Download ONS-Spiffingrad-T32-Crusha-Beta-2-3 (9.16 MB, Zip-format)


Overall changelog:
-Took away the tanks from nodes to give the losing team more chances for a comeback
-Added Paladin to both bases (use it to get the nodes back, not to defend the core)
-Added 3 Ion-painters to destroyed buildings (one removed in the latest version)
-More sandbags, especially to guard the nodes better
-Added minigun-turrets as base-defense
-Added teleporters to red base
-Changes in the weaponlocker
-Added good sniper-positions
-Added material types
-Improved collision-hull for sandbags
-Removed a building at node 2 to make a second entrance to the red base. Placed a hole with planks there instead
-Added a new room to the building infront of the red base with new decoration
-Added more planks to some windows
-Added karma-collision-hulls to most buildings
-Enhanced the location-names
-Some more anti-portals
-Added more decoration, like shark in the Wolga, exploding barrels, crashed bomber, vehicle-wrecks, etc.
-Secured the sides of the red base with barbed wire
-Added czech hedgehogs (thanks to Huntdown for the models)
-Moved and added more ladders to the buildings
-Moved both cores into better cover
-Increased the viewdistance
-Added a new radar-map that consider the changes and has a higher resolution and displays the position of the objects correctly.
-Moved the teleport-destinations from blue base
-Added collision for the pipe infront of red base to walk on and to catch projectiles
-Fixed some terrain-bugs
-Reorganized the position of posters
-Set one building semi-solid to prevent BSP-holes
-Added more powerups, like health in the buildings, or a wildcardbase at the center
-Moved the nodes and their cover in the latest version, so that the team on whose side the nodes are have better chances to get them back

sounds good

But I have a few questions:
-what is karma-collision-hull?
-hedgehogs as animals or is it a vehicle?
-what is a wildcardbase?

jancsi33 wrote:
sounds good

But I have a few questions:
-what is karma-collision-hull?
-hedgehogs as animals or is it a vehicle?
-what is a wildcardbase?

Karma:
The Unreal-Engine uses it's own physic-engine to simulate more or less realistic the behaviour of bodies that are affected by a force.
It may use the simple Karma-BoxCollision or the more complex Karma-Ragdoll, as it is used for dead bodies.

But objects don't collide naturally with everything, there are three kinds of things with which an object can collide: Zero-Extent-Traces (most weapon-fire), Non-Zero-Extent-Traces (the player, when he touches things, vehicles, shockballs from the shockrifle and spider-mines) and Karma for physical objects.
You can set for each of these types with what they collide.
Zero-Extents use in most cases "direct projectile collision", meaning they stop directly at the object by using a per-poly-calculation.
Non-Zero-Extents prefer for more complex objects a collision-hull, meaning a simple geometric shape that can be layed roughly, but as close as possible around the object, so that the engine can calculate the collision on that shape instead of the hundreds of polygons of the object and to let the player not get stuck easily.
Karma-collision does the same.

Now you can set for each StaticMesh, which of these three should collide in which way.

The problem in Spiff was, that there were these complex buildings, but they all were made as one StaticMesh, so you can't lay a simple geometric shape around it, that would fit it, as you can go inside it.

My job was it then to take simple shaped BlockingVolumes to set this missing collision by hand with multiple volumes per object, so that corpses don't fall through the ground anymore.


Czech Hedgehog:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_hedgehog

They were made by Huntdown in 3D Studio Max on my request. In the beginning we had some problems to export them correctly with aligned textures, but then I found a tutorial that helped us and Hunt is willing to do some more models, if I ask him.



WildcardBase:
A simple pickup-base, but it has a list of possible pickups which it can spawn in a random order, so you never know in a match which item will spawn at a which time.

Thank you for answering, that karma thing made me a bit confused lol but I could understand something...
oh, so the Czech hedgehog is an "antitankfence"

ohh I know the wildcard base (who doesn't), just I didn't know it's called wildcard base

Finaly I'v checked new Spiffin yesterday. Well Excellent job, Crusha! New red nodes location is very comfortable for building and defence. More free room on map is just great for vehicles!

New version available: Beta-2-4 (6.37 MB, 7zip-format)

Changes:
-Repaired the mapfile, which was corrupted in Beta-2-3. It caused the map to have weird entries in the myLevel-package and crashed the editor when trying to save it under another map-name.
-Rearranged positions of the czech hedgehogs. They are now used only on the red side to make the roads less accessible for tanks and to give some nice positions for ambushes, if a tank should stop there somewhere. Smaller vehicles can still get along most of the roads.
-Overworked collision-hull for the hedgehogs to make them more predictable when it comes to block vehicles or Non-Zero-Extent-Traces.
-Removed shock-rifles and sniper-rifles from all weaponlockers. However the classic sniper-rifle is still spread over the map.
This was an idea by Foibos to increase the "realism", as far as that can be possible. If the map gets unplayable without them, I'll put them back.
-Fixed a bug causing players to get stuck behind the red core.
-Changed some left-over material-types.
-Added a missing collision-hull.
-Reduced the fog-distance (minimum and maximum) by 500 UU to increase the performance and to prevent a bit more distance-shots.

why did u removed the sock and lightning? that's not funny at all. i'm playing only for them. maybe u'll reconsider and add them back. if not, i'll only camp for the tank, if that'll not work, i'll stop playing this map. the map is pretty open, u need far range weapons. u want us to kill far away enemies with link or minigun? or maybe flack, bio or the assault rifle? ok, for corridors they do the job.

why was the reason to remove them? maybe u ar right and i can't see that yet. only that they are futuristic-laser weapons? i think the gameplay is more important than this realism =) UT is unrealistic by definition.

Foibos argument was, that it is also in Spiffingrad-TSE like this and the map would be successful anyways.


It was quite unused when playing it this one time: I always had the reflex to scroll to the Shock Rifle, but it wasn't there.
I knew that you were going to be upset. ^^


I will probably re-add them, but for now I'll give it a try.
It worked also this way, but when I had the minigun more often now and it wasn't really hard to kill almost any enemy with it, who used another weapon.

Yeah, I suppose that removing the shock and sniper is only gonna give the mini spammers more of a reason to stick with that weap than before... aw well. I can understand the reasoning behind dropping the shock a bit more than that for the sniper (Foibos' argument doesn't seem too convincing IMO), but meh.

Now, I haven't tried the map yet (what with me being stuck with this old POS comp and this crappy dialup con here :/), so I'm ambivalent about all these changes - I am curious, though, to see how they work in action. Only thing that seems worse even in paper is the fog distance reduction. Seriously, it's 2009 and we're still worrying about performance drop from fog distance on such a small map? Yeesh.

Anyways, gj cranking those maps out and trying to improve things, Crusha - one more reason to think of UT and my comp at home while catching some rays at the beach, heh-heh :p!

PS: I love how after getting to know eachother a bit more and what each of our strengths and weaknesses are, we as a community now are starting to pool talents and resources and be able to improve our hobby together. Feels great, ya know? Makes me wish I was (much) better at UEd myself...

pegasus_ wrote:
Now, I haven't tried the map yet (what with me being stuck with this old POS comp and this crappy dialup con here :/), so I'm ambivalent about all these changes - I am curious, though, to see how they work in action. Only thing that seems worse even in paper is the fog distance reduction. Seriously, it's 2009 and we're still worrying about performance drop from fog distance on such a small map? Yeesh.

Anyways, gj cranking those maps out and trying to improve things, Crusha - one more reason to think of UT and my comp at home while catching some rays at the beach, heh-heh :p!

PS: I love how after getting to know eachother a bit more and what each of our strengths and weaknesses are, we as a community now are starting to pool talents and resources and be able to improve our hobby together. Feels great, ya know? Makes me wish I was (much) better at UEd myself...


Oh believe me, the FPS dropped in a way I noticed on my high-end system.
I increased by 500 UU to the original Spiff now (the last version had 1000 UU increased). In compare: a player is 88 UU tall.
You have to think, that if you increase the radius a bit, the circumference increases even more.

In order to save resources during the line-of-sight-calculations, the engine will only stop rendering objects, which are completely occluded by the fog and to achieve that may this small amount be the last drop that is missing. It's especially extreme in Spiff, as each of the buildings is one single object and not, like it is more usual, a result from multiple single objects.

And since the map shall stay playable for everyone, I have to make compromises. Lilalurl.T32 for example plays UT on very low graphic settings.




Jancsi also asked me if I could teach him a bit mapping, so if there is interest then maybe Foibos can create another sub-forum here as a "Mapper's corner" and you can ask questions there, talk about techniques and I would make something like a blog-tutorial about mapping, when I have some time.