DM-Nine - New pak (7/14/17) July 2017 Build

[darksonny]

hey tidu great improvement with those graphics very atmospheric, its very ut2k4ful lol, the UE4 lightning system helps a lot in mapping, I do like!

[tidu]

Thanks for the comments everyone

I like the way it looks and plays! I enjoyed double wall slides and trickjumping around but unfortunately I couldn't climb the ladder, also your second screenshot: Try rotating some of the tiles differently, perhaps adding color variation. Map is compact and looks like its focused on trickjumping and wall running. I can't tell how you managed to lit your map so evenly, although there are still some dark spots (I am having problems with that on my map). Overall superb work! Keep it up!

Ha, I'm imagining some players who would be ****** off by a working ladder... Talk about breaking the flow. I'm planning on adding some broken rungs to tell the player it is not functional.

I have some plans with the tiles too, I want to rip some of them up in the larger areas and break up the patterns. I'm working on the bio room now and it's going to be a lot different. Thanks again for taking the time to test it!

[tidu]

Hey there, it's about time this one was updated. I've got a major update this time around. I put this video up in the work in progress thread a couple days ago. It was an exercise in learning matinee and making a fly-through intro (It'd be cool if this was the default camera movement in the pre-game!)

https://ut.rushbase.net/tidu/Nine/DM...wsNoEditor.pak [69MB]
Server info found at the bottom of this post.
Here are some of the most notable changes:




Gameplay:

• Weapon layout almost completely re-done.
• A new room was added, lots of ways in and out including two sewer tubes. The vest and shock were moved into this room.
• Among other pickup changes, the belt was relocated to the center of the map (where the minigun used to be). It is very accessible and should make for interesting battles. It tends to draw players toward it so it should be near the center to promote better flow.
• The main room (where the belt used to be) was expanded, and the lower area with the lift was expanded as well. Bots couldn't negotiate this lift very well so I removed the navigation nodes that allowed the bots to lift jump with it. The jumppad was removed.
• Full blocking volume pass so collision should be pretty rock solid.

Visual:

• I did a full pass with custom assets; everything is pretty much static meshes now as I attempt to eliminate BSP. Variation was added to the floor tiles, like wood backing, broken tiles, dirty vertex painting etc.
• Terrain meshes were re-done and look much cleaner.
• I gave some more attention to lighting darker corners to avoid losing your opponent.

Immersive:

• Ambient sound effects were added like wind in the upper areas, water down low etc.
• Reverb was added to interior areas
• I tweaked the sun rays a bit, I tried really hard to control the effect and not blind the player.
• Fog sheets were added, and are only visible in far-away corridors

To-do:

• The upper (outside playable area) walls need some attention, for example around the sniper. Its an abrupt transition to the sky
• A lot of the meshes need to be polished, some have some strange lighting artifacts and there are some small gaps between certain adjacent meshes
• Add some more "landmark" features to help players navigate.
• Gameplay refinement

This map has been on a few hubs for the last couple months, I just want to thank you guys for hosting it! It means a lot after working on the map for so long. All comments and criticism are welcome. I am very interested in opinions of the larger rooms, and if anything needs to be larger. Also if the new visual changes conflict with gameplay or not.

Thanks!

MapRotation=/Game/Maps/DM-Nine_G2
RedirectReferences=(PackageName="DM-Nine_G2-WindowsNoEditor", PackageURLProtocol="https", PackageURL="ut.rushbase.net/tidu/Nine/DM-Nine_G2-WindowsNoEditor.pak", PackageChecksum="c29fc114e9447a0054f90a2cc547eeaf")

[MoxNix]

MapRotation=Game/Maps/DM-Nine_G2.umap

Does that work with .umap extension too?
I've always used it without the extension.

MapRotation=Game/Maps/DM-Nine_G2

Played version F online against a bot last night. He kept going to the lift below shield and would just hang around the bottom in front of the lift. Not exactly stuck, but almost. If shield belt spawned he'd immediately lift jump to it. If I was on the walkway above or to either side he'd repeatedly lift jump, trying to get up there but never actually succeeded. Dunno if it's the same in version G2 but if so it probably just needs another lift exit or 3 to the walkways up there.

[MΛuL]

Aww yeeaaa, downloading... Will be putting this up on the Hub today. And thanks for .ini code!

[MΛuL]

tidu, there are a couple of things wrong with your .ini server settings:

1) PackageName="DM-Nine_G2-WindowsNoEditor.pak" needs to be PackageName="DM-Nine_G2-WindowsNoEditor" (can't have the .pak on there)

2) PackageURLProtocol="http" needs to be "https" for rushbase.

3) As Moxnix, mentioned, I don't think the .umap extension will work (didn't bother to try it though). I'm using "CustomMapList=/Game/Maps/DM-Nine_G2" in my rules.ini (you had a missing forward slash also).


With those changes, I have it up and running on my Hub.

[User-843d7]

looks promising so far. definitely looking forward to seeing this evolve.

[MΛuL]

Played a match on it. It has been a while since I played it last. It's a unique and visually interesting level with an interesting layout and fun movement possibilities. The main issue I had was there are areas where enemy visibility is really poor in some of the dark areas. In UE3, I used to cheat a little by putting a separate skylight in that was only on the CompositeDynamic channel to add just a little boost to player visibility. I wonder if there is a similar trick that could be used in UE4 so you don't have to change the look you are going for?

On your short/fast lift, I had a bot get on there and it couldn't get off. I wonder if the speed of the lift was too high (bot was on 'skilled" level).

Awesome map tidu!

[tidu]

Thanks for running through it everyone! Sorry about the wrong syntax with the server info. It's been fixed!

Played version F online against a bot last night. He kept going to the lift below shield and would just hang around the bottom in front of the lift. Not exactly stuck, but almost. If shield belt spawned he'd immediately lift jump to it. If I was on the walkway above or to either side he'd repeatedly lift jump, trying to get up there but never actually succeeded. Dunno if it's the same in version G2 but if so it probably just needs another lift exit or 3 to the walkways up there.

I know what you mean, it's been fixed for this update. The problem was one lift exit on the upper floor above the lift, the path went right through the bottom of the walkway so the bot would just hit the ceiling over and over.

Played a match on it. It has been a while since I played it last. It's a unique and visually interesting level with an interesting layout and fun movement possibilities. The main issue I had was there are areas where enemy visibility is really poor in some of the dark areas. In UE3, I used to cheat a little by putting a separate skylight in that was only on the CompositeDynamic channel to add just a little boost to player visibility. I wonder if there is a similar trick that could be used in UE4 so you don't have to change the look you are going for?

On your short/fast lift, I had a bot get on there and it couldn't get off. I wonder if the speed of the lift was too high (bot was on 'skilled" level).

Awesome map tidu!

That's a good idea, I'll look into that. I've been making things brighter every release to combat this but there's still some work to do. I think I know which lift you're talking about. I haven't experienced it but I'll keep it in mind. Thanks for putting it on your server!

[MΛuL]

Curious how many stationary lights you have in the dark areas. I'm still on the UE4 learning curve, but am I right in stating that if you don't have enough stationary lights (not saying you don't) or other lights with dynamic capability that players won't get lit i.e. there are too many static lights?

The reason I'm saying that is that the darker areas seem to be reasonably well lit but chars are a bit hard to see.

Don't make any gross changes on my account, since my eyes aren't as sharp as the once were.... This map is a serious keeper though (just like DM-Eggshell was!).

[tidu]

Curious how many stationary lights you have in the dark areas. I'm still on the UE4 learning curve, but am I right in stating that if you don't have enough stationary lights (not saying you don't) or other lights with dynamic capability that players won't get lit i.e. there are too many static lights?
The reason I'm saying that is that the darker areas seem to be reasonably well lit but chars are a bit hard to see.
Don't make any gross changes on my account, since my eyes aren't as sharp as the once were.... This map is a serious keeper though (just like DM-Eggshell was!).

Wow I think that's it. Besides the skylight, most of my stationary lights are the orange spotlights so the players are not well-lit. I also didn't realize the "red-X" stationary light limitation was based on generating shadow maps, so stationary lights that don't cast a shadow don't count but still contribute dynamic light. It helps to read the documentation sometimes

The next release will have this improved lighting. I'm worried the 4.9 build will drop any day now and I'll have to repak the map for the updated engine anyway ha

Also I researched the "compositedynamic" channel you mentioned from UE3 and it seems like this functionality is no long available in UE4. See here: https://answers.unrealengine.com/que...f-not-can.html

I'm glad you found another way around it. Thanks for your help and comments M^uL!

[MoxNix]

Yup, and IIRC red X's become movable lights. IOW, they're still dynamic, only without any baked lighting at all and even more expensive to render in game.

I'm really curious how this works out for you. Please keep us informed on the results. I've been wondering how stationary lights affect character visibility and overall map performance but don't have a map that's quite far enough along to properly use dynamic lights yet. Pretty sure there must be others in the same boat and probably more after reading this thread.

I hope the 4.9 build does drop soon... I can't wait to see if DX12 makes any difference, even if it is only experimental for now.

[MΛuL]

Wow I think that's it. Besides the skylight, most of my stationary lights are the orange spotlights so the players are not well-lit. I also didn't realize the "red-X" stationary light limitation was based on generating shadow maps, so stationary lights that don't cast a shadow don't count but still contribute dynamic light. It helps to read the documentation sometimes

The next release will have this improved lighting. I'm worried the 4.9 build will drop any day now and I'll have to repak the map for the updated engine anyway ha

Also I researched the "compositedynamic" channel you mentioned from UE3 and it seems like this functionality is no long available in UE4. See here: https://answers.unrealengine.com/que...f-not-can.html

I'm glad you found another way around it. Thanks for your help and comments M^uL!

Hey that's cool, hopefully you can get this wild UE4 beast under control! I'm battling the effects of material roughness levels and "metal-ness" with regards to taking light. You can hose yourself in a real hurry and make custom materials that can't be lit.

[tidu]

I experimented with the lighting a bit. I changed a bunch of my lights to stationary and unchecked Cast Shadows to remove the red X's. This 1) made the lighting look like **** and 2) killed my framerate. I usually am pegging 120fps on this map but a number of overlapping stationary lights (no red X's) brought it down to 60 in some spots and it averaged about 80.

Next I looked at Outpost23 to see what was done there. I didn't realize most of the rooms are open to the sky so there is a lot of reliance on that light coming in and bouncing around. Overall there's a surprising lack of lights in that map, I'm not sure how the lighting was really done. The furnace room has a low brightness, huge radius point light (like 3500 units) that may contribute. I did notice that they implemented a Skylight. I dropped that into my map, changed the stationary pointlights back to static but the skylight did not have an effect on the characters.

So back to static lights... they do illuminate the characters, despite what the documentation says. Test it out in a sample map. I think I just have to have larger radii with a lower brightness to get better coverage. That's all I got for now!

[MΛuL]

I experimented with the lighting a bit. I changed a bunch of my lights to stationary and unchecked Cast Shadows to remove the red X's. This 1) made the lighting look like **** and 2) killed my framerate. I usually am pegging 120fps on this map but a number of overlapping stationary lights (no red X's) brought it down to 60 in some spots and it averaged about 80.

Next I looked at Outpost23 to see what was done there. I didn't realize most of the rooms are open to the sky so there is a lot of reliance on that light coming in and bouncing around. Overall there's a surprising lack of lights in that map, I'm not sure how the lighting was really done. The furnace room has a low brightness, huge radius point light (like 3500 units) that may contribute. I did notice that they implemented a Skylight. I dropped that into my map, changed the stationary pointlights back to static but the skylight did not have an effect on the characters.

So back to static lights... they do illuminate the characters, despite what the documentation says. Test it out in a sample map. I think I just have to have larger radii with a lower brightness to get better coverage. That's all I got for now!

Wow, yeah it's a ton of work to figure this out. I noticed the same thing opening Outpost. There are so few point lights. I would love to see a comprehensive lighting tutorial that combines all of the interactions between between post processing, directional, skylights, reflection capture, static/stationary, material roughness etc.. All of those things interact in sometimes very bad ways which makes it hugely challenging.