JM_SpaceCastleArena

[HDD21]

Hi guys, I have been working on a map, space castle arena, which I have perfected! The map is an arena in space, with 4 castles at each side of the map, with a lift to get to the top. You can snipe from the tops of each square castle, with a rifle, bullets, health and an eightball on top of each. There is a pool in the centre which leads to two underground rooms, one with a minigun, and one with an ASMD. A candle as a touch. The skybox using unreal textures and classes is my own custom skybox. I liked the music from timesplitters 2 on the PS2 - The industrial tileset music. Managed to get a good quality wave file down to 16,000 Hz as the music was fine with that, converted it to IT and made a UMX file from it, and embedded it with the map so there is only one file to download from the sever, the map. It is 9MB in size total. I will be putting up a test tonight on my server, so people can test it and get a feel of it. The map is basic, but an arena type map with castles, set in space is just my cup of tea. Basic, but for me and my friends whom I have got into unreal, we have had loads of fun testing this one out on the LAN.

Map Download Link:

http://www5.zippyshare.com/v/10074349/file.html

Screenshots are here:

http://imageshack.us/g/96/kc26.png/

Let me know what you guys think This map cannot be opened in the editor as it is protected, unprotected copy I can give on request. This protected one is the same version that will be on the server, so no worries about mismatches. The difference between the screenshots and the final version is the lifts are a bit bigger as a bug of the lifts being too small was fixed.

Jacob

[Hellkeeper]

I don't want to be mean, but I'll be anyway because there is no reason not to be here. Though I don't like to be agressive, I here fell totally justified.

Are you kidding me?

First of all, let's talk about size: your map, as you said is 9 Mo. 9,79 to be exact. Almost 10Mo. There's nothing wrong with a big map, especially with today's downloading speed, but please, think about what you did with your life: your map is bigger in size than DmRetrospective, then BluffEversmoking and, actually, bigger than any stock Unreal map except Terraniux.unr.

But as I said, size in itself is not a problem.

The problem is that these maps are huge, complex and interesting, while yours is not, which is my next point.

Your map consist in three rooms (two and a half if I wanted to be more accurate). It looks like the kind of map I made when I was learning how the editor works, years ago, and it looks like the tests I made then and never released because they were just that: tests.

So let's talk about the map: it sucks, plainly. I usually sugar-coat criticism, but here, there's nothing to sugar-coat: I can't say you have a problem with the theme, because there is no theme: you have just a empty cube with four forts (with walls so thin they look like they're made of cardboard), forts which are themselves only smaller empty cubes. Your lifts are nothing more than big squares which magically levitate to take you up, a well in the middle which is not a well: it's an excavated cylinder with 8 sides and dirt textures. The water surface has a texture which would look like water if it was animated; right now it's completely still (hint: look up Liquids.utx instead of GenFluid.utx). The forts are separated by a distance which I would guesstimate to be no more than 1024 units, there's nothing to do, nothing to see, nowhere to go anywhere, with weapons which are just "there". The underwater passages are just cubes, the lighting plainly sucks outside (holy mother of all white lights) and inside (these pathetic candles can lit the whole room in red, but are themselves completely black, ridiculous).

There is not even an attempt at disguising that your map is just a big cube: you can walk up to the side of the cube, and the grass just stops "there", because you've just selected the walls and ceiling of the cube and set them to fakebackdrop: congratulation, this mean you can kill someone by shooting a rocket at the sky near him, because it hits the fakebackdrop. I'd say this is the laziest way to make an outdoor map, but actually, this isn't an outdoor map, just an indoor map with invisible walls showing the sky. Your "outdoor" is just a plane surface (the underside of the cube because you've not even tried to add a hill or some kind of obstacle on the way). The skybox is itself horrible and absolutely still; at any rate, absolutely not adequate: your giga-white lighting comes from nowhere, because it sure as hell doesn't come from the red moon in the night sky.

The map is not even set as deathmatch, so by default, it launches in single player mode. I didn't try with bots, but I would be it isn't pathed?

And to top that all, you've decided to "protect" the map so that it cannot open in UnrealEd. Of course, who wouldn't want to rip off this masterpiece! From the look of it, I'd say it consist in barely more than 30 brushes and maybe 10 textures, which are almost all misaligned where you had the chance, because you must not even have tried to correct it but simply subtracted and rebuilt the entire stuff. This is something to protect, no one must know how impressive your non-skills are! Quick, hide this to the world, because everyone has to be jealous of this.

Moreover, it's not like the fact that anyone can open any map in Unreal is one of the best thing the Unreal modding/mapping community has ever had, no no no, it's a problem, we should work towards making this impossible. Not only is this map trash, the mere idea that it must be copy-protected is offensive to the millions of better mappers out there, as if anyone would want to "steal" anything from it. Hell, as if there was anything to be stolen here. This map lacks everything, not only skill, but also imagination or originality, I know people who aren't old enough to vote and who have never heard of UnrealEd who could make better maps than this given a 2h training session on how to use the software. And now that I've detailed in how many ways this map is a mess, let it be known that it is bigger than the Sunspire, or even damned Hexephet. This is among the most ridiculous (and pretentious, with the copy-protect thing) map I've ever seen in the last 10 years, and believe me, I've seen things that came out of the mind of great Cthullhu. Really, if the map only sucked, I would just say it needs a lot of work (to be entirely rebuilt from nothing, to be frank), but the fact that you made this rubbish protection makes it a shameful and hateful thing; had it been a normal map you could open, I wouldn't even have raised my voice.

This map is bad and you should feel bad. I'd say it's the worst map I've seen, but I used to browse NaliCity, so I know there's thousands of you out there.

[Rob-Bot]

Some ones having a bad day ^. Don't even bother with this idiot. Anyways, I really enjoyed playing this map! The gameplay was awesome. Don't let people tell you your map sucks, most of us are grateful to have more and more maps released to the community.

[Skywolf]

Sorry to say but this map really does suck
By entering set pathnode bhidden false in the console you could see if a map contains pathnodes and guess what? yours doesn't.

I have no problem with boring geometry especially when it is one of your first maps but making the map not even playable in botmatches and adding DRM makes this map shit. Also, the music is ripped and converted to a .umx file. the problem with this method is the file size which is why the map is so damn big. Either that or the DRM takes up alot of space.

Although I think Hellkeeper goes a little too far with his tearing apart this map. The DRM sucks (like DRM always does) and we really have no need for such a thing in this community. Just upload this thing to the Simcity 2013 forum where people are paying to get DRM and give us an unprotected file.

[HDD21]

I will explain I am too used to Deus Ex, where maps are commonly ripped and decached and passed off as someone else's work. Had it happen myself to a map I spent a month on a couple of years back, and was not too happy, to say the least. I did say i would release an unprotected version to anyone who wanted a look. I didnt know about pathnodes, i have not touched the editor properly in a long time as well! It was my first use of UED2. Constructive criticism is fine by me, but i think hellkeeper took it a bit too far. The sarcasm was uncalled for but heck I cant please everyone

The UMX convert from the timesplitters MP3 files (which i rarely use, preferring 24 bit FLAC, i tape FLACs on top end tape equipment and use sony's top end walkman WM-DD9 with high end headphones). the MP3, which i converted to 16,000 WAV (which was painful to do, but to convert to UMX and keep a reasonable size I had NO choice) as i wanted SOME quality, takes up alot of space, map is 250kilobytes without it. The UMX is embedded with the map. This map was made to be 'boring', hence why it is an arena. As i planned to host the map on a fibre connection and that the server isnt to be loaded down with mods, 10MB was not an issue to me. Making the music file any smaller really sounded bad. I am an audiophile and  own alot of digital and analog equipment, I am picky in that respect, as the music sets the mood.

I am not in agreement with DRM methods myself, but i would give a non DRM copy to anyone who asked, and I wont DRM maps in future if there is no need to. In Deus Ex it was so common to see maps ripped off and passed as own work, protecting them was a must. the unreal community seems much more mature, in this respect.

The tool was released for Deus Ex to combat this problem which was rampent.
http://www.dxalpha.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4649


It was aimed to be a basic fighting arena, with the theme set in space. A Floating arena, not trying to keep to the laws of science wherin the body needs oxygen to survive and cannot survive in a vaccum!

Personally me and my mates whom we love to play unreal and DX and HL love the map, I take all opinions on board as we have a right to free speech. I did get on well with hellkeeper in game in the past. I havn't had time for a long time to devote time to the editor, my life has been so full of stuff the past 2 years I have had very little time for gaming.

This one took 6 hours, my first use of the editor in ages, I wanted something simple, rather than go complex. Now I can start to up my game again, but me and my mates wanted something custom made by me to start with.

I saw maps in Deus Ex slagged off by the major Deus Ex community mappers, to find the server full of players where others with their maps sat empty many years ago, all they would then say was 'immature players', but they would play for  hours on the said RPG maps and that because they were either innovative ideas or just plain fun. Looks can be deceiving, although I do want to get better at the editor, my next map I plan to devote ALOT more time to, this one was more for fun, and we have spent hours playing on it, we had me and 4 other mates then another 3 people in the sever, it was fun I want to keep my 24/7 servers up on a FTTC connection, to provide some service to unreal, last year I helped out by reporting a security hole in 227 i found while messing around with some stuff, was a bug that could have been used for great ill as well, I did not like what I found, at all, even though I was looking to help out by looking for such things to report. wont post exactly what I found here for obvious reasons. I had a window of time last year. My server machine needs to have windows 7 wiped and server 2008 installed, just waiting on my discs. Then they will be completely uninterupted, i will also move my server files across, job done! Last time i had a server machine i only switched it off a couple of times in 3 years, then I moved out. I found a low powered solution, i would even offer it as backup masterserver if hypers or oldunreals ever needed maintence, they would have something to point the domain to, but that is for another thread and only when the machine is fully stable will i consider it. The mini server box is under the sofa. My router, VDSL modem and the server machine has a backup power supply, testing it out allowed it to run for just over 10 hours, i used a custom circuit which disconnects lithium batteries while power is applied, but the moment it is cut the batteries kick in. Single use lithium batteries, coupled with an alarm, in case it is switched off accidently. It has a 1TB hybrid hard disk drive. Weekly backups are made of the server files.

I am glad people could be honest, this was not a serious project, but fun for me.


Jacob

[HDD21]

Here is the unprotected one:
http://www.filedropper.com/jmspacecastlearena

I do plan to work on a more serious map, this map was made to be boring and simple, hence it is an arena. What is this pathnode buisness? I have no idea how to use pathnodes if someone could explain here.

[Skywolf]

Pathnodes (Navigationpoint-->Pathnode) are Actors used by ScriptedPawns to navigate levels, place a those around your level and rebuilt the paths. There is also a option for the render windows to show the paths AI can take. For elevators you need to place LiftCenter and Liftexit actors and connect them. When home I will make edit of your level with some a pathnode network to give an example.

Edit: here it is: https://www.dropbox.com/s/svuhd7rpmkwhu ... athing.unr

Start a botmatch with only one bot and get yourself killed. now don't respawn and instead type ghost in the console (press the ~ key) and hit enter. now the bot walks around like in normally would whem there is nothing to shoot. observe how it uses the elevators in your level to go up and pick up the weapons on top of the castles.

Also note how they have some difficulty getting in the castles. this is because the doorway of those things are too small. A SkaarjPlayerBot doesn't even try .


more information (from [url]http://www.oldunreal.com/wiki/index.php?title=Epic:Unreal_Creature_Care_and_Feeding_Guide[/url]):

You can place pathnodes manually, or you can use PATHS BUILD LOWOPT from the console to get a first pass placement done automatically. In any case, you must do a PATHS DEFINE from the console to create the connections between pathnodes.

To use the navigation system, a creature must first choose the best nearby node to "get on" the network. For performance reasons, creatures limit their search for path nodes to those within an 800 unit radius (see FSortedPathList::FindVisiblePaths in UnRoute.cpp). This is because the test to determine if a creature can reach a path is very expensive. However, once creatures are "on the network", travelling from pathnode to pathnode, they use the reachspec tables in each pathnode to determine reachable nodes. There is no distance limit for reachspecs, so paths may be defined between two pathnodes which are any arbitrary distance apart. For performance reasons, paths between distant pathnodes which have a suitable alternate path using intermediate path nodes (with a low added cost) are culled from the path network.

I recommend that paths should be less than 700 units apart, so that creatures don't ever start off going in the wrong direction to get on the network. In addition, paths on stairs and ramps should be closer together (

[sweetfrog]

Hey HDD21,

new map? Will you send us your map for test?

More Informations you can see here http://www.oldunreal.com/wiki/index.php?title=Unreal_User_Maps
(Klick the button Usermaps on the left site.)

I´m happy to hear about it.

[makemeunreal]

The download links are broken.
Does somebody still have the map?

[HDD21]

I have it, just looked through my old files as was showing my mate the map. Ill reupload it soon

[makemeunreal]

Bump bumpy bump bump