I open this thread for those, who are curious about what I am mapping from time to time. If you are not interested, then you don't need to take a look at it, but the rest could maybe also give a hint or two about what to improve.


My candidate today is Battlefront. I am working on the next version for several months now (at least it feels like this), but this map seems to love it to get bugs all the time you change something and so I have to start over and over again.

This is the new bunker I modeled today (there will be added more details):
[IMG]http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/5861/battlefrontbunker.th.jpg[/IMG]

And this is the problem I got as a reward, far away from the actual problem-source:
[IMG]http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/3817/bsphole.th.jpg[/IMG]

Always look on the bright side of life!

Hmm, that is odd. Is that bsp deleted or the texture just hidden? Could the prob be caused due to action on something that has a tag similarly named to that bsp?

While we're on the subject of Battlefront, there's something I've been meaning to say every time I heard mention of you working on a "fix" version: IMO it's a waste of time and talent, man. That map has fundamental flaws - including 2 choke points (!) - that think can be fixed no matter how much effort you put into it. BF was designed as a slow, turtling map and trying to change that without pratically substituting it for a new map won't get you anything. Hell, you can try to add a tunnel and directly link the 2 choke nodes, it'll still won't improve things much besides offering an area of higher pph action; above ground will still mostly remain a big no man's land in the middle where tank campers prevail and fights go on forever till the timeout drains one core to 0 faster.

Point is, the way I've personally lived and perceived it, BF on TechCom has been at an old and ongoing battle with quality; perhaps it's time to just cut our losses and move on to better things? Just a thought.

pegasus_ wrote:
Hmm, that is odd. Is that bsp deleted or the texture just hidden? Could the prob be caused due to action on something that has a tag similarly named to that bsp?

While we're on the subject of Battlefront, there's something I've been meaning to say every time I heard mention of you working on a "fix" version: IMO it's a waste of time and talent, man. That map has fundamental flaws - including 2 choke points (!) - that think can be fixed no matter how much effort you put into it. BF was designed as a slow, turtling map and trying to change that without pratically substituting it for a new map won't get you anything. Hell, you can try to add a tunnel and directly link the 2 choke nodes, it'll still won't improve things much besides offering an area of higher pph action; above ground will still mostly remain a big no man's land in the middle where tank campers prevail and fights go on forever till the timeout drains one core to 0 faster.

Point is, the way I've personally lived and perceived it, BF on TechCom has been at an old and ongoing battle with quality; perhaps it's time to just cut our losses and move on to better things? Just a thought.

You see that bunker in the middle? That's how we finally get around the choke. But I had another bunker there before, which looked really pathetic and was made out of two StaticMesh-bunkerhalfs, but it was horrible to work with that and got the bugs too as soon as I imported it to an old version of the map. So the root of all problems is definitely the center, but the center is also the one thing without that a release of the new version wouldn't make sense.

And the BSP isn't rendered. For more information see: http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/Legacy:BSP_Hole

It's fascinating, even if it drives you to desperation. That's not the only one in the map. I also have small invisible obstacles at the lake-node and a gigantic strange shadow on the mountain behind one of the big garages.

Nice idea with bunker I would like to try it. Unlike Pegasus i like this map very much and dont see any troubles with gameplay. And I just love fights for bunkers. And this new one will add some fresh feelings i believe. I'll be waiting!
Hope map bugs wont impede you Crusha too much
Anyway you do great job! Thanx!

m-knell wrote:
[...]Unlike Pegasus i like this map very much and dont see any troubles with gameplay.[...]So you don't see any problem at all with the higest scorers from both teams after ~25mins of play having <200 pphs? Because that's pretty much the short way of saying "nothing interesting happened all this time" if you ask me :/.


crusha_k_rool wrote:
You see that bunker in the middle? That's how we finally get around the choke.[...]Considering current geometry and link setup, you'd only get around the choke if you removed or bypassed the 2 underground nodes, not if you added something more inbetween them.

crusha_k_rool wrote:
[...]That's not the only one in the map. I also have small invisible obstacles at the lake-node and a gigantic strange shadow on the mountain behind one of the big garages.It's official, Battlefront is haunted! Whom you gonna call?

pegasus_ wrote:
m-knell wrote:
[...]Unlike Pegasus i like this map very much and dont see any troubles with gameplay.[...]So you don't see any problem at all with the higest scorers from both teams after ~25mins of play having &lt;200 pphs? Because that's pretty much the short way of saying "nothing interesting happened all this time" if you ask me :/.


crusha_k_rool wrote:
You see that bunker in the middle? That's how we finally get around the choke.[...]Considering current geometry and link setup, you'd only get around the choke if you removed or bypassed the 2 underground nodes, not if you added something more inbetween them.

crusha_k_rool wrote:
[...]That's not the only one in the map. I also have small invisible obstacles at the lake-node and a gigantic strange shadow on the mountain behind one of the big garages.It's official, Battlefront is haunted! Whom you gonna call?

Well, there are enough new vehicles, which should increase the pph a bit. I also removed the annoying ion-tank.


This is how to bypass it with the new node:
[url]http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/6876/72921335.jpg


I call the semi-solid brush, as it doesn't operate in the normal BSP-world. It has it's own world (which can also cause bugs on other ways, but that won't happen).
I didn't noticed it until now, but the stairs in the bunker must be horrible for any BSP-algorithm to render.

This is the result of the work on the bunker-stairs:

[IMG]http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/1839/stillbsphole.th.jpg[/IMG]


The hole is still there, but it became much smaller. Maybe I can find other places to fix something.

Crusha: 1 - BSP-hole: 0

[IMG]http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/6244/bspasshole.th.jpg[/IMG]


I replaced some complex brushes (some of them were also off the grid or only on a very small-sized one) with semi-solid ones or StaticMeshes and now the BSP-hole is gone.

Another positive effect is, that the repairs reduced the number of BSP-cuts in the two existing bunkers, so there should be less pressure on the CPU now.


EDIT: Ok, the deadly and obvious holes are gone now, but there are still invisible obstacles and some dark deadly looking shadows.

When I am finished, then I'll try to export all changes into a clean map and hope that it works.

pegasus_ wrote:
So you don't see any problem at all with the higest scorers from both teams after ~25mins of play having &lt;200 pphs?

Yep I dont care of scores but only impression of game. Well, its a matter of taste as i said. For example, a lot of ppl like aalien2 and for me it's the one of the most boring maps on server. Its not reason for dispute

crusha_k_rool Oh... radical changes. Do you thnik Ion was bad? It was fun and imho didnt realy affect gameplay or balance. Anyway i suppose it will be rather different map with such node-setup and other changes Will current version of map store on server too?

This one will overwrite the old, I think.
But Foibos and I still have the v6, if everything should go wrong.

If you are more interested in possible changes, then you can read through this thread I opened at the Titan-forum.

It's from an early beta-version and most Titans doesn't like this kind of gameplay, but lilalurl helped me a lot with feedback about how to improve things. Many of the things he mentioned in the thread found their way into the map.