Map Requests

Discussion related to the New Vision mod.

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miguel
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Re: Map Requests

Post by miguel »

Using small maps inside the main map would require to mess around with the mission script, example:
When you meet Sandra at the street a triger will unhide her in the bar. That will require a triger that tells the character to walk to the bar area.
I think it's better to leave the map separated and give them all the detail they deserve.
chris the cynic
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Re: Map Requests

Post by chris the cynic »

Jonas wrote:
chris the cynic wrote:Using warp zones to combine maps would be a bad idea. Warp zones are far from perfect (any carried object will be lost, bullets don't travel through them, stuff like that.) That said, if those two things could be fixed (coders, can they be fixed?) then there really wouldn't be any problem.
Both of these things are untrue. I'm not sure where you picked those up? We use warp zones for the voodoo booths in TNM, so...
I just started up TNM, used legend to get to the voodoo shop. Picked up a skull, walked through the warpzone. No skull. Went back, picked up a plant, walked through a warp zone, no plant. It wasn't just dropped, it was gone. As far as I know this works for any object being carried. On the one hand, carried objects are objects not deemed important enough to get a spot in inventory, so it's no great loss. On the other hand, if you're doing incredible things with your small crate and then it disappears off the face of the earth while you're holding it, that could be annoying.

Cheated to get AO's pistol, shot an incense thing into nonexistence to check they could be destroyed, walked back so there was a warp zone between myself and the remaining one, shot at it repeatedly, nothing happened, kept on shooting, Yardbomb walked in front of it, I kept on firing so I should have been shooting at him, but he was not hit. The bullets simply didn't go that way. Now I know full well that if I had used a gep gun Yardbomb and the incense thing would have both been destroyed because rockets and warpzones do mix, bullets (and other tracefire weapons) not so much.

Such is the nature of voodoo.

On my machine at least. Does this kind of thing not happen for you?
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DaveW
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Re: Map Requests

Post by DaveW »

Morpheus wrote:If I have time tomorrow (or today since its nearly 1am) I'll test my zone idea with NYC streets map and see how it looks.
That would be awesome if you could. I really don't know the best way to do this, if we were to do it at all - so having something to actually look at would be a great help :)

From what everyone is saying though it seems that merging everything together where it should be (and altering the map size to match) is possibly the best option - if it's not entirely infeasible.
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Re: Map Requests

Post by justanotherfan »

Jonas wrote:You linked to a screenshot of an octagonal tanker truck in Deus Ex, and your link was called "hexagon". You've either completely and utterly lost me, or you've lost yourself. Which is it?...bsp..geometry...ladder...
I used the wrong word originally, tried to joke about it ;-). Also the gas station sign. After that, I linked to a real-world photo where the tank turned out to still technically be an octagon, but irregular with a curved side

Was using Unreal 2.5/3 as impossible as it seemed? Epic calls this all "legacy", the BSP errors and map complexity issues, and certainly HDTP's animation difficulties and the texture size limits. Just ranting on that, sorry. There's no reason to create a maze of mapping errors by turning an octagonal tank/pipe/anything into a staircase.
Skyscrapers are just the backdrop, so who gives a shit? This isn't a modern AAA shooter where the skybox has to be captivatingly beautiful to conceal the fact that the actual playable level is a narrow corridor.
True, DX doesn't suffer from that. I imagine DaveW must have been pissed off, making high-quality textures that still get tiled a billion times on colossal flat surfaces. Often I can't tell what the originals represent, fake windows or balconies or differently-coloured stone. With HK_Signs and the materials redone, the HK screenshots look modern, probably except for the placeholder buildings. It'd drive me nuts working on it, especially if mapping tweaks would fix it.

--
I wouldn't mind dropping stuff in a teleport. It'd be weird to see, but not much of an issue. IIRC maps like NYC Bar and Clinic, along with UNATCO and others begin with curved hallways where NPCs don't go; players wouldn't have reason to notice the bullets disappearing.
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Re: Map Requests

Post by miguel »

A while a go, I super imposed the bar and the hotel whit the street and i had to stretch the street to about 3 times the size of the original, for all that to fit in.
This won't work, too much effort, too much walking and it will be boring. For what i've seen in the Revision mod, it looks like a nice gameplay and map expanssion but the maps seems to be way too big to be detailed as a graphic enhacing mod.
also

DO NOT TRY THE WARP ZONE.

Every Deus level icluides a "LevelInfo" for all the mission script and conversations to work, that will require for a coder to order all that mess in to a single map.
The loading times aren't that bad anyway.
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Re: Map Requests

Post by chris the cynic »

Quick and dirty demonstrations that were both far less quick than they should have been. The one that doesn't have "Warp" in the name connects the street and bar using teleporters. The one that does have warp in the name connects them using warpzones.

As it turns out, I lose a small crate I'm carrying passing through either, and losing a carried object is my biggest objection to using a warp zone (watch what Alginon can do with one, then imagine the frustration of one disappearing right out of your hands) so warp zones probably have more going for them. But not necessarily everything.

The basic 101 pros and cons are like this:
The bad thing about using teleporters is that you can't see the other side.
The bad thing about using warpzones is that you can.

Teleporters are like map transitions, in fact, the transition to and from the bar actually used teleporters. What that means is that there's never a seam where the two things meet, you're looking at a mock up of whats on the other side, and then you're looking at the other side. You veiw might skip a bit, but you can never stop and look at the line between one side of the transition and the other. The good side is what I just said other than the skipping bit. The bad side is that if the fake version of the other side doesn't match the real version then the difference will appear out of nowhere. An overly dramatic example would be if an NSF trooper were standing on one side, when you teleported the trooper would appear out of nowhere.

Warpzones let you see the other side, that NSF trooper wouldn't appear out of nowhere, and you won't experience a skip when you cross from one side of the transition to the other. The downside is that, well, you can see the other side. If you want to see why this can be a problem load up the warpzone map, turn on your flashlight, and walk into the bar. The seam will be as clear as the difference between day and night. Similarly, if we go to the overly dramatic situation, you'll see that NSF Tropper ahead of time, but if you pull out your assault rifle and try to defend yourself while you're on opposite sides of the warp zone your bullets won't do anything and you'll waste your ammo (so use the minicrossbow, it's more humane anyway.)

As has been pointed out, it's not all that likely for there to be gunfights in the areas where these things would be.

My major objection to either is the problem of a carried item. Having something disappear out of your hands is not good. Other than that the question becomes which is more jarring, having a transition like a level transition without the loading screen every single time you enter or exit the added map (if you don't know what I'm talking about, you will when you play) or having a smooth transition, but a highly visible seam between the two sides any time the player decides to shine a light?

-

These maps are purely to show you what the transition looks like, I haven't dealt with the problem of Sandra (though I think it would be possible to make it so Sandra from the street simply walks into the bar and sits down) and I have not tried to deal with scripts or music or anything like that. I figured that having two level infos would bork the map, so I deleted the one for the bar. So, like I said, the only thing you'll get out of this is what a warpzone looks like as opposed to a teleporter.

-

Or not. The file size is too big. What's a good file hosting place?

I'll email a copy to Dave regardless.
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DaveW
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Re: Map Requests

Post by DaveW »

Here you go.

To sum up an e-mail I've just this moment sent to Chris: I love the warp zones. The limitations I can see are:

-Hitscan weapons won't pass through them.
(But, remember that currently if you're being chased by someone and you run into a level transition, they disappear. That's a far bigger problem to me than not being able to shoot through portals, and this would be fixed. Plus we're only placing these portals in maps like New York and Hong Kong, where you're not going to face many enemies chasing you anyway. I don't think this would even notice, and besides - we'd be fixing a much bigger bug in the process.)

-Flashlight will show up the seam
(I think you'd only notice this if you were intentionally looking for it, it's a minor graphical glitch but it's forgiveable)

-Objects disappear if you're carrying them
(This is a big problem, but it might be possible to force a player to drop an item they're carrying before they approach a warp zone.)

The huge benefit is that it's far more immersive to play the level as one continuous map, not having to worry about load zones. If we can get around the mission script issues I'd love to do this.


Edit: I just tested out the New York map again, I went into the bar and blew everyone up with some LAM's and got Jock to chase me - except, he didn't once I got out the zone portal. Turns out the AI can't see through the portals at all so if you move the other side of one, they lose track of where you are. This might present problems for making characters move inbetween areas.
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Re: Map Requests

Post by justanotherfan »

ISTR similar problems happening with loading zones. AI can already suddenly appear, and people won't chase you through them. For example, get the Bar crazy by flashing a gun, run out, then walk back in disarmed. The LOADING message just admits the nonlinear space-time distortion "I'm a videogame" directly.

With Jock's alcoholism, I'm not surprised he wouldn't leave the bar.
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Re: Map Requests

Post by Morpheus »

I am not going to use warpzones don't think they are necessary at all, the way the areas are designed, you don't need to see into the area your going into, past what you do see (that why there is corners to turn before next map loads etc...)
Skyscrapers are just the backdrop, so who gives a shit? This isn't a modern AAA shooter where the skybox has to be captivatingly beautiful to conceal the fact that the actual playable level is a narrow corridor.
Doesn't mean the sky should look like crap either, just thinking if it were possible without slowing the game loading and play much, would be better than currently is. Don't see what is wrong with getting the game to look up to date with things like this, graphical and physical changes don't just have to be functional, with Deus Ex designed the way it was, with the unofficial patch that fixes problems in the game and HDTP working on the rest, why not make the game look as good too? Thought the whole point of NV is to do just that, make the game look more modern with hi-res textures and map edits to do this. I know its not necessary on skybox, just saying.
Edit: I just tested out the New York map again, I went into the bar and blew everyone up with some LAM's and got Jock to chase me - except, he didn't once I got out the zone portal. Turns out the AI can't see through the portals at all so if you move the other side of one, they lose track of where you are. This might present problems for making characters move inbetween areas.
You can put a block that stops NPCs leaving a zone as 90% of the time (apart form Miguel which wouldn't be an issue since it would break the game to have the MJ12Labs and UNATCOHQ as one map) NPCs wouldn't leave the area they are in
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Jonas
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Re: Map Requests

Post by Jonas »

Oh fuck me, you're right - I didn't even think about carried weapons, just inventory items, and I forgot that warp zones only account for projectile weapons, not hitscan weapons. Clearly I have been schooled :)
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DaveW
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Re: Map Requests

Post by DaveW »

justanotherfan wrote:ISTR similar problems happening with loading zones. AI can already suddenly appear, and people won't chase you through them. For example, get the Bar crazy by flashing a gun, run out, then walk back in disarmed. The LOADING message just admits the nonlinear space-time distortion "I'm a videogame" directly.
That's actually very true, I guess then that 'downside' to portals is similarly a downside to loading zones. Plus this would fix the time issue.

Morpheus wrote:I am not going to use warpzones don't think they are necessary at all, the way the areas are designed, you don't need to see into the area your going into, past what you do see (that why there is corners to turn before next map loads etc...)
I'm not sure what you mean with this.


For the record the maps I would support merging (off the top of my head) are these:

New York Street + Bar + Hotel + Free Clinic + Smuggler

Battery Park + Brooklyn Bridge Station

Mole People + Airfield Heli Base (Underground)

Outside Airfield + Inside Hangar + Possibly 747 (There isn't that much detail to add to either the Airfield or Hangar so this might be possible, might not - we'd just have to try it)

Liberty Island and UNATCO HQ (post first level)

WanChai Market + Tong's Base + Underworld Bar

HK Canal + Street

Superfreighter + Inside Ship + Ship 'Fan' (if you enter from the roof)

Vandenberg Main + Command Building

Basically I wouldn't be too concerned about missions, but the 'open areas' where I think loading zones discourage free exploration. But, at the same time - it would be better if some of the missions weren't so split up too.
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Re: Map Requests

Post by chris the cynic »

So some thoughts, beyond the architecture I have no idea how to do any of the work necessary to combine levels that has been brought up (mission script and whatnot) and thus have no idea how feasible that end of things is.

I wonder if some of the round things might be done as objects instead of architecture. My understanding is that objects cannot possibly cause BSP fuck ups and they interact with the word as if they were cylinders so for things that actually are cylinders (tires, plane engines and the big sign at the gas station come to mind) perhaps using those would work out ok.

I had more that I was going to say, but I'm still looking into something.
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Re: Map Requests

Post by Morpheus »

I'm not sure what you mean with this.
What I meant was that when you go to an area that takes you to another map, such as going through the front door to the free clinic or underworld bar, you have to turn a corner, so you don't see directly into the place from the doorway that takes you to the area, unless you count Pauls apartment window at the 'Ton, which you do see directly into the apartment.

I haven't played around with zones for a long time, so running a test of 02_NYC_Streets map and trying to get the teleporters working. I managed to import the NYC Bar and made a zone around it. The missions scripts would have to be tweaked so that the Local URL is removed and maybe changed to recognising the zone name of the zone your in so the mission script treats the imported area as a separate area within the same map.
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Re: Map Requests

Post by Morpheus »

OK, I have got zones to work, but the teleporters although they do work internally are still acting like they are teleporting you to another map rather than another teleporter in the same map. I imported the bar into the NYC streets map, put zone around it, set up the teleporters and when you use them you get the "saving, loading" message and takes a second to get to the area in the map, instead of being instantaneous like I first thought. Would there be any way around it?


BTW, the superfreighter is a big map, as are lower decks, I don't know if it would work having all of those in one map, would be slow to load.
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Re: Map Requests

Post by chris the cynic »

I did a test and did manage to make Sandra walk into the bar in sit where she is supposed to sit properly. Having two Sandras in the map was somehow messing up the conversation between her and Johnny, removing the bar Sandra fixed that. As near as I can tell Janey realizing that Sandra was back was accomplished by mission script, I added a trigger for Sandra to trip at one of the patrol points I placed to lead her to through the bar to set that flag and then the whole sequence seemed to work.

For the case of Sandra I prefer using a new trigger because otherwise Janey would potentially know that Sandra was safe before she got into the bar, it seems better to have her wait until Sandra is within sight.

-

I've never looked at mission script before today but here are the problems I see:
1 Some scripts, as the one above that lets Janey knows Sandra is safe, run only upon entering a map. We're removing those map entrances and so will need a way to trigger such things upon entering and exiting submaps.

2 Some scripts run only upon exiting a map. Not sure if that will be a problem as the only one I've bumped into so far wouldn't apply. Assuming it would be a problem, we'd need a way to run them upon exiting a submap.

3 Every single mission script I see is specific to a given map. I'm looking at the mission script for the second mission, every single bit of code begins with something along the lines of: if (localURL == "02_NYC_HOTEL")

Based on the names, I'm guessing "localURL" means "Map Name" and that would be a problem. If there's a way to have multiple different localURLs within a map then all we'd need to would be to assign each submap with a localURL the same as it had when it was its own map. If there isn't, then the code needs to be overhauled. And it wouldn't be as simple sticking all of the scripts under 02_NYC_STREET (or some such). For an example of why, the way the game checks to see if you've killed anyone in the bar is to see if any carcasses are spawned. Either a completely different kill counting method would be needed, or a way to have the script only be running in the bar area.

-

Standard disclaimer: I have no idea what I'm talking about.
Specific addendum: today is the first time I've laid eyes on mission script.
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