God dammit, I just spent an hour answering your posts and IE died on me. *&^$@#^$@#$&^@#$^(@#&$*(@($(#^$(@$
*TAKE TWO.. SNAP*
First of all, thanks for playing the map and your compliments.
Juim: playing the original map would probably explain the level a bit better which I will explain a bit more further on.
Chrustec and I spent a lot of time using the engine to what we believe was it's full advantage. We reached the limit a few times and dialled it back. A procedure that happend a couple of times. We concentrated a lot on optimising as much as we could without sacrifising our original goals and intentions. There would be more if source would let us. Please know that we didn't just throw out an unfinished and unoptimised map.
We get mixed results about the map. Most love the way it looks and the attention to detail but also complain that it is 100meg rar'd. Custom assets come at a price and we optimised as much as we could. It's not like we are using 2048 textures on small objects. The file is big because there is a shitload of content in this map. I roughly counted 150+ new props and I'm not counting gibs. It could have been a lot bigger, trust me
. Chrustec and I constantly reminded each-other that nothing new was going in so much that we just abbreviated it to NNC "no new content".
I can't explain the reasons why you are experiencing low FPS as I'm using a dual Core 1.8ghz Geforce 9800 GTX. I get 60fps looking down the street at the fire hydrant. The only low fps I got was when I had windowed mode on, had max, photoshop and hammer open at once in Vista.
We could go on a deleting spree and remove the billboards, rain and breakables outside but we are sacrificing things that we believe make the map immersive and different. I know we aren't getting 100+ fps but the map is still playable and fun. You're asking us to remove the things that we are getting compliments for. I'd find it hard to delete them after that.
The lightning doesn't cause any damage. It is just an env_sprite that turns on and off. I think the glass breaking you are refering to may be a part of the map that causes an earthtremor when you walk into the trigger. Something that was in the original.
The "air raid siren" is that length to tell players that it is dangerous to go outside when the Nuke button is pressed. Pressing the button causes a distant nuclear explosion that causes the players to die slowly if they are outside. It forces them inside and stops them from camping and/or sniping on the roofs. When the siren stops, it tells the player that it is ok to go back outside.
We originally had a lot of weapons in the map which made it unfun and made it unnecessary to go inside. All of the powerful weapons now take a little effort to get and once you have it you can situate yourself in a good position if you know where the ammo is. Avading someone who has an RPG while you have the crowbar can be a lot of fun and cause some intense moments.
Don't forget, there are plenty of traps and explodables to use as weapons. I advise going around the level, turns things on and off, see if you can use it as a weapon or strategically.
There are 2 entrances to the cinema building at ground level. One from the cinema exit and the other is through an explodeable wall at the ticketbooth. When we made the map, we initially made it for the people who played the original game. We assumed that they would know to blow up the wall (which is in the original game). We are stoked that new-comers are playing our map without playing the original.
Chrustec is the map layout expert of this map so I'm not 100% sure how he went about laying out the area portals or whatever the crap they are called. But I'm pretty sure the doors had to stay shut because it unloads that section when the door closes to allow better performance. Unfortunately that left the doors kinda buggy but as far as we could tell it was necessary. Chrustec could probably go into it more but its too complex for my simple artist brain
IMO, the "dead-ends" are good for hiding and setting up a spot to eliminate campy roof jumpers. Teleporters sound cool but would probably be hard to explain why and how they teleport you visually. I can live with anti-climactic, not everything is a puppetshow
Chrustec would have to run, hide and change his name if he deleted anything from this map. I would hunt him down. So regarding the billboards, rain and breakables. Although they don't play a huge part in DM they are fun to shoot down. Maybe might kill someone with it if you're lucky enough. I think deleting them wouldn't increase the FPS a great deal. It'd just get Chrustec assassinated.
We couldn't cater to everyone's monitor setup. What looked bright on Chrustec's pc looked dark on mine and vice versa. We had a few spats about it. We tweaked and tweaked and spent so much time on it. Valve was thoughtful enough to add brightness settings in the video options. I reckon crank that up if its a bit dark.
Chrustec and I believe it is time to move on from this map as it has occupied a lot of our freetime and trust me, we could tweak this for ages. There is so many things we had to cut because we ran over the limit of entities. We went through lots of optimisation passes and culling. In the end, I reckon we did what we could and still keep what we wanted initially.
Hey thanks Jium for your critiques. It's always good getting others opinions.
Armageddon and Admjg8, you guys rock. Thanks for playing and we are glad that you like the map. Your posts are exactly what we strived to achieve. It makes all of those late nights and angry wife moments all worth while. Cheers!