Kill Hill ready for testing

Hi guys, I've finally completed Kill Hill and it's pretty much good to go.

Testing and feedback is what I'm after so if anybody can try this out, perhaps a whirl online, I'd love for it to be included in this month's next friday night custom night.

I guess most important is whether or not it lags out and is playable. Honestly? This map is loaded to the teeth with vehicles, objects, foliage and effects. It runs exactly the same as all of the other maps on my machine, so I have my fingers crossed that everybody runs it similarly.

Thanks guys,
Hope you like

www.hitpawz.com/KHBETA/KHB.rar

I'll try to check it out tonight. If it is going to be laggy it will show up on my rig 😄

Cool. We are trying to put together a testing night after we get back from QuakeCon. We might be able to add yours in. I'll try to get back with you so you can join us if we do.

Cool?

Nice map dude. Very nice. Thumbnail looks great. Loadscreen and minimap looked good. The layout is awesome, although the cliffside flags (main bases) might be confusing for some. You probably did this to incorporate the transport helo's once the center flag is taken, but that might be a lost cause for some players, especially with so many other flags that will be in play. The vegetation is some of the best i've seen, so thick in spots i had to actually fight my way through it. Really good use of the random veg generator. The new fog was used nicely, i don't think it's too thick coming out of the bases. The pagoda combined with the hastings temple looks awesome, i liked that area a lot. It lagged a little on my machine but i'm only running 256ram. Hopefully it'll perform ok on an online server, but given the amount of objects, thickness of the vegetation, and just the size of the map, i have a feeling it'll be a lagfest once 20+ people are in it. I can't really comment on the playability or balance cause i was running it local by myself, but visually it's very nice. I took a few screenies of some bad spots i found; floating objects, etc. Nothing major that i saw, but i was only in it for a couple minutes. We'll get them posted up in the next few days. Good work man, keep it up and keep us posted on the progress.

Atomm, that would be sweet. Quake Con sounds like fun, if not stinky 🙂

Thanks for the quick responses guys. This version is still the official Beta as it really needs testing to see if it will hold up online. I'm very worried that it's gonna fail the population test. The good news is that fixing lag should be easy as it's going to mean removing and not adding stuff. I can also release the overgrowth to draw farther and spread out to lessen it some more. There's also multiple instances at every flag of jeeps and tanks, which can really be dropped down to about one of each type at each location. When I was first making this, I had 6 tanks, 6 jeeps, 4 helos, 2 ZSU's, 4 scooters and 8 Artillery pieces at the main flag alone. I wanted it to be an almost impenetrable defense once captured, but it lagged SO bad when you were up near the flag (looking down) that I killed 60% of it. I also changed my mind about it being that hard to capture and left it almost completely wide open. But still, it's going to be really tough to take once it's lost due to how open you are when actually capping the flag. I took a stab at concealment in the fog objects, which I doubled as clouds and it semi-works. Pretty much, you can be sniped from almost any location on the entire map while trying to get it, so I may have to rethink it if it really is impossible to take.


The shadows are pretty temporary right now. The raytracing from BCV is pathetic and I didn't have the willpower to start it at production quality as I heard it didn't produce much better results. So I actually doctored and merged them each by hand and I got a much brighter result. They are still pretty fuzzy and kind of ugly at the moment.

The thumbnail and load screen are still considered temporary. I was going to draw up a whole big thing with this and that, but I'm very lazy zzz

The ground fog is much thicker at the NVA base and that was done on purpose. There's different levels of defense/offense/jungle and visibility at each spot that I was hoping serve to round out a nice overall balance. The actual effect used is simply the DMZFog object right now, but I'm planning on creating my own ground fog that is thicker, brighter, lower and more dense like a marsh or a horror movie. I still haven't been able to locate the actual files I need to edit yet.

You will find a few spots with floating objects. Mostly, it's the foliage, but I think I may have missed a few lightsticks and I'm remembering a bunker at the US main which could use a little less in the Y. My plan is to make a new type of foliage to cover the steeper parts of the terrain.

Oh, and the jump that I mentioned before is back and working like a charm. BUT! Yes, there's a big smelly but here. If you have lag, you won't live. I guess the prediction code combined with lag actually causes the throttle to skip because you fall short. I found this out when I forgot to turn the graphics down while testing from BCV. But if you're running smooth, you land with just under quarter life lost.

I also threw in a VERY temporary jump at the NVA base. It doesn't actually perform as a "jump" right now. I had to dumb the air time down like crazy because it was just getting way too late.

Oh, and the flags in the load screen don't match the ones in game 🙂 I'll fix that after testing.

Oh, and the Pagoda/Temple combo came by total random accident and just happened to look like it would work. So I left it in cause I kinda liked it. It concealed the flag into the back "yard" of the base so that's a plus.

Oh, and I had this awesome idea. Man, it was gonna be hilarious but I couldn't do it. I wanted to make a labaratory inside one of the buildings that you could see into, but not actually reach. The USbuilding has rooms like that. I was going to put a MiG spawn in there with a low life length while outside of the flag radius, so it would spawn and then keep blowing up over and over again like a mad scientist's lab. But the stupid windows in the buildings are open by way of transparency in the texture, not modeled, and the game apparently won't render objects that spawn through the backside of a one-sided polygon. Ah well. I used wreckage instead so it's not as funny, but it's at least there.

So there's my full-on release news 🙂 . Thanks for providing an avenue for testing and feedback guys. It really does make it worth spending the time. I haven't even bothered mentioning this on PBF yet. I'll wait until it's totally final and working like it should be. Are there any other places I should consider releasing it while it's still pre-testing? I assume Doomlab wants final maps. I'm just not sure who else other than you guys is willing to actually test maps.

By the way, you guys play as a clan on a regular basis? I'm sans clan and I (very humbly) freaking rock at this game.

Yeah man, we play on TWL 8v8 Ladder, just had a big win last night. You should jump in our TS server some time and try to pub with a few of us.

By the way, you guys play as a clan on a regular basis? I'm sans clan and I (very humbly) freaking rock at this game.

Hitpawz! Are you available to get in some public servers with us tonight? If so, please reply here and we need to get you in TeamSpeak...

That would be very cool. We have been having a lot of fun playing TWL and working on maps. Hook up with ephil and he will get you in on our private channel. That will give everyone a chance to get to know each other. Besides, it is always cool to have another mapper in the group. It's like a synergy thing.....

I haven't had time to check out your map, but I will when I get a chance. QuakeCon just throws everything off.

I should be. No plans for tonight. Since this map is bout done, I'm free. I have the TS info so I'll stop in this afternoon. I'll get home at 5 PST.

5PST... is that like midnight here?

Cool. I will likely be on 11:00ish EST for a bit. Possibly earlier.

It takes me a little while to settle in before I start playing. 11EST will be about the time that I'm getting in to play. Gives me a few to eat and relax a bit from my absurd 2 hour commute home.

Whoa where do you live that you have to drive 2 hours to work? That's insanity. I would buy a helo.

hitpawz wrote:absurd 2 hour commute home.

Ouch. Bay area or Southern California? Longest commute that I had was about an hour (timewise). Just to make you jelous, I now have a very nice 3 minute drive or 10 minute bikeride. 😀

Breaky 5PST is like 3:00 PM tomorrow Central. :wink:

I have about 15 miles to get to work. I can make it in about 20 minutes. :-) That is one thing I would really miss if I ever move out of state.

We usually get on late anyway. I wait until my wife goes to bed before jumping on, so it would be right around 11pm EST.

Heh... 5PM PST is 8PM CST 9PM EST....

I worked at Netscape for a few months in Mountain View... Trust me... I understand your commute 🙂

I lived in San Jose and it was about a 10 mile drive...

So that equaled to 30-45 min normally, 3 FREAKING hours when it rained!!! Yes... 3 hours to go 10 miles... I could have parked and walked home faster!!! 🙂

Heh... there's a reason I didn't look at going to grad school in CA...

Then you know my pain. I'm going from S. San Jose to Belmont and with the construction, it takes anywhere from 40 minutes to three and a half hours. Usually averages just over one hour, but it's Monday. With no traffic what-so-ever, I would make it in under 30 minutes. It's pretty much the worst thing in the whole entire world and I would love to buy a helo for the commute. I'll get a commercial bird for me and then a Cobra for the rest of the commuters.

One thing to be said though is that the people in that area know how to drive... People let people over when they need and everyone has the same goal... Get home without any more issues!!! 🙂

We must be in alternate dimensions.

Heh... Nah, driving was nicer there then it is in say Dallas... The fun part in your area is trying to go from 10 to 60 in 1 second to get in the carpool lane... Then from 60 to 10 to get out of it... 🙂

Yeah, or 0-25 to get into the slow lane behind Granny Sanstooth. Haha, I guess we had vastly different experiences. For years and years and years I've said that the drivers in N. CA are the worst the planet has ever assembled. I can't go a single day without some jerk cutting me off, breaking for no reason, slowing down to merge, boxing me out, giving me the finger..etc. That and the spots where traffic builds up is in the same place everyday, yet never is there a reason for it. No onramps, offramps or anything. Just a slight curve in the road and it's 20 MPH for 20 minutes. Then for equally no reason, everybody is in a mad dash to the next bottleneck....10 feet up the road. Man, it wears me out just thinking about it.

Sounds like Oklahoma...

I take it you've never driven in New Orleans?? For starters, use of turn signals is prohibited. Half of the cars on the road don't have brake lights, the other half only has one working. Over 40% of the motorists in the N.O. area do not have insurance (fact). The other ones that do have it drive it like they'll use it.

Red lights are optional, and do not take effect until 5 seconds AFTER it has turned red. Oh yeah, and in very large sections of the city, simply being white and passing someone can earn a few slugs flying your way.

I went to N.O. once... And that was enough... Funny, you drive through the "hood", take a right and you are on bourbon street, take another right and you are in the hood again 🙂

Way too many people there for me to handle driving around... Kinda like driving around fishermans warf in San Fran during a Jazz Fest... There seems to be a lot more speed bumps in the road at that time and they screem when you go over them 🙂

Pretty much everywhere I've driven has been a dream compared to my daily commute. It's always rough here. BUT, I'm not sure if anybody has ever been dumb enough to attempt CA to NV on Thanksgiving weekend. Oh man, I turned a 10 hour trip into 34 hours of a bumper to bumper parking lot with 70% of all the cars breaking down at one point or another. Then I figured out the trick. Leave at 6am so you're in the middle of the Mohave Dessert at 3pm with an airborne temp of 117 and an inside temp of 145. Then have your AC go out the instant you come upon the flipped over semi that's been holding up all lanes of traffic for 3 hours prior to your arrival and the crew can't get through the 13 mile long line of cars to clear it. Remove the option of a cell phone because you weren't working and then force yourself to blast the heater to keep your engine from errupting. Oh, and put your computer in the back seat so you can play game with your buddy there, but have it melt on the trip and buy a new one. Yay for panic attacks or I would have been conscious for that one 🙂 So my new trick for that drive is to never go to Vegas again for as long as I live.

I've never done SF during a Jazz Fest, but I have done downtown SJ during one. That wasn't fun. I got stuck in a bike rally in SF one time and by the 2nd hour and 3rd block, it turned into a near riot. That was interesting.

One good thing about CA is that it's so big, the ghettos usualy ignore you. Even if you are a white devil. If you just go through and don't make eye contact, you can actually stand a chance of surving it. But look at somebody for a split second too long and you better put up the lead shielding.

Yeah its wierd about N.O. like that, drive through the wrong area and you could get fucked up. However, break down/ get lost in the wrong area, and the gangbangers are pretty cool about it. I guess they know they will bring down the police on em if there's a problem.

I spent a few days in Downtown San Francisco for work a few years back. That driving freaked me out. It was 3 lanes, with me in the middle lane, a garbage truck on my left and a taxi on my right. The right lane ended and the taxi decided I didn't exist. So here I am, this Okie in between this huge ass truck, that stinks and a yellow taxi from hell and we are sharing 2 lanes between us. Needless to say, that rattled me. Too this day, I have no idea how we survived that incident. I'd like to think it was the 4 years I tought defensive driving. :-) NAH!

Then, while in downtown SF on foot, I crossed down from cross walk. A beamer on the other side of the light floored it and came straight at me. I found out later that there had been several deaths from this exact thing. I don't like SF very much.

Then, that same year, I was in LA for a week. I was a little worried, but it really turned out to be alright. I'm with ephil. It seemed like the drivers there were better than in Oklahoma. You get on the highway, they make a hole for you. Granted, it's just big enough to fit and you better step on it or you will miss your chance, but at least they try. That doesn't happen in Oklahoma.

The whole SJ to NV thing was hysterical. I couldn't imagine it being so hot, your computer actually melts. At least it's a dry heat. LOL! A little humor from 90% humidity Oklahoma. :-)

Recovering this thread from the multiple hi-jackings.....

Checked out Kill Hill again earlier tonight. First a caveat: The XP service pack nerfed my "gaming" configuration which is stripped down as much as possible to free resources. That means I was running this with a bunch of stuff in the background on my standard config. Second, my machine is not the speediest by far. Given that, I was getting lots of lag - so much that I couldn't fly for more than a few seconds and it was choppy just walking around. I will check it again when I get my gaming config up and running again.

My only recommendation at this point is to get rid of a bunch of vehicles. Imo, there are too many.

Found the jump - wicked cool.
Fog looks great.
Like the cliffs and the scenery.
Also really like the load screen. Are those flag point values on the inset map?

Yeah, I've got SO many vehicles right now. I had originally hoped that it wouldn't lag out, but I'm now working with bots and it's chugging if I put more than 10 in. So I'm going to trim that aspect down quite a bit. I was thinking about only putting one spawner of each type and setting the number of spawns to 3. What do you guys think about that idea? There's no way I'm going to leave any avenues for having to run far unless you are intercepted en-route so there has to be at least one of each. It's going to make the bases look pretty darn empty, but I think it will be best.

Also, unless I make two completely different versions, the bots aren't ever going to be able to win the round. They can't climb the ladder part at the main and for some dumb reason, can't navigate vehicles along the very simple paths I have. They drive right off of it. Perhaps I have the pathmaps rotated or flipped or something. Anyway, I'll have to move the center flag to the ground and take all the flags that are on the 2nd floors of buildings and put them outside, completely negating all the work I did to set them up as "mini-levels". Hmm, what to do.

Anyway, Sarge. Thanks for checking it out. If you get the time to test it out under your normal operating conditions, that would shed some light for me. I only say this because it's unclear if you lagged because of the map or your system. I understand that it's both, but is my map more laggy than the stock ones or other people's maps?

Yeah, those are the flag point values. It's set up perfectly. If you cap the center while holding your main, you are at exactly 100 points. If the enemy captures the remaining four flags while holding their main, they also have 100 pts. I wasn't sure what would happen in a tie situation and I figured the bleed would halt. But it's actually way cool. Both teams bleed. I dunno, but I think that's awesome.

The part of the idiot guest on today's show will be played by Hitpawz.

Some of the lag is definately my machine - If someone like Raze or Ephil gets lag then you know it's the map, but with me it could be the machine. I am working on getting my gaming config back as it frees up a significant amount of system resources for BFV. A visit to Black Viper today will help me figure out which services I need to turn on that are off or vice versa.

In terms of vehicles, I would suggest that less is more. Less vehicles will mean people riding together to go to flags = teamwork to some degree. Maybe at your main bases you have 2 jeeps, 2 APC's and 2 tanks. All other flags have something like one of each (Center flag) or just jeeps/apcs (outside flags).

Also, is there a way to hike up to where the jeep jump is? I spawned there once, but had to fly helo's up there the other times.

I have it downloaded, I just haven't tested it yet. I will tonight.

Cool, Raze. Let me know how it goes.

Sarge, unfortunately not at this time. If you remember a while back I was bitching about the flight ceiling. I had to drop the bases down to their current elevation to make the mains navigable for the choppers. It sucks. I think I'll put a trail in the back corner and texture it to show on the map so it's more obvious. That or I can add a few more spawn points up there with the jeep or something.

I am definitely going to strip out most of the vehicles.

Were you ever inclinded to flip the jeep around and take the trail? If so, did you make it through? LOL I hope not.

Did you ever NOT make the jump?

Did you see what you get when you cap the base overlooking the enemy's compound?

Oh, and just kind of a quick fun note. You can navigate the level by the minimap alone.

The first time I made the initial drop, but missed the actual jump to the left and survived intact although I went right into the water. Second try I hit the jump, but off the right side a bit and did a lovely full spin before crashing in a big fireball. Third try made it losing a bit of health to the jeep - don't remember how much though.

I tried to take the trail up from the bottom, but didn't get very far.

No I didn't take all of the flags this time - too busy trying to take the jump 😄
I will try to be more thorough once I get my system straightened out.

Well, if you do it perfectly right and have absolutely no hickups from lag that interrupt your throttle, you will do two complete lateral flips and land in the puddle down below. When it lands, you'll flip the thing so it is literally pointing ass up while spinning to land almost perfectly facing the road. LOL.

You can't take the trail from the bottom up to the top. You have to get in the jeep at the top of the jump and just turn it around. This trail bypasses the first base and brings you around it and up on the enemy compound. While it doesn't exactly save time, it will keep you out of harm's way while you get closer to them.

You know the rock slide that I have at the NVA base? When I first created that, I put the boulders all over the entire thing and I swear to god I got within 2 feet of climbing all the way to the top of the near vertical terrain. I was SO excited that it would be possible. But at certain angles, the boulders would cut off and pass through the terrain or float in the air so I had to trim it back. I must have spent 3 solid hours finding a path up the thing, jumping from boulder to boulder. Man that would have been awesome. Ah well. I suppose I could lay them out statically, but nah.

I'm still on cloud nine from the success I had last night getting the bots to perform. They won't take the flags yet, but the enemy bots were actually shooting at me. My little boys are growing up so fast. I even went on a drive to give a few of my teammates a tour and we came across an enemy bot chilling in his jeep almost all the way to the top. I did. I shed a tear.


Oh, and I'll just tell you what you get with those flags. If you capture the base that is directly overlooking your own, you keep it and nothing is different. But if the enemy captures it, they spawn 2 log traps aimed directly at your compounds that have a max respawn timer of 5 seconds. So it's an almost endless stream of logs barrelling down into your base. That and they fall very far and come in VERY fast. If you don't have choppers and you happen to only control your main base and the enemy knows about this (meaning, if I'm your enemy), I can almost guarantee that you will not get a single vehicle out alive. It's what the trail and jump are supposed to help. What do you think of that? I think it might be annoying, but you actually can get through if you literally dodge the logs. It's cool cause if you recapture that base, the logtraps will remain there, but won't spawn any more. I made a separate spawn template for the other side that is the same thing but opposite. Oh, and I did make sure the logs don't make it far enough into the bases to cause a spawn rape issue. Also, you never spawn down at the compounds. I'm "thinking" this will be balanced as you can't see down there very well, need a TS person to spot it for real accuracy and can only hit those who are leaving by the roads.

Man, I just never shut up. I have some ??'s

What do you think about a shotgun for all classes and M16's for the US engineers?

Does anybody know exactly where I can find the files I must edit to make a new fog effect?

Great Map, after pulling myself away from the skijump I finally took a look see..

LOTS OF STUFF! WOW.

Loved the cliffs. I seen three things of concern and that was pretty much it. But then again, I'm not really too paticular...

First thing I saw was a littlebit of follage protruding through the sandback on the westtside of the US jump point. Between center and the west AA tank. Nothing big, I just threw that in to be picky... :-)

Now for my 2 main concerns. I leaped off the cliff to find a puddle that wasn' t completely covered. I checked it and I can't figure out was the deal was. To make it simple I have this screen shot.

Another cause for concern was, when I was flying around in the chopper, I did run into a little lag in the Clouds. I have this same thing in OHG B1 and thinned them out a bit and that fixed my problem.

That's pretty much it.

I however did love the Donkey Kong platforms on the back west building on the US Side... LOL

Also, I did notice you went to GREAT lengths for detail.. shrewn rocks around bombed tanks and such... I could never achieve so much detail.

Good job..

Thanks Raze, glad you liked it. I'm holding for a bit on working on it as I really did cram a lot of hours in and I need somewhat of a break. Probably start in again in a week. Sarge was in TS with me while testing and he was reporting back some serious lag. Thanks, Sarge. I have a whole gigantic layer of extra pudding on the top of this map that is highly unneccessary, but I did for at least one sort of "ultimate" version. Perhaps for servers which require a minimum system spec. All of you dump runners get to the back of the cue where you belong! Moooooohaahahahahaha.

Again, bots are in the works.

I will fix those problem areas you noted as well as a few that I have stored in memory.

My plan to reduce lag is as follows:
Cut at least half of the torches out with a plan to use the bare minimum for optimum air guidance
Remove all but one instance of each vehicle at each location. Set spawn # to 2 or 3...need input on that number
Thin the clouds
Thin the jungle significantly. Anybody think I should go with trees and make it more forresty than jungly?
(i'll lose my rockslide....wait, no I won't. I'll just lower the spawn probability with the same draw distance)
Finally, general refinements and cleaning up some of the details

Thanks for checking it out man. I'm going through a lot of maps on doomlab right now and reviewing. I'm signed up as a reviewer so will have choice of maps to run on the servers. I'm going to get to them all, which come a lot from you guys, so I'll be sure to rail you all something fierce 🙂 I kid, I know your maps rock already so they'll be easy reviews. Hell, I'm here cause your maps rock and you guys are a genuine homothexual community. I finally fit in. LOL! Is he kidding? Is he kidding?

The missing water is caused by the ground being to narrow. Try making it a bit deeper, and the water should show up. Scott had the same problem.

Ah, I see now. I had that same problem in a few other spots which were actually altered to get rid of it. Now I know. That particular one is a mistake in its entirety as no water should be there at all. Thanks for the catch.