Polynesia

[Rastavi]

Hi all!

I made a map for an arts assignment for school (I scored 9/10, which is nice ), now I'm posting it here to see what you guys think. It's basically an abandoned castle on a tropical island. Not meant to be played, but to be seen as an artistic expression Originally it had mapsounds, which made the atmosphere a lot nicer, but I have no idea how to add sounds without having the user to put them in C:/Program Files/Sauerbraten/packages/sounds.




Any advice/critics is welcome But don't say anything about the heightmap mess underwater, I know how bad it is and I learned to hate heightmap in general.

Edit: I forgot, but the well is from fc3, so credits go to blindabuser

Update: made it more misty, changed the fog- and watercolour, changed the colour of the well water and added some more detail to the ground level room in the big tower.

Update2: Removed a lot of the non-visible ocean to decrease /calclight times (thanks Fatality + Suicizer)

[greenadiss]

I can't see this map as a map maker, I am just a player.
This map is not for playing. That's obvious.
I like the castle, its forms and atmospheric rooms
The only thing I would like to change there is the skybox, something less sunny and more misty.
Also, I think the shadows are too dark/deep. It should be something simple to change.

Some more screenshots:

[Rastavi]

I like the castle, its forms and atmospheric rooms

Thanks you

This map is not for playing. That's obvious.

True, will add that to the description for clarity's sake.

The only thing I would like to change there is the skybox, something less sunny and more misty.

It was quite hard to find a skybox that had a bright sun in the air, a tropical look and mountains in it, this is the one that fitted those limitations best. But you're right, a more misty skybox would complement the mysterious castle.

Also, I think the shadows are too dark/deep. It should be something simple to change.

Will look into that, /ambient should be the solution.

[Fatality]

Hey, nice to see that you posted this here . I like the map, it has a really nice feeling.

Some things I noticed:
I know you don't want feedback on the heightmap, but I will just say that heightmaps do indeed suck, and if you can and are willing to learn how to build terrain without heightmaps I really suggest it. It is a little more work and time to build by hand, but it comes out looking 100% more natural and smooth. Just look at some existing maps which have nice terrain already (authentic, bt_falls, anything by neib). Hope this will help you a bit.

I think you should play around with a different fog colour and water colour. The default's aren't so good, and you can really change the mood with different colors.

The theme has been done pretty often already, but you still managed to make this one stand alone. I am sucker for originality (even though I don't follow this myself ). If you do continue to make maps, which I hope you do, try to come up with something way out there, that no one has done yet, even if it's totally bizarre. Look at some maps by Pyccna on quadropolis for some examples. Even if the map is bad in every other aspect, the originality will make it awesome anyway, since there really is nothing else to compare it to.

I think it could definitely be a playable map (why not?). Just add some well placed bases and some item spawns, it would be a nice capture map

/ambient will definitely work for what greenadiss said, just change it to something brighter than the default 25 25 25. You could also try some subtle skylight.

Overall I like it, not much else to say there . If you want more specific advice on anything just ask, or maybe I can catch you around in game.

P.S. Just a personal request, it would be cool to have the vines on the outside walls climbable, sort of like a throwback to some Zelda games or Mario. Just use some skytexture techniques or some clip. Also the horizontal tree in the back could be clipped and climbable, like the one on Xenon.

GJ!

[Rastavi]

Updated the map: less harsh shadows, more fog, different fog & watercolour, like you guys suggested.

to Fatality:
Woohooo! Thanks a lot for the kind words

I know you don't want feedback on the heightmap, but I will just say that heightmaps do indeed suck, and if you can and are willing to learn how to build terrain without heightmaps I really suggest it. It is a little more work and time to build by hand, but it comes out looking 100% more natural and smooth. Just look at some existing maps which have nice terrain already (authentic, bt_falls, anything by neib). Hope this will help you a bit.

I'm totally gonna do that, saw some people doing it online, and it is indeed beautiful.

The theme has been done pretty often already, but you still managed to make this one stand alone. I am sucker for originality (even though I don't follow this myself ). If you do continue to make maps, which I hope you do, try to come up with something way out there, that no one has done yet, even if it's totally bizarre. Look at some maps by Pyccna on quadropolis for some examples. Even if the map is bad in every other aspect, the originality will make it awesome anyway, since there really is nothing else to compare it to.

Definitely planning to make more maps; I wanna start working on a playable duel map soon. Thanks for the advice!

Regarding making it playable (and the climbable vines ): I don't think i'm gonna do that. There are many places that would have to be clipped, also it's quite small for capture I think. And then again, who cares about capture anyway?

Also a question: calclighting takes a painfully long time; it has to do 16 textures. Is that because the entire oceanfloor has to be lighted? And what are the commands to solve that?

[Suicizer]

Updated the map: less harsh shadows, more fog, different fog & watercolour, like you guys suggested.

to Fatality:
Woohooo! Thanks a lot for the kind words

I know you don't want feedback on the heightmap, but I will just say that heightmaps do indeed suck, and if you can and are willing to learn how to build terrain without heightmaps I really suggest it. It is a little more work and time to build by hand, but it comes out looking 100% more natural and smooth. Just look at some existing maps which have nice terrain already (authentic, bt_falls, anything by neib). Hope this will help you a bit.

I'm totally gonna do that, saw some people doing it online, and it is indeed beautiful.

The theme has been done pretty often already, but you still managed to make this one stand alone. I am sucker for originality (even though I don't follow this myself ). If you do continue to make maps, which I hope you do, try to come up with something way out there, that no one has done yet, even if it's totally bizarre. Look at some maps by Pyccna on quadropolis for some examples. Even if the map is bad in every other aspect, the originality will make it awesome anyway, since there really is nothing else to compare it to.

Definitely planning to make more maps; I wanna start working on a playable duel map soon. Thanks for the advice!

Regarding making it playable (and the climbable vines ): I don't think i'm gonna do that. There are many places that would have to be clipped, also it's quite small for capture I think. And then again, who cares about capture anyway?

Also a question: calclighting takes a painfully long time; it has to do 16 textures. Is that because the entire oceanfloor has to be lighted? And what are the commands to solve that?

The best option is to use the command /lightprecision and set it to something like 48 or 64.
If you're not satisfied with being that detailed anymore; use the command /blurlms 1 (or 2) to get smoother lightmaps again. This can also be done with the skylight, by using /blurskylight 1 (or 2)
It won't affect the amount of lightmaps; but if the map had a quite detailed seafloor, setting the waterfog lower increases the performance.

[Rastavi]

Danku! Gonna try that.

[Fatality]

You could also try just deleting about 60% of the ocean that isn't visible from the island, since the sea floor taking up a huge amount of the lightmaps. You can even go the extra step and fill in all the unused space with skytextured geometry (a trick I learned from suicizer). I figured making a video would be a lot easier than trying to explain this, so check this out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUdrDAkRJeE

I think there is also something with /shrinkmap but tbh I'm not 100% sure about it

[Rastavi]

Ah! That's brilliant! I always wondered why some maps have skytexture around them, but it totally works From 35 to 5 seconds, plus the map file is smaller. Thanks a lot for showing me man, really appreciated Updated the file again.

/shrinkmap doesn't work for me. It is recognized as a command, but no effect visible. One of sauer's dark corners...

And btw, what client do you use?

[Fatality]

wahn-client with a shitload of mods

There's some whole process to using shrinkmap, like moving the map to one corner of the build-able area, deleting everything else, and then executing the command. Not really sure how to do it but I'm sure you could ask around

[Rastavi]

wahn-client with a shitload of mods

Ok

Well, shrinkmap doesn't sound terribly useful anyway I'll take a look at the source code, curious what i'm gonna come across.