*POWERHOUSE* Closed Alpha Playtest

Twinreaper

Twinreaper

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#1
Mar 15, 2013
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As the title implies, I need to hold a test run for Powerhouse. The map is not finished, but I feel a test run with actual players is needed to see where the map can be improved before I get to far ahead of it, and changes become more difficult. The test will be conducted tonight at 10pm EST (Eastern Standard Time).

Now to get a proper playtest, I want to play Team Slayer, Assault, CTF and KOTH. I would like seasoned pros like J, Apple SiC members to try to attend as well as some newer or mid skilled players. The reason for this is that I have decided to see how Reach weapons function with the complete removal of autoaim and magnetism. I have always been a strong believer in your shots going exactly where you aim them, not dictated by extra help or the engine.

So to anyone interested, simply PM me here or on Live, and I will send you the map download link. Thanks in advance for the help guys!

And here are some prelim shots to get you started. They aren't the best or most recent...but it will do for now I suppose...







 
GCreat0r

GCreat0r

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Mar 26, 2013
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* I can't put the images in this post in a spoiler tag because they wouldn't resize if I did.*

So I have been running all over this map and I found a few things you might wanna look at.

Important things:
the wooden stairs are unwalkable
there is some floating geometry (an object floating in the sky)

on crazy king the hill in the water in the center of the map is positioned a little too high, making it hard to use the hill properly
getting youself stuck in the tube in the center of the map sucks


Unimportant little details: (just letting you know every single thing I noticed)
There are a few texture flaws




This one is actually a geometry problem:

the water isn't falling down the slopes

UWV mapping not optimal on some textures

There is little sound on the map:
- "it's quiet, too quiet..." (not even birds singing)
- where the water falls down the ravine the sound effect of falling water is missing
- could you add the sound of high voltage electricity to make it sound more like a powerhouse?
the sun is not shining (I would choose a different skybox)
 
Twinreaper

Twinreaper

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#4
Mar 15, 2013
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Yup all those errors are what I warned you guys about before testing it out. The skybox is locked. Currently, getting a proper render_model for a brand new sky is not working for me at least. Using Coag produces the best lighting results bar far compared to Zanzibar and Ascension. The water is always tricky though too. I never did have any plans on making water fall down the slopes of the center pool, but I can explore that further down the road maybe.

As for sounds, I will try to whip some up for the next test phase. How did the actual gameplay between you and Anz go? Did the map function similar to the Reach version? Were there any tactical or symmetric errors or issues you would add or subtract from to make the map play for fluidly?
 
Kills Alone

Kills Alone

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#5
Mar 20, 2013
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Remember you can rotate the sun and/or swap the sky for another even after the lighting has been done.

EDIT: Checking it out now. The room just left of the upper water drain (source), in that room there are some cool looking power cables on the ground, make sure you set them to have no collision as they are so small its a minor waste of resources, even if its error-free its too small to need any collision and I can tell it has some by the bullet decal when I shoot it.

You can replace the Shotgun with the red-sited one if you want, its in a folder right beside the original.

The textures and lights are looking better. So is the water.

Portal issue I think, go to the large exit gate. On its right side walk into it and it will disappear.
 
GCreat0r

GCreat0r

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Mar 26, 2013
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Kills Alone said:
Portal issue I think, go to the large exit gate. On its right side walk into it and it will disappear.
Click to expand...
Yea, i noticed the same thing on both left and right side but I thought that wasn't worth mentioning.

As to the test between me and Anz, we explored the map together but we never got around to actual gameplay because Anz had to go. I've never played Reach so I can't compare with the original map.

How did the full scale test go?
 
A

Anz

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#8
Mar 23, 2013
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First of all I have to ask you if it´s ok for me to share this map? Hard to give any good advice without playing this with good amount of people. Dmr and AR look really good and it´s damn hard to get shots on target without aim assist and magnetism, good challenge. Have to use just the left thumbstick mainly to get shots on target, the same as using sniper unscoped when using controller atleast. I think Gamecreator already covered the aesthetics pretty well with his pictures, those ladders on that small hut stuck out for me, I think Scrapy had the same problem when he was making the H2MT Sanctuary, maybe make them just a flat ramp or something. Also on some rooms the ceiling was pretty low, so it made them a bit claustrophic. Really have to get some more games on it before I can give more advice on the map.

Also you should make it so that you start with the custom weapons, like DMR start and AR or pistol secondary, the same way as Tombstone Devolded works when you set it up as Slayer (or any gametype for that matter).
 
S

Slaters Fury

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Mar 25, 2013
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Kills Alone said:
Portal issue I think, go to the large exit gate. On its right side walk into it and it will disappear.
Click to expand...
It is, the way I get rid of things like that is see which portal planes are closest to the disapearing part and just move them some, usually that will get rid of the vanishing parts.
 
AvengerofDeath2

AvengerofDeath2

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Mar 24, 2013
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That DOES look amazing, I'll try to get H2V running on my computer again later this week, it has been running pretty good lately and I'm hopeful that it will let me run the game. If it does, I'll also be able to check out the latest version of boneyard and help with the testing. Either way, if it decides to work then I will certainly help test this map too.

Also, didn't TrOy make Powerhouse at some point too?

I just looked through my files and found an early alpha of his version.
 
Twinreaper

Twinreaper

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#12
Mar 15, 2013
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#12
I sure hope I got it a long way from where it was. I have had this map and working on it off and on since April 4th of last year.

To touch on some of the issues you guys had, I apologize. Turns out, that the copy you guys had that i gave out, was a 2 week old one, and not the most recent exported and compiled bsp. I kinda did that on purpose, but kinda didn't. As for the issues that I saw with water, I fixed those. I had a few misplaced vertices, and now the water covers the whole sections it should and I also capped off the pipe in the center.

The stairs all have ramps now and work as to be expected. Some of the textures however are just awful. This isn't the fault of me misusing shaders or UVW's....it's just the horrible engine and bitmap compiling of 1024x1024 Reach textures. I noticed that lower res textures tend to work better in most cases.

Finally, as for the metal gate; there is little I can do. Due to the amount of vertices in some areas of the map, I have no choice but to leave the portals where they are to avoid the (too many vertices in cluster#0) compiling and lightmapping errors. If I can find a way to make it part of the map as instance geometry without too many vertice errors...I'll do that. As it stands now, the reason I made it a mach was to avoid such issues. There is a multitude of extra stuff I have to add to the map now, just to make it as close to the original as possible. Sometimes I just wish we didn't have limits on this stuff. It really kills a map sometimes....
 
Twinreaper

Twinreaper

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#16
Mar 15, 2013
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#16
Since my copy of Halo 2 got the dreaded "too many actications error" I am unable to test anything ingame. It sucks because I didnt have that much left to do. All the shit was setup for weapons, spawns, zones etc. Only issues remaining were geometry corrections I wanted to make. Unless someone has a solid workaround for the cdkey error or if someone has a spare unused key, we are looking at another 3-4 months before I can continue work on it. I do however have a very nice version of Security Zone from ODST that I have been working on that would be perfect for Kills' AI additions.
 
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