Ares | Quadropolis

Ulukai | 2011-10-27 12:35

Ares

[

points ]

(2 votes)

This content is now included in the official release of the game, so you do not need to download it if you already have the latest release. The content stored here may not reflect the copy the game uses.

Blurb Outdoor map in a temples setting. Supports DM, CTF, DTF and Bomber-Ball.

Screenshot Ares

Get original file (231KB)

Detailed description

CHANGELOG
---------

11/09/2011 - ARES 1.0
Initial release.

14/09/2011 - ARES 1.1
fixed texture corruption at middle tower.
Made surrounding mountains less square at the tops.

16/09/2011 - ARES 1.2
Texture blending and minor texture fixes.
Lighting tweaks.
Added clipping under stairs of middle tower.

18/09/2011 - ARES 1.3
More texture blending.

23/10/2011 - ARES 1.4
Added lots of details.
Colored all pillars.
Made surrounding less cubic.
Added 2 lights.

03/11/2011 - ARES 1.5
Decoration on the ceiling and floor of the temples.
Damaged the bridges some more.
No more grass textures used under water. The shape of the little lake has been slightly modified.
Added clipping ceiling to prevent abuse of hacks.

03/11/2011 - ARES 1.6
Fixed some minor water issues, texture issues and geometry issues.
Lowered the terrain a bit on some places.

06/11/2011 - ARES 1.7
Added grass + new blendmap
Made cave under water less square
Corrected some geometry errors
Smaller lightmap + smaller download size

28/02/2012 - ARES 1.8
Added Bomber-Ball support.
Fixed some minor geometry glitches.
A LOT of texture tweaking: I changed the offset of many textures so that the stones of the building really look like whole stones now. Some textures are replaced with others. Here and there I added some more detailed texturing.
Sound tweaks so that the torches aren't audible anymore when walking above them. The blowing wind is less disturbing now as well.
Added noclipping zones around the torches, allowing wallrunning.
MANY changes to the surrounding rocks. They are flattened a bit without losing their shape. This makes the map A LOT less resource hungry and should improve your framerate. Also the bottom and sides of the water zone has been flattened to improve framerate.
Adjustments to the rocks at the temple sides to make wall running / climbing easier.
All playserstarts were deleted and redone.
Improved bot paths.

06/03/2012 - ARES 1.9
Added some bushes to bring a more natural atmosphere to the map.
Skytextured the pushed-in cubes under the grass surfaces to make it less noticeable when diving under the map in spectator mode.
Fixed 2 more geometry errors.

LINKS
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Map thrad on the Red Eclipse Forums.
http://forum.freegamedev.net/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=2119&sid=548dd97a999fee9e2a7fd820ba9ee756

Map file Ares-1.9.zip (1.39 MB)

URL http://forum.freegamedev.net/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=2119&sid=548dd97a999fee9e2a7fd820ba9ee756

Rating

points

(2 votes)

Comments

Chasester_aka_you | 2011-10-29 05:13

a couple of things:

-Pick new textures ;p
-work on adding detail to your building for the flags (look at niebs garden map)
-maybe you should open the middle up so u can walk under it(not just through on or two openings)
-if its a ctf map it could be a lil bit bigger ;p

chasester

Ulukai | 2011-10-29 08:16

- I wanted to use the textures included in the game and I think they fit the greek old style rather good.
- The middle part was open first, but when playtesting this made for a lack of cover and you could shoot from camp to camp. Gameplay is better like it is now.
- Yes it's pretty small but it makes it a challenge :) There is a lot of action and I like that :p

Suicizer | 2011-10-29 08:36

I've taken a look over the map and it seems like a pretty interesting one.

Texturing
Seems to be fine to me. Could be just a bit better on some spots (like the square hole in each ceiling of the building where the flags are positioned).

Geometry
The mountains and the "caves" could be less square. I know you already improved it a bit but I'm sure it could look even better.

Detailing
The detailing could be better also. As for example, try to add some broken wooden planks on those bridges, for a more realistic feeling (so actually, just make sure the map looks more "broken", instead of some perfect landscape).

Lighting
I don't know if it's because of Red Eclipse, but the lighting seems to be pretty cool. Nothing to say about that.

Clipping/Noclipping
Seems to be fine as well, but be sure players can't get on the clip (maybe add a "clipping ceiling" just to prevent misuse of it?).

Flow
Well, the map is pretty flat to me, as it's actually just pretty flat with some hills and "craters" and very open as well. Maybe you should try to add more height difference in the landscape itself.

Gameplay
As I'm not playing Red Eclipse in common, I can only assume that the rifle seems to be overpowering the other weapons due the openness of the map.

Some side-note, try to get a better more clear screenshot for when loading the map. It seems very "blurred" to me. I don't know if Red Eclipse does this on purpose, but I'm not a fan of it...

Anyways, not a bad map! Still could be improved, but I like it so far. 7/10!

Ulukai | 2011-10-29 15:01

Thanks for the feedback.

I might add a couple of details in the ceiling and floor of the temples, I'll see what I can do.

I'm not planning immediate changes on the geometry of the surroundings since I already spent countless hours to make it what it is now and it's already a vast improvement over what it was before. Maybe they could benefit from a bit of texture blending, I'll think about it. After all, the surrounding is functional. There is clipping area already above all the rocks so that players can't stand on the surroundings, is this what you mean? Did you manage to get on top of them? If so, a clipping ceiling could be the solution indeed.

There are many broken planks on the bridge already, did you oversee those? Maybe the sides can be touched as well, that's right. Further... why does everything need to be broken? I like it on some spots, like the bridge because it is wood, but clean and solid has its strenghts too.

I'm pleased with the lighting as well. :) The textures have nice bumpmaps and I have highered the lichting quality value.

Well yes it's a large open map which garantuees fast action. Red Eclipse uses Parkour to jump high and move fast. Like that you can get on the temples, the middle tower and on the side corridor. In my opinion that's enough to jump around in a small map. Maybe I should encourage it more by moving / adding items to these spots?

The screenshot in Red Eclipse is made automatically when you save the map. I could make a better one but I think (not sure though) that all RE screenshots are like that. I'll have to check this.

Suicizer | 2011-10-29 16:36

Well, I saw they were kind of broken, but just with a poor quality. Try to add planks which aren't mounted on the bridge anymore and "rotate" them just a bit, or let them have a radius like if the bridge really has been used often (which is pretty logical when leading to a temple).
The temples itself aren't broken at all and seems to be just perfect, but if they are just perfect, what's the reason of it? how did they become such perfect? Those questions could all be used to put more quality (and details) in the map.

As people are able to change variables like "jumpspeed", they could wall-hack by doing so. I still would suggest just to make a ceiling of clip-material.

I also noticed the texturing and the geometry in the river itself isn't great at all (very sharp corners with way too much contrast between them, very patchy texturing). What about blend-mapping that at least?
Another thing which I noticed, the geometry where some grass-texture has been placed on, isn't having any grass at all. What about using the "autograss" command (at least, that's how it was called in Sauerbraten)?

Seems like it still can be improved greatly.

Ulukai | 2011-10-29 19:56

About the perfect temples: then you may as well ask yourself why they are flags planted in them. And why there are weapons laying on the floor... There is no explanation for this because it's not a real world. Don't ask so much questions. :p I see it this way: RE has a variety of different environments and it is set in the future, where arenas are built to fight in. It's not because it's an old greek style that it can't be built recently. I'm not going to make ruins of 'em. Same for the bridge: I think I already gave it some character. Also, it's built firmly enough to not have a radius: 3 big support bars under the bridge and an extra support in the middle of the bridge to the bottom of the pool.

I tried adding grass but it gives weird shadows on wrong places. It is still a bug in RE because there is no perfect grass texture yet. See the official thread for more information about this. (http://forum.freegamedev.net/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=2119&sid=548dd97a999fee9e2a7fd820ba9ee756)

Suicizer | 2011-10-30 00:42

Well, it still breaks the atmosphere and the idea of being at a temple.

Being lazy not to improve the bridge neither the temples isn't an excuse not to improve the river at all :P.

Ulukai | 2011-10-30 14:20

Who are you to call people lazy when they use their free time to try giving back something to the community? Apparently you have another interpretation of the game and of my map than I have, then that's that. It's no reason to call names.

I have used a lot of ideas and comments to improve my map and I listen to what people have to say. That doesn't mean that I have to make everything exactly the way YOU want to see it. I have been using some ideas of you and have worked on my map already, it's not because it's not here yet that I don't listen to the comments.

Maybe I'll change the little lake a bit (it's not a river), but I don't mind a rocky bottom.

Suicizer | 2011-10-30 14:29

Don't get me wrong mate as your doing so just right now.
I only give advices to improve your map, I don't give a damn if you don't do so. Unlike some people who comment on maps, I also just help people in-game with improving the map if they're editing on a map and allowing me to help (and I actually never seriously asked any credit for it, as it should be).
It's just my opinion that people which post maps that aren't that detailed yet and could be way more detailed, are lazy. Why? Because I'm probably also one of them :P.

But back on-topic...
The rocky floor of the lake is just fine to me, but it just could be improved by blending the grass-texture with the rock-texture so it looks way smoother as it is now.

Chasester_aka_you | 2011-10-31 12:46

im with suicizer here:

id rather one good well done node, than 10 partially done nodes. It lazy cuz you could spend a few more days on it at release it at a later point :p

chasester

Ulukai | 2011-11-03 00:08

Uploaded v1.5, see changelog.

Ulukai | 2011-11-03 20:31

Uploaded v1.6, see changelog.

Suicizer | 2011-11-04 13:22

Nice improvements!
The bridge really looks more broken and it's convincing me more that it's not a perfect world (as the new geometry of the landscape does).
There are still some points left to improve:
- The lake still has some geometry mistakes (at the side of it), which makes the texture looking tiled while it shouldn't be tiled.
- The cave to the rocketlauncher is very square. What about making it more "round"?

Anyways, good job!

Ulukai | 2011-11-06 15:32

Uploaded v1.7, see changelog

Chasester_aka_you | 2011-11-10 14:06

ooo

the grass in red eclipse doesnt look like its just a billboard -.- shock

Ulukai | 2012-03-03 17:07

Updated to v1.8, see changelog.

RaZgRiZ | 2012-03-03 20:52

I don't really see how this map is so complex enough to make the flattening of mountains such a huge performance boost; there are hardly any to begin with. =P

Note: the following paragraphs are based on what i saw in a previous version and may not apply for this update. If that's the case, just ignore it altogether. It's quite late and i'm not in the mood for tryouts.

If you want to save some space, find an alternative way to avoid the grass appearing where it shouldn't, instead of making holes on the ground. There are quite a lot of them, and none of them are skytextured, which usually means more lightmaps for the game to calculate, and thus a bigger file size. If you feel like going OCD, skytexture all unseen faces on the map, your choice. The weird outlines caused because of this kind of weird me out as well.

You might want to try using texture blending around areas where you don't want grass to be. Either use a dirt texture, or the same grass texture but with no grass generation, that should do it. Moar trees too, the map needs some more life, perhaps a bush or two. And perhaps make the map corners a little more curvy by extending the mountain sides. That corner far away in the screenshot looks like it needs some more lovin.

Ulukai | 2012-03-03 22:25

You are right about the skytextures on the cubes that I deleted under the grass area. I will try to take that into account when I do a new release. The blendmapping on more grass areas (like around the lake) was done in another version already, so this one has it as well. But thanks for the hint.

I don't feel like adding more stuff to the map because its relative small size... And believe it or not, but because I flattened the rocks there are way less polygons used, so there is faster rendering of the map. Certainly when you play this map on lower hardware like laptops with intel graphics, the difference is really noticeable.

RaZgRiZ | 2012-03-03 22:29

"Certainly when you play this map on lower hardware like laptops with intel graphics, the difference is really noticeable."

HAH! No wonder! =D

Ulukai | 2012-03-03 22:37

I know it sounds ridiculous to game on such a thing, but there are many players of RE out there that play it on comparable hardware because its low system reqs. :p

My gaming rig eats such puppies for breakfast, but I want to improve the overall speed for everyone to get a better experience, AND it also makes wallrunning a lot easier, which is cool :)

Ulukai | 2012-03-06 07:39

Updated to v1.9. See changelog.
Thank you Razgriz for the tips.