Interesting (underused) Ideas
Parallax
Join Date: 2002-11-08 Member: 7739Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Supporter
Join Date: 2002-11-08 Member: 7739Members, Constellation, Reinforced - Supporter
<div class="IPBDescription">Things that SHOULD be in NS maps</div> I have some big plans for my upcoming map, NS_Nexus 9.
I thought I could outline them, and get some feedback / interest / inspire others.
First, I think that there needs to be more audial feedback in NS levels. To that effect, I am going to have my girlfriend do some 'computer voice' wavefiles for my map
For example, to be played on map start: (to each player as they enter the ready room, to that player only)
"Welcome to nexus 9" (This is the first name that rolled off my tongue when I said "Welcome to".
Then I am going to have heaps of dynamic lighting. Most large rooms will have whiteish lighting which can be turned on and off, with moody coloured lighting that stays on regardless.
When the map starts, all of the white lighting is turned off. As soon as a marine gets in the commchair, a voice plays (Only the _First_ time, mind) "Command system override enabled, Power grid restored". This is followed by a number of the rooms turning on. All the sparking will start at this point. Lots of ambient 'Whurr up' noises at this point.
In each of the main rooms with the white lights, there is a lighting power box that can be destroyed. If it is destroyed, then the white lighting in that room is disabled (making it more alien-friendly). If a marine commander decides to, she can drop a wielder to fix a damaged power box to restore lighting.
All of the hives will have minimal infestation. Most of the systems near them will be functional and there will be associated whirrs and screens and cool stuff. When the aliens build a hive in one of the three locations for the first time (after the hive is finished), several things will happen, in order.
1) There will be sparks and small explosions and general system failures in the area of the hive
2) the lights in the hive and nearby rooms will go out, leaving only the typical dim hive lighting. (thinking that perhaps dim red emergency lighing comes up slowly after the lighting goes out).
3) Several func_walls that are 1 unit off the walls appear, with approriate infested textures <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
4) a nearby "important" room will be destroyed. Such as the computer core floor box I showed off in the screenshots tread recently
Also planning to have a type of sewer "loop" under the floor, placed so that it goes under corridors as little as possible (inspired from that feedwater access tunnel). Each of the hives will be nearish a room where this water will come to the surface to pass through a pool. Vents will enter it, and the marine base will be overlooking an outdoor area with a huge water pool. Although I plan to have a single resource node on the water loop (with both marine and alien access), The idea of the loop is to have a slow "sneaking" way of getting about. This means that although marines can lock down the map, the water tunnel should keep things interesting.
Perhaps you can weld shut some grates on the tunnel to stop alien passage.
I think that the ready room should also spend the first 3 minutes of the game (from when the players enter it) basically disentegrating. Girders falling down, explosions, klaxons, etc. The "select alien" area will be quiet with water / growing noises. The marine area will be alive with distress calls, steam, explosions, and general panic.
Flayra did say that the readyroom should set the mood <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
I know that there is an entity limitation. I don't know how severe it is. Am I going to encounter problems with this?
-Tom
I thought I could outline them, and get some feedback / interest / inspire others.
First, I think that there needs to be more audial feedback in NS levels. To that effect, I am going to have my girlfriend do some 'computer voice' wavefiles for my map
For example, to be played on map start: (to each player as they enter the ready room, to that player only)
"Welcome to nexus 9" (This is the first name that rolled off my tongue when I said "Welcome to".
Then I am going to have heaps of dynamic lighting. Most large rooms will have whiteish lighting which can be turned on and off, with moody coloured lighting that stays on regardless.
When the map starts, all of the white lighting is turned off. As soon as a marine gets in the commchair, a voice plays (Only the _First_ time, mind) "Command system override enabled, Power grid restored". This is followed by a number of the rooms turning on. All the sparking will start at this point. Lots of ambient 'Whurr up' noises at this point.
In each of the main rooms with the white lights, there is a lighting power box that can be destroyed. If it is destroyed, then the white lighting in that room is disabled (making it more alien-friendly). If a marine commander decides to, she can drop a wielder to fix a damaged power box to restore lighting.
All of the hives will have minimal infestation. Most of the systems near them will be functional and there will be associated whirrs and screens and cool stuff. When the aliens build a hive in one of the three locations for the first time (after the hive is finished), several things will happen, in order.
1) There will be sparks and small explosions and general system failures in the area of the hive
2) the lights in the hive and nearby rooms will go out, leaving only the typical dim hive lighting. (thinking that perhaps dim red emergency lighing comes up slowly after the lighting goes out).
3) Several func_walls that are 1 unit off the walls appear, with approriate infested textures <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
4) a nearby "important" room will be destroyed. Such as the computer core floor box I showed off in the screenshots tread recently
Also planning to have a type of sewer "loop" under the floor, placed so that it goes under corridors as little as possible (inspired from that feedwater access tunnel). Each of the hives will be nearish a room where this water will come to the surface to pass through a pool. Vents will enter it, and the marine base will be overlooking an outdoor area with a huge water pool. Although I plan to have a single resource node on the water loop (with both marine and alien access), The idea of the loop is to have a slow "sneaking" way of getting about. This means that although marines can lock down the map, the water tunnel should keep things interesting.
Perhaps you can weld shut some grates on the tunnel to stop alien passage.
I think that the ready room should also spend the first 3 minutes of the game (from when the players enter it) basically disentegrating. Girders falling down, explosions, klaxons, etc. The "select alien" area will be quiet with water / growing noises. The marine area will be alive with distress calls, steam, explosions, and general panic.
Flayra did say that the readyroom should set the mood <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
I know that there is an entity limitation. I don't know how severe it is. Am I going to encounter problems with this?
-Tom
Comments
Your penchant for dynamic lighting though, probably won't turn out as great as you hoped. First, they can be highly annoying if they're blinking ALL THE TIME. Second, every room being dynamically lit will use a LOT of runtime entities. There's also been problems with texture lighting turning on and off, I don't know what stage the project is in, Cagey or someone will have to answer that, and texture lights are the best for generally lighting an indoor room (light_spots are good at lighting "things" and simple light entities just look crappy).
I don't know if you can have things triggered by creation of Hives; or use of a comm chair (although their can be a switch only the comm can flip).
Having the ready room fall apart over time just isn't in the entity budget - as it will have no effect on gameplay whatsoever (unlike a fancy lighting system).
I'd say pick one of the fancy entity ideas that you have, and only do that one in a map. That will things will be under control entity wise and the map may get finished.
I really, really like the voice/over idea though. /me steals
2) the lights in the hive and nearby rooms will go out, leaving only the typical dim hive lighting. (thinking that perhaps dim red emergency lighing comes up slowly after the lighting goes out).
3) Several func_walls that are 1 unit off the walls appear, with approriate infested textures <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
4) a nearby "important" room will be destroyed. Such as the computer core floor box I showed off in the screenshots tread recently <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Most of the ideas in your list are good, but struggling with the entity limit will be a big concern for you here.
Next, the quoted ideas are not great. They've been discussed before, and the downside is cloaked hives. You will know exactly which hives are up no (The commander), and if they are cloaked and whatnot.
My 2c <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
As for the func_illusionary idea (so commander doesn't see infestation changes), I like that. I also like the idea of making detailed areas so the commander can't see them for performance reasons.
Unfortunately the lighting is a bit of a give away. I would make it so that you could turn off the lighing in those rooms anyway, and the hive just does it automatically. Remember that all this stuff only happens the first time a hive is put up (so happens 3 times, one for each hive, in the game) so that if a hive is destroyed these changes don't revert. This would mean you can stealtily rebuild hives.
Personally, I think that everyone knowing when a hive goes up fits in with the story. But to spot the changes, you would have to look for them. Although I am thinking along the lines of using environmental seismic events for something, not for hives. Nothing too obvious, just subtle changes and blatent local changes (if you are in the area of the hive, you get a nice fright).
Remember that these changes, although they give away the location of the hive, also make the hive area more alien friendly, so that even though the marines know that you are there, the lights are dimmer now and there is fog and stuff. Likewise, a "clean" hive is easier for the marines to defend.
As for the readyroom disintegrating, I love it, but I think it is the very last priority on my list. Lots of distress calls though, and interesting sounds. You can't stop me! <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> (Well, perhaps Flayra can)
And to keep you coming back, I will dribble out another idea.
Holigraphical signs that only the commander can see, labeling interesting places, appearing when things happen, or naming rooms in a convenient way to make comming that little bit easier.
Stay tuned! <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
-Tom
I had this idea about making a map where the layout was different everytime you played(boxes and doors and things where in different places and open or locked) by using some trigger_random, multimanagers and func_walltoggles and stuff <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->.
I also had a map with a counter that displayed how many player had entered aliens and marines(went up to 9 then it reset to 0). It used func_walltoggles set to render as additative with NULL on all sides but the front(all togheter they didn't cost many w_poly's). It used a thin trigger_multiple just in front of the brush-entity that makes you join a team(I forgot what it's called now) so you can't go back and forth and trigger it yourself several times by accident, it used a bunch of multimanagers and stuff but the whole thing for both teams cost something like 50 entities...
Another neat idea is one-way glass (2 thin func_breakables adjacent to each other, with only the side outward being textured with a glass texture and all other NULL, one glass was dark and opaque and one light and translucent. Obviously both had to break at once so I named them and set them to only break when triggered and used another func_breakable set to trigger them when it was destroyed and put it over both the other ones and covered it will NULL).
I have lots of weird ideas but I spend to much time on doing weird things and testing things the game isn't really capable of(like 60-sided rooms and stuff, that one actually worked and with low enough r_speeds but the number of leaks and chop winding something or other errors drove me mad, it would take ages to get that thing done, besides I was at 30 % of max planes and 20 % of clip nodes after just the marine spawn and corridor outside was finished <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->). sigh.. I will never get a map complete because I'm allways starting new weird projects that I won't finish and I kind of like mapping for the sake of mapping(I know, that's sad).
Take me as a warning example on why persuing lots of weird ideas is not nessecarilly a good thing.
unfortunately, i stopped mapping right after i thought up those ideas, so meh <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
As for flickering lights, I plan to have very few, and the ones that I do have will be small compared with the lighting in the whole room (so they don't cause an area to be pitch-black for any period of time). I am talking about lights that are turned on and off about three or four times a game. Flickering lights when they are the main lights are just plain annoying.
For the triggers on the comm chair and hive, if you look at the entities there is a trigger on build event and a trigger on destroy for each of these. I plan to use the first trigger on build in the game, and when it is destroyed, I will almost ignore that.
As for running out of entities, these ideas will only cost about 50 or so entities for the whole map. The key is to group several things into the same entity (without spanning rooms).
As I said, I am going to have textured lighing being dark and abient, and ceiling textured lights I will do manually with point entities (spots and lights). These I can turn on and off with no (additional) cost to entities. The textured lights will never be turned off.
Other things, like the func_illusionary things that use additive mode to make screens / light textures glow will also be turned on and off for 'free'.
As for the map, I am building the entire map before I start to add the entity stuff. If it becomes a problem, I have two options.
1) Tone down the entities. (this would mean removing the func_walls infestation stuff). Lighing would still be togglable
2) Convince Flayra that maps that are this interesting are worth having and giving him a motivation to find a way around entity limitations.
Valid points all. We shall see how this turns out <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Enjoy the speaker idea cash car star. And for those of you that think that these are old ideas, why have none of them been integrated into the "offical" maps? Why is it that Flayra bothered to make the trigger on build and the trigger on destroy events? WHY ? <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
-Tom
How old is your girlfriend? <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Majel Roddenberry did nice computer voices for many Star Trek series. You could rip it off ST, many sounds are at <a href='http://www.stinsv.com' target='_blank'>this site</a>.
She is 31. She has a super-spunky voice <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
-Tom
In order to have switchable lights, you'll have to use an entity that is counted for the limit. Lights and light_spots aren't used as long as they have no name, and thus aren't tracked by HL.
As far as I know, you can't switch a light that doesn't have a targetname.
If I was implimenting a lighting system, I would associate all the lights with the same targetname with a single entity (so like 10 lights in a room which toggle from the same switch all become one entity).
I will have to have a look ingame and see how this works. Or get the resident compile tool genius to answer my question magically.
"Are a lot of lights with the same targetname made into one entity or several?"
-Tom
If I was implimenting a lighting system, I would associate all the lights with the same targetname with a single entity (so like 10 lights in a room which toggle from the same switch all become one entity).
I will have to have a look ingame and see how this works. Or get the resident compile tool genius to answer my question magically.
"Are a lot of lights with the same targetname made into one entity or several?"
-Tom <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
I don't think by giving them the same name u "make" them one entity, really though, this is a question for Cagey.
~ DarkATi
You got a great tinny voice effect there (or a bad microphone ) <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo-->
I was thinking more of a "boomtown" voice
This is my own voice, unmodified (but of course I don't usually talk like this).
How about you think up some interesting paniced voice overs?
The basic idea is that it is an isolated planetside mining base, where the karaa arrived on a shipping crate delivered by an automated cargo ship. The maines arrive very soon after the distress call, so it is pratically coming in as the game starts. I will also need some system failure sounds, you can think up interesting names for rooms in a mining base, if you come up with a good enough idea I can name rooms to suit.
I was thinking that the distressed colinist would be the unfortunate first person to see the alien hive. Obviously systems like lighting have already failed as the comm chair turns them back on. You get the drift.
Thanks heaps for offering to help. Very much appreciated
-Tom
And, yes, it could have an associated voice too, but I can't think of a cool thing to say.
-Tom