Equilibrium
Link to the original conversation:
N/A private conversation
(18 July 2010)
Hi,
So here are my suggestions for your map. Some of them I've already told you yesterday but I just mention them again so you won't forget. I post here instead of sending you a private message because I think this might help other people, too.
- There are some textures that need to be aligned.
equilibrium1, equilibrium2, equilibrium3, equilibrium4, equilibrium5, equilibrium6 - At some places it's really too dark. Some corners are completely black. You could set _minlight to maybe 10 or 20 or 50, try a few different values.
equilibrium7, equilibrium8 - 3. This picture is not on the wall.
equilibrium9 - These arrows don't look good at all. I uploaded an example map for you with a few examples how you could build those arrows(Download link at the end). The first one is roughly how yours looks like, the other 3 are examples for nicer ones.
equilibrium10 - Why does the water stop here? It looks a bit unrealistic. Why not make another waterfall? I think it would be nice to jump through the waterfall :)
equilibrium11 - This teleporter model has a frame around it. So you should make a caulk frame around it so that you can't walk into the telepoter from the side.
equilibrium12 - All these stars look like they are stuck inside the wall. You can only see half of each star. Move those brushes a little bit away from the walls.
equilibrium13 - Move the extra ammo entities just a little into the floor. Then you can't see it anymore but you can still take it. Otherwise you think there are helmets lying on the floor.
equilibrium14 - Make the door open in the other direction.
equilibrium15 - Remove the invisible brushes here.
equilibrium16 - Jump 10 has very bad fps. It's because of the green slime. When you have a look at it with /r_showtris 1 you can see it's like 1000 brushes. Have a look at the shader. You use q3map_tessSize 64. That means the surface will be divided every 64 grid points. You don't want that. Either just remove tessSize or set it to something high like 1024. And you should also remove the surfaceparm slime or replace it with surfaceparm water. Slime is deadly. Even when you have a teleporter brush above the slime it is still possible to fall through it into the slime when you have a high ping. This brings me to the next point...
equilibrium17 - Make sure all your teleport brushes go right down to the bottom of the jump. Like I said before, it's possible to fall through a teleporter when you have a high ping. Here for example you could end up in the water. Go through the map again and make all the teleport brushes big enough.
equilibrium18 - Now comes the part that saves a lot of fps. Have a look at the two screenshots. There is so much rendered even though you can't actually see it. Here's a hinting tutorial (http://tremmapping.pbworks.com/Understanding%20Vis%20and%20Hint%20Brushes). You might have already seen it, idk. I also included a hinting example in the attached map. For hinting you actually just use a brush with "skip" texture (you can find it in the shader file in my example map) and apply to just one side of it "hint" texture. With the hint brushes you divide the rooms into several areas. When you are in one area only the area you're in and the areas you can actually see will be rendered. Hinting will save about 30 fps for poor old driller :)
equilibrium19, equilibrium20 - There are some places where you could improve your brushwork. When you build this door frame a little different you would save 4 faces that need to be rendered. I included an example in the map. Go over your map again and try to improve your brushes like this. This will save driller maybe 1 fps :). I marked the 4 faces you would save with wood texture.
equilibrium21 - This railing is too low, you can just walk over it and fall. Make it a bit higher. And one side is thicker than the other. You should make them the same size.
equilibrium22 - There are a lot of brushes that need to be moved a little bit. Sometimes two brushes stick inside each other, sometimes there's a gap. Take your time to go over your map again and make the brushes fit correctly. It looks so much better when there are no such mistakes.
equilibrium23, equilibrium24, equilibrium25, equilibrium26, equilibrium27, equilibrium28, equilibrium29, equilibrium30, equilibrium31, equilibrium32, equilibrium33, equilibrium34, equilibrium35, equilibrium36, equilibrium37 - This one goes together with the point above. Your doorways, where 2 rooms meet could be improved. Each doorway is build in another way. There's no consistency throughout the map. You should make a nice doorway (example included in the map) and use it in each door throughout the map.
equilibrium38, equilibrium39, equilibrium40, equilibrium41, equilibrium42, equilibrium43, equilibrium44, equilibrium45, equilibrium46, equilibrium47 - You have a few places where light shines "under/through" a wall/corner. Here's a tutorial by delirum that explains how to solve it (http://gotdelirium.com/wiki/index.php?title=Lighting).
equilibrium48, equilibrium49 - A few missing textures:
equilibrium50, equilibrium51, equilibrium52 - You should use caulk. Normally you build each brush with caulk and then add the texture only to those faces that you really can see in game. I think you already used caulk but you can caulk even more. Caulking will save a few fps for poor driller :)
equilibrium53, equilibrium54, equilibrium55, equilibrium56, equilibrium57, equilibrium58 - You need to jump to get on these stairs. Make another step at the floor or lower all the stairs a bit.
equilibrium59 - Maybe a pillar missing?
equilibrium60 - You sometimes have a little water pool at the beginning of jumps. Be aware that you can get trapped in the water (when you've already made 3 wjs). Better make a few stairs so people can get out again.
equilibrium61 - Your pk3 file is very big. Here are a few suggestions to make it smaller.
- Sounds are very big. Rather than use a 1min track use a 10sec track and make it loop. Or don't use sounds at all. A 1 second sound like "Godlike" in Rambs map is ok, but do you really need a music piece of 1 min?
- You use a lot of textures. Using different textures for each room makes the map big again.
- Models are also very big. Use as little models as possible. Good example would be the vending machine. You get almost the same result by using one brush with 4 textures.
- Your map size get's smaller when you move all the rooms as close together as possible. When you have a simple map with two rooms next to each other it's very small (a few kb). Move the same two rooms 100000 grid points apart and your map is a few mb big. So make sure you use as little space as possible in the editor.
- Your scrips folder in the pk3 looks very confusing. Why use so many shader files? One or two are enough for one map. Normally you write everything in the same file and make headlines like "water" or "light" instead of using a new file for each category. Also make sure you don't have shaders you don't actually use in your map. I doubt you use all the shaders in the sfx.shader file. Just copy the ones you use and rename them. That will also save a few kb.
- Last but not least, I think there's something very important missing in your map. A unique style. Think about dgw or vetigo or other good maps. Each of them has their unique style that people will remember. There's not much consistency in your map. You use a lot of different textures, colors and shapes for your rooms. A good map uses just a few textures and the same style for the brushes throughout the map.You already use the same teleporter often. That's good. When you use something all over the map, the jumps feel like they belong together. It's of course your map and you can do as you like, this is just my opinion :).
Ok, That is most of what I noticed. I can't tell you anything about the jumps themselves, I haven't done them. But I think other people already gave you feedback about that. I hope this helps you in terms of mapping :). So, go over your map again and don't forget to take a look at the example map (happydayequilibrium.pk3). If you have any questions about what I wrote here, feel free to ask.