My Cave Map

[Runescapedj]

I've worked pretty hard on a huge cave map, I want to show it to some people and I hope you like it
My cave map futures some parts you can just explore, and find some secrets.
It also futures a jumping part, including walljumping (no coding) and falling, in a detailed cave.
The map is far from finished, as you can see at some parts, especially the part with the huge underground city.
Here are some screens:

Here you can see a video of me playing this map (mostly the jumping part):

And if it doesn't work, here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAeMDXCg85E
And, most important, the download link for the map: http://www.sendspace.com/file/bvn1ky

[chocolatepie33]

wow, that's some great work, I like the lighting and everything.

one question: how did you get the cave ceiling (third pic) the way you did? That looks so natural, yet nothing like heightmap mode... (which I'm terrible at using).

[Runescapedj]

It is heightmap mode, first the middle, then the edges with q+scrolling (to avoid the round walls from getting messed up), and I used the aqua color light, I think it makes it look good, and there is water, I use it whenever there is water, and orange for torches and lava.
You should try the jumping part of my map btw, I've put much effort in it

[chocolatepie33]

Yeah, that was pretty cool. Some tips: I recalculated the lights at the beginning (a habit for me, you know how sometimes a loaded map doesn't calculate lights the right way, right?), and it took literally 5 minutes or more to finish calculating, with over 100 textures made. As found on the Sauerbraten editing reference:

lightprecision P
Default = 32. This is the most important variable for tweaking the lighting, it determines what the resolution of the lightmap is. As such has a BIG effect on calculation time, video memory usage, and map file size. The default is good for most maps, you may go as low as 16 if you are lighting a really small map and love hard shadows, and for bigger maps you may need to set it to 64 or so to get reasonable memory usage.

The number to watch out for is the number of lightmaps generated which are shown on the HUD (and also as output after a calclight). 1 or 2 lightmap textures is very good, over 10 lightmap textures is excessive.

The map file size is 90% determined by the lightmaps, so tweak this value to get an acceptable quality to size ratio. Look at the size of the map files, sometimes a slightly higher lightprecision can halve the size of your .ogz.

Every surface matters, even though the engine attempts to compress surfaces with a uniform lightvalue, it is always a good ideas to delete parts of the world that are not part of your map. Lightprecision, lighterror, and lightlod are stored as part of map files.

I also have to point out that even after the calclight, a lot of areas, especially on the surface, looked "patchy", like this:

If you'll also notice, there's a "operation allowed in edit mode" thing, I think that may have to do with the map. I also have a very low fps (19), so it does lag a bit. What scares me is that although sandbox is normally slow for me, I was playing in a lower resolution, which normally makes my fps skyrocket, so that number should be lower than normal.

There's a teleporter which takes you to a dead end at the bottom of the cavern, and there's also a funny "E" at the map top. I know this is a WIP, but what's with those?

[Runescapedj]

First of all, thanks for downloading and playing my map =)
Then your screenshot: It wasn't patchy, look at the sky , you think that'd be normal if you know that the sun light must come from above, as you can see at the other shadows.
And it's a huge map, that's maybe why it laggs for you, I normally have like 150 fps, when I run this map it can go down to 80 fps, but I didn't see that as a problem, because I consider my computer slow if you use it for gaming, which most of us do. I normally have to use lowest settings and a lower resolution, and then I get like 30 fps, so if I get 80 fps in my map, I'm happy.
And I used a lot of lights, and maybe too much textures, but I don't see a difference in fps when turning lights on or off, only the 'quick light' time may take a few minutes, same as saving my map, but I consider that not a problem, I think it's normal with this kind of detailing in such a big map.
And what teleporter are you talking about, to a dead end (maybe with screenshot)

[cork279]

Ooh, it's this map

It's a very good map. Especially that room with the chest in (In that screenshot), I really like the lighting in that room too
Although I do fail at jumping, from platform to platform (on ANY map I play )

[Runescapedj]

Maybe that's because everybody just sends in hard jumping maps? Like Arc's map for that jumping game of his, was a really hard one, it'll have easier ones too, he said, you can try those.
And to me the jumping part gets easy, but that's just because I've put so much time in it, and of course because I've created it myself, and I know how to do it.
I've added respawnpoints (as you maybe have experienced), so it will be slightly easier.
Good luck with the jumping part , and any advice/suggestions are appreciated

[RonnieNeeley]

Yeah, that was pretty cool. Some tips: I recalculated the lights at the beginning (a habit for me, you know how sometimes a loaded map doesn't calculate lights the right way, right?), and it took literally 5 minutes or more to finish calculating, with over 100 textures made.

5 minutes? The WIP map for Tritium took literally 45 minutes on the lowest patchlight settings, with very very basic lighting.

[Runescapedj]

I think it depends on how good your pc is too, if your pc is from 2000, it might take more than an hour to light, but please back to topic: My map =)

[arcones]

I'll try and get to it tomorrow Rune, I just haven't had all that much time recently ;D

Just real quick, Cork has you all beat. It took him hours to calc his lightmaps for OrkMoth, and it ended up crashing Sandbox