Unreal 227 Singleplayer Map Update Project [WIP]

[Loke]

Hey there

Harobed Village is also done! The strange thing on this level is, there are some invisible BSP do blocking the player in the Original.
I rebuild most of the brushes and the invisible BSP blocking do also happen... I don't now what cause them.

Before


After



I will start to work on Terraniux this month. I hope I can combine Terra Lift and Terraniux into one map



greets Krull0r

Splendid work as usual.

[UBerserker]

Well, it's Harobed lol. At least the new details are very appropriate.

What anyway would be questionable right now is the gameplay balance being changed with enemy drops and loots. I'm generally very opposed to item drops, preferring instead intelligent/logic placements of items in the level. Item drops being random means the gameplay balance is never under your full control. Neglecting item placement in favor of looting and especially drops becomes massively problematic on the long run; at one point in the game you won't find human carcasses anymore. And then if you plan to place more items in the later levels that wouldn't be consistent with the rest which was just lootsville.

[Krull0r]

Well, it's Harobed lol. At least the new details are very appropriate.

What anyway would be questionable right now is the gameplay balance being changed with enemy drops and loots. I'm generally very opposed to item drops, preferring instead intelligent/logic placements of items in the level. Item drops being random means the gameplay balance is never under your full control. Neglecting item placement in favor of looting and especially drops becomes massively problematic on the long run; at one point in the game you won't find human carcasses anymore. And then if you plan to place more items in the later levels that wouldn't be consistent with the rest which was just lootsville.

Thank you I try my best to not overload the map with to many details


You are right. There is a lot of balancing to do with that randomdrop system. I already had this problem you mentioned in Chizra.

So I added a lot of peaceable random item spots in the levels. Some are on the original position where some ammo were preplaced and some are on new spots.

The player will find enough ammo but he has to watch his ammo. It’s also a great feeling when your eightball is low and you find randormly ammo of this weapon and you need to be careful using rockets.

I also added a system for the coop game where the player count scales the drop chance of the system. I can tweak and balance it that way.

[UBerserker]

That sounds good. The original Unreal had quite a balanced distribution of ammo, then Na Pali Haven comes and you have trillion of health anywhere, Dasa Cellars with lots and lots of Flak ammo.
Also this is a good time to fix the +50 Razor ammo bug that happens when you have a weapon that uses said ammo (e.g. Razorjack)

[Krull0r]

Also this is a good time to fix the +50 Razor ammo bug that happens when you have a weapon that uses said ammo (e.g. Razorjack)

Noticed I’m going to fix that issue

[Krull0r]

Sorry for the slow progress at this moment but I needed a short break from this. I played other games and spent more time with my girlfriend

But I guess Terralift is done. It's not easy to rework the Terraniux its really really huge!
Both maps are already connected and the player can pump out the slime without switching the level.

What do you guys think about the idea to make the slime in TerraLift and in the center of the Terraniux toxic?
It will change the gameplay drastic and rises the difficulty.

Anyway here is my interpretation of the scanning lasers of TerraLift.

Original:


Redux:

[UBerserker]

The "slime" in Terraniux is water mixed with processed organic plant waste. It's not supposed to be toxic or dangerous. They specifically call it water in the messages.

As for the laser beams I'm not exactly convinced, they look like proper killer beams unlike in the originals that have that, scanning-waving light thing into them (the presence of smoke also makes it more convincing those red beams are dangerous).
That part never really made sense anyway, you could never dodge the beams and triggering the alarm or not made no difference (so I guess P849 triggering them is always canonical); the beta version at least had that corridor as the original entrance, not to a room already inside the underground outpost.

[Krull0r]

That part never really made sense anyway, you could never dodge the beams and triggering the alarm or not made no difference

It does now

You are right they look really dangerous. I try to create a better texture for it.

[WhirlWindWabbit]

Kudos to you for working on this for so long. All the updates you've shared are really, really high quality work. You should be proud. Great work, I mean it.

I do have question though: how do you manage BSP problems? It's evident that you add quite a bit of geometry for detail's sake, and I can't help but wonder how come the maps aren't just broken? Harobed Village, for instance, is a complete mess in its original form. Adding or removing anything usually results in huge HOMs all over the terrain brush. I also can't help but suspect that with the 227 patches some of the BSP compiling code got rewritten or changed, since some maps break if you just rebuild them as they are? How are you managing this?

[Krull0r]

Kudos to you for working on this for so long. All the updates you've shared are really, really high quality work. You should be proud. Great work, I mean it.

Thank you very much

Unreal 227 rebuilds BSP more stable but you are right touching the original maps and make "small" changes cause alot of HOMs.
To fix this I have to rebuild most of the level geometry from scratch.

Passage for example needed to be redone completly from scratch because the original brushes caused alot of issues.

But 227 do not guarantee you always perfect BSP results so I also spent a huge amount of time in fixing HOMs.
I guess the trick is also to use clean brushes.

[WhirlWindWabbit]

Thanks for sharing. Was kind of guessing you had to re-do a lot of ground work. Kudos to you man.

[Krull0r]

Hello

I like to tell that the project is still under development. I’m sorry for the slow progress this year but I worked a lot on stuff which is not visible for the player but very important for the gameplay. Let’s call it hidden timeconsuming work


Maybe some of you noticed that I recently stream some work in progress footage live on my YouTube channel.
At this place I like to say thank you very much for your support and motivation you guys gave me last month!

I will keep streaming some progress, that’s for sure.


I also like to show a comparison shot of a room in the Terraniux.
I will also update the website as soon as possible when all the fine tuning on this level is done.



Terraniux Original




Terraniux Redux

[Preki]

Yup, we've noticed Well, at least I have, been watching you on the recent stream on Terraniux.

[Krull0r]

The project is still alive and I'm currently making good progress

Here is the comparision shot of Noork's Elbow:

[editor Dave]

*drools* The more contrastive lighting makes it look so much more atmospheric, and the additional details are neat, yet faithful. But most impressive is your perseverance. I found new motivation to keep going for my project (Unforchers 2), but I know how hard it is to not slow down!