[CTF/DM/NB] Ascent (beta 5)

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A rather wide and open ctf map.

Supports: CTF, TDM, DM, KH, LMS, CA, NB, DOM

Download Ascent (cath95) Beta 5
Download Ascent Vehicle Version (cath95v) Beta 5


Download Ascent (cath94) Beta 4

Download Ascent (cath92) Beta 3

Download Ascent (cath91) Beta 2

Download Ascent (cath90) Beta




Have fun!    

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Wow, futuristic. I'll test it in few hours

Wow, the architecture is impressive!
My only concern are that yellow that does not fit well for my taste:


And those repetitive grid squares on the wall (for some reason and unlike others, those textures suffers more from repetitiveness):





Also notice the texture alignment mismatch on the left and the right of this last screenshot.

But that's pretty solid!!!

Thanks for testing!

Yes the yellow parts... i wanted to have some gold-looking contrast and i'm not sure either about this texture.

Maybe I'll just use the other texture.

The repetitiveness is actually wanted. Maybe I'll add some panels to break it up a bit. But the basement/crypt should look sterile and really contrast the rest like entering a different world. I added some fog there to make it look less monotone. (i wish i could use fog-brushes like in q3 :C)

The alignment I adjusted a bit. It looks better but misaligns on other places. (maybe i'll switch to curves)
Also improved alignment on other surfaces in the process.

Thanks illwieckz for the in depth feedback

What a cool map. In a futuristic style. There is also vehicle. I love wide and open maps. Thanks a lot .

Beta 2:

-bigger jumppad hitboxes, now they fit the model
-chose the other texture for the upper path
-added domination checkpoints
-made a clean minimap


Download Ascent Beta 2

Beautiful map! I host it on my server.

Would you consider the following?

1. Scale the map down a little bit for non-vehicle plays? (Perhaps a different map name so both are available?) This map has many interesting paths and I can really see a very fun CTF game in it. I think it'll also work for other game types as well.
   
2. Compile a smaller bsp. Right now it's a 33MB download.
   
3. Perhaps use a more consistent map name? Right now it's cath91, although you call it Ascent.
   

Again, great job!

Thanks for the input!

1) I also thought about downscaling it as I playtested it and also found it to be a bit too big. I've already tested a downscaled version which feels better i'd say but I have more ideas to make it more compact.
2) It compiles like 160 image files for the lightmaps.... I honestly wonder why its just 30 mb (hopefully the smaller version will have less mby 20-25mb)
3) Yes, cath is just the working title for when I had no name. The final version will have the right name.


Here's a crude sketch of the idea I have in mind:


Maybe thats even enough. Will see. If you have more feedback/suggestions/ideas please let me know.

Thanks for the input!

1) I also thought about downscaling it as I playtested it and also found it to be a bit too big. I've already tested a downscaled version which feels better i'd say but I have more ideas to make it more compact.

Here's a crude sketch of the idea I have in mind: (image omit)

Maybe thats even enough. Will see. If you have more feedback/suggestions/ideas please let me know.

I think that'll improve it, although I do like how your map looks.

My original idea was to scale the whole thing down without changing your general design, for non-vehicle playing only (I assume you had the vehicle size in mind when you decided the original map). My first impression is there's a lot of open space for player size (as opposed to vehicles) so scaling it down gives me more chances to strategically use the structures during the game. It also encourages more actions.

2) It compiles like 160 image files for the lightmaps.... I honestly wonder why its just 30 mb (hopefully the smaller version will have less mby 20-25mb)

I'm not a mapper so I'm just throwing ideas here. Can we use jpg/png instead of those tga files? That way we can use good quality lossy compression.


Another thing I noticed -- the round jump pads in below the water seem to have slightly bigger trigger zone than usual. For example, I can't bunny over it without triggering it, neither can I use blaster to enhance the jumping force.

I think that'll improve it, although I do like how your map looks.

My original idea was to scale the whole thing down without changing your general design, for non-vehicle playing only (I assume you had the vehicle size in mind when you decided the original map). My first impression is there's a lot of open space for player size (as opposed to vehicles) so scaling it down gives me more chances to strategically use the structures during the game. It also encourages more actions.

Thats what I tested it's nice. It makes most things easier. Hopefully not too easy. It feels not as spacious. Yes I had vehicles and minsta in mind. But else I tend to make my maps too big haha. I should really continue my measurements study to get those scales right haha.

I'm not a mapper so I'm just throwing ideas here. Can we use jpg/png instead of those tga files? That way we can use good quality lossy compression.


Another thing I noticed -- the round jump pads in below the water seem to have slightly bigger trigger zone than usual. For example, I can't bunny over it without triggering it, neither can I use blaster to enhance the jumping force.

Sadly the compiler only spits out .tga but they are more compressible. Like -80% size. (but for this map like 160 of them)

Those jumppads will get a better hitbox.


Thanks again

Sadly the compiler only spits out .tga but they are more compressible. Like -80% size. (but for this map like 160 of them)

1. I guess the engine can read them as PNG, so you may compress them as PNG. If you use linux I may give you command line tips to convert all of them in a row, otherwise it probably exists batch image conversion tools to do that.

2. You can increase the size of a lightmap file, that would lead to less files to be produced. Basically, since your lightmaps are 512×512, if you use 1024×1024 lightmaps, you would have 4 time less files, if you use 2048×2048 lightmaps, you would have 16 time files (only 10 instead of 160)! And with 3072 or 4096 you'll get 5 or 3 lightmaps (with a lot of wasted space in the last lightmap in those two cases, but that may be acceptable).

The bonus is that the PNG compression would be better in the end because it would be like compressing 4 lightmaps at once. Use -lightmapsize option from q3map2, like this:

Code:

q3map2 […] -lightmapsize 4096

Beta 3 incoming.

Download Ascent (cath92) Beta3

Download Ascent (cath9275) Beta3 (75% Size / smaller)



"-lightmapsize 4096" really did the trick now down to 22mb. But now the lightmaps are inside th .bsp.
Now the flags are a bit closer to each other and theres now a ring above each base to enable more routes. Changed the siderooms and resized the lower part a bit to match the textures.
And removed the Spiderbots for now. Aaaand includes a license now gpl3... hoping it's compatible and everything.

Thats what I meant with ideas for making it a bit more compact. Maybe that does the trick or goes in the right direction. A 75% scale version is also compiling.


What do you think?

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Now beta 4:

Download Ascent (cath94) beta 4


Rearranged health and armor to greatly enhance flow, encourage blaster-jumping, reward some trickjumps and keep you well hydrated while capping on many routes. (which are also more obvious now)
Theres enough health to even consider crylink-boosting and rocket-jumping while maintaining speed.
And I added strength to the crypt section which you can get by rocket-jumping 2 times or once with a preceeding blaster-jump.

While weapons and ammo placement is more designed to make you stop for a moment.

For anyone interested in the numbers and purpose:

Big Armor (50): 6 (300, but mostly hard to reach)
Medium Armor (25): 4 (100, trickjumps, only lower level)
Small Armor (5): 84 (420, on the routes to maintain speed, only top level)
Total: 820

Large Health (50): 4 (200, only groundfllor, around the center)
Medium Health (25): 8 (200, only top level)
Small Health (5): 64 (320, on the routes to maintain speed, combined with armor to compensate for blaster-jumps; some in the crypt for trickjumps)
Total: 720


This should be enough for 6-16 players. Designed to keep you running more on the upper level but charging armor on the lower level. Those hard-to-reach-Big Armors combine with some really effective and fast ways into the base. The ammo and weapons being more scarce to focus more on the blaster while keeping the battlefield mixed.

That way the map shouldn't feel so big anymore but encourage you to appreciate the size.


Almost added a walker turret to the lower part but they wont stay in position so nope. Then you'd had to fight for your sniper. (screenshot in the link below)

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https://imgur.com/a/TZhz5te

I've seen the jubé, the triforium, and the crypt, is “cath” for “cathedral”?

Also, those routes make me think this map can be turned into an interesting race map!

For some reason pressing jump while going through those water portals just hurt and make lose all the speed, is it an issue with the map or the game?

It's an issue with the game. If you hold jump in the water it makes you move upwards at a constant speed. If you hold jump in it the abrupt change of acceleration is registered as hitting your head.

And yes its a catherdral. I was thinking about combining some themes like cathedral and cyber and tried making a good xonotic map out of this. Also this helped me deciding the textures and details. The structures are mostly from what I remember from artclasses about gothic architexture back in school.
Those triforiums made add some more arcs... even though im not entirely sure about them I think minsta players like them.

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Download Ascent (cath95) Beta 5

Download Ascent Vehicle Version (cath95v) Beta 5

So now it's time for beta 5. I upgraded the crypt to have some covers also the strength and vortex can be obtained easier now. Also this turns the lower part more into an arena of itself.

Moved the jumppads behind each base a little further back.

The trigger_impulse, in the water now boost more. Like 3.6x from 2. Except the water in the crypt only 1.42.
This should make the water transitions a bit smoother also moving in the water atop now gets you quicker to maximum speed.

And there's a little pillar in the middle now to provide some cover which houses the Large Health that's there.

Also I set the -lighmapsize to 2000 this time. It seems that the compiler puts the lightmaps into the .bsp if the lightmapsize is no power of 2. This way the size of the package is down to 16mb.

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https://imgur.com/a/YVLYWqc

Also I set the -lighmapsize to 2000 this time. It seems that the compiler puts the lightmaps into the .bsp if the lightmapsize is no power of 2. This way the size of the package is down to 16mb.

Hmm, there is something wrong with it. When stored in bsp, the lightmap is not compressed and each lightmap file (internal equivalent to external lm_* file) is 128×128 pixels. At this point the only way for your map to be lighter is that the lightmap definition is way lower.

Currently your Beta 5 BSP has 492 uncompressed lightmaps with a 128×128 resolution for a total file size of 25MB. Those same lightmaps stored externally and compressed to PNG would weight 7.1MB instead. So, they are very low quality…

Anyway, as we see, reducing the definition can be a trick (less pixels for the same surface), so you can also reduce the resolution (amount of pixels of the lm_* files). Maybe you don't need high definition lightmap smaller maps usually use and can reduce it (i.e. less pixels for the same area).

Also, I did some tests with your previous map:

Code:

# Your TGA in your PK3:
42M 42476K    sr_cath92_ascent_b4.pk3

# Your TGA in PK3 zipped with 7-zip zip compression:
40M 40356K    sr_cath92_ascent_b4+zip-7z.pk3

# Common PNG in PK3 zipped with 7-zip zip compression:
30M 29996K    sr_cath92_ascent_b4+png+zip-7z.pk3

# Optimized PNG (oxipng optimizer and zopfli PNG compression) in PK3 zipped with zopfli zip compression (note: it spends 13 minute optimizing the PNG and 9 minutes optimizing the zip):
28M 27712K    sr_cath92_ascent_b4+png-oxipng-zofli+zip-zopfli.pk3

So, I recommend you to convert to PNG first then use 7-zip to compress the PK3 (use zip compression, not 7z one) in all case. Don't mind the crazy optimizers, reducing to 30MB is already far better.

If I'm right, option -samplescale <float> scales all the lightmap and -samplesize <int> sets an arbitrary lightmap definition. This would be, with -lightmapsize, the way to go. Then PNG, then ZIP with 7-Zip.

Note that I strongly recommend you to reduce the definition of your lightmaps (but probably not as much as your current one which probably uses 20 years old Quake3 settings) since in beta4, the total size of your uncompressed lighmaps were 233MB, that means the CPU had to load 233MB of files to feed 233MB of data to the GPU, and the GPU had to use 233MB of video RAM, whatever the efficiency of the PNG and ZIP compressions.

So, Iplay with definition to find one that is larger than the default Q3 setting to get better quality (but smaller than what Xonotic does by default to save memory), then increase the lightmap definition and store them externally to compress them in PNG the best way.

Just for fun, those are your current (beta 5) lightmaps:

Hmm thanks for the insight. I didn't know that. In some places my current lightmap indeed looks a bit low quality while mostly it's ok for looking diffuse and hardly noticable. I'm just happy to be down to 16mb at the moment. Also for a beta it's sufficient except the fact that I want to ship it with reflected lighting regardless.
Stored inside the bsp, the bsp is about 60mb and compressed with winrar best zip compression it's down to about 15mb. I'm still not sure if I really use png as it's already a compressed format. I mean those uncomressed images are taken care of by the zip compression then while png just stays mostly the same. But I'll test with the next beta.
Btw I'm on win10 and gimp/winrar are the tools I'm using.

By definition you mean resolution?

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But at the moment my focus is more on the playability of the map. I mean all that doesn't really matter if noone plays it.  
Here are some questions I'm trying to figure out:
Is there something missing structurally. Or too much?
Are there some places you wish you had more cover? Or want to get faster to a place? Too many/ too few routes/escapes. And where? Or is being so dependent on laserjumping annoying?
How's the item placement? Do you miss mega health/armor?

(another thing is that all those itmes are costly and I cant seem to find a working option to reduce the render distance of items because you dont really need to see the small health at the end of the building)

I mean BuddyFriendGuy suggested it's being too big. I rearranged the items, got some more cover and tried to make sure you can get fast from a to b without scaling it down. Because when testing it there are already some fast routes and you really only have to make it to the elevated platform in the middle and laserjump from there into your base to cap. So the first half of the way is slower for which you get hp along the way and the option to attack with having full hp/armor in the first place. That's like the thought on paper. But maybe it just doesn't work.

Great job on the look. Stunning!
Just had a DM on my sever (version b5), and it still felt a bit big (not many encounters, or players just stayed in the main hall for actions) I guess it'll work well for 7-8 players. I haven't tried CTF yet though. Will report back.

Phenomenal map! Love the architecture and spaciousness. It's a great fun to run on it with a laser!

Glad you like it and thanks for testing/playing

Yes it might be a bit too big for fewer players. Also the symmetry doesn't help. If you follow the cap routes you may get enough health and armor to hunt players if you spot them.

Good work for this architectural map! It seems to fit Xonotic well!