Contest 10 Mapping Results

[Null]

Apr 5, 2015 19:31:31 GMT -5 fifthelephant said:

I will put in a much better effort next time. I did start making another map for the contest but RL stuff got in the way, so I might finish that off too.

I'm glad to hear a few people are already working on their next map, because we're planning on having a couple exciting events soon in the near future. Some people are interested in having a Small Arena Map Contest (to entertain the 4-10 person target audience), and others would like to try their luck in a Map Remake Contest, where almost anything goes. Each with it's own set of unique challenges but still more like relaxing and fun appetizers before our next big contest. Hopefully everyone had fun and has learned a thing or two from their current experience and the feedback they got this time around, and can use it to make something even better for their next attempt. I'm just waiting to receive the remaining feedback so I can attach it with the previews, before moving onto the next one.

[cocerello]

So, finally took a good look at the scores, it is a good amount of information, but they are more or less what i expected them to be so there is no general surprise. Actually, should feel more accomplishment, as these two are the fourth and fifth deathmatch maps i ever have done (the first three were just one room arenas for Quake done back on 199x. 
The only surprise i got from the ratings was that no judge rated differently from each other of the two maps the sounds part, i suppose that the sounds that come by default from the teleporters and that they are spread all over the map hid the fact that no sounds were used on the second map.



On the offtopic side: I plan to give feedback and comments, but those will come later, when we get the individual threads for each map like in previous contests, so everything is in place neatly organized and not a chaos in one thread, but it depends on how much i can withstand the urges to write that up. It's hard to keep the beast restrained, but i'll do my best effort. 
So, for that reason, I have downloaded the map bundle but i am prohibiting myself from playing them, to keep the hype within warm and fresh and do everything (playing them, writing feedback and posting) it in one go.
For the same reasons again i'll keep my answers and thanks to WizardExt for his feedback for when that time comes. Also, i am refraining myself from answering your PM, Null, till that time.
And to finish, i am planning to explain what a bit the maps, how they work and how i thought them, and what i am planning to improve them, but as the rest of the plan, that's for when the individual threads are opened.

Apr 3, 2015 17:38:27 GMT -5 thehappyfriar said:

then randomly teleport to to a spawn point in the map. I completely messed up the entity links and two hours before the contest ended places weapons & spawn points. So, originally, each player would have one weapon when entering the map & only get new weapons by picking them up from dead players.

How did you achieve that, Thehappyfriar? I tried to randomize the teleporters in 2cocedm02 to make it even more chaotic and disorienting but didn't found a way an the deadline was drawing closer, so i discarded the idea.

[Mikemc]

Don't teleporters & spawn pads stop working if they are too far into the ground? I'm thinking brushes that come and go to turn them on and off

[jaydolan]

Apr 5, 2015 19:31:31 GMT -5 fifthelephant said:

Well if I can take away any victory from this it's that I got 4th in gameplay and 1st in lighting. I thought I'd end up faring better but I guess not. I think the top 4 maps are pretty much right, though I think I prefer Pan's map overall (I have a soft spot for the slime metal texture set and the lighting is good on that map too).

I will put in a much better effort next time. I did start making another map for the contest but RL stuff got in the way, so I might finish that off too.

I honestly felt like you were maybe a bit short-changed in the scoring as well. I was impressed with how your lighting turned out, too -- we got to see it evolve from being way over-bright to being almost perfectly balanced. Good stuff.

[JohnnyDean]

People, I got a quick question. I wanna give certain items to a player upon spawning, and after some research everything points to a target_give entity, which is basically nonexistent in Radiant (at least as far as Quake 2 goes).
Anybody know how to give items to spawning players?

[cocerello]

The easy way in any videogame would be to place the info_player_deathmatch on top of the items you want to give the player, and place them on a place that can't be reached by the player by normal means. For example, make him spawn on the top of a vertical tunnel and make the items stay on place by placing them atop a tiny brush 1x1x1 in size, moving the items and the brush to a side so the player can't collide with the brushes.

A better way would be involved to info_notnull use. I know some ways of hacking in Quake that work for that, but no idea if they work for Quake 2. For example: www.celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=4&start=13653&end=13653

Will try that Mikemc, if it reacts to brush entities it works, but i have seen weird behaviors when blocking it sometimes but still teleports, like for example on spiritdm3, the teleport that helps you get close to the red armor. And yes i couldn't stop myself from testing at least one map, shame on me after saying i would withstand the urges.

[jaydolan]

As far as I'm aware, this was not possible with the baseq2 game module. I added something like this to Quetoo by supporting a "give" key-value pair in worldspawn. Lazarus or other mods may have a way to do this.

[JohnnyDean]

Yeah, it's getting tricky. I made some advance though, what I was looking for is the target_spawner entity, which also spawns items. Now the problem is triggering that spawner ONLY WHEN the info_player_deathmatch has spawned someone.
Apparently any target in the info_player_deathmatch is ignored...

[jaydolan]

Yea, you could place a trigger over the spawn, and use the trigger to target your target_spawner, but then any player will get the items by running over the spawn -- not just newly spawned players.'

I think I'd reevaluate how badly you want this functionality

[thehappyfriar]

Apr 6, 2015 6:13:52 GMT -5 cocerello said:

How did you achieve that, Thehappyfriar? I tried to randomize the teleporters in 2cocedm02 to make it even more chaotic and disorienting but didn't found a way an the deadline was drawing closer, so i discarded the idea.

Take one teleporter & have it target multiple destinations. It will randomly pick one (at least I assume it's random). So, misc_teleporter has a target of t1, all your misc_teleporter_dest you want to be a possible spawn point have the targetname t1.

That part worked, it was the weapon stuff I had issues with (GTK 1.5.x uses the exact same properties when you copy/paste an entity & 1.6.x increments the properties if they're able. IE in 1.6.x a targetname of t1 when copy/pasted would be t2, t3, etc.)

With regard to the scores, I was surprised I was seventh in the April fool thread. This thread was much more realistic. At first I thought "Damn, eigther I did better then I thought or everyone made a bunch of crap!"

[cocerello]

Eh? That was one of the ideas i tried, so i ran over the same teleporter a dozen times to test it and all of them i was teleported to the same destination. Going to test it again, maybe i made a mistake due to deadline's pressure, who knows. Anyway, thanks.

[ace]

Was fun, hopefully I get to finish my map and can release it as I intended it to be played

[thehappyfriar]

Ok, I just tried it and i'm getting the same results as you. Maybe I was to tired and THOUGHT it was working.

[jaydolan]

Yea, that's not possible with baseq2, either:

github.com/jdolan/quake2/blob/master/src/game/g_misc.c#L1781

You can see the teleporter_touch function just does a straight G_Find for the teleporter destination; it doesn't support teaming. It'd be a trivial change -- just adding a simple loop there to count the number of teamed misc_teleporter_dests (that is, those sharing the same target_name), and then choosing one at random. But yea, you're not gonna get that behavior out of a stock baseq2 game module.

[Null]

Apr 6, 2015 6:13:52 GMT -5 cocerello said:

I plan to give feedback and comments, but those will come later, when we get the individual threads for each map like in previous contests, so everything is in place neatly organized and not a chaos in one thread, but it depends on how much i can withstand the urges to write that up. It's hard to keep the beast restrained, but i'll do my best effort. 
So, for that reason, I have downloaded the map bundle but i am prohibiting myself from playing them, to keep the hype within warm and fresh and do everything (playing them, writing feedback and posting) it in one go.
For the same reasons again i'll keep my answers and thanks to WizardExt for his feedback for when that time comes. Also, i am refraining myself from answering your PM, Null, till that time.
And to finish, i am planning to explain what a bit the maps, how they work and how i thought them, and what i am planning to improve them, but as the rest of the plan, that's for when the individual threads are opened.

I've created individual threads for each map, so feel free to let loose that feedback

Feedback Threads:
leray.proboards.com/board/82/screenshots-contest-maps