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Posted by Wazat [205.126.65.25] on 2003/06/23 15:51:18

This is the thread for discussing mapping for Battle Mech, which will be officially released in mid-QExpo in July.
It can be downloaded here for all you who want to try it out and get a feel for the mod, and to test your maps on it.
http://static.condemned.com/files/...
Mapping for this mod is very simple. The perspective is always from above, and the camera is a distance off, so you only have to worry about a limited fov. In fact, quite often starting out with a box map works just fine.
Some good example maps are dm1, dm2, and dm3 included with the mod now. They are the bmech01-03 maps pushplay made for me some time ago, and they play wonderfully.
I'm looking for a variety of designs, large and small, simple and complex. You can map for Deathmatch, CTF, Rob The Nest, Protect the Nest, and Infiltration (a kind of one-way CTF match). Any reasonable theme will do, including castle, millitary, snow, space, desert, tech, woods/jungle, or anything under the sun. You can even set the gravity of your map to match the theme (such as a moon base).
There are all kinds of entities at your disposal (some of which aren't documented right now, I forgot. They are documented in the Void Ents mod at http://static.condemned.com ). Here are a few:
Pit triggers (harm or kill players who touch them)
Eye candies (any model you want to place in the map, including statues, corpses, etc)
Radar (for CTF mostly, shows surrounding players in 3d radar display)
Gravity triggers (touch them to change your gravity, like if walking over a fan that makes you more floaty, etc)
Lasergates (lasers that team mates can walk through, can cause damage or instant-kill, can be toggled on/off or turned on/off for a time, like doors; example in desert.bsp).
You can also add the following items to your maps:
Doors, platforms, buttons, triggers, etc (most quake entities)
health
A large selection of weapons (see documentation for the full list)
Jump pads (I'll try to add more air control to the player when he jumps off these so he won't get flung straight up uselessly).
Camera helpers (they help the camera to avoid crashes, and to place it at the right height to avoid problems; they can also control how high/low the camera goes for various needs).
Armor and powerups will be added back in soon (within next release), so feel free to add them too.
I may also add turrets that will shoot at players, or defend a CTF base.
I will be including a number of maps with the initial release, and even those that aren't will be made downloadable from the main page if the author approves. Everyone who makes a map will be included in the credits.
I look forward to any submissions or comments!

BTW
#1 posted by Wazat [205.126.65.25] on 2003/06/23 16:39:23
Since the mod is stand-alone, none of the maps can use the old Quake textures.
...however, all things considered, that should not be a problem. Especially since 100 new textures were just released recently.
The maps I made will probably not be included in the release (they use quake textures and are crap anyway), they're just there as examples (poor ones).
Hmmm...no Sp?
#2 posted by Levelworm [61.152.210.129] on 2003/06/24 11:26:02
*sigh*
And
#3 posted by CheapAlert [68.71.167.41] on 2003/06/25 12:51:22
Plus condemned.com is down by hackers... double *sigh*
It's Back Up Now
#4 posted by Wazat [144.38.161.213] on 2003/06/25 18:13:52
You can download battle mech now. Horn's been working real hard and has gotten most of my stuff back up (except the index.shtml).
Pushplay: I want to talk about that 4th map you're developing. If I'm remembering it right (and I may be confusing it with something else), it's got quite a few narrow platforms/walkways suspended in the air. Perhaps more broad areas in the air would work well, such as a large, octagontal area where paths converge, and maybe the tops of some buildings. Too much thin areas makes treading the high places difficult, though that may be the intent. :) But keep the camera in mind, though. Thin walkways won't make it too hard for the player to see, but he can get easily lost under something too large (it's not a problem if the large thing is solid all the way down instead of suspended, since the player can't go underneath it). The walkways in map #3 were done quite well, but anything larger would probably make players pretty lost.
Also, some attempts to compartamentalize some areas (make them into separate areas with walls and hills so it's not all 1 big arena) might also be good. I like the fact that the new map is bigger, there needs to be some fairly large arenas as well as some small ones.
Levelworm: Xsniper was working on a single player version of the game, but he decided to break away and make his own version from scratch. I wonder if I should reactivate single player...
-
Some news on the mod:
Armor has been added back in. You can even set how much armor is given and how strong it is:
armortype: 0-1 (red armor is 0.95) how powerful the armor is/what fraction of damage is blocked.
armorvalue: how much armor is given to the player. You can have as much as 255.
Powerups are next.
I'm also working on a simple entity list that covers lasergates, pits, etc, and will be easy to read and will give the basic info you need to use the entities, without having to pick through a bunch of useless details. If you need to know more, you can visit the detailed files.
I can't upload the new version yet, but I will when my site is fixed.
New Version
#5 posted by Wazat [205.126.65.25] on 2003/06/28 18:48:37
The new version has brought quite a bit to the mapping folks, as well as players:
*Added Rambo Match
*Added armor and health items back in, so they can now be included in new maps.
*Added new weapons: burst flare, flak cannon, namek, laser drones, and sniper rifle. More will come.
*weapon_random can now include or exclude weapons as the mapper pleases
*Included more documentation on mapping entities (custent0.txt through custent2.txt)
*Wrote an entities.txt to accompany mapping info.txt, to make the entities easier to understand.
*Updated the Readme and other files
Health and armor are added now (I pray you'll like the armor effect), and powerups are coming. The health also has new sounds, though I'm not sure anyone will like them. The powerups I'm hoping for are Invulnerability (Mega Shield) and Super Damage (Overdrive), possibly invisibility (Cloaking Device), but probably not the bio suit. I need to gather some non-ID1 sounds & models to make them.
You can now make any items (health, armor, weapons, etc) float in mid-air by giving them a lefty value.
I've gone to great lengths to write entities.txt in a way that's very simple and user-friendly. It would be great if someone used any of these in their maps.
The random weapon item can now include or exclude weapons, so you don't have to worry about unwanted weapons appearing in your map. It does not, by default, include the special, very powerful weapons, such as the sniper rifle or lightning cannon, but you can tell it to.
The new weapons should be interesting to people. I hope. :)
I got teleporters working. Sorry they were broken. :)
I'm also working on another deathmatch map called arena1. Like desert, it's not lit yet, but it at least has a good start. The bots don't do very well on it, unfortunately, because it has lava. :( It does make a great example, however, of what camera helpers are and what they can do.
-
BTW, level worm, the main reason single player is disabled is I have absolutely no monsters. I can't use the ID1 monster models and sounds, so I would have to replace them all with new monsters, and I'm just too busy to do that right now (I'm struggling to get all the current models & sounds replaced).
However, you CAN make mods of Battle Mech. You would do this the same way you'd mod quake, IE make your own folder - such as sp_mech - and run Battle Mech with this:
Bmech -game sp_mech
If I get the time I will try to add some of the classic new monsters, such as blargs, snakeman, dragons, sp ops soldiers, etc. It's just hard to find enemies that will be easy to plug in, and just as importantly would fit into Battle Mech's supposedly futuristic theme.
Any suggestions are welcome.
-
Btw, now that I think of it... Am I just talking to myself? I have no idea if anyone is working on anything or if I'm just looking like an idiot blabbering incessantly about his own mod.
Hmm...not Bad
#6 posted by Levelworm [218.25.255.19] on 2003/06/29 05:55:03
so i have to model all the monsters?
Funky
#7 posted by starbuck [80.192.123.134] on 2003/06/29 08:28:10
BattleMech was really professional, and some of those weapons were fantastic, expecially the thunder thingy and the flame thrower, and the heavy machine gun, and the laser beam and the...
PROBLEM
#8 posted by inertia [24.164.72.234] on 2003/06/29 19:24:17
I can't play bmech with the included engine, cheaphack (I even downloaded the standalone cheaphack and it didn't work). What happens is when starting cheaphack, I get an error saying "specified video mode not available." Woo. All the other engines I've tried look/work like shit with this mod, so I was wondering if anyone knew what my trouble is. I'm interested in mapping for this, assuming I could test them properly :D
Sounds Like
#9 posted by czg [80.202.31.131] on 2003/06/29 20:55:12
You're trying to run the engine with -width -height -bpp commandline, but the engine/your drivers doesn't support this video mode.
I had this happen to me when I installed new nvidia drivers; all of a sudden none of my quake shortcuts worked no more because the video mode I used before was no longer available. You can check what modes are available from the video options menu inside quake.
Hmm
#10 posted by nonentity [217.42.36.101] on 2003/06/30 18:03:24
I started playing with a map for this last night, then realised I couldn't possibly complete it in time.
Hey All
#11 posted by Wazat [205.126.64.166] on 2003/07/01 14:06:33
Nonentity: Oh, don't worry about finishing in time. The promise of more maps is better than me releasing 5 maps with the game and saying "well, that's all that's coming".
And besides, I won't be releasing the mod until the last or second to last day of QExpo, meaning either the 12th or 13th of July. You have about half a month.
Levelworm: No, just send me some links to monsters you think would work. I know Quake has archives and archives of free monster models & source. Once located, they should be easy to plug into battle mech. XSniper came up with a good system for targeting enemies besides just other mechs (so player can target turrets, monsters, etc).
Starbuck: Thanks! Weapons are my speciality, and I feel they can literally make or break a game. It's good to hear positive comments about them.
Inertia: I hope you can fix your problem. Try starting with the lowest resolution possible and work your way up. (thanks czg for helping him). I should mention this in the readme, I suppose.
BTW, I've uploaded yet another version. I need to start uploading version updates instead of forcing everyone to download all 6 MB each time. <:)
The main changes in this version, among other bug fixes:
*the weapon_random errors have been fixed. I noticed it was crashing. Also, the railgun can be placed in maps now without causing problems (before, you weren't able to drop it once you had it).
*turrets have been added. You can place these in your maps to guard special areas, defend CTF or Infiltration bases, etc. Think of the turrets in UT. You can tell them what weapon they have, how often they fire, how much damage they do, etc. They can use most of the weapons available to the player, including the machvn, flame thrower, navis, homing missiles, rockets, etc. Since I stupidly neglected to include documentation, I'll put the basics here:
To place them in your map, make an entity called "turret". It will default to the machvn for a weapon.
To determine the weapon, you can place a "turret_machvn", "turret_rocket", etc. If the damage, bullet speed, attack rate, etc are not set by you, the turret will determine its own defaults based on the weapon.
Some more fields:
attack_finished - fire delay. Set this to 0.1 to have the turret fire 10 times a second. (for example, a fast-fire machinegun, or 3 rockets per second).
delay - how fast the bullet travels. For hitscan weapons (laser, penetrator, lightning), this is how far the bullet can travel.
dmg - how much damage the attack does. For explosive weapons, this is how large the radius is.
I'll have more useful documentation included in the next release.
If you have any questions, e-mail me @ static_void@hotmail.com (no, I'm not afraid of spam bots finding me. I get so much spam already, I no longer fear death. But I do fear hell, since hell is the source of all spam).
Battle Mech Maps Due
#12 posted by Wazat [205.126.65.25] on 2003/07/11 19:13:28
Battle Mech will be released tomorrow, so anyone who wants their map included in the official release, please, please have it ready and uploaded somewhere (not my e-mail) so I can download it around noon tomorrow and put it in the zip.
If you have a mapshot for your map (for MHquake, which will be in the release), please include that too (btw, metlslime, please send me the mapshots for bmech01-03, I can't find them anymore).
I won't be able to test your maps to check quality, I just don't have the time. :( So, I suppose that means I'll be including any and all maps that are submitted.
By the way, I got powerups added. They use the original powerup names so those of you including powerups in your maps won't have to worry about not knowing what the classnames are. They are:
Invulnerability
Invisibility
Super Damage
Infinite Ammo (replaces the biosuit)
Also, here's the infiltration map my bro submitted. It's pretty good quality, but probably slow too:
http://www.qexpo.com/uploaded/45/C...
Please get those maps submitted soon. However, if you don't make it on time, I can later add your map to the qexpo page or Battle Mech page, and will gladly do so.
New Battle Mech Version Adds Camera Angles!
#13 posted by Wazat [205.126.65.25] on 2003/07/31 15:16:13
The new version allows you to control the camera angles and position, both globally and locally. This means you can set the camera angle of the entire map, and you can use camera helpers to make the view change in certain areas (for example, a side view when the player walks under a platform or down a certain hallway).
There is also a new version of start.bsp that displays this feature. The camera angle is changed when walking under the large platform, to aliviate the visibility problems.
I'm hoping this comes in handy to at least someone. :)
Would it be helpful if camera angles could also be modified with triggers, not just camera helpers?
Eer
#14 posted by [71.3.239.47] on 2006/05/31 18:21:11

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