Ir-Kalla (Serious Sam classic map project)

[Louva-Deus]

About time

[Maska322]

Played first 10 minutes... This is so great!

[Discy]

Thank you, that's so good to hear.

[FreekNik]

Very beautiful and pretty hardcore map I've played about 30-40 minutes for now, but already got my ass seriously kicked numerous times

[Discy]

Thank you. What difficulty are you playing on? Every difficulty is one step harder than the normal game, and Serious mode is mostly made for co-op play. If you can play it on Serious mode on your own you're pretty badass.

[Fiendian]

My name is Fiendian "Fiendian" Fiendian and I recommend this fine, family friendly entertainment package. Serious mode not recommended (yes, that's a dare).

Inevitably Angie and Croteam will beg you to let them put the finished campaign into an add-on pack for Serious Sam Revolution (assuming data formats are compatible with the classics).

[Discy]

I have added it to the Revolution Steam Workshop, because it's backwards compatible with classic maps. I am not, however, making it a Rev exclusive with those new enemies and entities.

It already has 12 subscribers, so yay me.

[Nifran Tay]

Hey Discy, just finished playing the demo on steam and it is good. Really good. Can tell you have spent alot of time of the enemy placement in all difficulties. A job well done. Not found any issues with it, performance is good even on rev The full product must be a master piece.

[Discy]

Thank you for your kind words, I hope everyone will get enjoyment out of the final product. I don't work on it a lot, but when I do I try to put love into every area.

[Louva-Deus]

As long as it's clean when we get it...

[Discy]

Not that kind of love. That's reserved for you.

[NoMercy Rider]

I need to visit the Showcase forums more often, I somehow missed the official demo release. I need to dig up my classic discs and give this a whirl whenever I find the free time

[noam2000]

Just wanted to mention we're gonna be playing this map on Saturday

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/7SM...88693621233570

Hopefully it lasts for a long while and has some nice juice in it. Also hopefully SS:R wont freak out on us

[Discy]

Originally Posted by NoMercy Rider

I need to visit the Showcase forums more often, I somehow missed the official demo release. I need to dig up my classic discs and give this a whirl whenever I find the free time

Keep in mind that the difficulty is a step up from the default game at times. But hey, there's a secrets guide, so at least you'll find them all between dying.

Originally Posted by noam2000

Just wanted to mention we're gonna be playing this map on Saturday

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/7SM...88693621233570

Hopefully it lasts for a long while and has some nice juice in it. Also hopefully SS:R wont freak out on us

All right, if we can get SS:Rev working properly I'll most likely be in.

[Discy]

So I've been working on updating the dusk map. It was too much like the first episode (Persepolis themed noon levels), so I changed the texture set to Tower of Babel. But I also made a fundamental change to the map's style you will appreciate: The map is completely open ended. After a brief introduction where you have to follow a set path, the whole city opens up to you. The goal is to find six keys to unlock the next path, and they're divided throughout the city. You can take any key in any order and come back to where you have to place them at any moment. You can save them all up or go back after collecting a few keys, the choice is yours. I don't know if this type of freedom has been done before, but I think the end result is really cool.

The level has 1200 monsters, 20 secrets and I estimate three hours playtime, maybe four if you want to explore everything.

[PikaCommando]

Open-ended? 20 secrets? Three hours? Keycards and mazes? This map is my worst nightmare.



I like how the levels look though, it's almost official-quality levels from CT. I am very impressed by your level-building quality and the ability to align textures and make shapes that aren't cubes. You should take a job at CT.

Also I think there's too much blank spaces on the roof of the inner sections, might wanna stack some ziggurats there as facade.

[Discy]

Originally Posted by PikaCommando

Open-ended? 20 secrets? Three hours? Keycards and mazes? This map is my worst nightmare.

How so? You'll be gently guided to where you need to go. There will be multiple ways of seeing where you have to find a key and where you've already been. I will also distribute a secrets guide with the campaign so you will be able to look everything up.

Originally Posted by PikaCommando

I like how the levels look though, it's almost official-quality levels from CT. I am very impressed by your level-building quality and the ability to align textures and make shapes that aren't cubes. You should take a job at CT.

Thanks, that's pretty much my aim. And I wouldn't be able to take a job at Croteam, since I have no real 3d modeling experience.

Originally Posted by PikaCommando

Also I think there's too much blank spaces on the roof of the inner sections, might wanna stack some ziggurats there as facade.

Yeah, that would be a great idea, except the wld file is now 18.8 MB so I'm already getting scary close to the 19 MB wld file size limit. I might add some really simple stuff to the roofs, but adding more complex architecture at this point will most likely mess things up.

[Solais]

Heh, cool! Looks interesting. Though, I still say the same, that I kinda wish it was for SSHD.

As for the open-ended-ness, my "Clerical Wards" level from SSHD Extended (based on the Holy Spirits level of the LotB DLC) also got the same mechanic, where you have to find 4 keys, but you can do it in any order. Besides the final arena, which is sealed by the four keys, the rest of the level is open.

[Targ3t]

Put stretched, vertical boxing gloves at the top.

[Discy]

Originally Posted by Solais

Heh, cool! Looks interesting. Though, I still say the same, that I kinda wish it was for SSHD.

As for the open-ended-ness, my "Clerical Wards" level from SSHD Extended (based on the Holy Spirits level of the LotB DLC) also got the same mechanic, where you have to find 4 keys, but you can do it in any order. Besides the final arena, which is sealed by the four keys, the rest of the level is open.

Cool, glad to see I'm not the only one utilizing this idea. The drawback is that every area can potentially be accessed from 2-4 entrances. I can just plop in a bunch of spawners, but I always go out of my way to not show the player spawning monsters. This adds a whole new challenge to scripting fights, and I'd like to think I did it pretty good. You'll have to ask Fiendian, he's my go-to testing guy. And you can always port it.

Originally Posted by Target-UPnP

Put stretched, vertical boxing gloves at the top.

And then sometimes cannonballs will shoot out of it?

[PikaCommando]

Wait, Serious Sam maps have a size limit? Usually what is it inside a .wld that takes up the most space?

[Discy]

Originally Posted by PikaCommando

Wait, Serious Sam maps have a size limit? Usually what is it inside a .wld that takes up the most space?

There's no hard size limit, but the engine has a limit to the amount of lights and shadows it can process. Usually after a map goes above a certain limit of lights and shadowmaps, strange glitches might appear after playing ingame for a while. This is a screenshot of the Egypt map of Ir-Kalla before I had to split it in multiple parts:



If you keep adding more and more stuff, eventually the lighting will break and disappear completely and the map will appear black despite enabling fullbright. This stuff usually happens around around 17-20 MB wld files.

As for what's in wld files:

• Every entity and its properties is stored. Name, location, anything you can enter in the properties box of the editor has to be saved. I suppose that if you have a world file without shadowmaps, this will take up the most space.
• Target lines. When you set a parent, target, spawn target, the entity ID of the targeter and targetee both have to be saved for every occasion.
• External source paths. When you have Sam say a quote, the game needs a pointer to where the file you want to play is located. So every file not in the wld file, like sounds, textures, models, animation files all need to be pointed at on a per-entity basis.
• Shadow map data. When you have a directional light, every polygon you flag as "directional" and "directional ambient" will get influenced by it and receive/cast shadows. The shadowmaps will be stored in the wld file, adding a pretty big chunk to it depending on how much polygons you use and how low the cluster size is.

[Solais]

In a way, this is one reason the current engine saves everything into separate resource files. For instance, in SSHD, you could still have some parts of the levels have "local" resources, and the lightmap was baked inside the level file. However, this caused memory leaks and other problems with larger levels, hence my problems during SSHDX development which I was VERY vocal about during that time.

Since SS3, the lightmap is saved outside the level into a single resource file, and since Talos, a bunch of smaller resource files. The editor also starts giving errors and warnings if there's anything that's still using local resources. Since SS3, scripts have to be saved. Since Talos, a lot other things; and dunno if this is only in the internal editor, but in it, not even particle effects work now, without them being saved first.

...Just saying, how things have developed since then, just to reduce the stress of the engine, by having everything inside a level. In a way, SS1 was designed to have so small levels, but I had levels in SSHD reaching 100MB and more, because of the complexity. Glad that the later games made it better, not just having lesser errors, but much less crashing as well.

[ZynX]

Looks really great and, as said by PicaKommando (:>) it has an official persian style in it and has a great setup. Maybe some holes on the ceilings or windows would be great, instead of adding torches to make lightning. But obviously a map must be done with the mapper's taste.

And about the circles, WHAT ARE THOOOSE !!1!1

[NoMercy Rider]

Beaauutiful! I love to see folks still kicking ass with the old school editors. Can't wait to try this out once it is done. Definitely looks like you've done a great job making all the courtyards feel varied and unique. Out of curiosity, is the central building visible from most points of the map? Might be a good idea to make it that way to help players get their bearings right in the massive level. That is my only suggestion.

I would love to see some boots on the ground screenshots too

[Discy]

Yes, the big starting building is visible from maybe 80% of the locations in the level. I've also made sure to try to add a lot of landmarks, so every area is distinguishable. The central courtyard when you exit the start building also has exits to every key areas, with a lot of interconnected paths, detours, extra stuff to explore.

And here's some screenshots, click to see the full version:

[ZynX]

Ah, that's a better point of view..
Nice, really nice. ;-)

[PikaCommando]

How did you resize the images but make it full size when clicked on??

[Discy]

You use an img tag for the thumbnail and put a url tag around it to the full image. Like this:

[url=url-to-full-size-image][img]url-to-thumbnail[/img][/url]

[Mkbewe]

Wow, just wow