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Latest iteration. It's got gothic arches, it's got Dzurgs, it's got mist/fog, whatever you wanna call it.

This map is not an easy one to get screenshots of. Think of trying to tank around the outside of a haunted mansion on a foggy night.

I know I keep saying this, but you REALLY want to download the map and try it. Poly count is high, to be sure. I am gonna try to do yet another reduced poly version. I have an 800mhz PIII with a 128 nVidia GeForce 4 and it runs okay, not great, but okay. It just barely runs on the p4 2.4ghz with Intel 845g chipsets at work. The fog alone accounts for probably 100 polys.



The above shot is one of the four entrances or "Dzurg Doors" into the central "fortress".



Interior of fortress. Network of gothic arches, fog.



Another shot of the exterior.

There is a second floor, which right now is not directly accessable and it could use some obstacles around the outside. I also plan to add some invisible teleports. Need to get the poly count down some more, I think...too bad it will lose some detail. Code thus far attached. 469K unzipped. And if anybody has any ideas on how to reduce the poly count without losing "ambiance", I am open to suggestions.

Man.

Is that good or bad? I am not much of a player, so I dunno how this map is from a playability standpoint, tho the guys at work seem to like it, in spite of the slightly choppy-at-times framerate. I also think the materials could use some work, I don't really understand all this ambient, diffuse, specular stuff and I am still not happy with the look of the "dzurgs", they have this sort of saturday morning cartoon look to them that wasn't quite what I was after.

woah..............................................................................................................................
nice

ClayOgre wrote:Is that good or bad? I am not much of a player, so I dunno how this map is from a playability standpoint, tho the guys at work seem to like it, in spite of the slightly choppy-at-times framerate.

I think that this complex map is harder to play than others. For me it's more looks than playability on this map. Just my opinion. But then again, I haven't played it at all. I've just seen the screenshots. [Note to self: Play this map ]

can you tell me how you made the smoke?!?!?!....

Okay, this is fundamentally a variation of the fire thing...was that a LouMan invention?

First I made two texture matrices to shift the cloud texture and make the mist appear to move. One moved it in one direction, the other in more or less the opposite direction. I also made two materials using these two texmat's respectively.

I had a large mesh object, a "box" with no top or bottom surrounding the entire map area. I copied it, renamed it, then went through and copied each face, then retyped the values so as to rewind the faces and normals in reverse. Now each wall was "faced" on both sides. I defined it as a group.

Then I called that group three times, each time scaling and spinning each box to creat a bunch of random (and hopefully intersecting) planes with the moving texture. From the outside in, I alternated the material on the boxes so different layers would "move" in different directions.

I nested the above three groups into a new group which I called four times, again using scale and spin to mix things up even more.

The attached screenshot is the result of the above, with the boxwall texture substituted for the cloud texture. The attached map file has my code for the mist itself. It is not nearly so visible in a "regular" map, unless maybe you set skycolor to black. In my map I had to set the color to .7 .7 .7 1 because the clouds were too white.

This also has a sort of "eye" in the middle that is mist-free, but you could shift the groups so as to completely cover the map in mist. This also is not a true mist, since you sort of drive through layers of mist and the effect can "stack up" depending on how many layers you are looking through.

The mist in this example and my map uses 120 faces, 8 per box (inside and outside), called three times for 24, then called 5 times for a total of 120, which I think means 240 triangles.

You could tint the clouds, that might be interesting. I also wonder what might happen with scaling the texture around or using shapes other than boxes (would probably make the poly count too high, tho). You could also fiddle with the speed of the texture matrices and throw in some dynamic color. Hmmmm....a map shaped like a large guitar with some purple mist, a Jimi Hendrix map! or smoke rolling across the battlefield....or smoke to go with LouMan's fire. Burning buildings! Combine it with world weapons for some realistic looking ordinance/pyrotechnical effects!

I never knew stuff like this was possible with bzflag.

*falls to the floor ALMOST dead*

i.e. this is amazing, like the most visually cool-looking map in the entire history of bzflag. Nobody before has made a map that looks like this.

After I look at the fog.bzw: This was my reaction~~~ Genius this is some great stuff he thought of. But how do you resize it to fit a world with a size of 1000? Hmm ill test it and find out..... This is some good stuff...

DUDE....that looks amazing. One of the best-looking maps I've ever seen (Metropolis is defietely in the list, I just need textures. ).

Someone put this online if it isn't up already...

This is such a cool map...but is there anyway to maybe make it 200 worldsize or something? To reduce problems?

I have made a lower poly version, but haven't finished with it yet. The "dzurgs" are down to 140 faces apiece, but have suffered somewhat in the looks department. I also did a reduced version of the interior vault structure, I think its down to around 1100 faces if I remember right.

Also, we have discovered that if you have to use lower graphics settings, the fog doesn't work worth a crap. Basically you get a sheet of white that blocks everything out.

As for other addtions to the newer version (I will post the map and screenies later), I have added four towers, one in each corner, accesable at this point via wings flags. There are four guided missile flags in the map, one at the top of each tower, most likely keeping company with some of the 8 oscillation overthruster flags also in the game. I have added a couple of rocks around the periphery, and plan to add a few more.

As for shrinking the map, I suppose it would be possible, but it would also shrink the space between the interior columns. And wouldn't it actually reduce the frame rate? Since now you would have a higher poly density visible out the window? I dunno about these things.

I think the fog might work reduced, just use fewer group instances and scale accordingly, or perhaps go with a triangular "box" instead of a four sided one for the mist walls.

i just played on map
nice map.........................................................

and FPS is great! at least compared to what i expected... i got 15-80 with i whole person! i thought i'd get 1-2 from this map's complexity.

Hey there, a little problem I found. This map works great on bzflag 2.0.2, but at least on bzflag 2.0.3b14 this is how some of it comes out. It's missing part of the mesh or something.

I dunno the answer to that one. I did have a heck of a battle with the face windings on that part of the map. Could it be a bug in the version you are using? Is it a final release or a beta version? I haven't downloaded that version yet, been doing other things. Are you running under windows or linux? Are any faces missing when viewed from inside the object?

I just looked and there is a 2.0.3b16 version...wonder how it looks with that?

I'm using the b14 version when I took that pic. Just holes through the head and a few holes in the roof of the middle part of the map. It might be that it's a beta. I think I remember that Louman was having trouble with his tanks on BZBowl with missing faces.

By request, I am hosting DarkWorld at my server: bzflag.bounceme.net:5154. Enjoy!

I played the map before I started the server, and I must say - this is phenomenal! Great work ClayOgre!

I was talking with a person on the server... and it seems natural to make a CTF version of this map.

Four entrances, four bases... hmmm....

Now, how to 'darkify' the pretty, colorful bases?

And mabye a cast-iron picket fence blocking access to the other bases outside the building? Like the ones you see around haunted mansions.

^Yeah, good idea.

And I played it today...AMAZING! Great job on it!

Regarding the 'bug' posted above: check for non-planar polygons - the new versions check for them and eliminate them. I found a few on my previous maps that I had to fix.

i love this map. very original and cool. it appears though as if it needs a few more things, like new effects or objects or what have you.. i can't imagine it as a ctf map btw.

very nice,i played on it and it was awsome,i can imagine it as a ctf map,that would be really cool