lol, did i not tell you to do that?
aww crap, i guess i didnt, sorry.
Edited by Maniac1000 on Sep 20, 2011 at 10:06 PM

Well you asked if I could get it into a BSP for you. In either case, you wanted it in Max, as I do now.

So I take it this is almost ready then?

If by ready you mean ready to work on in Max, then YES!

SUCCESS! My map, in all its glory, is in Max 8 (trial, unfortunately). Thank you, mista grunts, for suggesting the obvious solution of using gbxmodels. I've done that before myself, but forgot about it.

I have all the geometry compiled in (on a side note, everything was flipped, but I flipped it right side out), and it appears correct, but I have not examined it in detail yet. I also have not checked to see if the texture coordinates were preserved, but I would imagine they were. Smoothing is good to go (but Max is screwing up in terms of rendering, so shading looks even worse than in gmax; I'll fix it later). So now I just need to attach all the pieces together, verify I have no basic errors, and export for a test run.

In case anyone is curious, I had to detach faces in a tedious fashion. Materials 1-7, 9-11, 12-18, 19-24, 28-38, 39-47, and 48 were all detached into separate files, linked independently, one at a time, to frame, exported, compiled, and imported into Max, where they were flipped and re-ID'ed. Materials 8 and 25 had a lot of faces, so I had to split them up into several files: 8 went into four files and 25 went into two, the second also containing 26-27. The reason for this is that files with around ~15K vertices or more produced an index array count error. Too much geometry to parse. I did not discover what tool thinks is 'too many materials', as anything with more than 10 materials likely had too many vertices.

It was a horribly long process, and it took me like 4 hours (I had other work to do in between things). But the end result is a success, and success tastes good. Updates will follow soon as I need to be quick; due to poor planning on my part, I installed Max 8 prematurely (I could've used 2012 with my 3 year student license, then sent it to Max 8 real quick for JMS exporting) so I have 29 days to get this done. I might be able to use Max 7 or earlier, but I'd really just rather stick with 8. Now off to bed...

Congrats on the success, Gonzo! Here's to more good fortune heading your way!

Cheers to that!

Amen.

Mhmm. Damn right.

Textures were preserved, smoothing was not. Luckily, aside from a few skewed faces, the only faces requiring smoothing are the terrain and cliff faces. The only thing missing is the Wall, its shield, the water, and the busted up bridge arms (I detached them earlier to troubleshoot errors).

Well for some reason exporting these four objects with Bluestreak yields an 'array index must be +ve number, got: 0' error. Never seen that before...it only occurs when I try to export the wall, shield, or water, but not the arms. It worked fine the first time through, but I forgot to modify the materials. I fixed the materials, then got this error. I'm working on isolating the cause.

It has to do with modifying the materials. I only need 8 IDs, but they are all scattered about the spectrum of 47 I have in my main material set. I doubt it's the fact that the IDs aren't consecutive.
Edited by CAG Gonzo on Sep 21, 2011 at 06:02 PM

I had several material IDs when I exported bits of my map. No problems there. I am doing the EXACT same procedure here now when I export these last four pieces. I'll give that a shot, but for now, I have my map in Max 8, the Blitzkrieg plugin nicely in place. All is well, right? WRONG! Stupid thing tosses me 'an error has occurred and the scene will now close blah blah blah'. Honestly, I think everything I use for mapmaking is scripted to adapt and deny me success on all fronts.

remove any lights and or anything that is not needed.
save your .max as something else.
try export again

I'm happy to see that this is going very well.

I remember my attempt at an extinction remake. I still have the files for it, haha. I just kinda gave up after a while, there was just so much to work out and rework.

Good luck man.
Edited by Officer egg on Sep 21, 2011 at 09:55 PM

You really should update your first post with the most recent status and pictures of the map.

I suppose, but I was leaving them up so people could see how far this has come. I mean look at my first pictures, and how awful my map was back then. I've learned quite a lot.

You could copy your progress into word files and preserve it for future reference. If you like, I can make a forum for your progress on my clan site once it's up.

You're improved in the field of modeling from what I can tell, though your level design simply can never be exciting for competitive FPS MP due to it's size.

That depends on your personal opinion. Extinction is brilliant with the right players. With aimbots, hackers and spawnkillers it is quite terrible, but I have come across some matches in which every player played properly and efficiently, providing a fun experience for all.

A good MP map should be fun and exciting to play with average Joe's, and fun to use all the assets provided within the map. An average game on extinction is very boring and lonely. The map has very little points of interest or tactical importance. It's just a huge canyon filled with as much vehicles as possible, and the only real value it can hold is "dogfights" in a space that is too huge to ever feel any adrenaline. Using warthogs and the like is incredibly dull due to the huge (and boring) terrain as well. I can go on and on about how bad it is, but I won't because I need to cook up some spinach.

TM is correct; the map is simply too large. I knew that going in. I regret nothing except the huge amount of time I've invested in this, compared to the gain I've produced. I get Requiem isn't going to be everyone's favorite Shotties map, but as with Extinction, a large scale map begs to bring about either excessive camping and noobery (which I'm trying to limit but is ultimately unavoidable) or coordination. This is the map genre I went with as my first entry.

I played a fabulous match on Extinction; we had a leader, and he issued commands correctly to neutralize Red Team and we won because of our teamwork. It inspired me to found CAG and ultimately attempt to perfect a large map like this. That's why it's not just a large map with two crashed ships. It has life. There's lots to look at (i.e. the walls), and I included plenty of Forerunner structures. The minimap is, in my opinion, brilliant, because it allows people to play the smaller game types (KotH, Oddball, Race) with ease. And who knows...if scripting kill zones and coordinating it with game types or options becomes easier, it may come to pass that players can restrict access to the map, say to play CTF only in the minimap. I know little of Halo scripting, but I don't see why it isn't possible at some point.

Edit: No worries. Large maps like these aren't for everyone. I tried to alleviate your comments by including more than just bases, hence the addendums and cliff paths. This adds more ground options to the palette, and by better balancing out the aircraft, I think I can mitigate their overuse to give ground ops a better chance to shine. As for spawning, everything will be tactically placed as best I can. There will likely be two Longswords, but they will be spawned far away from anything important so they can't be abused as easily, as an example.
Edited by CAG Gonzo on Sep 22, 2011 at 12:49 PM

Clearly you haven't actually explored the map.

There are multiple sniper spots dotted around the map. Some are not known.
It is possible to move around the back of each base and sneak attack the enemy.
Capture the Flag can be fun as the map is big enough for a player to snipe or defend against enemies while another player tries to escape with the flag.
There are anti-air turrets which can be used strategically to take out pelicans and longswords. If used efficiently, the battlefield can be controlled by these turrets. However, snipers can easily take them out so snipers on the defenders' team must defend the turrets against enemy snipers.
There are bridges which are brilliant sniping spots and snipers on the covenant team can entirely cease flag captures from those bridges.
There is a large space near the human base which can be used for warthog battles.
Dogfights can be fun if players actually fight properly as jets are manouverable enough to fly between spaces while longswords and pelicans can attempt to autoaim and unleash fury.
I could probably list more, but I can't be bothered right now.

That's basically correct. Snipers won't enjoy nearly as much freedom as in Extinction, but they'll get enough of it to still be a credible threat to most enemies. I mean I'm taking input from people and turning that into changes in the design. As it stands, the majority of people who comment on this thread assert that my design is good as is. The alpha testing will reveal just how good it really is, and the beta testing will perfect it.

I'll be looking forward to attempting to snipe stuff - the sniper I am ;3

I second this. I love sniping on large maps.

Clearly you don't know anything about good gameplay.
All you list is snipe snipe snipe and dogfights. You say there is a "large space" near the human base for warthog battles...what about the rest of the space? This also implies both teams would always have to be near those particular spaces which clearly won't often be the case.

The map is simply limited in design options due to it's incredibly large space. Both in weapon choice and vehicle choice.

I wouldn't be bringing this map down so much were it not for Gonzo's bold statement that "he sure can design a good MP map", implying he can design a competitive FPS MP map, whereas this map is clearly only enjoyed by a very select crowd of people who enjoy gimmicks.

Lol @ noobs.

All I list is pretty much as limited as gameplay on smaller maps.
Shotty shotty melee and hog crush.

And I will agree that extinction is limited when it comes to a large variety of options for attack, but I think Gonzo's designs will solve that.

"Gimmicks" are for those who play Reach.

"Gimmicks" are for those who love OP'd weapons/vehicles.

There is a certain line which I do not cross when it comes to gimmicks - and sniping is not one of them. If people want to be heavy-noobs, let them. I tend to stand well back from the action and dispatch enemy troops with precision, going CQB when there is no other option.

I have no doubt in my mind that Gonzo will be balancing the crap out of his map. We should wait until the alpha/beta to cast judgement upon his map.

I too prefer sniping over anything else, however I've found that jets are a very strategic vehicle on large maps if used correctly. Heavy-noobs can easily be taken out with the right tactics, especially if teamwork is used. Scarabs are especially easy to take out with jets.

I agree with this entirely. Large maps are fine for some people, and small maps are fine for some people. I'm one of those that likes both. I love the adrenaline of being suddenly attacked in a corridor, but I also love the excitement of strategic warfare on large maps.

And some people like getting girlfriends on the internet, but most people will prefer just getting one the normal way in real life.

To further elaborate this analogy:
As I said in my previous post, the only issue I have is that Gonzo claims go be a good MP map designer in general. I completely disagree with this as a map such as this would never play well for the majority of people who play maps on Halo Reach for example.

This map will be popular for a select niche, similar to how maps that use the entire Forge World on Halo Reach are popular for a select niche as well.

To sum up: don't claim to be a specialist in something you aren't and then try to act "mighty and knowledgeable" in other threads
Edited by TM_updates on Sep 22, 2011 at 03:11 PM

He has full right to claim that he's a good MP map designer in general. He may have past experience with making maps of multiple styles, thus giving him full authorization to claim to be a general good designer. If this is not the case, he still has his opinion, as do you.

To sum up: Anyone has the right to boast something whether they can prove it or not. If you've a got a problem with that, you may oppose it with your opinion, but do not try to claim he's wrong, he may be right, you just don't have all of the evidence that he has.

Basically you are saying people can claim to be who they are not, because theoretically they COULD be the person they say they are and have those qualities even though they cannot prove it.

Yes, I can tell you went to debate school Jaz, a sound argument indeed.

Now run before uncle Phil tosses you out of the house.

Basically I'm saying you aren't them and you don't have access to all of the materials they do, so they can claim to be anything they like and may just not wish to provide evidence, though they do have evidence. Basically, you can't know somebody's wrong unless evidence is provided, but clearly you can't actually provide evidence in this case because you can't know if Gonzo's doing his best or not unless you are him. He could easily lie and say he's doing his best now even though he's not, but he could also easily lie and say this isn't his best even though it actually is. You never know.

YOU ARE NOT GONZO SO YOU DO NOT KNOW HOW MUCH KNOWLEDGE HE HAS ON ANYTHING

I judge based on what I see and thus on what Gonzo provides the community. There is absolutely no reason why I can't do this based on the simple and very unlikely belief that he may be holding some form of amazing vital information back.

Uncle Phil is coming Jaz...


Edited by TM_updates on Sep 22, 2011 at 03:58 PM

I base off the complete available information. It is up to him how much info he presents, not my responsibility. Besides, you guys are just trying to break my argument by coming up with the most ridiculous arguments I have seen in awhile. We all know that the chances of Gonzo holding behind this sacret hidden information is slim to none.

Now unless you have an actual concrete argument that isn't based off of unbelievably ridiculous speculation, say no more. I believe I have made my point and I'll leave you guys to post-flame it all you want. Enjoy.

PS: you guys have made this look more personal then it was intended, props to you for trying to twist my words and intention
Edited by TM_updates on Sep 22, 2011 at 04:17 PM