giftdm8 - Tryggve's Tomb (updated)

[giftmacher]

Could some of these issues be related to QuaRK though? I don't know much about this technical stuff as you mention here but look at this:

[Floating Point Issues]

"tiglari - 29 Dec 2002 [ Top ]
In Quake-engine games, the faces of brushes are defined by three points, which can be located anywhere on the face of the plane, as long as they don't sit on one line (note especially: they do not have to be vertexes of the face, although they can be). Early Quake editors and the build-tools required these points to have integer coordinates, but QuArK introduced floating point coordinates, which allow precise placement of rotated brushes, and are also necessary for its 'enhanced texture positioning' scheme, which provides more more flexible texture-positioning than the original 'Classic Quake' system.

Unfortunately, floating-point coordinates can also introduce various problem, especially in conjunction with build-tools that can't read them. The way they were involved with enhanced texture positioning is particularly problematic, since repositioning textures involved moving the face-coordinates, and so could drag face vertices subtly and unfixably off grid, which tends to drives people crazy, whether or not it caused real problems. And furthermore, build-tools that can't read floating point coordinates are very likely to have problems with maps written by QuArK, even if floating-point coordinate writing is suppressed (since the truncations shift the faces around, and thereby can cause leaks).

So QuArK 6.3 has a different internal representation for texture-scales than earlier versions (called 'tv6', since it involves a 'tv6' specific on faces that specifies 6 numbers), so that moving textures doesn't shift the face threepoints, and also has some tools for finding and fixing faces with non-integral threepoints. The finder, on the search menu, is the 'Find Non-integral Threepoints' command, and will produce a list of faces with non-integral coordinates. Then the fixer, on the commands menu, 'Integralize Selected Faces', will attempt to fix the selected faces automatically, by forcing threepoints that are slightly off-integer to integral values, and also coopting integral vertexes of the faces, if it can find enough. On exit, it leaves selected the faces it has fixed, so that they can be inspected (conveniently with 'Browse Multiple Selection' on the Selection menu) for bad effects on texture-scales, etc. Then you can run the finder again to see the recalcitrant cases, and decide what to do about them by hand.

It is quite plausible that you might want to allow certain vertexes to be non-integral (for decorations, etc); if a group has a 'nonintegral' specific, the finder will ignore the nonintegral faces within it.

With these tools, and the 'Don't Write Floating Point Coordinates' map option, it will hopefully be possible to control floating point issues adequately."

Related?

Also can you explain what I'm looking at in these numbers in the .map file and can I fix the problem in the .map file? I know very little of technical stuff so Mercurial/Git/SVN etc is beyond me Yea I guess the clipper tool is quite handy when shaving off parts of a brush without breaking it.

[sP1Sp0pD]

Yes, related. Personally I think that using floating point coordinates to allow precise placement of rotated brushes does not warrant it enough. Even with fractional numbers, it is still an approximation, since practically any non-trivial brush transformation (like rotation) would involve irrational numbers. So you've always limited by certain precision which can differ between various editors and tools. Integers are universal, more readable, and just easier to work with. It is usually possible to find close enough integer values to adequately position rotated brushes, and the benefits of floating values IMHO are outweighed by all that nuisance that comes with them.

Yes, you can modify brushes by simply editing your .map file by hand (with a text editor), as long as you understand how Quake brushes work. Even if you don't want to dig into these details (although I think anyone who's mapping for Quake II should understand how this stuff works), I guess it's fairly obvious that numbers like "41.9999" look better as "42".

P.S. It's QuArK, not QuaRK by the way.

[spirit]

This looks and feels like an excellent map already, congrats!

I like the textures and the lighting is just great. The atmosphere is also strong with the sounds and a solid overall theme.

I agree that the item placement could use a bit of work, nothing too major though. I would say the 3 major items (MH, BA and CA) are ok the way they are. I did not really like some things in the large room close to MH though. I drew on your screenshot because I'm too lazy to describe the spots, sorry for that:

• The room on the screenie above is nice, but I think there are 4 medkits in there (+MH right next to the room), 3 of which are very annoying to grep. The one under the stairs and the 2 stuck in the corners at the wall, which are not directly visible in the shot (white arrows at the right). Maybe make it 2 large ones and place them next to each other, like under the stairs. (Or even in another room, not that close to MH).
• Also the black hole in the wall looks cool, but I keep going there to look for items. I think it wants to hold an item.
• There is a crate (close to the rail gun) which has a box a HB ammo on top of it. It is a cool spot to place an item, but 1x HB ammo is not worth it. Put something better there. Maybe 2x rockets or so, dunno.
• I do not know whether it is wise and you want this, and I dont know whether it is good. Maybe it sucks. But you could place the rail gun down in that teleporter pit (right before tele), so the player has to slide down there and into the tele to get it. Unsure, as I said.
• The crossing which is the lowest point of the map (this screenie was taken from there) could maybe use an item. What about maybe a small armor(Flak jacket) there? It's rather close to MH, I know.

That's it for now. As I said, great map.

[giftmacher]

Thank you for that link sP1Sp0pD, will definately read up on how Q2 brushes work..

Thanks for the input spirit, good Points, I will do a complete overhaul of the items, one weapon should probably be placed at the lowest Point. The black hole (for camping, got a laugh from that one), it is/was the destination for the teleporter below YA elevator, which I'm considering removing all together (the teleporter). So yeah I could put something in there a long with a light, maybe the MH to free up some room below.

Item overhaul, some tweaks and then that's it I Think, maybe I can poke around in the .map file too at some Point.

[spirit]

Oh right, that teleporter. Seems I did not use it that often, hehe. Fast way from CA to MH, so I should maybe have used it more. But my usual route was MH to CA to BA.

[giftmacher]

Made the following changes and updated link:

* Removed one teleporter
* Minor texture changes
* Made weapon spots more visually distinct
* Reworked item placement for weapons/ammo/health/powerups
* Removed Machine Gun

-> Only one teleporter now, you drop down at the railgun area and spawn in the RL/MH area (darkish brick space)

Item placement feels better now, tested some bot matches, unless there are some serious bugs/errors I will leave it alone now. Thanks a bunch for the feedback!

[giftmacher]

Thanks for that crypt In a few years all the kids will be plugged into the matrix while the few of us still dream of the past.. Seriously though, the new games, I've played them and I don't get it.