Project Lighthouse (SP)

[lassev]

Yeah. On my part, I strongly support detail brushing. Absolutely most of the stuff in my maps are detail. My compile times are really short. Of course I could use more brushes for detailing, but then again, I want to release this campaign someday and it's already growing old, and certain deadline called Jedi Academy is closing...

 

What comes to hollowing and CSG substract, I have used them all the time, from beginning to the end. They are perfect tools (well, not really, but anyway), if you know what you are doing and when you should use them, and most importantly, when you should not use them.

 

There's little fear of this map being cancelled. Only Force Majeure in the form of a broken hard disk could cause that. And I have perfect trust in my Maxtor case heater.

[lassev]

Originally posted by Louis

If you need any beta testers -- sign me up

 

Well, I'm truly sorry to let you down. What little beta testing I'm planning for my campaign, it has already been sealed behind closed doors. I can assure you there were no honest competition, only historical reasons.

 

This has been a long project, because I only learnt to map along the way. I have mapped and remapped until you wouldn't recognize the maps to be the same, should have an opportunity to have a look at the older versions. I textured them anew a couple of times, not to mention changed the lighting.

 

So, I will, one day, just release the map and wash my hands. It doesn't need to be perfect, but it's the measure of my skills and shall be judged as such, with no lenghty feedback chain of beta testing. This is my personal view of things, and I don't say other people shouldn't beta test their own maps. Yet, I can promise my campaign will have a good integrity and a very low count of errors.

[master_thomas]

Sorry, I over exaggerated on alot of things; I don't know why. I have two main projects. When I do my rare detail brushing, I do alot of it. Therefore, I get decent compile times. Only a maximum of, like, two faces lack caulk.

 

I use hollow and merge (why not), but just not subtract (I've had more problems than I posted).

 

With my mapping style, I have gone through about 30 map files that I just didn't like until I started The Attack on Yavin 3 months ago. I started mapping 4 months ago. That's about one map a day.

[lassev]

Well, it has been quiet for a while, mainly because of this:

 

Now, let me add, before anyone gets any ideas: the level is not finished yet, far from it (still 95%). But Kengo played through the major part of the levels, because such is the state of things, that only one chamber is partly unmapped and a couple of cinematics unscripted, not to mention one big puzzle, but rest of the levels are quite finished. And I haven't still contacted the voice actors Kengo has offered me a few times. Because the lines are not fully finished.

 

A couple of irrelevant shot (except for Kengo) to brighten the day.

Now the doors should be a bit more inviting, and the func_plats are themselves a bit boosted, as well (not shown here).

 

This seems a bit dark here, but in the game, it's not anymore totally pitch-dark, but gives a nice gloomy atmosphere, yet you see now, where you are going.

[Kengo]

I like it, I lke it a lot

 

People, this level will really be worth the wait, I will say no more

[lassev]

Despite my best intentions, I haven't still finished the last chamber. My time was spent on adding a totally previously unplanned room to the last map. It's a part of an eastern egg, so to speak, and totally irrelevant to the general plot. It's coupled to a rather funny cinematic (in my opinion), that is as well absolutely optional considering the general plot. Thus it's not automatically played but requires some trying on player's part.

 

I'm aware of the fact that this kind of thing may eat away some realism, and some people don't like that. This is basically the reason the place is hidden and is NOT compulsory in order to play the level through. Yet, this additional room will be kind of different in architecture compared to the other places in my maps, and thus worth visiting.

[master_thomas]

Interesting idea.

 

I like what I hear from Kengo.

[lassev]

For the enjoyment of all those two people still interested in this level, I'll post one more screenshot. I intended to post no screenshots of the last chamber (besides the array picture already posted), but as most (almost all) of the time I spent on this campaign goes to the last chamber, it's the only indication of progress.

 

 

So, here it is. One of the many machines. Lighting is temporary right now, as I'm only mapping architecture for the moment. The blue parts are covered with a peacefully pulsating shader. There will also be occasional electric discharges between the towers. Ambient sound will be static electricity.

[master_thomas]

Looks good, Lassev. It has been two weeks since anything was posted here.

[Shadriss]

So, ETA is when? I know I havent posted in the past on this project, but as I'm doing SP myself now, I find myself curious about the better projects in progress... and this definately qualifies as one of them, from what I've seen.

[lassev]

ETA, ETA. Indeed I'm sorry to say this, but I'm afraid the ETA will be closer to the time your ship sails back, Shadriss, than any moment soon. It would be finished sooner, but the last chamber is a bit of a headache. I want it to be as impressive as my skills allow, but it seems right now my imagination is a bigger obstruction. It's hard to design fine looking big machines that would also look like they have some function right where they are.

 

And then there's still the voice acting. I have actually selected one of Kengo's excellent voice actors, yet I still need to finish the lines and contact Kengo. Obviously I cannot give any estimation of the delay it causes. AK gives a good example that this part can be the last hindrance.

 

But in the mean time, I will post yet another screenshot. It's essentially the same as one of the earliest shown here, but a bit upgraded following Kengo's advice. I hope you like it.

 

[The Truthful Liar]

:-O

 

This map has equal if not better quality to the original JK2 sp maps made.

[wedge2211]

Do those cylinders just have a "_glow" texture applied??? Please tell me that's temporary...

[lassev]

They indeed have just a _glow texture. To be honest, and once again I have to remind you all this is my first map ever for any game (and thus I have been given too much praise here), I applied that _glow texture a long time ago, when I was dumb enough to not even realise it's a just the minor part of a shader. Well, I have become a little wiser by now, but I never changed the texture.

 

I might draw a dark modification of the actual texture and make a decent shader code to use that glow properly. With FPS of 71 I have still some margin to play with. Yet, in the end, it will still be stark contrast between very black and very white.

 

PS. The most sharp-eyed of you have noticed there are two brushes missing in the last picture...

[lassev]

Yeah. I changed the _glow texture to a very fast noise pulsating shader. It looks quite good, but FPS dropper from 71 to 35, so I guess I won't be leaving it there. Most probably the rgbGen wave will be removed and just lightmap left in place.

 

Well, this is but a minor thing in my recent revert to enhance old places and structures in my maps. I have done it before, and actually there's few enough places I wouldn't have ripped to the ground and built anew. Yesterday I did also some major changes to a very old room. Maybe I will post a screenshot later (I'm not finished with it yet).

 

Unfortunately this all means delays to the release of the map. Well, it'll be that much better.

[master_thomas]

Hm, Attack on Yavin one took me three months (though, I spent a good amount of time on others (More like 1 and a half month). It turned out mediocre (like all first maps). So far, this map is so good, it can only come to mediocrity with, like, 5 glaring errors.

 

I don't mind the extra wait. Bring it to its maximum potential.

[lassev]

I'll post here a screenshot of the latest achitectural modifications I did. The lighting continues my experimental line, so feel free to post any comments. It's kind of green, and has the potential to be ugly, but then, one can also keep in mind that nobody seems to be working in the room right now, probably because of the disturbing noise generated by the generator thing (well, you can barely make out some imperial worker, but he's only temporary and was present during the mapping to help with proportions), so why would the lighting be any more convenient?

 

 

There's a very nice puzzle in this room. One illogical, stupid puzzle Kengo criticized after playing the very early beta has been all but removed. The new one required some advanced scripting, and it's very elegant in my opinion. Quite obvious, hopefully, but also smart enough.

[wedge2211]

Nice work, man, the lighting has a pretty cool effect (why do control rooms always look better under colored lights? ) Be careful with stretching textures, though.

 

The EF2 demo had a neat little puzzle, where you actually played a sort of mini-game...probably way beyond JKII, but if someone could figure out how to do that, it could be an interesting way to incorporate puzzles into a SP mission.

 

Can't wait!

[clu]

That was an intersting little addition (the EF2 puzzle).

 

Looks great, Lassev. It's very cool that you are focusing more than a bit of attention on slick puzzles. I look forward to playing.

 

-clu

[lassev]

I tried the EF2 demo. Although the game in game did give me some ideas, it certainly would require much research to actually accomplish puzzles so sophisticated in JO. I mean, you couldn't even do exactly that kind of thing, but perhaps one could build some puzzles that would seem to be more complicated than those we saw in the original SP levels.

 

I guess I won't be building any new puzzles in Project Lighthouse (except the very last one, but that's kind of fixed already), but who knows, if JA will give more possibilities. The scripting should be better, so I believe somebody mentioned. My next project after Lighthouse will anyway most likely be for JA (I even have the plot somewhat planned already...).

 

Thank you all for the feedback. I really appreciate it.

[PRSLou]

Just wanted to report back in to say this map is looking very awesome...can't wait to see it finished!

[lassev]

It has been more than two weeks, so I thought to let you know the project is still breathing. After doing some rather major enhancement to older parts of the level I'm finally satisfied enough to fully concentrate on finishing the level. Actually, I have done enough mapping on the last chamber to evaluate it to be about 85% to 90% complete architecturally. That makes the whole level about 98% mapped architecturally.

 

Also the last puzzle is now designed and currently under construction and the custom textures and shaders are ready and waiting, so it really could be a matter of days, before I can announce I have nothing but scripting left.

 

The scripting shouldn't be underestimated, because the last cinematic will be very long and rather complicated. However, I have proceeded nicely with the sole voice actor I have / need, and I should get the sound clips soon.

 

I'm afraid I won't be posting screenshots anymore, but I'll keep you up to date otherwise.

[Eldritch]

Sounds good, lassev. From what Kengo says, it's a real winner. Can't wait to play it.

[wedge2211]

Sweet.

[lassev]

It seems there can be no progress without setbacks. After encountering one nagging, albeit slight, problem with JK2Radiant, I decided to give a chance to the much acclaimed GTKRadiant (actually it has been sitting on my hard disk for a long time, unused). Well, it did nothing to solve the problem, but to reward me for my troubles, it did, however, give me one surprise.

 

I saved my map once in GTK, and went back to JK2. I mapped this puzzle I've been talking about and went to scale down one mammoth sized corridor (this scale issue is related to the plot tightly, so I had to do it). Well, first I noticed one forcefield was missing (func_wall). I checked the situation and noticed all func_walls were missing. Well, since there were just four of them, it was easy to copy them from the back-up. Then I noticed trigger_onces were missing. It was time for a heart attack.

 

Well, if you knew my map, you would know there used to be about 50 trigger_onces all over the place. I can't imagine how jolly good time I'll have hunting them all down in my back-up to copy them to the GTK ravaged map.

 

Unless GTKRadiant is the official editor for JA, it will certainly take much reassurance to make me touch that foul program again (no offence at all to those people who are happy with it. I know it's good, but not for me, it seems).