Posts by Campaignjunkie

  • "20 Brush" level compo! WIP / discussion thread

    Quote from seir

    I know that "20" is just fine but for me that's something like stoling the idea. I don't know...

    Well, I wanted to do one right NOW, but they just finished theirs so they aren't going to do another one for a while. Plus, they have judges and scores, but I prefer something casual and relaxed and democratic. (They spent a month or two to plan theirs!)

    And re: the patch / displacement / terrain question, I think we should just disallow height field terrain AND disallow use of displacement and patches as terrain? (I mean, it'll be obvious...)

    Here's another draft:

    Comments / feedback / changes?

  • "20 Brush" level compo! WIP / discussion thread

    A question: do we want to allow specialized brush / displacement editors? I'm referring mainly to Microbrush2, DispGen and Twister. On one hand, they're not level editors... but on the other, they can do really cool stuff and people might make cool stuff with it. I can imagine some awesome effects with Twister especially, and if it encourages people to go out and try / learn these tools and bring it back to their other work, isn't that good?

  • "20 Brush" level compo! WIP / discussion thread

    Whaa? At that point, is it even a brush, if you're merging all these solids together?

    Okay, I've added a definition of brush to the rules:

    Quote

    a "brush" is a single convex primitive that was built in a level editor, whether additive or subtractive.

    Does that address peoples' concerns?

    I don't know how Unreal does it, but in most Quake-based engines I can't imagine more than 40 or 50 faces on a brush, and even then that's really pushing it. But if someone finds a way and makes a single really awesome brush with 100 faces, why should I stop them, with my personal lack of imagination?

  • "20 Brush" level compo! WIP / discussion thread

    I think 20 brushes is a good amount. It makes you think, "do I need this brush? What is this brush doing?"... which I think is a question that people skip over a lot.

    Then again, no one's going to verify whether you stayed under the limit or not. (Honor code and all that.)

    ... but like here's a floater I made in about 90 minutes as a test run. It's HL2DM low gravity KOTH instagib with ar2-altfires. The displacement sphere came from a 6-faced cube, so it counts as 6 brushes. (textures / skybox by Hipshot, converted and HDR-ified by me)

    [attachment=0]20b_nara0003.jpg[/attachment]

    [attachment=1]20b_nara0004.jpg[/attachment]

    ... and here's some examples from the leveldesign.nl compo:

    [Blocked Image: http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/9837/cr3b20full.jpg]

    [Blocked Image: http://www.leveldk.co.uk/20b/20b_v2.jpg]

    [Blocked Image: http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y138/phantazm11/Level%20Design/phantq3_20b_1.jpg]

    Like I said, this doesn't have to be a 10 month project. You can crank out an entry in an hour or two, in your editor / engine of choice, and enjoy yourself... Or you can make an awesome CTF map (like the leveldesign.nl people did) with only 20 brushes and plan everything meticulously.

  • "20 Brush" level compo! WIP / discussion thread

    FINAL EDIT: Updated rules can be found here, please use these... I know there are a lot, but they're mostly there to cover edge cases: viewtopic.php?f=57&t=15843

    =================

    EDIT: err, can someone move this to 3D forum? My bad.

    EDIT 2:

    Quote

    I'd submit, if we do this, a starting date of Jan 8th with a final submission on Sunday the 23rd? That's 3 full weekends and the two weeks in between... hopefully way more time than people need, but not so long that it fizzles out?

    INTRO

    Over at leveldesign.nl they've recently wrapped up a 20 brush level contest -- http://www.leveldesign.nl/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=102 -- and the results are really cool and inspiring. Maybe we could run one of our own too? (I recently discovered an invitation to be a judge in my Snarkpit inbox which I haven't checked for months... oops)

    THE RULES

    I think they have too many rules though (http://www.leveldesign.nl/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=86) so we could keep ours much simpler. I propose these:

    - For our purposes, a "brush" is a single convex primitive that was built in a level editor, whether additive or subtractive.

    - A small MP map in whatever engine you prefer, but that engine has to use BSP. (Source, HL1, Q1, Q3A, UT, UDK, Crysis?, etc.) Any game mode you want, though DM / KOTH would be easiest and CTF would probably be most difficult.

    - 20 brushes max. Each "face" of a patch or displacement, before it was subdivided, counts as a brush.

    - No fancy 3D skyboxes filled with props; use only the most basic skybox setup for whatever engine you're using.

    - No static meshes, detail props or particle systems, unless they're already part of a weapon base or capture point or other gameplay entity.

    - Each sprite / decal / overlay counts as a brush.

    - Custom textures allowed. Paint whatever you can within the time limit...

    - Unlimited number of faces on a brush, light actors, postprocessing, weapons, ammo, player spawns, vehicles, whatever.

    - Special brushes (skybox, portalsky, trigger, nodraw, etc.) don't count, as long as the player can't walk on them or run into them.

    - IN GENERAL, just try not to do stuff that goes against the spirit of this compo.

    TIPS & TRICKS (?)

    - Use the clip tool to make bevels; that way you can easily put trims, if you want.

    - Vertex manipulation is your friend. Remember -- in Hammer, you can select two opposing edges (the yellow boxes) and press CTRL+F to split the face!

    - Displacements and patch meshes are your friend too. In theory you could make your entire level out of one displacement... if that sounds like fun to you, go ahead!

    JUDGING

    From there, we vote on winners in several different polls: Overall Winner, Coolest Use of BSP, Prettiest, Coolest Layout, Weirdest, etc. whatever categories we want.

    No one will have time to play levels, especially with so many different engines, so they'll just be judged based on two (2) screenshots: (a) a beauty shot and (b) a layout shot. It isn't ideal, but let's be honest, it's how people would vote anyway.

    All we need is, like, 3 people and that'll be enough to get started. People can jump-in whenever they want.

    Sounds good? or bad?

  • WIP in WIP, post your level screenshots!

    Hipshot: you should've finished that!... Whatever it was. Or tweaked / changed your mechanics if the grav gun wasn't working out.

    Happy: That's awesome and really realistic.

    Anyway!

    Here's some of my Doom 3 level, for a Thief-style mod called "Dark Mod." They've just released 1.03 publicly and already have 30+ levels out. If you guys like Thief, you should look into mapping for it, their version of Radiant is pretty alright and they have a lot of textures / props (a lot of them are bad, but you find the good ones quickly enough).

    Going to Doom 3 from Source is kinda weird, but it's fun to figure out the quirks. The standard for map size is pretty great too, a lot of maps are just a handful of rooms but they're praised and loved, and I imagine a DM level would round out a portfolio quite nicely and prove you can learn a new engine properly as well as digest new single player mechanics... cough cough.

    (I miss light maps)

  • Black Mesa Source

    Having worked on both:

    Nightwatch died for a lot of reasons; no animators but a lot of animation to do -- which stalled NPC code that relied on animations which stalled map design that relied on working NPCs, rampant feature creep, a global content reboot or two, an engine getting increasingly obsolete and so it was difficult to recruit for staff turnover, etc. (Who wants to work on HL1 when HL2 is out?) There's probably more to it than that, but that's what comes to my mind first.

    Black Mesa has well-staffed departments (or it did when I was still there) and experienced leadership that has shipped MMOs, and Source is still relatively viable / usable for the near future... and since it's a remake, there's a clear roadmap as to how to finish things. (You won't see new, entire chapters or entire new game mechanics)

    To sum it up, I don't think the comparison is accurate. They're both huge single player mods with talented staff (and a lot of turnover, haha) but that's it.

  • Now playing 2010

    Playing through Mass Effect 2. I liked how they stopped kidding themselves and got rid of the RPG elements. Now I can just focus on killing lots of things. The "Jack" character is really annoying though, a rather large misstep on the part of the writers.