after a long absence of me from Vietcong I decided to come back and do one more thing. It bugs me for over three years now to do one more map with a certain map design settled in Vietnam. Since there are not a lot of great Vietnam shooters out there (that I've played) with a decent modding community I choose to return. To do this map I just want to know a few things to make sure that I won't put all my effort into this thing and nobody plays it.
1. Are there still people enjoying this game and regularly team up to play this game in coop mode?
2. Are new maps desired? Especially to bring fresh air into the map rotation.
So I already have a specific plan
The layout is not completely done and a few paths will definitely change here and there but that is the general layout.
The playable area shall be around 300x300m. You start on the right (at the cyan mark) The first thing you do is cross the bridge across a river that is full of stones and enter a village (like a stealth mission) and clear out each building. All buildings are built out of wood, bamboo and corrugated metal plates. Two main buildings will be up to two stories high. They are big enough to have a short battle inside of them. You can enter these buildings via multiple entrances or across other roofs. There will be also a tiny pond in the middle of it.
In case you don't want to go this way you can also NOT cross the bridge but go into the river (that is apparently really shallow) and follow along until you hit a few watchtowers of the VC.
Everything is settled in a valley, thus the river flows into the middle of the map, where it flushes ricefields to its left and right (bright green), and then heads towards the south to leave the map.
Perhaps you see that the village on the right (first encounter) is on top of the hill or at least on a higher point of the valley. It should look like a main village where the vietnamese produce cocaine or where chiefs live to have a great overview of their valley. This village is surrounded by a thick forest, therefore you can only enter it via the bridge, one road in the south of it (not yet on the image) and to the left when crossing the rice fields and going up hill (or using the road near the ricefield). You could also sneak around the village by bearing right and clear out the village from there or just circulate it.
In general you have the opportunity to do the job in multiple ways, its your choice.
To recap:
- Playable area ~300x300m. Could be bigger cause i cannot estimate the proportions right now.
- Lighting: overcast or sunny, but definitely during the day. I will render out lightmaps in 3ds max, thus the lighting looks more exciting.
- View distance: unlimited. But bots will have a limited view distance apparently. Also the map will be so dense that you cannot look from one end to another. Obstacles, buildings, rocks and little woods will always block your view in some way.
So what i want to hear are a few active people, i would do a first grey block map with a bit of vegetation to get a sense of the size, placement of stuff. Then i need people to test it, run across it and tell me wether it is well proportioned or where they may see problems when challenging this map in coop.
After that is done i would do the modelling completely and i would need help from somebody to do the bot placement as I have never done this before.
TropicThunder wrote:
...
To do this map I just want to know a few things to make sure that I won't put all my effort into this thing and nobody plays it.
I will give you my own opinion and won't talk for "the others" of course...
1. Are there still people enjoying this game and regularly team up to play this game in coop mode?
2. Are new maps desired? Especially to bring fresh air into the map rotation.
1. Compare to the well known "block busters", Vietcong never really got a huge community and after all those years (soon 20 years!), there aren't many of us anymore of course. However, what I like with the Coop mode is, as long as we are at least... 2 players, we can still have fun together! So, yes, you will still have at least 8 players (around) to play your map I guess...
2. Always! But don't create your map only "for the numbers" but only because you really want to (in my opinion). Each time I edit or create a map, I already know that it won't be played by a lot but at least I will play it, to have fun with my friends for sure!
- Playable area ~300x300m. Could be bigger cause i cannot estimate the proportions right now....
It may be too big in fact... Each time I made the "mistake". My Intrusion and BrownWater maps are a little too big in my opinion. During the building and in the Editor, a map will usually appear too small, but once the objects and the bots will be in place, the same map will appear bigger and longer to be "played"... But you will find the "correct size" during the building process I guess.
- View distance: unlimited. But bots will have a limited view distance apparently. Also the map will be so dense that you cannot look from one end to another. Obstacles, buildings, rocks and little woods will always block your view in some way.
I strongly advise you to set a limit for the view distance! But to explain you the reasons (and understand many other things), I also invite you to fully read my mapping section to avoid many mistakes (that I've done in the past) and to better understand how to build your map "for the best" results and renderings...
Yes i know what you mean. Its just a rough estimation, despite the fact it is a big playground there are also big areas you cannot enter, like the forest parts will be in many parts so dense that you cannot enter or look through it.
I strongly advise you to set a limit for the view distance
I've read your thread already (nice one indeed). Whats speaks against unlimited view distance? Cause in theory you cannot look over the whole map at any point because of occlusion, i more or less said that it is unlimited so you can see the backdrop and outside of the playable area for the immersion.
I will also put a lot of effort into hierarchical lod'ing, thus the performance shall be good. With VCStarter i want a minimum of 100 frames without bots.
Give me any advice that is untold or not yet written down :-)
I like your idea, especially to have more options how to proceed through the map (make AI little bit random would help too). Do not worry about the number of players, you will find people playing coop on few servers (sometimes on full server) every day. There is also coop tournament (this season is about to end soon): http://tournament.vcclan.net/about.php
Few years ago we had more map makers (Gonzo, guys from Alpha Team, Martyr, Intruder etc), some of them took a break from making maps, thus this year we had fewer maps than usual (was there any?) so every map is welcome!
...despite the fact it is a big playground there are also big areas you cannot enter, like the forest parts will be in many parts so dense that you cannot enter or look through it.
In that case, I think it's better to use "visual tricks" (like "jungle walls" ) to create that effect instead of using "real individual objects", to obtain the same kind of result (and it will avoid fps drops)...
...Whats speaks against unlimited view distance?
It's very bad for the fps, certainly if you want to add a lot of bushes and objects on your map...
...Cause in theory you cannot look over the whole map at any point because of occlusion, i more or less said that it is unlimited so you can see the backdrop and outside of the playable area for the immersion.
If the "tricks" I'm previously talking about are used "cleverly", it shouldn't kill the immersion and the visuals...
Give me any advice that is untold or not yet written down :-)
I can't as long as I haven't seen a lot more of your map!
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...what is the optimal step size for stairs (despite an inclined plane as collision) again?
I never made some for my maps but I would say it will mainly depend of the kind of stairs you want to create. For a "plane collision", I wouldn't exceed the 40° (of tilt) or the player(s) will be blocked and forced to jump... Only your tests will give you the best solution to use I guess!
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By the way, you wrote in your first post...
...It bugs me for over three years now to do one more map with a certain map design settled in Vietnam...
...But have you already made maps for Vietcong in the past? And if "yes", which one(s)? It may help me (us?) to guide you in the right direction...
...But have you already made maps for Vietcong in the past? And if "yes", which one(s)? It may help me (us?) to guide you in the right direction...
I like to stay in the dark :-)
Don't worry about fps, i will make it as high fps as possible. I think it will take longer to load the map as there will be a lot of baked meshes and textures but at runtime it shall run really smooth. I already started creating meshes, I assume that it will take a few weeks until i have a first "grey block" map and then I will get in touch with you again :-
So as I will use a few tricks to blend between high poly objects i like to ask wether someone made some tests with ClipDist, Dol and Dummys. What i want to do is fake Hierarchical Lod'ing. How does it work?
Example:
Say you have 10 trees linked to 1 dummy. When this dummy's clipdistance of 75m is reached i would like to clip it. A big mesh at the same location with Dol=75, DolNoAlpha=1 that represents all trees baked to one mesh in 3ds max now appears. Atm. it works really good in editor and there is absoluty no flickering. But maybe someone already tested this with less fps where flickering occurs.
Best regards.
Ps. I provided a little testscene. There are 15 trees linked to a dummy in the middle. the dummy's clipdistance is set to 75. there is an object at the center of dummy 'coco02_scene' that has the 'Dol' property.
I did this 10 times, thus there are 150 trees visible on the screen. Maybe you can test it on your pc and tell me wether the swapping is seamless or wether you've already tested a similar method.
Maybe you can also tell me the red outlined number corresponding to the blue outlined numbers.
Yes sir, So i already blocked out the first / main village and also placed some placeholder forests. I was off to the suisse for 10 days so I made a break.
Oh man, my 3ds max has tremendeous problems for a few weeks and even reinstalling doesnt work. I cannot work at the map atm. Maybe one of you guys knows a fix?
Problem: When opening any scene it works but after around 4 minutes working it slows down dramatically that even selecting any objects takes a few seconds. No matter what I do, its impossible to bang your head against the wall because of its laggyness.
Apparently Autodesk Support is not helping either. They don't even understand that my student license that I refreshed and up to date until 2022 is not working for my 3ds max, its just not working. Maaaaan this is so annoying.
I have one for 3DS max 8 but I use it only to convert to .bes. Its almost unusable for me in win 10. So many problems. the worst problem is that after the thrid or fourth time opening the right click menu the menu ist stuck on screen. also happens with other parts of the viewport.
At some point i started using VirtualBox to run 3DSMax8 on Windows XP in there.
You can easily give the virtual machine 4GB of RAM on a modern PC and it will run really smooth.
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