Puny Human forums

Quick intro to self:
Hello. I used to be a regular player of Dystopia (since the public demo), but now I'm caught in L4D. I'm probably mentioned somewhere in the forums as being able to kill someone no matter the circumstances (yes, I was vain enough one day to search for my name). Aside from that, I've been dabbling in Source mapping since 2005 and thought I could take on a map for Dystopia.

Alright, to business:

This idea came about after not seeing a crossover map and discovering a couple transition textures in Dys. So, naturally, I made up a few proof-of-concept maps and, after getting the courage to post here, have decided to see what you guys/gals think of this.

So, without further ado, here's what I have:
Background:
Started in the late 2050's, Obsolution, a portmanteau of "obsolete" and "solution", is a thinktank company specializing in research in the far reaching and seemingly impossible. Their only breakthrough to date is Parity.

Story:
Obsolution has been researching a way to break the so called "barrier" between cyberspace and the physical world. Several years and numerous failures later, they finally broke that barrier and succeeded in integrating the physical world into cyberspace and vice versa. The end result was a core dubbed "Parity" which links the physical world to the digital. It controls what goes in and, more importantly, what goes out.

Screenshots (jpg, 1680x1050):
Punk's starting spawn
Street outside of the above spawn
Dock (Corps' starting spawn): 1 2
The rabbit hole
Lobby
Main room (where the transition takes place)
Parity's firewall room

Videos (XviD, avi, no audio, 1152x864, rather large files):
Idea for breaking down the wall in the main room (currently missing in the above screenshot)
The proof-of-concept map I made for a transition.
Part of cyberspace

Problems:
*The lobby lacks cover and is rather small.
*Lighting looks horrible
*There are no alternative paths other than the rabbit hole (vents in the works)
*There is little to no z-axis to the level until you get to the main room
*The street has no cover other than 2 cars

Right now, I'm fleshing out ideas and trying to get the layout down. After seeing all the threads here, I should probably state that I am a slow mapper. Most of my time is spent going "Oh that would be cool to try," "Wtf was I thinking?!" and "Now what?"


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Latest Build

Youtube Videos:
Descent Effect: Idea 1
Old map run-through
Spinning Core Idea

so... cyberspace is in meatspace?

The rabbit hole

This better be blended for the final version, it looks like poop now.
Also being in cyberspace as a meathead doenst give you that nice glowy feeling, which sucks.
Make it glow.

Nice, those videos make me really look forward to playing it.

Make sure you get it playtested for balance before you spend too much effort on detailing and lighting! Looks like you have some really cool ideas though.

The rabbit hole

This better be blended for the final version, it looks like poop now.
Also being in cyberspace as a meathead doenst give you that nice glowy feeling, which sucks.
Make it glow.

seeing you post in this forum again excites me in ways that you would laugh at.

No to me the point of this map is eye candy.
Who cares how it plays as long as it looks damn good and there isn't any button bug.

The rabbit hole

This better be blended for the final version, it looks like poop now.
Also being in cyberspace as a meathead doenst give you that nice glowy feeling, which sucks.
Make it glow.

Why wait till the final?
Nothing some photoshop, rand0m luck, and notepad couldn't fix.

As for the glow, I don't think I can do it in meatspace since it is an effect that is invoked when you deck. If I'm wrong, please point me in the right direction or, if you want this to go faster, tell me how.

EDIT:
If push comes to shove, I guess I can try getting really creative with sprites.

its bloom iirc

iirc its a custom bloom shader which might only be used in cyberspace. I'm not sure if you could use it in meatspace without additional code support but maybe you somehow can.

also this is very cool idea for a map. good luck with it

It is a custom bloom shader (shaders/fxc/Cyber_Bloom_ps20.vcs). Because I now know the name, I can declare it in the material. However, the shader doesn't support that type of use, so I get a "hall of mirrors" effect with it (the regular Bloom shader doesn't work either). Looks like the last image is the best it's going to get for now.

I knew I was forgetting something...Thanks for the replies and feedback!

Update:
If you look at the screenshot of the street outside the punk's spawn, you'll see a curved building. This is going to be a powerplant used to capture the Corps' first spawn.

Here are a few pics of the area: 1 2 3

As for the playtesting, I still have quite a few things to do (before details and final lighting):
-Cyberspace
-Meat-/Cyberspace areas
-Objectives and basic I/O

would be interesting/funny if when you deck in it looks like meatspace

I need some help for an effect, that effect being...a rubik's cube. I was fiddling with it for a couple days, but gave up. Here is a video showing the problem I'm having.

All of the cubes are named and parentable, but I have no system to dynamically reassign the cubes that make up a side (right now, everything is static). Triggers aren't working (even when set to trigger on everything) and recreating the logic for every possible turn is a tad ridiculous and would take up all the entdata. Can you guys/gals think of a solution? If not, it still looks cool when run fast (especially after it gets really messed up).

That last post wasn't for April 1st, I apologize if that is how it seemed.

Anyways, here are a few screenshots of the former firewall room. It is now a junction point between Parity, Corps' spawn, and a door to meatspace.
Meatspace view.
Cyberspace view.
The door.

Should I make the walls solid or does transparent look ok?

Papers, Midterms, and other tests...

Anyways, I don't have much to show right now (despite it being nearly a month since my last update). I'm integrating the separate cyberspace map with the main map, linking JIPs with their respective cyberspawns, littering the map with info_nulls to hold my ideas for certain areas, and trying not to go too into detail.

With that, here's the generator's cyberarea.

Your progress is awesome, I am still not sold on the initial idea yet (it's hard for me to see this working in a way that is good for gameplay) but I would sure love to see it in a playtest. As far as your rubik's cube goes, I am trying to think of a possible solution that is also not rediculously complex; I also wonder, what exactly do you want it for?

I originally wanted it for a cyberspace "decoration", then a minigame (shoot an edge to move it), and now I'm back to a decoration (only after running into the problem). If anything, I was hoping it'd be something for deckers to do if their teammates were a bit slow in opening up networks.

For gameplay, that is a major concern for me. I have a lot of areas that are open, but would get very cluttered if I added only a couple props. Vents...every lab has them, but I've reworked so many ideas that I have no clue where to put them.

Oh, does anyone know what font is used for the blue "xxxxx Node" textures in cyberspace? This is what I have:
It isn't an important detail, I'm just curious.

Motherboard died last week, new one in.

It's all together now, except for the screens and their I/O.

For screens, is the order of keyvalues important?
For example, is this:

Code: Select all

"TitleLabel"
{
.
.
.
"dulltext" "0"
"brighttext" "0"

parsed the same as this:

Code: Select all

"TitleLabel"
{
.
.
.
"brighttext" "0"
"dulltext" "0"

Yes. Order is not important, as long as you have the keys there.

Here's a good Rubik's cube example. Hope it helps! http://forums.tf2maps.net/showthread.php?t=6454

WOAH!

From the looks of it, I have nearly double the entities that guy used. Thanks for the link!
If only I wrote down what I had in mind when I first thought of it...
Well, back to HW.

Screens are built (after an offshoot idea took hold, more on that at a later date), I/O is in place for all but 2 dys_screens. There is no skybox and areas the player can't go are just clipped (so you can see the sky below).

Problem:
Despite resorting to copying the cybergravity triggers directly from tutorial maps, I can't get them to fire when I pass through them. I either don't get gravity for rooms or I don't lose gravity for links. Is this just a listenserver bug or have I done something wrong?

Here's the I/O for the triggers:



Edit:

Apparently, I have a mind boggling number of bugs to work out...

Does the pitch-yaw-roll point to the room with the gravity?
Otherwise I'd think you should try setting the ouptut to OnTrigger.

Oh wow...Thanks!

Finals week.
I've been rearranging the objectives and making screens accordingly. Parity's area is still just a nodraw-block placeholder. The map is playable, but there are chunks that I have yet to work on.

A random room: Image

About that offshoot I mentioned earlier, I'm working on a CS degree and decided to get some practice: Here

It has no use other than a programming exercise right now. The "Corner" image on the window is a vtf file that I can't seem to resize in Java (despite several methods, all of which failed), so the preview pane has come to a halt.