Old Map, New Paint

[YoullNeverWalkAlone]

Allow me to rephrase that.
As soon as Steam/VALVe get their act togther. And allows me to even launch Steam. i will run it.

I had to erase almost every file in the Steam folder and restart to get it going last night. From reading the Steam forum, it sounds like some people have had this problem going back a couple weeks.

[M's]

Yea I removed my steamaps file, I'm now in the 18 hr process of redownloading it.

[MateoTheBold!]

Added some additional visual elements that don't affect gameplay.

Intriguing....

[MateoTheBold!]

I did a very mean run through with the purpose of trying to be as nitpicky as possible.


Here is an album with the bugs I found:
http://imgur.com/a/BI22n#0

Beneath each image is a description of the bug.

I assume that if I found it on one side, it is duplicated on the other.

[YoullNeverWalkAlone]

I missed the big event last Saturday. Can someone(s) post thoughts about how the map played? In particular I was curious about game length and the strategic elements of how it went.

[MateoTheBold!]

I did a very mean run through with the purpose of trying to be as nitpicky as possible.


Here is an album with the bugs I found:
http://imgur.com/a/BI22n#0

Beneath each image is a description of the bug.

I assume that if I found it on one side, it is duplicated on the other.

Looks like other people had a lot of these same bugs pop up on the other side, so it looks like they are duplicated on both sides; the main exception being red's back gate.

[Zork Nemesis]

A couple of things I noticed.

There are many locations where rocket jumping too high will put you above untextured areas, such as these shots in the red spawn.

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There are also numerous places where the ceiling is either low or oddly shaped. While low ceilings may not be an issue, randomly hitting one of the "ceiling jags" as I'll call them can be a bit disorienting. The worst one I experienced was when I rocket jumped in the direction of the blue team's third spawn coming from the ridge path. I was stopped somewhere between the path and the bunker next to the tunnel.

[Mad-Hammer]

Sigh...........NOoooooo, please don't make me change all those draw distances. I was only looking out for your all's FPS!!!! Okay, I'll do it but if you all take a performance hit, well, I told ya so. The fast method on this would be to select all the props on the map and set them to -1 which means no fade. Compile it and see what it does to my rig performance wise. That might actually help the server because I believe it is asked to make the extra calculations in regards to draw. Maybe, with all the area portals that I installed, props won't be as big an issue as I originally thought.

Most of the other stuff is easy to fix, some of it, I'm still trying to figure out what happened.

The seam in the Point 2 building is a glitch caused by making something function_detail. I compile the map one time and you'll see it and I can turn around and compile it again and it will disappear. When you work with the map editor, you find it handles a lot of things like that.

The open spot in the wall at Point 1 is a skybox issue. Just means I need to extend the wall down a bit to compensate for the skybox camera.

The water in the caves........that totally baffles me. All I did was change the texture. I went from hydro_cheap to 2fort_water and now I have this disappearing water trick. I think it's related to the area portal that is located in that area. Even though Red and BLU were set up identical, it only happens on the BLU side. So, while working on B7, I moved the water and split it between the portal.

Last but not least, the gates, probably something I did when I was tinkering with the timer settings. Which leads me to something else I've been working on today. I know you all don't want me to tinker with the layout but that gate at the first point is never gonna work right in it's current setup.

The problem is that it has two triggers on each side of the door. To the cave side, the trigger activates the door for Red and BLU. This allows both teams to open the gate. The trigger to the "Courtyard" side filters BLU, allowing only Red to be able to open the gates from that side and vice versa.

So, you may be all asking what this is all leading up to. What if I leave the trigger that lets both Red and BLU activate the gate from the cave side. Now I know what you're saying, "you're taking away the defenders ability to enter the caves. No, I'm giving the defenders a sneakier way to access the tunnel. A drop down point in the cave behind the gates. They can either attack an enemy buildup at the gate itself or push through the cave. If the defenders meet resistance, they can retreat back through the gate.

Let me know what you think, curse me if you want to. Oh and the usual question, did anyone notice any areas where you suffered a loss of performance.

[Mad-Hammer]

Okay folks, I sent the upload link to Stevo. As soon as he says it's a go, I'll post a link. In the meantime, here's the changelog for cp_warhammer_b7

The draw distances for the props in question are now set to not fade. Now the bad news, there is still some texture shift, the rock at the second point and the barrels. Reason for this I believe is that the area portals cause a certain amount of fade themselves. The props in question don't fade, their textures just kind of.........shift. The rocks in the valley surrounding the bridge no longer fade and do not suffer from texture shift. No area portals to occlude them.

The water in the caves had to be removed as it was popping in and out of site also due to the area portal. Even though I had the portals properly set up for water, the game engine decided it didn't like the water. I have a work around but it will wait until the next and hopefully final release.

I added a new wrinkle to the map. I won't go into details, I'll let you all decide if you like it. If you don't, it only takes 5 minutes to disable it.

Finally, fixed the timers on the Point 1 gates. They work a lot better now.

I wish I could add more to the skybox to make everyone happy but, if I do, it puts more load on the engine and causes your fps to drop. In spots, I have added close to a 1000 units in height over the old skybox for warpath. That's why those of you who rocket jump can now see into certain areas. I only texture what would be the normal sight line. The areas that you don't normally see, get no textures. Less load for the game engine, more fps for you.

I hope you all like the latest version and eagerly await your verdict.

[Soup Nazi]

Wonderful work, as always.

I took a good hour to do some edge-and-ledge testing, working my way around corners to look for ledges which could be exploitable to the game. Unfortunately, there's a bunch of easily reachable spots which would be highly evil, such as a ledge camping over the turn up the ridge.

Anywho, here's the link to my screenshots. Labeled everything.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/i_like_pi/ ... s/?tab=all

As for the new drop-down area, i like the concept a bunch. Unfortunately the horizontal gate seems a little funky to me. Personally, i think that a gate into that little tunnel area would be easier and more user friendly, and would add a cool twist, allowing skilled rocket jumpers another access point. As it is, the gate does not allow enough time for someone to access it from below, even though it promps to open from both sides. Its just a thought, but it seems more balanced. Like the drop-down towards mid in Granary - a skilled demo or solly can go back up it, making a fun twist.

Thanks for working so hard on this!

[Checkm8]

I was meddling in Gmod..

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[Mad-Hammer]

I was meddling in Gmod..

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That brought a smile to my face.......Looks Good.

[Mad-Hammer]

Okay, cp_warhammer_b8 is now live. As soon as Stevo gives me the thumbs up, I'll post a link to the map.

Changes:

Fixed the player clips demonstrated by Soup.

Fixed a couple of models draw distances

Fixed the draw distances on some overlays

Added a few minor visual tweaks

[Soup Nazi]

Does B8 include all of Mateo's draw changes? And what's your thoughts on having this ready for the Warpath cup? Think she's almost ready?

[Mad-Hammer]

B8 had er.........most of Mateo's draw changes. He found more. He's as big a stickler or draw distances as the Soup and Mlite are on player clips. Anyway, I fixed those.

Then, there was the issue of cosmetics and some weird texture issues. It was easier to add new displacements to cover up the textures as it was to try and fix them. Actually, they couldn't be fixed. It was just how the brushes came together, so like I said, added some new displacements and some rock props to the area Mateo pointed out. Doesn't affect gameplay but I like how they look.

Currently working to pack cp_warhammer_f1, hopefully this means Final 1. I'm gonna be extra careful, try to walk through the map slow and see if I missed anything.

If everything goes as planned, should upload to my server this evening and make it available to Stevo for download to the servers.