Berlin Wall | Quadropolis

schmutzwurst | 2008-05-05 23:22

Berlin Wall

[

154

points ]

(19 votes)

This content is now included in the official release of the game, so you do not need to download it if you already have the latest release. The content stored here may not reflect the copy the game uses.

Starred Content

Blurb large CTF/capture/insta map, historic theme

Screenshot Berlin Wall

Get original file (78KB)

Detailed description

2008-06-20: Updated the zip to what is in the realease too so anyone who edited the map and wants the official version back can get it from here.

Thanks again a billion to Nieb, SATAN and fweep who helped me a lot on this map!

UPDATE 05/20/08

after a several hour long coop edit session with Nieb, apflstrudl and fweep we were able to reduce the geometry in berlin_wall drastically. Thanks so much for your help, guys !!!

its now 1,4 MB instead of 2,3 MB and might have up to twice the fps you previously had. Some Buildings are goone, the rest were just minor optical, but major gridsize changes. i hope you all like it. i dont really have the time to update the picture, but except for some buildings it looke pretty similar still.

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05/18/08: UPDATED

tried to fix everything mentioned and added a train station right under the brandenburg gate. i didnt do all things that were suggested, but most. thanks for all the good hints, tricks, bugfinds etc.!!!

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here comes another CTF map. it requires the CVS version of it, but you might want to check it out anyway, because it now contains new models, CTF (finally!) and thousands of other improvements so far.

just follow this guide (WIN/MAC), its easy, takes just about as long as the usual release to download, you just need a different program to do so:
http://www.the-conquerors.net/clanpage/index.php?site=static&staticID=10

it is meant as a tactical CTF map and therefore uses a spawn-room in which you have to decide what role you want to play until you die the next time. depending on how you decide (defensive player, offensive one, going for quad or trying to sniper you get your required ammo for the role. the map itself is equipped then only equipped with few ammo but still creates incentives to browse through it as the spawn room gives you no armour...

in insta and ffa it works similar like akroseum: it tries to keep you in the center of the map (by letting you spawn there only) so it should even be fun with just few people.

i know some of you (me included) hate symmetrical maps - but with CTF they just seem to be the only real solution. hope can cope with, i'm having a hard time myself releasing such a map ;-)

well, give it a try. it is still at beta stage, though.

my major problem is my partially broken graphics card which makes sauer crash whenever i try to load the map myself lately. therefore i'm happy to have a version for you to look at and test,

but: i wont be able too fix or update the map right away. however i will read what you write and will will work out all of your critique that you gave good reasons for. i will just probably have to go to a friend's place in a few weeks and finish it as my computer can`t run the map anymore.

another issue: unfortunately it got a little big in size. if anyone knows how to make it smaller or speed it up a little without rebuilding it or changing much in the map itself, tell me.

i used:
/lightprecision 256
/calclight 1

Map file berlin_wall.zip (2.81 MB)

Rating

154

points

(19 votes)

Comments

nepomuk | 2008-05-05 23:38

just: wow!

MeatROme | 2008-05-06 13:57

First of all : this is a terrific map, I like the theme and especially enjoyed your "job selection"-spawn-room :-)
Maybe the only not-quite-historically-correct bit is the holes in the wall at ground level, they used to go under you know ... hehe - JK ;-) - for game-flow this is obviously not practical, anyway you do have under the wall holes too ... wonderful themeing!!

Now on to the filesize:
For one thing the "calculating normals" step takes ages, which - I guess - is due to the intensive use of the new gridsizes smaller than what we could previously use; I'm now starting to understand why this was so hard a feature to get through ... slows us down considerably :-/ ... even amping the lerpsubdivsize to 128 didn't help there, but this might of been a misconception on my part to hope it would - best ask eihrul directly about possible tweakage to improve on that step!

The main issue I can see is the insane amount of light entities, given the mainly murky level of light - except for the central square. You should try to reduce the numbers considerably, that will surely help.
For example - after having clipped off the upper parts of the octree (8 cubes (at default gridsize) above the "Brandenburger Tor") with skybox - probably you can take off even more, since I'm not to sure how much of the roofs are actually accessible.
That already gives about 0.25 MB - not much, but every bit counts, I guess.
Then - if I delete all lights and just set some ambient and skylight, the calclighted (though looking fullbright TBH) OGZ was another 1.0 MB smaller - bringing it to 1.4 MB precisely.
I haven't got time to play with various attempts ATM, so just some general ideas here:
Don't use 4 lights for your street lamps - use a glowskin on the light texture and one light entity for each lamppost.
Try going with a number of large radius but low intensity lights to subtly highlight what the ambience didn't (prolly go a little higher than 10 on the ambience too), use some skylight as well ... your "sun" was so low in intensity I bet it doesn't even really make a difference.
Anyway >500 lights is insane for that map.
All this will probably still leave you with a 2.0 MB OGZ though ... maybe the normals bit is where you can get more out of, but sadly I haven't a clue as how one could go about that.
Oh. A hint towards the glowmap - use the light-texture itself for the "g"-texture-slot; as Nieb has told me a number of times, this works just fine :)

schmutzwurst | 2008-05-06 15:56

thanks a lot for the detailed inforamtion and hints you give. i will try to follow them all.

as i said i will have to wait a little to collect all ideas and then do it all in one big session as my own computer still does not want to open it :-(

another thing is that i am not really into coding, programming etc. but consider myself rather a total noob. therefore i might need to get back to you on some points - as i really dont know how to perform them... i guess i will just try to get you in #sauerbraten.

all this will prolly be not too soon as my DSL is down at home for a few days and the ISP wont seem to get me back online right away, my ISP rents the DSL line from someone else and they dont seem to hurry...

however: your ideas sound great - and even if i just get it to 2MB thats worth giving it a try.

therefore: THANKS, really appreciated!

Berk | 2008-05-06 16:16

I like that kind of maps, because its a big map and its mirrored :)
I think for a CTF this is very important so every team have the same chances and a big map offers more tactical strategies.

There are more fantasy maps in Sauer so this "real map" could be good addition.
The German Shields are a good idea, perhaps you can add more things like that.

The theme of the map is really fantastic :)

Berk

MeatROme | 2008-05-06 16:49

Yes Berk - a map explicitly constructed for CTF should definitely be symmetrical (mirrored); yet, since this gamemode is so fresh (not even been in a release yet) we're all gonna have to wait for what mappers will take on the job.
The down-side of this - probably also the reason we waited for it so long - is that maps for this gamemode seldom make as much sense in other modes ... this was different with the Capture mode, which made maps more versatile ... hence less of a bloat on the release-package-filesize!!

The german signs (a shield is "Der Schild", "Das Schild" is a sign!) are nice for sure, altough the old-style font doesn't really fit with "The Wall" ... it looks more like "Kaiser Wilhelm"-times.
The down-side of them is : it'll be a hassle for non-german-speakers (rather -readers) to know which job-teleport is which, they will need to remember portal-1, -2, -3 or -4 for whatever they prefer ... and now that I think about it ... it's a bit hard on you, if you decide to walk through one portal that someone else just took the last items from ... finding yourself on the battle-field with next to no resources :-/ Ouch!

schmutzwurst | 2008-05-07 09:35

thanks berk! :-)

meatrome: no weapons: valid. very valid argumant actually. i guess there is no way to control the time in which ammo reappears with parameters...? so i will have to either put more ammo in the map or decide for 1-2 weapons per role and overfill the teleporter room with that or create up to 8 rooms per team (currently 2) and hope the people dont spawn in the same rooms all the time. but thanks! you really got me on this one. :-S

the font: well, signs in berlin are traditionally in that kind of font, take for example just all the signs in train stations, at the pariser platz (where the brandenburg gate is located), etc. as far as i remember (i was eleven when the wall came down) many of them were like that too back then ;-)
but: you are right, to be very realistic it might need to be at least little mixed: new signs and ols ones, etc.

now here comes the reason why i dont wanna change it: i dont want it to be too realistic. the brandenburg gate just serves as a rough theme for a certain reason: what i intended with akroseum and this map is that some players get to know that there is something in history thats beatiful (akroseum) or worth getting to know more about (berlin_wall) besides gaming. just a a small hint. anyone who played the map might think then: hey, i played there - and might rather enjoy that class han without that map. if thats the outcome then i achieved two things with one map: a little gaming fund and a little improvement on schol subjects in class. ;-)

on the other hand ive always had a problem with games that use war themes or other problematic themes or even absolutely no-go themes like nazi-themes to make their game more "real". sauerbraten is very far apart from kind of "realistic" in general and thats why i like it so much. if you take all this as premises i had to take a theme but change is just as much that they remix the reality. therefore i e.g. weakened the position in the sniper spot tower, created so many holes in the wall, and made the brandenburg gate be surrounded by houses where there was pretty much nothing when the wall was still up.

in my eyes its actually even too realistic as of now and might hurt some people that have lost friend or family at the wall, which made me put up a sign in the spawn rooms (you'll have to make a turn) which states that its not intended to support any communism an wall-weirdos but that its rather meant to keep in mind that we can learn from the past and just not put up walls again.

MeatROme | 2008-05-07 19:21

Thank you for this insight into your motivation, I enjoyed reading that a lot!
And hey - I was just kidding about the signs .. and I am totally with you on the realism argument, you really spoke from my heart there! Hope it does have the effect of getting people to go see the actual place they enjoyed playing a sauerbraten map that was modeled on it :)

I just had an idea about the spawn-room issue - another one to 'spamming' the room so you can't pick up all ents in one go.
How about making the entry to the 'job'-alleys be two-way!?!
So you can enter the teleport and run through (as before) if it's full, but back out and pick another if it's empty.

schmutzwurst | 2008-05-07 21:57

it was nice meeting you in mumble today!

i guess this wouldn´t work as i believe many might then just go into one room, pick the weapons, back out and go into the next. well, of course not in PSL games as youd just hurt your own team, but it might be that way on public.

i`ll think of something. theres gotta be a good solution.

MeatROme | 2008-05-08 10:57

Likewise re:mumble :)
Oh re:back-out-and-grab-it-all ... didn't think of that ... you're right. Hope you find a good solution!
If all else fails I'd rather see it be league-friendly than public-friendly though ;-)

Jorge | 2008-05-08 12:15

Overall look: Very nice. So cool to have "real-world" related maps.
Gameplay: Unfortunatelly not yet tested, but from what I can see there seems no reason to complain.
Idea/uniqueness: This is the strongest point of this map. The Berlin Wall theme on the one hand and the spawn rooms on the other hand are both gorgeous ideas.

So definitelly a great map. Of course it is symmetrical which makes it a bit less interesting for other gamemodes than CTF, but one can't have everything. And for CTF it seems to fit perfectly.

About the weapons: Maybe try it this way: After going through the teleporter one can take e.g. 3 ways which all have the very same weapons. But you have to jump down to each way and can't get up again (or maybe only with rocket/nade-jump). So that one can see in which of the 3 ways there are weapons, but only can go through one of it.
Hmmm, my english is a bit rusty. Hope you got my point ;)

SheeEttin | 2008-05-08 21:17

A beautiful map indeed.
However, I'm going to skip the architecture, etc., and talk about the map itself.

First thing I'd recommend is an English translation for the signs only in German (I assume the signs on the wall itself say something like "keep back" and "scharfschützen" means "sniper"), but for those of us who don't speak German... (You've got two lines on the wall sign, one could be in English, if both aren't necessary.) You could also step up the quality of the of the texture; it looks a bit grainy. Also: Consider making the sign a decal; that'd eliminate the problem of the gray corners not matching the rest of the texture.

As for geometry, I have a few recommendations. First, examine your columns, inside and out; I found a few little errors. For example, at the top of the main structure's columns, there are little tiny voids. These should be filled in, as well as holes running lengthwise through the middle of the columns in the main structure.
There's also a texturing error on the floodlights on the corners of the smaller structures, immediately obvious.
Also, I see that the smaller structures seem to have an "attic"... These should also be filled in.
The underside of the "lid" of (at least some of) the streetlights also seems the be textured as brick... Not very noticeable, but still.
One more thing: The capitals of the pillars on the outside corners of the smaller structures seems to be missing a chunk, This is very easily fixed.
The pillars themselves, while I'm sure they took you a long time, seem to actually be ovid, rather than round! (Go inside one and look down to see what I mean.)
I'd also move the street curbs out one cube (at gridpower 1), if only so that the streetcorners come out clean. (Turn on outlines and you'll see what I mean.)

The buildings are pretty nice, though they're very uniform... Try making each building unique somehow.
Also consider allowing roof access--jumping from roof to roof is not only fun, it's a very effective method of transportation.
Consider making the windows extrude from the building as well; the current system looks a little too flat. (Extuding the windows will also result in more efficient rendering--hit 7 or /outline 1 to turn on outlines (the bigger the triangles are, the more efficient your mapping is).)

In addition, all along the outside wall, there is some empty space. (You'll need to go outside the map and look in to see it.) These spaces should be filled in.
(There's also a space in the foundation of four of the buildings... The green stone ones toward the axis perpendicular to the Wall.)

Oh, and one of the Berliner Movers signs is backwards. ;)

All in all, a beautiful map.

schmutzwurst | 2008-05-09 18:11

thank fpor spending so much time in testing it and giving me god hints!

i will try to fix most of it when i do all the fixing at my friends place in a week or so,

thanks! really appreciated.

schmutzwurst | 2008-05-10 11:17

thanks again for this list that will serve me as a to-do-list, well at least most of it.

as to the signs: i want them to be german, because they would just seem strange in english. but they dont really have much of a meaning and if it is important i already used english (like in the quadroom). with respect to the spawn-rooms: its always the left door which leads to the offense, the second from left which leads to the defense etc. even without beeing able to read german everyone should get it. i even used the german words which root from latin and look like adjectives but somehow fit in english (Offensive/Defensive) instead of the real german words (Angriff/Verteidigung).

SheeEttin | 2008-05-11 16:39

One more thing on the signs: You can flip the texture when you load it (see texture in the docs). You don't need to include flipped versions as different textures.

schmutzwurst | 2008-05-20 15:14

thanks a lot to Nieb, apflstudl and fweep for helping me in that huge coop-session last night!

SheeEttin | 2008-05-20 20:52

You've changed it quite a bit.

You'd fixed most (if not all) of the things I mentioned--but in the process, you've introduced a few other little bugs: Namely, if you go inside any of the pillars, there is a little spot where it looks like your finger slipped on the scroll wheel. (This is present at the top and bottom of each pillar.)
Those little chinks in the outside of the wall are gone--except for where the Wall meets the wall.

You've also removed those darker rectangles on the main structure's supports--I liked those! They broke up the face of the column very well.

The new subway station is nice, though it's a bit barren (try some poster-type things) and I'm not sure why there's grass under the tracks. (And the southwest entrance's sign is backwards. Edit: so are two of the Quad signs.)

I'm not sure I like the new "park" areas--an area of greenery kind of conflicts with the cement and stone of a major city. It goes against the grain, if you will. (The same goes for the parking lots--this seems more like a residential area).

One last, very small gripe: The corners at the base of the columns are made up of cubes at gridpower 0--they could be made of cubes at gridpower 1 just fine. (/outline 1 to see what I mean.)

PunDit | 2008-05-20 19:09

Excellent Map. I can tell a lot of effort went into it. :D

tentus | 2008-05-21 22:16

I'm very impressed, this is a very impressive map. It also makes for a great study of what the engine will and won't do with poly optimization... very impressive nonetheless.

One thing I would recommend is adding some shutters to the 'hollow' buildings and then adding single open windows with single rooms to the 'filled' buildings. This will help keep players from making these classifications so quickly, and generally enhance the illusion. I'd also recommend putting some stuff inside the buildings, to either give them a abandoned feeling or inhabited feeling (or both). Without any content inside right now they kinda come off as unfinished.

Also, there's a couple of signs in the quad room that need flipping, and the slips at the base of the columns that SheeEttin mentioned. But as a whole, it's a fantastic map.

Edit: noticed a couple new things.
If you run along the wall trenches to either end, the thin wall that connects the walls at the tip looks like it's not quite finished texturing. In the same area, it's really easy to fall out of the map: I'd recommend putting a very thin clipping material to avoid that.

One other recommendation; in the damaged parts of the wall that form an S tunnel, could you perhaps add a bit of a downward bend in the tunnel-y part? It'd help it to stand out and make it feel a bit more like a tunnel, because I didn't even see it during my first few play throughs. Maybe do something in the texturing?

schmutzwurst | 2008-05-21 13:36

thanks again for the comments!
very appreciated.

eihrul fixed the colums and the grass i just flipped the sighns and will ask him to update it in CVS.

unfortunately i wont be able to spend more time on it as i go on vacation on saturday and the next release will prolly be out already when i get back. up until saturday i will be busy as hell, getting prepared and getting my desk empty at work. :-(

but again: thanks so much for spending time with the map and writing your opinion here. i wish i could follow more of your ideas but theres just no time left.

SheeEttin | 2008-05-21 19:14

Yep, these are all fixed in CVS.

But I just noticed one more thing: It's possible to get stuck between the curb and the lamppost for the lampposts that are on the grass. (Jumping will get you out, but just running gets you stuck.)