Station X

After a week of full-time work, I finished a map concept I had in mind for some time. The design and idea are inspired by UT maps such as Phobos and Hyperblast. The action takes place on a space station where players fight both indoors and outdoors. Outside they are subject to low gravity, and falling or getting too far from the surface will cause anyone to explode. The map uses philipk1x textures for the interior and philipk2x textures for the exterior, which are some of the best textures currently in Xonotic.

As far as I'm aware this is the first original Xonotic map with this theme and layout as well as low gravity, so I hope it properly fits the wanted style. It's intended to become a default map, although it probably needs more work to get there. As usual, the brush work is very clean and every single entity and vertice is snapped to the grid. Only known bugs are lighting behind some panels not compiling properly due to ambient occlusion, and bots not navigating the map although waypoints are properly linked... not sure how to fix either bug currently.

If anyone has any suggestions I would like to hear them, though I prefer making changes to the map myself. I might add even more detail in the future but other than that no major modifications are planned. Only thing I don't know to make are hint brushes, so if they're needed someone else can add those. Don't ask for removing or lessening the low gravity however... that's one of the main purposes of the map and I'd rather throw it away than do that.

Together with this map I created another set of screen textures. They include two TV stations consisting of 5 looping images. One shows Xonotic news while the other Xonotic commercials. Some games have parodies like this and it enhances the feel when placed on a large screen They're currently submitted for merge request separately and I hope the devs agree with them. The pk3 of the map includes them until they are in master.

Download: Link 1, link 2, GIT repository. Screenshots:

Looks good!
I'll be trying it tomorrow ;P

Pretty! ;-)

Though the exterior could use some more details on the sides, it looks like a plain box on the screenshot.

Pretty! ;-)

Though the exterior could use some more details on the sides, it looks like a plain box on the screenshot.

I counted on the fact that the philipk textures are very detailed, and you usually don't see the side panels unless you are thrown out of the map and die. But if I detail it more I might add a bit of extra geometry there too.

I added it to the DCC pickup server (delight.vapor.com:26500) for testing.

While playing a bit on it I find the low gravity extremely disturbing. If you really HAVE TO switch to lower gravity, there should be some sort of energy shields where the transition from normal to low gravity is, in order to make this more apparent.

Placing the nex on a low gravity map with lots of open space to fly around in is a very bad idea imho.

But apparently there is not even lots of open space! When you laser off the top tower where the nex is, you hit the kill trigger immediately. If you laser yourself up from the main platform, you hit the kill trigger, too. Even if I laser myself up from the little plate between the two things that look like the front of a spaceship I hit the kill trigger. Also the kill trigger at the bottom of the map is too early, I was for example still trying to laser me up again along the wall which is reasonably easy given the low gravity but then the kill trigger finished me off for no apparent reason.

You cannot really take the small shards placed in a row on the outside unless you walk instead of bunny hopping. Actually, the whole low gravity thing makes bunny hopping uselss... I'm not sure I am fond of maps that encourage walking turret gameplay :o/

For offering interesting gameplay, the inner parts should be a bit more complex.

I added it to the DCC pickup server (delight.vapor.com:26500) for testing.

Thank you, much appreciated

Also, confirming that the lighting bug with wall grates does not happen in the auto-build BSP... just my local netRadiant settings which are probably downdated. I also checked the bot waypoints again and nothing should be broken there, it remains unknown why bots just sit there and do nothing. Other than that everything should be fine at least for the time being.

Just a note: A few changes have been made in GIT compared to this pk3, such as adding a realtime screen and new lights. If anyone wants to make any modifications to the map, always use the version in GIT and not the linked pk3! Typically ask me first though, I can probably do any suggested change myself.

Also, to get the latest map, use the version on the autobuild-bsp page. The pk3 linked in the first post is just for the sake of separate distribution... that is the right way of obtaining and distributing the map. Note that in its case it won't have the new screen textures till they are in master, which is the only use of the pk3 I posted.

I really like this map! It works great with both large and small scale games.

However, I feel there should be a bit more going on around the edges and map exterior. As you pointed out, the textures are very detailed, but maybe there should be some geometric design around the map exterior? It would really help break it up and make it that little bit more appealing.
Also, the kill trigger at the top is infuriatingly low. A lot of players, myself included found the nex very hard to obtain without large amounts of precision.

Other than that, very appealing to the eye, and it has a great layout.

I've always wanted to try the lo-grav outside, normal inside idea, and I think you did a decent job. I probably would have pushed it farther to the space-side, by doing things like making some voids in the interior floors that you could fall through–that's just personal taste though.

The only thing I saw that was seriously breaking gameplay was the low ceiling + exploding nature. You can't laserjump outdoors without dying, and with the nex placement, everybody's going to try it right away. I'd advise raising it to about twice the height of the tower or more.

Other than that, just a few ascetic things, like breaking up that huge floor pattern (I always end up unconsciously avoiding using it because the default scale seems too large to me), some trims, and maybe some beams/ridges down the sides. Again, that's up to the mapper of course Props for trying out this concept!

This is great concept, I like the sound of raining low gravity gibs on a 10+ deathmatch (if they do that in the first place), but the ceiling definitely needs to be further away. Either that or increase gravity a bit.

Actually, the whole low gravity thing makes bunny hopping uselss...

Air strafing does compensate that loss quite well though.. Well perhaps the armor shards could be arranged more creatively. For instance make a track that would start from the ground and continue in the air (maybe even with a curve) which can be picked up in a row comfortably with a low gravity jump.

Mario?

This map has so many problems ... I dont even know where to start ...
Oh wait ... yes I do ... the textures
Yes the new texture sets have lots of detail
... but they are the same resolution as the textures in the other packs
But all over the map there is noisy textures ... streched textures ... badly scaled textures ...
the map needs breathing space ... everywhere there is detail ... there is no breathing spot ...
outside is the biggest offender ... the floor texture just has way too much contrast and lines going all over the place ... its visually dissorienting (especially with low gravity and when the sky has a giant f#$@ing planet looming nearby)
lots of other places have texture stretched up to double the size of the xonotic standard ...
and in many cases this is done to replace detail (because the texture has so much detail) ... but in the end it looks flat and fake
The computer screens are humorous and such ... but they are large ... dominating ... and very detailed ... Their complicated colorful bigness seems to make then the center of attention ... instead of stuff that really matters
the big wire/pipe things that are deep blue dont fit well either ... they just look so out of place ... nothing else on the map is blue ...
also the outside bottom area of the space station needs more variation
and the upper killbox is too low (if you dont want people up there ... then add a invisible windy push force thing)
I know these are just my opinions ... and I used the pk3 version ... but ... this map isn't really up to stuff ...
especially for something that is looking to be included in the game
I do suggest playing on drain some more to see how to get good mileage out of the new textures
sorry its such a downer post ...
replaced with more constructive post below

I guess my previous post was kinda mean (probably shouldn't be reviewing peoples work at 2 in the morning) ...

sorry about that ... nobody deserves to have their work treated with such disrespect

anyways ... heres a more constructive/positive post

   

1 I dont like this corner ... the texture is stretched ... and it just turns at the curve ... making it break the illusion of not being flat

2 this room has many different colors of pipes and wires ... a little color consistency would probably make it look nicer

3 I like this tower thing ... the corona rlight is a nice touch

4 another very stretched texture ...

5 another

6 dito

Hi, I added hint brushes to the map (monad/station-x branch). There are not big differences except in this entrance:

Hi, I added hint brushes to the map (monad/station-x branch). There are not big differences except in this entrance:

Thanks. I shall try to integrate them when I work on the map again.

Pushed a fix to GIT solving the stretched indoor wall textures, and trigger_hurt entities breaking bots due to incorrect damage detection.