My Custom Map

[Diego Cueva]

[999]

How about a PQ Custom Maps thread for starters? <br><br>Last modification: 999 - 04/25/01 at 18:30:47

[randall]

Yeah, whatever. How dare anybody generate a topic that caters to such a small demographic of PocketQuake users- custom mappers.<br><br>Moose can kiss my ass. His worthless input hasn't amounted to jack shit in the last month, yet a few people get together to help each other and he's "all over it".<br><br>Fuck it. Lock this thread.<br><br>Lock them all if they start getting to be over 5 pages.

[randall]

I like how it automatically censored me and said "darn it".

[Matt Keys]

I tend to like this thread. I think we will keep it open. FYI, I found a map online that with a little work will be perfect for pocketquake. One problem, when I test it out in Quake for desktop pc the textures are extremely light. Why is that?

[randall]

Without seeing the map it could be a couple different things depending on the degree of "lightness".<br><br>Did you modify the map in any way?<br><br>If it appears that there are no shadows, then the map was compiled without lights (fullbright). This is usually annoying and ugly.<br><br>If it only looks too bright on your desktop computer, then your gamma, brightness/contrast may need adjustement.<br><br>If the map was compiled with lights, they may have used Arghlite and set the ambient lighting too high. This gives everything a washed out look with little definitive shadows.<br><br>Sometimes mappers just make their map "too light" because the machine they tested it on had real low gamma/brightness/contrast settings. Which caused them to use more light than necessary.<br><br>Bright textures require less light to illuminate them. Not all mappers take this into consideration and treat all textures the same.<br><br>There are a couple other things it could be, depending on the characteristics.<br><br><br><br>Last modification: randall - 04/26/01 at 12:49:33

[Moose or Chuck]

well me and my friend, who makes CS maps, have collaberated on a map and are currently finishing it up. We build it everyday during Computer Math class, i like it is got close quarters good fun, lots of room to room stuff, its got a really cool room with a quaq damage and grenade launcher in it o how i enjoy quad and grenades make you go KABOOOM!!!!!! sometime in the near future we will release it.

[randall]

if you have alot of explosive weapons, make sure your wpoly is really low. If everyone in the game has a rocketlauncher, the game will slow to a crawl and be unplayable.<br><br>I like explosions and flying body parts as much as the next guy. But slideshows (low framerate) automatically nullify the "coolness" factor.

[Moose or Chuck]

no i don't think we'll ever put a rocketlauncher in because i hate how slow it is, the grenade is a little faster, and i like how fast the level seems to play in that room , its a fun little war to get the Quad, and no, we are trying to keep the wpolys low, but your little tutorial doesn't have very many helpful points other than the one unit apart, Could you please let me know some new ones. we haven't tested the level yet, because i haven't taken the pop.imp file up to school, i'm doing that tommorow

[randall]

There are a few other tutorials in the works, that focus on layout and design in order to achieve lower r_speeds. The main problem is controlling VIS in order to reduce the number of wpoly we see.<br><br>Here is what VIS does, and why it does it:<br><br>It creates something called a "VIS portal". There are literally thousands of VIS portals in a single map- each portal contains information about all the other portals it can "see".<br><br>I'll use my house as an example, and for the sake of this explanation each room is it's own VIS portal (VIS portals are actually much smaller than an entire room).<br><br>From my bedroom I can see a bathroom, the hall and another bedroom.<br><br>From the hall I can see two bedrooms and the living room (but not the bathroom).<br><br>From the living room I can see the hall, the kitchen and the dining room (but not the bedrooms or the bathrooms).<br><br>I can never see ALL the rooms, no matter which VIS portal I am standing in.<br><br>Design your maps the same way- limiting the number of rooms or areas you can "see" at any given time. This usually requires hallways and VIS blocking walls.<br><br>Also, textures affect wpoly. A 256x256 wall is split into four 128x128 chunks by VIS (this varies depending on the texture).<br><br>There are ways to avoid this split, but I prefer to use it to my advantage. I use a different texture in each 128x128 chunk since VIS is going to split it anyway. It doesn't increase the polycount any more than if I had used the same boring texture across the entire surface.<br><br>There are other things that affect VIS to a great extent, but this reply is already too long. I hope the tutorials I create will be more informative than this.<br><br>If you run into high poly areas and don't know how to fix it I can probably help on a "per problem area basis". Each problem can be solved a number of ways, depending on what you want to achieve.<br><br>

[Matt Keys]

I would like to mention that my map is coming along nicely. I still need to get the polys down in a few spots but it wont be to much longer until I release it. It is a deathmatch style map with quad damage and a invisibility in it. I think I will release it sometime around the 30th for you all to give your constructive criticism.

[Moose or Chuck]

well that is one good thing, my map is all close quarters, hallways and small rooms, nothin huge. Also as i was thinkin about it i got an awsome idea for a level, a big spiral of hallways and rooms going upward around itself sortof like a DNA strand then at the top and bottom one of those blow tube things THAT'D BE KEWL!!!!!!

[randall]

Well, the thing is the rooms CAN be huge, it just requires a tighter control of the other areas you can see into.<br><br>Which is why the outdoor areas of my map usually lead into a small hallway or a dinky room.<br><br>I'm not saying the outdoor areas of dmmuseum are large, they aren't. But they have multiple entrances and details which required me to reduce their size. Certainly larger rooms could be created with less detail and only two entrances rather than three.<br><br>Last modification: randall - 04/26/01 at 19:52:06

[Moose or Chuck]

ya i like outdoors, until i realized i can't really look up or down very well with pq, so this map i'm makin is more no lookin up or down, at the moment there are only 2 raised surfaces, i doon't like not being able to shoot at someone above me, so they can't get above me

[Moose or Chuck]

well i'm takin pak1.pak to school tommorow so i can start debugging the level, but i'm off to sleep tonight. Have fun fixin your map, and TOMMOROW I WILL REACH 500 posts, not bad for my 3rd week. god i talk to much