A Temple Death Match Map

I've been busy, I'm always busy.  I seem to lose so many hours in these things that it's kind of amusing, and sad?  I in fact, get lost in the day not even realizing what time it is once I get started on these things.  I feel slightly like a evil scientist in my basement lair, beneath a viking family!  Fear me, the alchemist of strange and wondrous oddities.  So with this update to my blog, I bring... DM-Asian.


If it isn't obvious, yes, I'm American.  If it's not an "Asian" look, my apologies!  It was just the first thing that came to mind when I chose that asset set to work with.   I had a lot of fun looking into the asset list, there's a lot of fun parts that go together well.  This map took me probably a work weeks worth of time to assemble to this point.  It took 2 weeks real time to get to this point, if that makes any sense.

Art:
I think I made great use of meshes in this map personally, though I'm certain there are things I could improve on.  There's nothing very complex I feel about the assets that I did use, and I tried to make sure all the walls had something interesting there.  The floors were what I felt were the hardest, as it was hard to put anything there that looked good and made sense, and didn't screw up gameplay.  I know a couple new tricks for next time around now, but I'll try those then.  At this stage, it had already been white boxed and I wasn't going to fix it up any further.

There's very little Z fighting through through out the level.  I was very, very good about avoiding that.  If you find any, well, I hope some bot set on easy gibbed your ass, because you shouldn't be looking there or you had to be looking really hard and not into the combat spaces to find it.  So, go you!  You found Z fighting!  ... I hope you died finding it! =)

Lighting was the real pain in the arse.  I think I did an OK job of it, but it's not as dark as I'd like it to be.  I really wanted to enhance the level with glowing paper windows in a dark setting, and have the sun at a setting position to cast dramatic shadows across the play area.  This, didn't really happen as I envisioned it.  It's a good start thought, but better luck next time I think.  I may revisit this map over time to update it's look and make it prettier if I can.  No guarantees though, as I'm really itching to white box another four ideas I have and figure out which one is fun to play and develop that level next.

The last thing lacking are particles.  I didn't put any special particles in, and I may come back to do that as well.  As of the moment though, I don't really feel like any are needed other than by the two fountains placed out in the map.

Gameplay:
Well I did finally get around to bot pathing.  It worked swell I think, so those of you with no one to play with will have something to shoot at.  Sadly, I don't think the bots fight all that well.  I rarely had any trouble with them.  That's not the focus of this build however and I'll leave it at that.

Combat spaces though I feel are very entertaining.  My original idea was of course symetrical play spaces with upper and lower tiers, and under ground passages linking above ground passages together.  I feel I did this very well.  I know, a lift would be more believable than a jump pad for the level changes, but, I find lifts hindering on player movement if they're up.  Granted, I understand they can allow an escaping player a point to leave a surprise of rocket grenades in order to lose potential pursuers.  I may work on this for my next map idea.

Weapons included in this map are all the basics but a link gun, flak cannon, and sniper rifle.  From a gameplay perspective, I left the two popular ones out for a reason.  Their really just isn't fun spaces to use the flak cannon in my opinion.  The play space is very tight nit and visibility is everywhere.  A flak gun would just be a bit over kill.  Also, I didn't want people just standing on the ridges, which is why the sniper rifle isn't there.  I feel the guns placed are great for making the player constantly move around the map and pick up items as they go, and shoot at those as they see them.  All of the weapons are items that can be fairly easily dodged, aside from the pulse rifle.  At least the pulse rifle though, you can see where it came from and follow.

So far this map plays really fast, and it feels pretty full with 4 people in it.  It could probably support up to 6 easily, but after that is pushing it.  There's just not enough rooms there for players to disappear in.  I'm afraid that the gameplay lay out leaves little for the player to desire as well, as I didn't really factor in secret spots for getting super powers like shield belts and super health packs.  The only armor in the level is the helmet and leg pads.

There's still work to do however, and one example is the need for a cieling so players can't jump onto the roof tops.  I don't think it's worth it for them to do that, but players will do it if they can, and that needs to be stopped.  The next time I revisit this map, I'll hopefully have learned how to do that, and I'll add that in.  I also need to add collision walls for some of the lamps, as it's easy for a player to get stuck between them.  Lastly, I want to add a terrain piece to the bottom floor, so as to have a more exiting ground piece that the flat boring space that's there now.  I just don't know how to do that yet.

Anyhow!  Hope this was a fun watch.  Until next time!  Fwee!