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Linedrive - Pipeline Pipeball
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Linedrive - Pipeline Pipeball
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- Thread starter SnickerPuffs
- Start date
Changelog from previous version (pipeball_tunnels_a3)
OVERALL
SPAWN
KNOWN ISSUES
- While the black ball's new bleed radius is functioning properly, the original kill radius is no longer working. This has been fixed for a5, which shall release once I get feedback on this version.
OVERALL
- Changed map name from Tunnels to Linedrive (thanks to Katsu for the name suggestion!)
- Reverted the map to basic geometry and dev textures
- Removed the glow effects from the pipeballs (tf_glow is suprisingly fickle), instead using a custom texture that renders through walls
- Added soundscapes (but for real this time)
- Fixed the pipeball not destroying buildings
- Increased the phys_pushscale from 15 to 20
- Removed the "crush" effect on the normal pipeball. Some players really enjoyed it! Everyone else didn't.
- It's nighttime now
- Added some "sightlines blockers", in the form of corrugated metal props, to block some spawn-to-mid sightlines
SPAWN
- The doors are no longer locked during setup
KNOWN ISSUES
- While the black ball's new bleed radius is functioning properly, the original kill radius is no longer working. This has been fixed for a5, which shall release once I get feedback on this version.
SnickerPuffs updated Linedrive with a new update entry:
Beta 1: Artpass? More.... (*giggle*) More Like FARTPASS!
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Beta 1: Artpass? More.... (*giggle*) More Like FARTPASS!
Read the rest of this update entry...
SnickerPuffs updated Linedrive with a new update entry:
Beta 1a: Logic Tweaks and Experiments
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Beta 1a: Logic Tweaks and Experiments
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- Sep 10, 2016
- 602
- 465
I seem to remember at some point that this was tested with the instruction to really tear it apart with detail feedback.
Well, it took me a while, but here I am.
I always feel like an asshole talking about places that are underdetailed in early-beta maps, since it's possible that the map designer already plans to add more detail there, but it's possible they have no idea that it's a problem.
Avoiding inflicting this dilemma on others is part of why I fully artpass my maps for the first beta release.
It leaves people in no doubt that if they don't feedback something, it'll be there 'til RC1.
In imitation of Pipeline's theme, we need to consider what makes it so good, and why they chose the theming elements they did based on Pipeline's existing pre-beta structures.
Having the original paintovers by Dhabih Eng would be ideal, but we don't.
So I have to analyse this map as compared to Pipeline, and where I find this map lacking in that comparison, I will try to understand why.
This map uses Pipeline's full-black props to illustrate distant structures silhouetted against the sky.
This structure behind the pipe building is particularly cool:
However, other structures leave much to be desired:
It's almost pitifully obvious where the main map ends and the fullblack 3dsky zone begins, and past the simple props and black brushes, there's really no effort to make it look like the world continues beyond the confines of the fullblack 3dskyzone, which is remarkably thin and not very layered.
Here's a screenshot from Dustbowl which I found particularly inspiring when researching for the artpass of cp_bruhstbowl:
The important part to note here is not that there's an endless layer of ground, it's that there's a lot of details placed to mask the simplicity of this ground plane, and they're placed in three distinct layers which are far enough apart to create parallax between them:
Now, how did Pipeline mask the transition between main map and 3dsky?
They'll also occasionally use the silhouette props in the main map, combined with silhouette props in the 3dsky - since the 3dsky has much more fog.
Back to Linedrive:
Another thing that makes Pipeline's aesthetic work is the abundance of tall structures in the main map, which makes it so that Valve only needed to occasionally use a silhouette prop, instead of spamming them everywhere.
Linedrive doesn't spam them everywhere, but with no tall structures, to make the map feel like a lived-in world, it's gonna need to either do that or get mighty creative:
The lack of tall structures mean that the sky texture is displayed very prominently everywhere, which is really harmful in my opinion, because this sky texture is SO bright that it's hard to really sell it as a nighttime scene. Pipeline gets away with it by only letting you see it if you look straight up (which players never will), or through the highly detailed silhouette props, as a way to contrast their dark colour.
Connecting the main map and 3dsky at ground level also makes the transition too obvious in another way:
Even though the ground is the exact same texture, there's a clear line where it transitions from yellowish to purplish.
This is mainly down to two reasons:
I said this in another post, but this means a luxel size of 16 in the 3dsky is equivalent to a luxel size of 256 in the main map.
Here it looks like you've used 8, so that would scale up to 128, which is better - but still not a luxel size you'd be proud to put on surfaces that are receiving subtle bounce light.
That brings me to another issue:
This map uses a luxel size of 8 on nearly every surface.
This is great! It makes some really nice effects:
And Pipeline does this too in several locations, particularly where light is shining through a window.
However, I might point out that there are some parts of this map where a luxel size of 8 is not necessary, at least until more wall-details have been added.
For instance, this room:
This room is bathed in spotlights and (presumably) invisible point lights to the point where it's almost fullbright.
I assume you're using multiple spotlights per ceiling light, and their Focus keyvalue is set to the default 1.
So, the main benefit of low luxel size (making the edge of shadows more apparent) is wasted on this room, and the walls should be 16.
However, constantly playing with the size back and forth like this is admittedly one of the reasons my artpasses take so long, since I think "this room could be 16", and then later I put a junction box on the wall or something and then I'm like "better change this wall to 4 and chop it up so I'm not wasting filesize on the parts that don't have the junction box".
So I can kind of understand why you'd standardise the size on nearly every surface as a preliminary measure. You just have to remember to change it back later if you end up not really using the luxel size.
I do find, however, that this map has a general tendency to be overlit:
Two spotlights, and a bunch of point lights, with not that much difference in colour, cause this floor to look basically fullbright, which is a shame, because there are objects on it which would cast nice, stark shadows across its surface.
All this overlighting leads to a crapton of light being bounced everywhere, which not only causes the difference between the main map and 3dsky that I mentioned earlier, but also makes it harder to have your main-map buildings fade into darkness more and more as they get taller.
It also means that any building without an abundance of wall details is going to look flat and boring.
That's not a problem with Pipeline, because they actually place their lights very deliberately so that they'll brighten some parts of a wall but keep others dark - the spotlight cone itself becomes a crucial detail, and one that comes at no framerate cost.
Since almost all the lights they use point straight down and aren't actually super bright, they don't have to worry about a light placed on one wall having adverse affects on another wall.
Refer back to these screenshots (cause I'm too lazy to take more):
By the way, I don't actually think that Pipeline is a spectacularly good-looking map!
There are two main causes of this in my mind:
This lets us brainstorm some fun ways we could make the map look significantly better than Pipeline.
Here's a quick concept area to (hopefully) demonstrate that:
This isn't really as different to Pipeline stylistically as I'd wanted, but whatever.
I was going to do more than one area in this style, but it took ages just to do this one, so I refrained.
Something I thought of in the meantime is that, unlike Pipeline, Linedrive is a very, very open map. That means even if you add a bunch of detail to the map in a similar vein to this area, players' framerate will probably begin to suffer significantly.
So, probably what you'd wanna do is keep details low to the ground (so they can be culled by occluders), keep details inside buildings (so they can be culled by areaportals), and make the absolute most you can out of lighting.
Finally - don't be discouraged! I'm writing this because I really want to see a Pipeball map get popular, and be well-remembered. Since I can't really weigh in on the gameplay of this map, the best way I can achieve my goal is by trying to be as helpful to the aesthetic as possible.
Well, it took me a while, but here I am.
I always feel like an asshole talking about places that are underdetailed in early-beta maps, since it's possible that the map designer already plans to add more detail there, but it's possible they have no idea that it's a problem.
Avoiding inflicting this dilemma on others is part of why I fully artpass my maps for the first beta release.
It leaves people in no doubt that if they don't feedback something, it'll be there 'til RC1.
In imitation of Pipeline's theme, we need to consider what makes it so good, and why they chose the theming elements they did based on Pipeline's existing pre-beta structures.
Having the original paintovers by Dhabih Eng would be ideal, but we don't.
So I have to analyse this map as compared to Pipeline, and where I find this map lacking in that comparison, I will try to understand why.
This map uses Pipeline's full-black props to illustrate distant structures silhouetted against the sky.
This structure behind the pipe building is particularly cool:
However, other structures leave much to be desired:
It's almost pitifully obvious where the main map ends and the fullblack 3dsky zone begins, and past the simple props and black brushes, there's really no effort to make it look like the world continues beyond the confines of the fullblack 3dskyzone, which is remarkably thin and not very layered.
Here's a screenshot from Dustbowl which I found particularly inspiring when researching for the artpass of cp_bruhstbowl:
The important part to note here is not that there's an endless layer of ground, it's that there's a lot of details placed to mask the simplicity of this ground plane, and they're placed in three distinct layers which are far enough apart to create parallax between them:
- Foreground - the fence, grass overlay on the concrete and living and dead shrubs just past the fence
- Midground - the gravel mounds, grain elevator, train and pylons
- Background - the 3dsky horizon card, tree props, pylons and road
Now, how did Pipeline mask the transition between main map and 3dsky?
- Fences are used in the foreground
- Sometimes even right in front of the silhouette structure to make it feel more like it's part of the existing building
- Objects past the first layer of fences, and then a second layer of fences, are used to create parallax and make the silhouette feel more distant than it really is
- Occasionally, multiple silhouettes are placed back-to-back, with the subtle fog helping to make one feel more distant than the other and not making it a confusing mess of shapes
They'll also occasionally use the silhouette props in the main map, combined with silhouette props in the 3dsky - since the 3dsky has much more fog.
Back to Linedrive:
Another thing that makes Pipeline's aesthetic work is the abundance of tall structures in the main map, which makes it so that Valve only needed to occasionally use a silhouette prop, instead of spamming them everywhere.
Linedrive doesn't spam them everywhere, but with no tall structures, to make the map feel like a lived-in world, it's gonna need to either do that or get mighty creative:
The lack of tall structures mean that the sky texture is displayed very prominently everywhere, which is really harmful in my opinion, because this sky texture is SO bright that it's hard to really sell it as a nighttime scene. Pipeline gets away with it by only letting you see it if you look straight up (which players never will), or through the highly detailed silhouette props, as a way to contrast their dark colour.
Connecting the main map and 3dsky at ground level also makes the transition too obvious in another way:
Even though the ground is the exact same texture, there's a clear line where it transitions from yellowish to purplish.
This is mainly down to two reasons:
- Light can go from the 3dsky to the main map, but not the other way around
- Since the 3dsky is scaled up 16 times, its luxels also are:
I said this in another post, but this means a luxel size of 16 in the 3dsky is equivalent to a luxel size of 256 in the main map.
Here it looks like you've used 8, so that would scale up to 128, which is better - but still not a luxel size you'd be proud to put on surfaces that are receiving subtle bounce light.
That brings me to another issue:
This map uses a luxel size of 8 on nearly every surface.
This is great! It makes some really nice effects:
And Pipeline does this too in several locations, particularly where light is shining through a window.
However, I might point out that there are some parts of this map where a luxel size of 8 is not necessary, at least until more wall-details have been added.
For instance, this room:
This room is bathed in spotlights and (presumably) invisible point lights to the point where it's almost fullbright.
I assume you're using multiple spotlights per ceiling light, and their Focus keyvalue is set to the default 1.
So, the main benefit of low luxel size (making the edge of shadows more apparent) is wasted on this room, and the walls should be 16.
However, constantly playing with the size back and forth like this is admittedly one of the reasons my artpasses take so long, since I think "this room could be 16", and then later I put a junction box on the wall or something and then I'm like "better change this wall to 4 and chop it up so I'm not wasting filesize on the parts that don't have the junction box".
So I can kind of understand why you'd standardise the size on nearly every surface as a preliminary measure. You just have to remember to change it back later if you end up not really using the luxel size.
I do find, however, that this map has a general tendency to be overlit:
Two spotlights, and a bunch of point lights, with not that much difference in colour, cause this floor to look basically fullbright, which is a shame, because there are objects on it which would cast nice, stark shadows across its surface.
All this overlighting leads to a crapton of light being bounced everywhere, which not only causes the difference between the main map and 3dsky that I mentioned earlier, but also makes it harder to have your main-map buildings fade into darkness more and more as they get taller.
It also means that any building without an abundance of wall details is going to look flat and boring.
That's not a problem with Pipeline, because they actually place their lights very deliberately so that they'll brighten some parts of a wall but keep others dark - the spotlight cone itself becomes a crucial detail, and one that comes at no framerate cost.
Since almost all the lights they use point straight down and aren't actually super bright, they don't have to worry about a light placed on one wall having adverse affects on another wall.
Refer back to these screenshots (cause I'm too lazy to take more):
By the way, I don't actually think that Pipeline is a spectacularly good-looking map!
There are two main causes of this in my mind:
- It's a three-stage map, so Valve was running into engine limits left, right and centre
- Because there are so many tall brush structures, Valve got left with a lot of tall blank walls that they need to break up the shape of and adorn with wall-details - however, they couldn't actually do this because of the above issue and the fact that it was 2009 and players were gonna have a hard time running such a detailed map
This lets us brainstorm some fun ways we could make the map look significantly better than Pipeline.
Here's a quick concept area to (hopefully) demonstrate that:
This isn't really as different to Pipeline stylistically as I'd wanted, but whatever.
I was going to do more than one area in this style, but it took ages just to do this one, so I refrained.
Something I thought of in the meantime is that, unlike Pipeline, Linedrive is a very, very open map. That means even if you add a bunch of detail to the map in a similar vein to this area, players' framerate will probably begin to suffer significantly.
So, probably what you'd wanna do is keep details low to the ground (so they can be culled by occluders), keep details inside buildings (so they can be culled by areaportals), and make the absolute most you can out of lighting.
Finally - don't be discouraged! I'm writing this because I really want to see a Pipeball map get popular, and be well-remembered. Since I can't really weigh in on the gameplay of this map, the best way I can achieve my goal is by trying to be as helpful to the aesthetic as possible.
Last edited:
Huh. So it is. I have the "repack" option checked in CompilePal, so it should have been packed.
Then again, for the last couple months, CompilePal has REFUSED to generate cubemaps, but it suddenly and randomly fixed itself a few weeks ago. Maybe it's buggy, and I just need to reinstall it.
Thanks a MILLION for the detail feedback. Gonna do some reworking over the next couple days to improve the skybox and OOB areas.
SnickerPuffs updated Linedrive with a new update entry:
Beta 2: Sooner Rather Than Later
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Beta 2: Sooner Rather Than Later
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SnickerPuffs updated Linedrive with a new update entry:
Beta 3: The Gamble
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Beta 3: The Gamble
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SnickerPuffs updated Linedrive with a new update entry:
Beta 3a: All my apes... gone...
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Beta 3a: All my apes... gone...
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SnickerPuffs updated Linedrive with a new update entry:
Beta 3b: Last call (for realsies this time)
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Beta 3b: Last call (for realsies this time)
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SnickerPuffs updated Linedrive with a new update entry:
RELEASE CANIDATE ONE, BABY! YAHOO!
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RELEASE CANIDATE ONE, BABY! YAHOO!
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