Seriously though, the commander mode needs to be fixed. You probably shouldn't wait around for the complaints to pour in. You're talking about crippling gameplay for aesthetics.

How could a commander possibly support at this scale? A marine can practically jump right off the screen from the center.


( compare with: )


There's not even any way to see this node or these hallways, although structures built on top of the hallways will sink down to the inside:



Anyway, if you want it to work as an ns map, at the very least it needs a workable commander mode.

Oh, i didnt even think of that as a reason why you'd have the comm view as such. It never occurred to me.

Well, that can be fixed fairly easily, imo. The top of PowerCore isnt visible from anywhere, right? Just make the actual structure bigger. Have the vents extend out of the side of the new, higher part of the center. Make is so that there isnt actually space, clipped or not, above that structure. Then you can have the comm height as high as you want.

But it definitely is a crippling issue man. I was totally stoked about this map, then i hopped in the CC and cringed. I comm a lot, and i don't think i could handle an entire game comming on this map, with that height.


Oh, and using Powersilo as an example isnt quite the same. There are no spawns up there, and gorges cant heal the hive from there. Yes, its a fun spot to spit/lerk from, and a DC would heal the hive (i think), but thats a far cry from what you have going on in Cargo. Trying to avoid spawncamping is always a good thing, but it seems like its far too big of an advantage for aliens... especially compared to how insanely easy it would be to spawncamp the other hives, especially waste. A simple ladder would retain all the fun, and most of the alien benefits, while giving the marines a fair shot.

And also, the North East Access siege on Cargo should really be dealt with. You set up an awesome siege battle around Cargo, but that all goes to s*** with this siege. You can either take the time to really move around the architecture, OR... you could try a more environmental deterrent. Maybe put a small broken pipe near the ground, and put water covering the are where the siege cannons reach? That'd be a quick fix that could actually work really well.

And one last thing. I posted that pic of a route addition. Thats only a suggestion, im sure it could be done other ways; but just realize that the current layout is pretty much critically flawed in that sense, where one of the ONLY TWO exits/approaches of the middle hive, ONLY leads to another hive. Sure, in Caged, if you go from MS towards Gen, there are no route-branches (a bad thing imo), but at least thats from MS to a hive, not between two hives.

Saturn Beta 2

Using a highly scientific method, I raised the commanders view. While taking a look at some ns maps, I noticed that the comm chair was about the same width of a finger. Therefore, I increased the height in Saturn and put my finger on the screen to see if it was about right.

Next, I used my magic eraser to fix some stuff:

First, you can see grey texture covering some of skywalk in the first beta. That is because of sky brush on top of it - more on that later - but it's removed in beta 2.



Same situation in Marine Start:



In the first beta, you couldn't see into the bridges, but I did a little work with the eraser, and poof! There goes the roof!



Remember the sky brush that caused the grey exterior to be visible in the first couple pics? Well, I used that to my advantage in this next pic:



The room above marine Marine Start isn't playable area and may be distracting for the commander. Therefore, I made the back face of the ceiling brush black, scaled up of course, and put sky brush on top of it so that the black face gets rendered instead of the room below.

In this next pic, you can see that there is a grate above the node in waste now so that the commander can see it.

Also, the hive has been moved towards the front enough so that you can set up two rows of sieges that will reach from the siege point in the hallway.



Here you can see that the exterior cuts into the view of the power core hallway. I can't really do anything about that, but the commander still has a pretty good view of it.

I also took the small top piece off of the core for now. Although, I may bring it back in another beta.



Here you can see that there are still a couple things to clean up:



I want to raise the view a little more so that the commander has a better view inside the pipe.

Also, you can see that there are still some visibility problems on the pipe side of power core that are caused by raising the comm view, but it's only a small section and I'll try to get that cleaned up in another beta.

So, that's added to the work list for the next beta, but beta 2 will solve several problems.

And yes, I added a ladder to cargo to give poachers easy access to the top area. Poor gorges....

I think it would be similar to data in hera. There is a vent leading directly to the siege point and a fairly long hall. Moreover, the siege point is elevated, which makes it more challenging for an onos. The vent isn't as deep either; therefore, it's harder for a gorge to back up and heal while biling. However, it still works and it's a popular map.

Still, I like the water idea, and I think that would also be a good solution to the other siege point in waste halls.

I'll try to work it in, but I have to do some optimizing first.

You'll notice that some of the spotlights are flush with the ceiling and some use a 1 unit gap. I'm not really a fan of having two different textures flush with each other because it can look cheesy if truncated and flat, but I took another look at it in game, and the spotlights look ok when they're flush. Therefore, I'll probably go around the map and change all the spotlights so that they're flush. That will lower the number of leaves used, and it'll also lower the ent count because they're currently func_illusions. I'll leave the larger lights for 3D details because they're more noticeable.

Once I get the leaves and clipnodes down a bit, I can start working on an additional path.

The options for the service tunnels are as follows:

1) Leave them as they are and allow players to move through them with the limitation that the commander cannot build inside them and has to drop meds/ammo on either end.

Personally, I don't see the building limitation as a problem because building inside the tunnels would only block traffic. Concerning meds/ammo, marines have a clear line of sight and aliens have to cloak to ambush inside the tunnels. Therefore, marines can simply shoot ahead or chuck a grenade in to make sure it's clear. Then, they can run through and get meds/ammo on the other side, if needed, and the comm can scan ahead to make sure it's clear.

2) The exterior area can be removed so that the space above the tunnels can be filled in, which would allow the commander to see into them.

3) The tunnels can be closed off so that players cannot go into them, but they'd still be able to see everything in the exterior area.

4) The top of the service tunnels can be turned into func_seethroughs, but that'd screw up r_speeds.

I don't consider 2 and 4 to be real options. Therefore, if the way it is currently set up is a problem, I think the best solution would be to simply not allow players to go into the service tunnels.

I'm thinking about trying a regular brush with the null texture on top so that the commander can see into it without ruining the r_speeds or lighting inside the tunnels. Then, a 2nd roof brush in the exact same spot that's a func_seethrough with the service tunnel texture on it instead of null to prevent players from seeing into the tunnels, through the nulled area, when they look out into the exterior area. It might be worth experimenting with this.

Just func_seethrough the ceiling, or leave it. If you have any normal brushes, null'd or not, the comm cant drop through them. And man, i doubt the r_speeds will suffer much at all. You already use high texture scales, and even though i havnt checked them out, im sure r_speeds are plenty low in those areas. You're only talking about an additional few faces (of the inside of the pipe, which isnt many) added on to the already many visible. Honestly, im sure r_speeds would be just fine.

And dude, that siege on Cargo needs a-fixin. You explained all the reasons why its tougher for aliens, when i was already explaining that aliens would be ruined. But thats just by the approach and lonely vent. I'd feel guilty as a comm to use that siege, but it would definitely work.

The view of the exterior has to be carefully controlled. I'll explain in more detail below and explain how I optimized parts of the map.

According to the mapping guide, the max wpoly limit should be 700. However, I think it is a mistake to set a fixed number, and some of the maps in ns exceed 900. Instead, it's best to think of a poly limit as a budget. Sometimes it is worth paying a little more for a better product, and sometimes products are simply overpriced. If you work efficiently, you should get good value for the price. The emphasis should not be on a fixed number, but rather on value vs. cost.

Here’s a picture of the exterior while looking up close at the window in communications:



The poly count isn’t bad for the view. However, when you step back a bit:



Even though the player doesn’t see it all, the engine still renders it. Originally, if you stood in the middle of the room, it maxed out at about 1000. To fix that up a little, I added the wall as a vis block. The r_speeds still max out at about 800 when you’re by the window, but they drop like a rock in the rest of the room, which is where most of the action will be.



Forgive the rough look of the vis blocking wall. It wasn’t done at the time I took the picture. However, you can see that by the node, the r_speeds drop to about 500, and if you stand behind the vis wall, in the center of the room, it’ll drop even more. Therefore, the view does deviate a little from the 700 limit, but it’s contained to a small area of the room that won’t see as much action.

In the top right corner, you can also see how I lit the monitors. At 128 x 256, an overlay would chew up more texture memory. Instead, I used a func_illusion that faces the screen rather than the room, and set the render mode to texture and render amount to zero. Then, I used the eyedropper tool in Photoshop to get the most common color in the monitor texture, and used that for the light texture, which is only 16 x 16, in the rad file. However, I've since replaced the func_illusions with entity lighting to lower leaves.

All the windows in the core bridges used to be open, and like Communications before the vis block, the r_speeds maxed out at about 1000. I fixed it by closing some of the windows, which lowered it to about 500.

Here is a picture of the pipe in waste:



In the red circle, you can see brush fragmentation that’s caused by grouping multiple brushes into one entity. In the green circle, you can see faces repeating because the texture scale isn’t high enough. Because there are so many faces on the cylinders, this gets costly.

To optimize it, I scaled up the texture so that it does not repeat. Simply divide the length by the chop size, which is 240, to find the minimum texture scale that will solve this. Next, I used a separate entity for each cylinder to prevent the brush fragmentation, and since the cylinders are entities, I used null on the ends so that they are not rendered.

Here’s a picture of the optimized pipe:



func_seethroughs on the top of the service tunnels would be like Communications and the core bridges before optimization. It would probably hit 1000.

Awesome looking map, I'm excited to try it out. So far I've run around on the version named without an extension, which was loaded on our server for awhile, but haven't played a full game there yet.

Most of the obvious complaints have already been asked and answered. I'm glad you fixed the bridges into double so the comm can see, and it wouldn't bother me much to have the maint tunnels still invisible to the comm.

About the second access to the north-west side of the octagon--it looks like double is intentionally balanced to have easy access to the south-west and north-east corners of the map, while not providing good access to the north-west or south-east corners. I like that balance. The extra corridor proposed by Stix would break that dynamic and make double much more powerful.

Still, he's right about the northwest corner needing some access to something. I'd suggest adding a pathway along the leftside of the map that bypasses the Hive and rejoins the area later on...for comparison, think of the passageway (P-corridor I think) that runs just north of the southern Hive in NS_Altair. It doesn't really go anywhere new, but it links the right side and left side of the hive without forcing you to walk THROUGH the hive to get there.

This map is looking great, and I am so glad to see mappers out there that still make maps with attention to every little detail--no more boring, bland, one-textured siege maps

Keep up the good work, I am definitely looking forward to adding this map to our classic server and seeing how it plays out when its done.

Beta 3 will be released soon, but for now, here are some of the changes:

First up, the siege points by waste and cargo have been fixed up.

In this first pic, you can see that it is no longer possible to build sieges in the far corner of waste halls. The grate in the red circle is a func_illusion with some water below it to prevent structures from being dropped there.



There are also 1 unit high func_nobuilds on the sides of the halls, circled in green, to prevent building there. It's only necessary to have the nobuild along the wall between the halls and the hive to prevent sieging, but to be consistent, I used a nobuild on both sides of each hall.

It was also possible to siege from the area circled in yellow, but I moved the hive a little further away so that it's no longer within range from there.

The grate/water in this pic of northeast access is the same deal as waste halls. It is no longer possible to build there, and the area circled in red has a 1 unit func_nobuild to prevent sieging as well.



The vent between cargo and northeast was no longer important. Therefore, it was removed to free up resources. Moreover, I think the vent might have made the path to double a bit too short, and removing it fixes that.

It used to be possible to siege from the corner of this room between northeast access and loading bay:



However, the corner piece now fills in that area so that it's no longer possible to siege from there.

This will make loading bay more important, and it should make the gameplay more interesting and balanced.

In the top right corner of this next pic you can see the original version:



Notice that there is no black border between the wall and the floor, or between the the walls and the doors in the original version. I tried adding it before, but had problems with leaves. However, after more optimizing, I was able to finish it off.

This may be a little picky, but in this next pic you can see that the black lines in the texture on the bridge exterior, circled in red, now align with the walls:



It just looked a little truncated before.

The next couple shots show some additional details to areas that were a little plain:

A new path between power core and distribution is now in place. I actually had to redo this because it was originally too close to waste halls, which made it possible to siege the rt in waste. To prevent this, the path has to be relatively straight, but I used some lighting tricks to keep things interesting.

In this pic from the power core side, you can see the entrance to the new path is dark, but the dark area is short and you can clearly see light in the area beyond. The dark area should be enough to make it a good ambushing spot for skulks without being hard to find your way through.



Here are a couple pics of the new path:




Like the power core side, the doorway on the distribution side also is also dark and good for ambushing:

I also tweaked the comm view. These first few shots show how it's done:



In the pic above you can see that the end of the pipe is sliced in half. The players will not be able to see the end, and nulling it makes it easier for the comm to see.

In older versions, the comm view was lower and cut into the sky & null brushes, which messed up the view, but it is now above the brushwork.

Here you can see how null brushes fill in the area above power core and the pipe. This is necessary so that the comm can see into those areas and drop stuff without having to wait for it to sink down.



The reason why structures sink when dropped above the bridges or tunnels is that the outside area is clipped, and you cannot drop a structure within a clip brush. With null brushes, however, the structure is dropped below rather than sinking.

You can also see in the pic above that the end of the pipe, circled in red, is nulled. This makes it a little easier for the comm to see down into the vent below.

In this next pic, you can see, in the red circle, that there is some space on each side of the pipe where it connects to the core:



The green arrow shows a rough line of sight from the bridge.

Players can see through null brushes, but because null brushes still block light, the sides of the pipe would look like crap if the null brushes touched up against it. Therefore, some space is necessary on the sides for lighting. Although the comm can see clearly into the entire area, the space without null brush will cause the sinking problem when the comm tries to drop something there, but as you can see, it's a small area.

I experimented with filling in the area above the bridge with a null brush, but that caused a bit of a problem that you can see in this pic:



If you try to place a structure with a wall in the way, it will go up the wall. The null brush acts as an invisible wall, and it's annoying in a narrow space like this. It allows you to drop something without having to wait for it to sink down, but you have to be precisely over top of the null brush for it to work. It also screwed up the view from the communications window. Therefore, I decided to go back to the original design.

This next pic shows how I also had to keep the ready room in mind when increasing the comm view height:



The ready room is circled in red and the top of the sky brush over power core is circled in green.

Increasing the comm view height to clear the sky brush also resulted in the comm seeing into the ready room by about 80 units. Simply raising the ready room wasn't an option because it resulted in additional leaves and the map wouldn't compile. After some tweaking, I managed to get 4 units of space between the floor of the ready room and the top of the sky brush so that the comm can clear both.

In this next pic, you can see the area where the view was screwed up in beta 2, but now it's clear.



Raising the comm view also exposes a bit of a texture alignment problem on the exterior, which is impossible to align perfectly, and as a rule of thumb, hide what you cannot fix. However, gameplay trumps graphics; therefore, it's better to have the comm view up high.

The ready room and the map itself are separate, isolated pieces; i dont see why adjusting the gap between them would have any affect on leaves.

Nicely done though man, good effort in fixing up the issues. Now just gotta play it some to see if there are any more

This looks good, I added it to customfactor, however we have an ip limiter on the server, so sadly you wont be able to play unless your in aus/nz

OK, here's beta 3: Saturn Beta 3

Summary of changes:

- added new path from power core/powerline to distribution
- fixed siege points at waste and cargo hives
- removed vent between cargo and northeast access
- improved comm view
- added more details (around northeast access, southeast access, distribution and the hallway between ms and communications)
- fixed sticky corners in observatory doorway
- fixed up some texture work (bridge exteriors and white hall by power core)
- added null brush to bottom pipe in northeast (which is a func_wall) so that it has a shadow
- updated minimaps with changes

This pic of an updated minimap shows how the new path fits into the layout:



Here are some changes that I made yesterday:

The walls in distribution were flat; therefore, I added some cutaways to make it a little more interesting:



I also added some color to the hallway between ms and communications as bERt0r suggested:





I'm still adding more detail to the map, and I'll work on this area a bit more.

I also have to fix up some lighting problems, but nothing worth delaying the release of beta 3. For example, there are some ugly slice marks because of the way the lighting hits the brushwork like this :



I'll sort that out in another release, but the important gameplay related stuff is fixed up in beta 3.

looks nice mate

Looks like a solid update.

Just a note of worry though, from the pics; you do know that any brush that is not a func_illusion (regardless of being a solid or entity), will still block the commander from dropping anything, even if it has a NULL texture on top. It just looks like you may have a couple of brushes that would do this, so i'm just wondering

The only func_wall problem that I'm aware of is in Observatory. The center window is fine, but the windows around it are grouped into a func_wall. I've already switched it to a func_seethrough for the next release.

There are also some some func_illusion grates on the floor in a few spots that cause structures to sink. Personally, I prefer using func_illusions for grates, but I replaced the func_illusions that are on the floor with func_walls to fix this problem.

Also, as a result of raising the comm view height, lerk's nest is harder to see. To fix this, I've added a null brush in the exterior area above it.

Looks pretty nice.

Lots of good attention to details, layout seems good too.

I'm a little concerned about some of the paths from the minimap, but I'll have to run through a few games before I comment on it.

impressive , gameplay and all.

Saturn Beta 4 is available here: Saturn Beta 4

Summary of changes:

- fixed the floor in core bridges and in the hallway by ms so that when the comm drops structures, they won't sink
- fixed windows in observatory so that they won't block structures from being dropped
- cleaned up brush/texture work in observatory a bit (both from player and comm view)
- added null brush over lerk's nest to make it easier for the comm to see and to drop structures
- added cutaways to vents by northeast access, communications and by ms to give 3D effect and to use for ambushing
- added cutaways to monitor by ms and in maint to add more of a 3D look
- fixed some lighting/texture problems

In previous betas, the grate floor in the hallway by ms and in the core bridges was made of func_illusions with clip brushes. As a result, when the comm dropped structures there, they would sink through the floor. This is fixed in beta 4 by switching the func_illusions to func_walls. Here are a couple pics of what I'm talking about:





Because of the increased commander view height, it was a bit hard to see lerk's nest in beta 3. After some tweaking with a null brush, the comm has a pretty good view:



This one's for Skacky:

The cylinder in powerline had some texture stretching. This is because I originally planned to have a grate ceiling with the cylinder extending above and I wanted the texture scaled up enough so that it wouldn't create extra faces. However, that plan was scrapped and thus the higher texture scale isn't necessary.



In the red circle, you can see some slicing. The edges of the stairs and ceiling brushes align perfectly with the edges of the cylinder, but the compile tools had different plans....

In the green circle, you can see how the light on the texture looks a little truncated.

And here's the new and improved version:



I also played around with the idea of using some models, but decided to leave that for an engine that has better support for such things. Here's a pic of some model detail I tried out for power core:



I didn't bother with uv mapping/skinning because I just wanted to get an idea of how it would look without spending too much time on it.

So, what's next? I'll continue to support Saturn with updates if necessary, but I want to turn my attention to new game engines. Lately, I've been playing around with 3dsm, unrealed, high res textures and putting ideas into brushwork in hammer for possible future projects.

Here's an example of a texture I've been messing around with:



In the top right corner, you can see the original texture from bast that the new texture is based on. Because HL2 has 4 pixels per unit, 512s are the new 128s, and I like to make ceilings a little higher; therefore, 1024 is the way to go. 1024 is also pretty much standard in UT2k4, but who knows what it'll be in UT3.

You're re-making my favourite NS texture

The elevator at halls leading dres from marinestart has a somehow unfair button.
Because as soon as the elevator has been used marines need to send the elevator up again to even reach the button.

All in all this map is horrible, i felt like i was imprisoned in a small spacestation with all these narrow hallways.
Even the vents look like Spacestation vents.
Just kidding, great map. I hope ill get it to play it on a populated server

I'm sorry but i have to add, that i think it is somewhat a bit too bright as i have not seen any completely dark spots in your map, so i'd like to see some more dark/bright contrast in that map.
But it is just my opinion and not my map.


But if it gets darker i probably wont be able to sleep again, ever

I actually felt that many parts needed to be brighter. Maybe try a compile with -scale 1.10, for a 10% brighter map.

Some areas need more flow, like the left hive. It seems like it needs a ladder or something up the side, so a gorge/marine doesnt need to go all the way around and up the ramp and catwalk to get there. This is mostly for gorges, as it really bothered me when i was gorging in the hive.

Check the runtimes. I did them awhile ago, and they all seemed pretty bad. NS Mappers can usually get away with high runtimes for the middle hive, but the outside hives, theres no excuse. I think you're looking at a 40+ second run to both of them, from MS. Consider streamlining some of the routes.

Oh and some of the vents just dont make sense. The left hive's comes to mind. Working from memory, both vents first go to the grates over the hallways, but you cant actually attack from there (though maybe gas). Skulks have to continue into a vent on the other side, and then drop down from the one room at the corner. Consider making openings in those grates so skulks have more options, rather than being forced to just show themselves before dropping into an awaiting ambush.

Hey Sike, you mentioned that you had fixed up this siege before by adding this grate, and func_nobuild'ing the top red area...



But i was just going through Saturn b4 to check that everything was good for the Map Pack, and found that I could actually still fit at least three sieges in that area that could hit the hive. This pic shows where I put them ( i placed 5 but at least 3 were hitting):



Could you please add a few more nobuilds or such and do a quick recompile please? That's a pretty horrible siege, especially now that you've removed the vent

While you're at it, it'd be great if you could add the -scale 1.10 to the RAD settings, as it could really use more light all around. Consider even doing 1.15. And in the left hive, Marines can jump up to the top, but gorges are really handicapped by not being able to, so please consider that ladder i was mentioning