's just impolite to get on #urbanmappers to burn up the high-end mappers time with relentless n00b questions.
As you can see, this situation is frustrating. I know why it is frustrating. I'm a programmer who likes to build from
scratch, because if something high-level breaks and I can't figure it out, I can go to the low level, figure it out,
and add code to make sure it doesn't happen again. No such luck here.
Ok, before I can start explaining how to build these shaders I have to get them working myself. I have some work ahead
indeed.
05-29-2003
Got quite a few things to talk about today. First, after trying and trying to figure out what was causing my shaders
to malfunction, I've found the answer. Thanks to help from the map-center
forums, it was hinted upon that the way I was listing my shader in the shader file was wrong. And so it was. Now with that
out of the way, progress continues! (whew) I've added more detail and a whole new area to ut_momentum, and spent the night
playing around with trying out new shaders. As I told .223|Apoofoof, you're going to love what I've done to this map. It's
a secret right now, but all will be revealed at the next beta release.
Using Q3ASE, a q3 shader design program, I've been learning different ways to make nice effects. Waves (vertex deformations),
gl texture light manipulations, and interesting ways to change a texture while totally eating up fps :) have been a part of a
well balanced meal. Mmm... meal. Really though, after seeing what I could do for myself with shaders, I give the Id designers
a pat on the back for making simple shaders create complex textures. I spent a decent amount of time watching the torch
animation in awe of how simple it really is. gj Id. Now as for Doom3... I'd like to know what new shader technology they
have in store... that shader on the pipes and metal looks really good.
Also, thanks to a tip from planetquake.com, Gray Matter studios is hiring
a entry-level designer.
Hoo hoo! I'm game. We'll see what happens with that.
Tomorrow I'll talk more about what kind of shaders I'm using to create what effects, and how to do them for yourself.
