Machinatrium by James Wild (jameswilddev2)

Hello.

It's been many years since I did any Quake 3 mapping; largely in other games using its engine such as Elite Force/2. I graduated with a games degree nearly two years ago and have since been working as a software developer.

So why not?

I have some plans for this map. Looking to keep the scale of the map fairly small, but hopefully get some decent visuals in there. For once, I also want to do some proper iterative design with good process and log exactly how it all came together.

My project is being hosted in source control here: https://bitbucket.org/jameswilddev/machinatrium You may download the map, or scroll back through the commits to see how it came together. Right now there's not a lot to see.

Currently experimenting with the layout; I'll be making some notes after the jump about the design changes being made even this early.

Starting out with this, I had this idea that the map could be structured with a single central corridor with little pathways branching off it and linking up in different ways like passages over the top of the corridor, under it, etc. Sketched out some VERY! rough ideas of how it might fit together:

https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=69DF02CF4DAD8DAE!4166&authkey=!APstNe1X_DMfcdE&v=3&ithint=photo%2cjpg

It looks kinda neat from a plan view perspective, but when I visualize it in my head from a first person perspective it's just a bunch of corridors; probably confusing to navigate and not particularly interesting. It could be broken up a bit by having little arenas/rooms attached to the passages, but this is working around what's supposed to be the map's central feature not really being very interesting.

Instead, the only thing I'm taking from this roughing out are some combinations of junctions and the idea of having two floors, one at 45 degrees to the other.

[Blocked Image: http://imgur.com/bhVwbNa.jpg]

Began playtesting a very early beginning whitebox to make sure things are to scale/etc.

[Blocked Image: http://imgur.com/ZDRSbDz.jpg]

Immediately noticed that I've overestimated the size of many things; might be more used to Unreal units now.

[Blocked Image: http://imgur.com/81yKlAf.jpg]

This ramp is also a bit steep; the player tends to fall off it as they come down. If I make the ceilings a bit lower (currently a bit high) this should be better but I might need to move things around horizontally a bit to give it more space too.

[Blocked Image: http://imgur.com/B6IoUTB.jpg]

The diagonal corridor over the top is a bit too long; it'll look less bare once detail/textures are put in, but right now there's no choice for the player.

[Blocked Image: http://imgur.com/oXU07nK.jpg]

Given this little shortcut at the end of the diagonal corridor plays quite well I might add side paths out or big windows you can jump through to the diagonal corridor. I might want to put an item against the corner's back wall so you have an incentive to not always take the shortcut.

http://imgur.com/a/jffUL
Continued working on the greyboxing this morning. Got the whole map there, now to do refinements and see if any big changes need making.

Although the map is fairly big, it's pretty open making it very chaotic with the full 8 players. Finding 8 places to put spawn points where they didn't have line of sight with one another was difficult. It works a lot better with about 4 players at the moment.

Need to figure out how exactly to structure item pickups - I've got a couple of places about the map where the "big" guns are going to go that are fairly exposed, but I want to avoid putting any disk one nukes anywhere near spawns. For instance, I put some armour on the little shelf around the back of the ramp down from the diagonal corridor to hint that it's a path you can take, but that puts it right next to a spawn point and whichever bot spawns there tends to win.

Thanks, that helps. I'm only using the Quake 3 lighting for the greybox; my longer term plan is to high poly the whole map in Blender, raytrace it there and bake the whole thing to fullbright meshes. Though I will still need Quake 3 lights in the scene to illuminate players.

It is pretty big; I think I'm still in Unreal unit land. Have been cutting it down bit by bit, but there's going to be quite a bit of geometry on the walls so I'd rather it be a bit big rather than cramped right now. Thanks for your input.

Began working on the high polygon models for one of the rooms; plan to have a test bake done by the end of tomorrow.

[Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/4T0g8na.jpg]

I'm leaning towards styling it with blue/green/sickly yellow dark interiors and fairly bright orange/red sunset outdoors for all that teal-orange goodness.

Hmm. It's not been going well. I've been at work this week so I haven't had a lot of time to put into this, but it seems the approach I was taking does not scale well; with only one room done, a bake takes a few hundred megabytes short of all of my RAM, and far too long to bake to be practical. I might need to make stylistic adjustments...

[Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/CIBseHy.jpg]

It doesn't look like much progress but it's the fourth rebuild of the room. Beginning to learn the performance characteristics and limitations of Blender's Cycles engine. I'll be showing a test bake soon.

[Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/n9iWTZJ.jpg]

Baked to low-poly geometry. This is a relatively quick test bake with only 25 iterations; final render will be 150 at double the resolution.

[Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/kvEscXF.jpg]

You were 100% correct on it being a bit big Sprony. I like the height for how it plays but will bring some of the details closer to the floor (I'm partway up a jump here)

Is that better? It was showing up before as a thumbnail here; not sure if that was a browser thing. They were showing up as links on my phone.

Working on the high poly of the "underpass" which runs under the diagonal corridor. In the background the eastern wing is visible.

[Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/y3nAlwi.png]

Also started thinking about how to build the background. Quake 3's skybox system is quite easy to produce textures for with Blender's camera system, but given some parts of the backdrop come quite close to the player and the sky cube has no depth, I'm going to have to include some parts of the backdrop as models.

[Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/c5OLEtf.jpg]

Began experimenting with sculpting the cliff the base sits on. I have only limited experience with sculpting and that is getting on for two years ago. I think the material is what is holding this back more than anything though. Will have to see how it bakes tomorrow.
[Blocked Image: http://i.imgur.com/5c8l5QD.jpg]

To recap following my absence: I did about half a day's work, lost it, then didn't feel like doing anything at all for the following week. But I return...