• Please make sure you are familiar with the forum rules. You can find them here: https://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/index.php?threads/forum-rules.2334636/

Final Map KF-Subduction

SpoolsOfWar

Active member
Mar 31, 2016
32
0
E9XjSKC.png


Deep within the Marianas Trench, one of Horzine's deep sea ocean labs has unexpectedly fallen silent.
Thought to have been closed off from the greater Zed outbreak, something stirs deep below the surface, something that has managed to trip the alarm and cut off all communications topside...


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Map Features:
- Large map size, with multiple height variations and holdout spots. Based around a hub style layout with 4 distinct wings to explore. Perfect for kiting!

- Custom meshes and textures!

- Custom in game maps dotted around the level for you to orient yourself should you get lost!

- 20 collectable fish bowls carefully placed in devious hiding spots!

- 15 Hold Your Ground objective spots for that extra little challenge!

- 6 Trader pods!

And more...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
V2kEcUD.jpg


t8UDYgl.jpg


FbjQEwu.jpg


3aDtaY9.jpg


L9mwiug.jpg


ZTDS1MF.png
 
Last edited:
SpoolsOfWar;n2317937 said:

This is a pretty rad map man - we played it on 6p HoE a couple of nights ago and didn't see any pathing issues. The lecture hall area is my favourite part of this map. Only addition I could suggest would be making a small little "You are here" decal to chuck on the maps :p

There were some pretty severe fps drops in some areas though - I usually sit around 110fps and was dropping to around 40-50 in some areas. The little wooden cafe/bar room is an example of this and its caused by the point lights in the areas, atm they have 'Cast Per Object Dynamic Shadows' set to true - and these should be set to false/off. I dont think it would hurt going though all the lights in the scene just to double check because there were some other areas like this as well (cant remember where- just remember the fps drops).

The black door spawn areas are a bit jarring as well - You run towards them and it just stops you, its a bit misleading and I dont think blocking them off with some props would hurt.

Other than that yeah - well done man.

Out of curiosity - how did you do the splat maps for the non-planar surfaces (if they were combined meshes). Usually I just export the fbxs remap the UV1&2 and reimport. Did you guys do the same thing?
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0
Delta69er;n2318205 said:
This is a pretty rad map man - we played it on 6p HoE a couple of nights ago and didn't see any pathing issues. The lecture hall area is my favourite part of this map. Only addition I could suggest would be making a small little "You are here" decal to chuck on the maps :p

There were some pretty severe fps drops in some areas though - I usually sit around 110fps and was dropping to around 40-50 in some areas. The little wooden cafe/bar room is an example of this and its caused by the point lights in the areas, atm they have 'Cast Per Object Dynamic Shadows' set to true - and these should be set to false/off. I dont think it would hurt going though all the lights in the scene just to double check because there were some other areas like this as well (cant remember where- just remember the fps drops).

The black door spawn areas are a bit jarring as well - You run towards them and it just stops you, its a bit misleading and I dont think blocking them off with some props would hurt.

Other than that yeah - well done man.

Out of curiosity - how did you do the splat maps for the non-planar surfaces (if they were combined meshes). Usually I just export the fbxs remap the UV1&2 and reimport. Did you guys do the same thing?

Thanks man! I'm just glad it's finally out there for people to jump into, it has been a long time coming as you can probably imagine ha. I'm pretty happy with the lecture hall too, I also like holding out around the cargo elevator in the excavation area. Lighting up the waves with a firebug down there is pretty fun I find ha. Yeah the "you are here icon" was also brought up during testing, couldn't find an existing prop to shrink down that fit the role and didn't want to have to make a separate texture for each variation so it kinda got forgotten about ha.

Yeah testing the FPS is tricky, all of my testers didn't have any issues so I released and hoped for the best ha. But a couple of people have also noted some dips occasionally. I will go through and see what I can do. Would you say lights are probably the biggest factor I should look at in that regard?

The black fog spawns were my way of not taking up floor space with extra obstacles as if you just shove props in doorways for zeds to climb over they tend to get stuck sometimes, but yeah I do agree, I was never totally happy with it. I'll take another look at it.

We did indeed, or if it wasn't super complex I just used the "create new Atlas UV" option which was usually good enough in most other cases.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0
SpoolsOfWar;n2318232 said:

You wouldn't need to make a separate texture for each variant, in paris/biotics theres a lot of graffiti/decals on the walls - these are just textures on a plane, essentially thats all you would need to do - make a transparent texture that had a red arrow and "You are Here" and just shrink the texture down and overlay it on top of the existing of the map object in the level. If you wanted it to be more modular you could seperate the arrow and text. 1/2 texture/s multiple ways to use them - work smart not hard :p

Lights with dynamic shadows are always a big hit on performance for this game. So yeah always double check the lights (even spot lights) to make sure they arent casting dynamic shadows if they arent needed or try and restrict how many there are in one area. If you do need dynamic shadows - they should really only be restricted to spot lights as well.

If I remember right from playing I think a couple of those black spawns had signs as elevator ones - if thats the case, you can just make an elevator shaft and have them drop down from the top - still let the player go in, but itll be at their own risk.

I know that feel of zeds getting stuck on props all too well - if you've played Biolapse nearly every spawn has those prop blockers and I had to deal with that issue so many times. The main problem is that they get stuck on the individual props. To solve this, remove collision from the props to weapons only and drop in a ramp from the modular set ontop of them and turn the Rendering options to make it hidden in the game - now theyve got a flat surface to path on and players wont know. Additionally height and distance from the door can be a problem, so just make sure theres enough headspace and floor space for them to walk down - chucking a Chokepoint trigger also helps.

And thanks for letting know about the UV mapping - good to know!
 
Upvote 0
Delta69er;n2318258 said:

You know, it didn't even cross my mind to make separate decals and just overlap them. I'll see what I can whip up!

Yup, the spawn in the Lecture Hall is marked as an elevator, might be easier to do that than mess around with props to put in front. The rest I will just barrel/box them up and hope they look alright. Yeah, I've used the old invisible blocker choke point trick on some of the spawns already, but as you said, the whole hitting the head thing stops some of the bigger Zeds sometimes even when node and space wise everything looks fine. I'll just fiddle with it until it works!
 
Upvote 0
Pushed an update on Steam so thought I'd post the change notes here as well.

Update Notes V 1.1
---------------------------------------
- Optimised lighting across the whole map. Those of you who were experiencing FPS drops should hopefully see the most benefit from this.

- Increased the initial timers on the "Stand Your Ground" objectives before they start ticking down. This should account for the size of the map when heading to defend.

- Changed the majority of the black fog enemy spawn rooms to better show that the player cannot enter those area on first glance.

- Fixed some minor pathing issues for big Zeds.

- Added a navigation marker to each of the ingame maps! Now you can see where you are actually standing in relation to the map.
 
Upvote 0