Digital Amusement Game Development
  
|
Once released, there will be so much more ease to get radiant configured and usable for Urban Terror 4. The original v01 was very notepad driven, lots of dry reading. Now, it's been sexified with html, clicky things, and better visual examples. Lots of new content too. There's some game reviews I want to do when I can... Psychonauts and Paper Mario 2. But very interesting games. A few more shader techniques I've thought of. Paying attention to grass on curbs, I think there's a blending tecnique that might work well for edges, and for surfaces, I'm looking at ways to make give folliage more depth, less flatness. Also been paying attention to real world lighting. Hmm... I wonder if I could use a hall of mirrors effect behind a tex to create sunlight blur...
http://media.digitalamusement.com/maps/ut4_mapmaker_v01.zip - UPDATE new version available Extract this zip file to your quake3/q3ut4 directory. Follow the included instructions. This file will greatly assist in getting you mapping for Urban Terror 4.0 asap. Use the DA forums for additional questions, or email me.
Inversion Mask Lighting: Bricks from ut4_sanctuary, normal lighting:  Inversion mask technique:  This is reminicient of a method I came up with some time ago, however there's a few differences in how the end goal is reached. An inverted greyscale alpha mask put through a luminosity blend starts the process. :) I'm going to continue my experiments, then pull together a map with the resulting effects.
Played some more maps, now I'm starting to see the real potential of 4.0. The characters do look cleaner (and there's some rather impressively detailed textures on them). The guns are cleaner. I have few problems with hit detection. Loading ut4_riyahd, I like it! The sand looks good, the buildings in the middle remind me of paintballing. The ability to slide feels even better now. Algiers is solid, I like the new changes. Suttle, seem to work well. Speed of the game is fast... I can see I've rusted a bit. Although I still pwn with the HK69 grenade launcher. ;) Tonight I hope to look more into the shader tests I've been conjuring up. I've got some hollywood magic in store. The main one I call Inversion Mask Lighting. The second will be tricky - Phantom Material Recess Texturing. The third is near-distance detailing. Serious Sam implemented something like this. DankRider pointed out something very important today that I recognized in yesterday's review. The included maps are narrow and small. No large maps. The game needs large maps. I'd like to get a urt4_superman_b3 compiled. I think KOTH is first on my plate of funmap remakes (yes even before sled_extreme). More to come. Things are looking up.
http://media.digitalamusement.com/urt4/dense_compression/ original file: UrbanTerror40_full.zip - 535M dense compression method: Advanced_Install-UrbanTerror40_full.rar - 406M This was done without any changes to the final files. Both above will end up as the same q3ut4. Next, finally got some good time in on 4.0. My thoughts: - I'm not impressed, but it is a better game - The texturing, although skillfully worked into the maps, are still low-res within 5 feet - Most of the maps play very much the same... some routes, move through the linear paths, shoot forward. Little deviation from the standard. - The engine appears maxed out. It's time for a new engine that's more capable of using the hardware's capabilities. Sorry Quake3. :( - FPS appears generally lower. - Hit detection appears very improved. Not perfect, only a few issues. Actually, it was finally fun to use an automatic weapon again. :) - The lighting doesn't seem that drastically different. Again, better. I say this because of the texture resolution issue. Appears to be contrast issues with washed out greys instead of hard dark recessions. - Sliding adds some movement relief, retaining the speed of the game. - Hats n stuff are great additions. Little things count. :) - Rommel (now ramelle) blew away most of the tunnels. This sucks, hard. Graphically, I felt like I was in a Quake2 mod. - New player models are cool. Their running animation looks slightly strange, but then again I could be too used to current animations. - I think the maps in general are unrealistically lit which deviates from what really is some good looking maps. Ramelle could use some of that contrast drear. - I like the idea of ioUrbanTerror - standalone. See my comment about this in the Urban Terror forms: http://www.forums.urbanterror.net/index.php/topic,7336.0.html - In Oswald's radio show, why, why?! could he simply not resist unnecessarily talking shit about people like he's the end all answer to what's right? Com'n, why is he still trying to push people away? There isn't many left! Ok that last point is more me bitchin than anything, but disappointing none the less. Overall, I think I'll enjoy the game more making fun maps than playing the game. In the meantime, let's have a little more fun: The backwards compatibility thread Finding out what works from UrT 3 in UrT 4. :)
Man it's good to be part of the community again. Not just that, when all was done, it been a long time since I've felt like I gave something significant back. Today it was in the form of release distrobution. I'm sure a couple hundred gigs were freed off other servers, giving gamers the goods faster. I'm going to keep these files up for a while. If in the future the links no longer work, it shouldn't be hard to find the files. All files below: http://media.digitalamusement.com/urt4/ I've created split .rar archives to assist in downloading. The total size is reduced up to 20M. The whole game: http://media.digitalamusement.com/urt4/UrbanTerror40_full.zip http://media.digitalamusement.com/urt4/rar/ Self-installer of the whole game: http://media.digitalamusement.com/urt4/UrbanTerror40_full_Installer.exe http://media.digitalamusement.com/urt4/rar_installer/ Also on-the-fly, thanks to a lot of frustration buiding maps in the past, I was also able to step up and provide a quick solution to the hunkmeg problems that started showing up for a bunch of players. This fix made it's way to the Urban Terror website immediately. http://media.digitalamusement.com/urt4/HUNKMEG_FIX-URT4_SHORTCUT.txt I'm pretty satisfied with my contributions today. :) Maybe I'll even get to play in a few days... thanks to everyone that made this release possible. I'll follow up soon.
I've come up with a few shader ideas. This one is fairly simple. Involves the lightmap blended with multiadd, a high contrast black/white of the underlying texture blended with filter, then the texture. I'll try to get a demo up soon. Lastly for tonight. I found there's a new/current version of Gtk. Not GtkRadiant, but the backend program that powers gtkradiant. I installed this, and was able to finish ut_sled_free. In fact, I've done some interesting work with gen_surf to create a suitable mountainside for ut_sled_extreme.
 Teams spawn on the side of a mountain, each has their own zone. When you hit the hill, it's like a big slip-n-slide.  All this ski/snowboarding makes you go FAST. The map curves so you can whip and flip with crazy airtimes.  So now you're glancing around as the world blurs by, and another guy drops in from another route, moving fast too - it's a firefight on rails now! Very James Bond-ish because now you're moving (slide direction influence) while trying to hold your crosshairs on the target.  By this point you're moving somewhere around 60mph +/-20 while hill, edges, terrain, curves, speed etc are turning an exact science into probable cause. Here, it's actually fun to miss...flying downhill with bullets blazing past...sometimes the reverse of a mexican standoff. Anyone remember SkiFree for Windows 3.1? That was a great 16-bit game. Simple and fun. Got that same kind of feel here (without the sasquatch unless him and his bro yeti show up ;) Another unique map by a wily duck. Glad to have it working and cleaned up. Looking to create sled_extreme - already have some of the heightmap done. Might still take some time thus I make no guarantees. The lighting of this map renders it potentially able to be used right off the bat in 4.0. It's always fun to skip vis calcs. /me ducks :V
It's been a while. Frog has convinced me to work on ut_sled. I have finally made the modifications needed to fix the broken spawns, and add some visual additions. This work got the mapping blood flowing, and as such I've conceived the next version. Tomorrow I will release ut_sled_free, the update to ut_sled_v2. Within a month I intend to have the next version, ut_sled_extreme ready for release. Now, this depends on some variables I don't have control over, specifically my current situation with my work. Significant is occurring on a daily basis. Regardless, I've got my plan for the map, I want it to happen. A rather amusing story - a couple weeks ago I was playing DBZ on the Wii after throwing a football around all day. Fighting 5 guys in a row (this was a lot), on the 5th I was in a kill-or-be-killed situation. A rapid thrust forward with the wiimote and my shoulder went with it, tearing something within. Needless to say I lost. It hurt, a lot. Is this a "quick blame nintendo and $ueeeeeeee!" moment? hell no. My own damn fault, and it was pretty funny too. Didn't pick up the Wii for at least a week and stayed extra nice with motions from my right arm. Picked the game up, tried the same fight, couldn't win because I still had concerns of overstressing myself. Probably about two weeks, came back, played strong and won. I sit at a computer far too long.
In the real world, I have personal priorities, extremely high ranking. There is the matter of work, my job, it's fate. My company has just been bought out, leaving the short wick of doom lit by a laughing mad bomber looking at his watch getting closer to $$'oclock. Team members falling off, leaving the burden to the remaining. I like a challenge. This challenge, however, incurs another challenge of sliding extra time into the multitasking machine. I'm not complaining. It's tough but I fanagle some out of it. Then there's the psychological. Oswald. He is the eccentric, arrogant gloom cast over an otherwise great community of free gaming. Worse, he's the center-foo that calls the shots. I've voiced my opinions on the matter many times, more or less the damage done to the game of Urban Terror. Obviously as the front-man, he's had to do some things right to keep the game at least alive for 5+ years, but what does it matter when he's the one being looked up to, looking back down telling the folk STFU MY GAME DO IT MY WAY I KNOW WHAT YOU WANT ALREADY. Hey whatever man. Fuck: you. Your persistent inability to appropriately identify with your position as a community leader has cost you dearly. Most players have moved on, most mappers have quit, or perhaps moved on, and you have nothing but excuses to show for it. Urban Terror also lost one of it's best mappers, not known for great looking maps, but fun, playable maps with a great deal of replay value. Speaking from being the mappers' greatest fan, that mapper is ME. The maps I come up with are my favorites because they're the most fun. "Most" is relative of course, a category inclusive to some other fine maps, like eagle, laberinto, rommel, park_ave, etc. I mak|de maps that I'd play to absolute death. ISn't that the purpose of a game? When will gamemakers begin creating seperate maps for competition vs public play? id Software's Enemy Territory would have been out months ago if they weren't so damn concerned about competition balance. Here's an idea, create a public map version that doesn't have to have flags tweaked down to the unit, then you can sweat over how L33t_D00d can execute the almost-hax combo move. It's easy! pub_ubermap gets released first (don't use it as a lazy excuse for forcing a release i.e. could've spent an extra 8 hours on just simple optimizations, that'll burn you), then moooonths later comp_ubermap gets released. Gaming is in a tough state. See below for my review on Dragon Ball Z for the Wii. That's gameplay. Unreal Tournament - Onslaught. That's gameplay. Ms. Pacman. That's friggin gameplay!!! Making a fun game isn't that hard! It's going to be 1985 again before you know it...
It's been a very challenging and extremely rewarding game. There's so much depth to the controls. It's very much like Soul Calibur, with two more axis's and the ability to use the Z-plane for fighting. Seriously, O-M-G the fight sequences are incredible. If you're a fan of the DBZ cartoon at all, you'll understand the intensity of some of the more epic battles. Amazingly, absolutely amazingly this game has accurately captured the over-the-top fighting style that is DBZ. Let me give some initial examples: enemy is 200ish feet away horizontal, floating. I'm on a raised plateau or something. Enemy lights up a huge energy blast beaming in my direction. Note that this beam is rolling in real time, and FAST. I see, and react with a paniced whipping of my left hand to the left, my guy leap-cartwheels out of the way as where I stood is now occupied by a barreling subway train of white light. I could have hit down on the d-pad on my right with the correct timing and teleported out of the way, or just held down and hoped for the block. I could have reversed with a instant released beam of my own, minimal time pending, to lock into an energy struggle where I'd whip around the analog stick to overcome. In another fight that struggle occured at the third/final guy in the fight, both of us had a hit left, we somehow locked in an energy struggle. The fighting is EPIC. The levels are HUGE (think superman x 4 for most maps). Another guy hits me, I'm sailing backwards to a rock wall, and with cartoon dead-on action, I hit the button at the right time, toes touch the wall instead of my back, I leap right back with the same inertia then land a kick upon approach. None of this is scripted. It's all timing. All of the moves per character are at one's disposal, it's a huge undertaking to get them down... well because although the fighting is good, the game has a HUGE amount of depth! How many characters? Hell I've only seen a few dozen and they span eras from end of red ribbon to at least buu. And there's a LOT of empty character slots. WOW. There's a lot of game modes, I'm hacking at the story. All the cut-scene fat has been cut, maybe too much. They say action, now. It's also funny when the story goes linear and you whoop the next dudes' ass with a character, only to have your character lying in shambles in the following cutscene. lol "hey I totally wiped the floor with that guy! what!?" I want to say the controls make the game, but no, there's a few other platnium points. The graphics: what's this about the PS3 having this incredible rendering capability? All who have witnessed DBZ have noted the excellent graphical work. It's cartoon-rendered. It moves, looks, and plays in-game exactly like the cartoon. Stunning. There's environment damage. Leave holes in the ground with the enemy you dropped like a meteor. Throw him through a mountain, a building, whatever. And then there's Goku's spirit bomb. Get one of those off on your opponent.... and scale back to planetary view as you watch about a 1/16th of the planet get re-arranged, return to the level that totally decimated, armageddon style. The voices are right on, American cartoon version of course. I want to hook this up to my surround sound system. A few more notes on fighting. The controls and moves alter based on some conditions. Close combat has different fighting capabilities than long range. The wiimote keeps a cursor on screen - that you can use for making hits accurate, or pull it close to the edge for a change in styles, or bring it off-screen in either of the four sides to trigger yet another move set. All of these things are happening at once, it's overwhelming for a while. The toughest part is remapping the brain to handle both the new controllers and the behavioral movements, then factor timing into the mix - attacks, counters, defense, relocating, when to generate ki... etc! This is the first console game I've been excited about playing in a long time. The Wii controls have proven to be a superior control set when taken full advantage of. I've heard of the gamecube wavebird control being used instead because of the lack of will to learn the advanced nunchuck controls. It's truly a worthy game.
The ps3, as expected, is somewhere over there, where it exists but popularity is not. Funny how the first ps3 I saw was around a few guys playing madden for the ps2 on it. It's going to take a while for the console to catch on. Meanwhile, the Wii is an experience one needs to experience. We're living in the future, maaaan. Yeah, and no new superman of any kind until at a minimum urban terror 4.0 is released. Next page |
