Alexis: I looked at the official campaigns to figure out a full-screen
poster, I think you needed a 4:3 and widescreen setting in the mission
or addon file, but neither worked for me so it just gets left at
1024x1024. Not sure what I'm doing wrong there.
The car alarm, I noticed that after I released it, but I used one of
Valve's own func_instances, so I don't know why that happened. I
remember it happened with another car I set up by myself though, maybe
the car is set to physics but the glass isn't.
I used a couple of models from CSS and Ep2, but I made this campaign by
myself so everything else (except the tall tree props) are my own. Last
I counted there were over 400 props in my folder but that includes quite
a few that were just converted through propper.
Caleb: the invisible brush/clip problem is actually a concrete barrier.
It's a default prop from L4D and shows up for me, but someone else
reported it as invisible too. I really have no idea why that would
happen for some people when I'm pretty sure it's used in the official
campaigns. I'll swap it out for a different one.
The small alley in map 1 was meant to be a bit of a maze, but if you
follow the path through the middle it leads straight to the next part. I
tried including more than one route through some parts (especially there
and the map 2 shopping area), a lot of people are getting lost though so
it should probably be streamlined.
It will support versus but I have zero entities free in map 2 until I
break it into separate maps, and I'll probably add survival too.
Eugenio: thanks for the demos, and I agree with pretty much everything
else you said. I think the maps probably are too dark, I always have to
lighten the screenshots but you don't really notice in-game since you
always have your flashlight on.
On 07/01/2012 18:53, Alexis H wrote:
Allright.
First off, THIS SUCKS. Why are the Survivors in Japan in the first place?
OMG U SUX
Just kidding ye.
I am really impressed. The level of detail is astonishing and the custom
textures and models make it really wonderful to see. To be honest, I don't
easily say this, but I wouldn't find many cons. If I have to come up with
some, I'll say this:
- The loading screen poster would be better if it spanned the whole screen
- The starting area's walls look a bit too clean IMO. It would help if you
added a couple of decals on those.
- The alarm car's windows near the area where the plane crashes into the
building are not aligned with the car itself properly. Check it out in
Hammer, you'll see what I mean
- Yes, map1 and 2 seem to be too long.
For the rest, this is really impressive. It's amazing and you really get
the feeling that you're in Japan. Well done. I'll be following this from up
close. If you want us to test more, let us know. You're right: it helps a
lot when other people test your map a few times. I ran Haunted Forest so
much myself that I totally missed some really blatant bugs and it also
helped me tweak the lighting correctly when getting feedback from other
people.
How did you get those badass models anyway? You made them all yourselves?
-Alexis
On Sat, Jan 7, 2012 at 7:41 PM, Mark Edwards
<[email protected]>wrote:
Thanks for the feedback Kev. A lot of people have said map 2 is too long
and it will be split up into two (just before the little shopping district
area). I thought map 1 was pretty short though, at least if you run
straight from A to B without exploring/getting lost, but I'll probably
delete the elevator event and just have the ladder going up which should
cut it down slightly. The ambulance you can actually see further back from
the house in map 2, the idea is that it got stuck at a roadblock so they
have to go on on foot. I had no other way of both giving a reason for them
to abandon it, and also block off the way it had already come from. I'm
going to try and put a moving camera in that pans from the ambulance and
over to the house to clear that up.
The 'too many vertex format changes' error is apparently to do with brush
faces, from what I've read. As long as that error is scrolling through the
console, random brush faces flicker on and off to stay under the limit, but
I converted enough stuff to props that it's not really noticeable at all. I
don't know how I could even get rid of any more brush faces but I'll do
some more testing to see if that's causing the particle errors.
As for the obstacles, those came up in testing too but I couldn't think of
a more realistic way of doing it in some places. I didn't want to put
barricade fences everywhere and zombies need to be able to get over easily,
but I'll try to at least make it more obvious which routes are blocked off.
I actually played map 3 for the first ever time with other people a few
days ago, and they got lost at the start too. You're meant to restart the
generators to keep on going up after they cut out, hopefully if I use some
instructor hints across the two maps it'll be easier to understand.
Thanks for playing and giving some feedback anyway, I've tested so much by
myself with bots that I sometimes miss the more obvious things. I was going
to just leave it at this, I'm hoping to get the last 2 maps finished in a
couple of months.
On 07/01/2012 15:42, Kev Edwards wrote:
hi Mark
Incredibly impressive with a ton of new content. You've totally nailed
the setting.
Anyway, you're after feedback, so here goes...
I thought the first two levels are far too long. It took me the best part
of half an hour to get through each of them...on Easy. That's longer to
play through 2 maps that it originally took me to play through any of the
full Valve campaigns. Versus mode may well be a problem due to the length
of these maps. Map 3 is a much more playable length. I'm not sure what your
plans are for the remaining maps, but I think you could quite easily divide
maps 1 and 2 each into two maps, rejig the current map3 into map5, add an
appropriately lavish finale, and it's done.
In map1 when the plane flies overhead I was getting 'too many vertex
format changes in frame; whole whole not rendered' spammed. Could do with
visually simplifying that area a bit. You mentioned particle effects
occasionally not being displayed - it may well just be that you're just
trying to do too much in that area and the engine is running out of
available resources. You could quickly test this by temporarily removing a
ton of detailing in that area and retrying the vpk on a server to see if
that fixes the particle issue.
The AI survivors had a hell of a job getting into the 'saferoom' at the
end of map1. It took a few minutes of me messing around opening and closing
the doors. To fix this open the doors into the vehicle then delete any bits
of the navmesh under the doors to ensure they'll navigate around the doors
when opened. Perhaps set the doors as initially open too.
I found the transition from map1 to map2 very jarring - from a vehicle in
Tokyo suddenly teleported to a room somewhere in remote Japan - but maybe
that's just me. I guess I've just come to expect continuity and progression
from level to level when playing a Valve game.
There are a lot of dead ends that look as though the players can easily
get over them, only to find the way is clipped off. Many of these clipped
dead ends use props that players will assume they can jump over, based upon
a few years of endlessly playing the Valve campaigns and other community
campaigns. For instance, in map2 there is a chainsaw lodged into a fallen
tree; this fallen tree prop is one I've jumped over a million times, only
to find the area beyond is clipped off.
At the end of map2 are a bunch of 'saferoom this way' arrows and such. I
think you should remove these. It's pretty obvious anyway, and it's just
confusing at the start of map3 when the survivors have to go back up into
the cable car. I actually spent a few minutes wandering around that area
trying to follow arrows, thinking I'd missed an opening somewhere.
In map3 after getting off the cable car there's a ladder that can't be
climbed up.
Hope some of that helped. Amazing job so far on the campaign. :)
-----Original Message----- From: Mark Edwards
Sent: Saturday, January 07, 2012 3:31 AM
To: [email protected].**com<[email protected]>
Subject: [L4Dmapper] Yama beta
I just released a beta of my L4D2 campaign which includes the first 3
and a half maps. I had a lot of help from this mailing list to get the
map to this stage so I wanted to post it here, and get some feedback
from other mappers too instead of the general community.
Link to download:
http://www.scorchingcraniums.**com/yama/<http://www.scorchingcraniums.com/yama/>
Screens:
http://www.scorchingcraniums.**com/portfolio/yama.html<http://www.scorchingcraniums.com/portfolio/yama.html>
Also I have a problem I never got to fix before I released - particles
(all default L4D2 ones) only load half the time, which is especially
annoying with the plane crash sequence. They work every time in a local
server but online they keep breaking. The particle rain also cuts out at
some points which might be related. Are there certain flags or something
you need to use?
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