CTF-{WINGS}Perdition

[Feralidragon]

This is a map requested to me by CandyMan, and I wanted to release it by Halloween time, and well, it came a little bit earlier.

It's a map based in Hell, castles and has all the wings members listed in a wall inside the castles (based on the wings members in early September).
And it may lag in some more old computers, so turn dynamic lighting off to improve performance, and for another hand, the bot pathing is not well built, but still it's playable.
It has some files such:
ConcreteLucifer.umx - 11Mb
Gothic.u - 13Mb
WINGS_TX.utx - 6Mb
CTF-{WINGS}Perdition (RX version of the map) - 5Mb
CTF-{W}Perdition (normal CTF version) - 5Mb

Here's the download link: http://www.gamefront.com/files/20461189 ... dition_rar


And here's some shots:

General:

RX version:

[Creavion]

I think you are really an expert with that effects. Like those flames which are raining from the sky, looks atmospheric. From the pics I only noted on pic 3 on the wall with that RX sign that you could trim those windows, otherwise they dont look good. But dont worry. There is no need to use a trim texture, well at least I would not do this there, but you can make a bigger version of the window - with a base texture - to add this to the wall and then subtract the smaller into it or over this order thing. I guess you know what I mean.
And the second thing.. the side supports look a little bit dark, if you have some problems with the lighting there, I would suggest you to use special lit (I often used it on my last DM map, really useful). If you have more pics of the map, maybe I can say a little bit more.

.. or I wait until I am home and download your map.. oversaw the dl link

[Feralidragon]

Damn, I really thought that I did something wrong in the windows, I really could trim them. Oh well, I will consider that in the next version (the one in a thunder storm).

And those flames appear each 1 or 2 minutes, after a little earthquake (CandyMan's idea).

Btw, the trees and the bushes I took from the package you gave to me

EDIT: I used special lit in some spots, like the team symbols where the rocket launcher is, but I liked the dark effect in the middle, due to the map theme. But thanks for the sugestion as well.

[Creavion]

So thats the final version already and to late to change something?

[Feralidragon]

So thats the final version already and to late to change something?

The RX version yes, if people don't find any problem in playability. About the normal CTF version, I can make some changes, but maybe more at the bot pathing level, textures (the trimming) and stuff.

The thing is, I have to do the thunder one first before doing these little changes, so if I have enough time to make them, I will (and I will consider every tip for the storm one). If I finish the storm one before Halloween, I will head back to Perdition and make some changes, if not, it will stay like it is.

[GenMoKai]

Owke... im very impressed! downloading...

[Myth]

[Feralidragon]

What?

[GenMoKai]

What?

I think he crapped in his pants

Anyways it looks very sweet! Maybe i should play RX a bit more

[Myth]

Ok, a lil review, I downloaded it. Played it. Flew around whit an RX a few times.
The map gets 10/10 for first impression. When I first saw that screen shot I crapped into my pants. I thought, 'Got I'm going to play one of the most interesting maps of 2008!'. After downloading and playing it, I felt more and more disappointed, because I really expected something big because of that screen shot. The performance was really bad at some points. Nowdays I'm starting to have a really old rig, but that fog was the most GPU killer think I ever played in a released UT map. When the node ratio is that bad and you have 1000+nodes in a view the most power demanding thing ever possible in Unreal Engine 1 is volumetric lighting. Volumetric lighting is a really complex thing and it just can't be tossed around that easily. It's not like the fog in UT2004, and it's not a hardware shader on steroids.
The architecture was fairly good. Better than what I can come up nowadays. One thing that I didn't really like the pre-shadowed textures. The more they look 3d in 2d views the more flat they look in 3d. Fooling someone's eyes whit textures is a hard job, and pre-shadowed textures whit 100% black shadow doesn't do that trick too well, especially when you have some ambient lighting, and light rays coming from the opposite direction.
Some masked textures were a bit annoying since some of them had transparent in spots where they shouldn't have.
The geometry, texturing and lighting of the 2 'floating' islands could have been improved. They seem to have razor-sharp edges, and I doubt that you can cut yourself whit dirt.
Be a little more careful about using models, as they have no 'proper' collision and are lit in a totally different way than constructive solid geometry.
That raining fire effect was awesome. The only flaw was that the smoke it emitted wasn't continuous. And it would have also been better to use 'black smoke'
Unfortunately I can't review gameplay aspect of it since even my computer can't get 30 FPS in the 'great' outdoors, not even mentioning my other computers and my friend's computers.

The main problem was performance, and I admire your ability to make a somewhat better geometry than me. Respect, dude!

Disclaimer: I didn't actually crap into my pants. It's just an innocent little joke. Don't take seriously everything that is told to you by me, or by any other human beings.

[Feralidragon]

About the performance thing, it gets way better if you turn off the volumetric lighting and dynamic lighting.

I just added volumetric light to have better visuals, but as almost players have that disabled, I didn't worry too much, and I tried to add the less I could.

I made a really big mistake when I did the islands, because it has a lot of unnecessary polys, so the performance gets with it too.

The models I used them in my best judgement, because I know that collision thing, so used only meshes for torches, inside holes trims, the spikes, trees and such, because they woudn't make that difference and they make the map look better.

The flames, I wanted to add more smoke, but the thing is, if I added more smoke, with the current performance of the map, a lot of them would be skipped, and the map would even more unplayable.

I did some mistakes with textures, but I will try to not repeat in my next works, I should have apllied a macro and detail textures to the terrain in the islands, because they really look bad quality.

So, overall, thanks for the review and the things you pointed out, I will try to not repeat the same mistakes.