KotH Mill rc3

[IrishTaxIDriver]

I talked to a competitive fella last night and he gave me a few changes that he'd like to see.

1. A way into the attic from the cliffside area. This was actually something I was considering a while ago but never did it for some reason.

2. Remove the guardrails from the stairs up from the basement. I had them in because I thought it'd be annoying to just fall without any real indication of why. But appearantly they block pipes and rockets too well, making that landing a hard place to fight from. He'd also like to see that landing merge with the other one, which might not be possible with how the basement is set up. I haven't measured it yet.

3. Remove the superfluous walls inside the mill. It creates small chokepoints and turns the mill into spamming around corners and such. I don't like this!

4. Needs more optimization. I'm running out of stuff to do really rapidly. I noticed a few occluder errors that I need to fix for B3 but I'm not entirely convinced they're all necessary. I need to look at them again. I've done areaportalling and hint/skipping, but I think unless I find some way to straight up areaportal the halves of the map, it just isn't gonna happen. I've got a few more tricks up my sleeves though.

 

[3Dnj]

Ho! I really like how your indoors area looks like maybe the outside need a more attractive identity. More attractive than just cliff and dirt.

 

[IrishTaxIDriver]

Yeah the indoor sections are easily my favorite part. I guess I'm struggling with the exterior then, theres not much I can do with the logging setting except throw logs and planks everywhere. Someone did just say to me that the buildings feel plain. I've been using model train buildings as inspiration.

Oh heres some shots of stuff that'll be in b3. My list of changes is complete except for more optimization stuff.

Removed the superfluous walls inside the mill. Dunno about that crate and barrel, they might get removed or reduced to something less in the way.



Removed the guardrails and extended the landing all the way across. Not sure about the texture on it.



New route to the attic from the cliffside area, scouts can use this with some easy jumping.



I think this is the last door to the upper mill area I'm going to add. Its starting to turn into swiss cheese and is affecting performance.

 

[IrishTaxIDriver]

My apologies, but I have released B3.

Wheres the download link?

Its here! WHAP! http://dl.dropbox.com/u/53150/koth_mill_b3.rar

We'll be playing it on 2fort2furious tonight soonish!

 

[IrishTaxIDriver]

Hello. I had to do *something* for *someone* and work on a *different project*. Its mostly over now so back to Mill. I'm working on the optimizations and I think overall its about a 15-20 fps increase everywhere. I mitered everything possible, nodraw'd several trillion faces (its a ballpark figure), added some skybox boundaries to divide up the play areas better, and probably a bunch of stuff I forced myself to forget because optimization is not interesting work.

I areaportalwindow'd the heck out of the mill and the teams respective sides. It needs a little more fine tuning on the distance numbers but I think my initial stab is pretty close, just gotta go through by hand.

Heres some shots of blue that have been changed. I switched it all to a darker white wood which allowed me to get away with the framing, and mixed in some concrete to give blue a little different flavor than red. I'm looking into some more industrial stuff to seperate it a little more.





That cranes really bugging me in the second screenshot, its gonna meet a little friend I call detailing...

Also the truck ramps gonna get some lovin'. Probably will fill it with a new sawdust texture and make an overlay to blend it into the ground displacements.

Double also that metal bridge isn't detailed either.

Barring my computer exploding (though I think I got that over with in the artpass contest) and my dog eating my harddrive, b4 should be ready by the end of the week, and hopefully in time for a gameday so we can roll up our sleeves and hit the non-performance issues.

 

[LeSwordfish]

That kind of crane would be placed on a wall, no way would it just stick out of the roof.

 

[IrishTaxIDriver]

Yeah I know. It was a placeholder thing because I really couldn't think of what to do at the time, but now I don't really mind just bringing a little piece of angled roof out to touch the back of it.

 

[honeymustard]

Just do this

yes I have parkinsons

 

[IrishTaxIDriver]

That is almost exactly what I was going to do minus the other one. But I like both of them. I was thinking of doing it to the other side too and adding a unused crane above the ledge to the cliff dock.

EDIT: I like that line that doesn't connect to the right place :>

 

[honeymustard]

You shut up.

 

[IrishTaxIDriver]

At least I bust out photoshop and the straight line tool!

 

[IrishTaxIDriver]

Bump with a beta 4. Its mostly unchanged visually but performance has been improved significantly, seeing at least 10-20 fps improvement over the entire map. Hooray!

Hopefully a RC won't be too far away, but I'd like to rebuild as much of the map from scratch as possible to remove the bandaids and patches I've put on through various experiments.

I'll get it in on a gameday when they start up again. Right now its on 2f2f's rotation.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/53150/koth_mill_b4.rar

 

[IrishTaxIDriver]

Hello previous post's words, let me eat you.

I ended up focusing time on some other stuff that didn't come to fruition

In this version I've changed:

-Instanced all lights and most common geometry stuff.
-Replaced the blue wood storage building with something more suited.
-Nodraw'd everything I forgot about last time.
-Removed the signs on the trapdoors.
-Removed the sun.
-Whole lotta more detail inside the mill, mostly focused around the point. Things like cross braces for the floors and cobwebs.
-Rubbed the sharp corners off a lot of areas (Better clipping).
-Clarified a whole host of detail areas.



We played it on 2f2f a few minutes ago, everyone loved it! Should be in the rotation too

http://danmerboth.com/files/koth_mill_rc1.rar
OR
http://danmerboth.com/files/koth_mill_rc1.bsp.bz2

 

[Seba]

Omnomnom, that BLU container is so sexy

 

[Boylee]

Duuude, not sure how I missed this until now, it looks fucking sweet! Note to self: must organise a playtest of this soon...

 

[IrishTaxIDriver]

I take a long time when I do new versions, last version was a month or so ago.

EDIT: Updated all pictures in the OP.

 

[McNuggetFiend]

Finally! I love this map and it plays pretty well with bots too!

 

[IrishTaxIDriver]

RC2 Update, still working on the feedback list from a playtest a few weeks ago. I was on vacation last week.

Hopefully doing the last geometry tweaks right now. Lets have some checkerboard cubemap shots in here:


I've narrowed the back of the riverbed a little bit, under the assumption it'll funnel people who go into it up the pier at the bottom. Also the riverbed was too big. I also tweaked the displacements around the dirt ramps into the riverbed, preventing you from getting stuck in a few spots.


New waterwheels! Also instanced now so I can rotate them just a smidge.

The astute Mill Scholars of you will notice the health on the pier moved in the first shot. I've swapped the health and ammo placement, and downgraded the metal. I've added small metal to the inside of the mill here:



And also downgraded the health and metal on the back pier.

If everything goes as well with this as RC1 did, the final is just around the corner!

Things I'm still looking to do: (bold not complete)
-Round the truck tracks a bit more.
-New corn texture.
-Tweak the lighting settings, see if I can remove the wood glow.
-Figure out a damn solution for the truck ramps.
-Maybe some brick accents on the mill. Looking a little flat to me these days...
-Instance and redo the cliffside and riverbed piers
-A spire jump for the cliffside attic entrance to simplify the jumps for scouts.

 

[IrishTaxIDriver]

Curse you my internet for making me think the last post timed out. Shame on you.

 

[IrishTaxIDriver]

I've been a few days late posting this after the test, but I'm busy moving out of my apartment, finding a new one, and moving there to start work at a new job on the 8th (as well as working on upland wth my good buddy Mark Honeymustard). So its been a little hectic, and doing "homework" before I start working doesn't help either. So!




Major changes:

• Redid the truck track overlays.
• Redid the Mill wheels.
• New corn texture. (thanks Mark!)
• Threw some shovels in the truck ramps and rounded it a bit more.
• Added some brick accents to the mill.
• Messed with the item locations a bit.
• Pinched the back of the riverbed down.
• Modified the team spawns to be less spacious.
• Rebuild the piers from scratch and modified them a bit.
• Added a new route for scouts off the back pier into the attic.

What I didn't get done was modify the lighting. I wanted to set that aside and fix everything else first so I can focus on it completely before digging my heels in and 100%ing everything for the final version. Yes! Next version of the map will be FINAL.

--> DOWNLOAD LINK <--