Mental Gap - Beta2

Hello and thanks again for the feedback to the first beta.
I've found some more time to work on this map.



Changes:
- Side platforms have directional walk lanes to avoid traffic accidents
- Jump pads got a little more power
- Jump pads use team skins (thx to Mario)
- New base stem model
- Item placement tweaks / new items
- Geometry tweaks
- Polygon count reduced
- Script placed lights instead of surfacelight textures

Issues:
- Lightmap black splotches (don't know how to get rid of these for good).
- Red flag disappears in CTF / current autobuild (the flag item is there. Game bug?)

Download:
Map .pk3 package (~7.4MiB)

Great job! Amazing map. I just want you to place the nexgun in the middle again, or change it with the rifle, otherwise this map will be a minsta map not a normal.

here is your darksplotch problem .... looks like something is wrong with the lightmap

the red flag does disappear on 0.6 too

I tried doing a compile on my system (to see if the darksplotches would be fixed) ... but the ground model was missing for some reason ... (me and all the items fell into space)


  lm_0005.png (Size: 456.61 KB / Downloads: 300)

Great job! Amazing map. I just want you to place the nexgun in the middle again, or change it with the rifle, otherwise this map will be a minsta map not a normal.

Thanks machine!

I don't mind putting the nexgun into the middle.
Probably into a random item queue together with the two powerups.

But now I run out of items for the top level platforms :/.
Maybe some more medium armor/health will do it.

Btw. what's the situation of the mine launcher and the uzi.
Should I use them in a map or not?
(Personally I like the mine launcher but not so much the uzi.)

I guess you mean to have it compatible with future releases of Xonotic? If so, I think that Uzi will be okey since it'll be replaced by LG, so no mmodifications on the map is needed(i think). If you decide to place the mine layer, it will be replaced by another gun except if the "new toys" mutator is on. This is only in future releases which is probably far away, so it doesn't really matter, just that you might have to replace mine layer in the future so that the map doesnt have several spawns for the same gun.

here is your darksplotch problem .... looks like something is wrong with the lightmap

Yes, I've found the splotches in the lightmap, too.
It's an issue with the q3map2 lightmap generator,
I've stumbled over this very often and mostly on
more complex shapes like patches or models.
This probably can be fixed manually with some
gimp painting but that's not a thing I want to do at all.

the red flag does disappear on 0.6 too

I tried doing a compile on my system (to see if the darksplotches would be fixed) ... but the ground model was missing for some reason ... (me and all the items fell into space)

Good to know the flag disappearance is not only an issue here.
If it's an engine bug, I can't do anything about it on the mapping side.

To compile the map I always have to put the models into a subfolder inside
~/.xonotic/data/.
e.g.
~/.xonotic/data/mental-gap-beta2.pk3dir/models/...
That seems to be where netradiant / q3map2 looks for them.

---

I guess you mean to have it compatible with future releases of Xonotic?

Yes

If so, I think that Uzi will be okey since it'll be replaced by LG, so no mmodifications on the map is needed(i think). If you decide to place the mine layer, it will be replaced by another gun except if the "new toys" mutator is on. This is only in future releases which is probably far away, so it doesn't really matter, just that you might have to replace mine layer in the future so that the map doesnt have several spawns for the same gun.

Hmkay.
So I'll leave them for now.

Liking the map. It reminds me of the teletubbies strangely.

On ESK, we don't get the missing flag problem, but there are some performance issues.
All players get occasional packet loss & server CPU usage rises to 80%.

Maps should never do that. Only 8-bit arena has it afaik, because of the interactive floor tiles. Maybe there is something similar happening here?

There's nothing dynamic in this map,
all models are static "misc_model" entities.
Jump pads are "misc_gamemodel" entities
(I've copy pasted that from somewhere).
There're also no hidden triggers or anything beside the jump pads.

What may be a bit unusual is the "team" attribute
used on a few items for random item spawning.

Ok, here's another release.

The Panels are now misc_gamemodels which shrinks the filesize
but seems to have bad influence on the fps.

And there's still the RED-FLAG-NEVER-APPEARS issue which makes
this map unplayable for CTF mode (Domination mode works fine though).
I've tried tons of things to bring it back but without success.
It seems to be a game bug but I'd be happy if someone could prove
me wrong and tell me how to fix it.

The black splotches lightmap issue results from q3map2 turning
every single mesh triangle into a 5 sided prism a brush with a depth of 64 units.
On small meshes that are thinner than 64 units these brushes poke
out at the other side of the mesh model and may throw shadows during
the lightmap phase as well as cause player / item collision troubles
within the game.

I've tweaked q3map2 for this compile to use only a depth of 4 which is small
enough to not poke out.
Another tweak used for this map compile is that q3map2 reads skin files for
misc_gamemodels as well during the lightmap phase.
By default (up until now) q3map2 reads skin files and remaps only for misc_models entities.

Enough of the technical stuff, here's another screenshot and the download link.



Mental-Gap-Beta3 pk3 file (~4.8 MiB)

I love the concept, it looks nice and it's great fun (when it's not unplayable) but I think that major optimisations need to be made for players to fully enjoy this map.

Perhaps it's DarkPlaces, but even with lots of 'fps-draining' settings off, it still gets laggy!

Haven't tried it yet, but I must say I really like the concept of the map too! Will try it when I got time.

Agreed, it's not playable like this.
Somehow I hoped that darkplaces would support mesh models
as smoothly as patches. But well, it doesn't.

On the other hand I think I've found a manual fix for the fps
issue.
Making the brushes nonsolid and filling them per hand/script
with cliping brushes seems to work basically.
The only drawback so far is that there are no shot marks on the
surfaces since the collision happens to the invisible
cliping brush. And the red flag is still missing :/.

I'll try to push a "fixed" version within the next days.

so ... thats where the splotches came from .... nice ...

did putting a invisible block under the red flag work? ... what about shifting the whole map left (or right) 64 units or so ...

as for models ... try contacting tZork ... hes the darkplaces model expert

@hutty: rotating, shifting, and solid block under flag, nothing worked to bring back the flag.

But finally after changing the entity placement order the flag appeared again.
At first it was
1. Place bases (with flags)
2. Place side platforms
3. Place sky, bottom hurt box, etc.
Changing the base placement order (blue first) didn't work but placing both
bases after the side platforms made the red flag turn up again. So now it's
1. Place side platforms
2. Place bases (with flags)
3. Place sky, bottom hurt box, etc.
No idea why it works now, since the map geometry didn't change, just the order.

Also in this version all models are nonsolid but filled with cliping brushes.
It's hacky but my fps now is stable above 60.

Download Beta 4 here:
mental-gap-beta4.pk3 (~7.7 MiB)

FPS is indeed better, but we're still getting the performance issues.

map looks nice, but there is no way to make it perform great, its just not designed for this engine, there are no solid walls dividing playing field, so all players, effects and everything else is rendered all the time

Worked for mentalspace, too ;D

Working map link: https://dl.xonotic.fps.gratis/mental-gap-beta4.pk3