Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2017 11:54 am Post subject:
Operation: Seasick
Subject description: First Sun map, utilizing FSGDI01 and a TW recreation
I bring tidings of maps! Or rather, a map. I felt the urge to stretch my map making muscle again, for the first time in about a year or so, and decided to revisit the last project I was working on: a potential mission map that recreates the Port Alexandria mission from Tiberium Wars.
However, I wasn't satisfied just recreating the port city, I decided to take it a step further. There was one thing I knew: back in Firestorm, the Kodiak crash landed when it was departing from Cairo at the start of the GDI Campaign, right along the Mediterranean Sea- however, the exact location was ambiguous. I said to myself "You know what would be great? If we combined Port Alexandria and the Kodiak Crash Site". After lots of screaming, a year's worth of delay, studying FSGDI01 and Port Alexandria, and even more screaming, the map was... some semblance of 'finished'.
Mini-Map, because thats the only image that'll fit. The map is gargantuan and I can't even get it on imgur.
And that's the image of the Alexandria map from Wars. Some things weren't possible to recreate exactly, but I think I did a good job of it. I'd like to think my artistic liberties really made up for it, but...
I'm slightly dissatisfied by how some things came out. For example, the lack of civilian buildings in Sun made it hard for me to design a city- or at the very least, I lost inspiration in designing the upper city because of the lack of variety. It becomes apparent in a lot of places. There's also the dunes, which don't feel entirely perfect in my eyes. I also have no idea how to make the water moss look decent, especially since it isn't converting in the map editor- i heard you have to run it in-game and it'll look proper?
Also yes, I'm aware that I have Tiberium on slopes. I actually didn't know that that crashes the game when I was making that, and I'll set about removing it Soon:tm:.
So what's the story behind this? Well, think of this as a slightly inverted version of the Wars mission- though it is different. You assume control of the Nod Seaport in Alexandria, and are waiting for a transport to arrive to escort a convoy out of the African Theater. However, GDI has dropped in forces from their nearby airbase in the dunes near the Kodiak Crash Site, and hastily deploys a base within the city limits to try and prevent the convoy from escaping. The objective would be as follows:
* Defend the Port Authority building and the convoy until the transports arrive
* Escort the transports to open waters and ensure they don't get destroyed
* Wipe out all GDI presence in the area
Pretty straightforward. I was inspired by Mental Omega's mission inversions when I was working on this.
I'm not really confident enough to release this, especially since it's just the husk of the map with nothing else going on yet. I don't know if I'll ever script it, since all my scripting efforts for anything else I've done have gone about crashing the game. Like I mentioned, this was mostly to stretch my map making muscles since I got the urge. If anything, I'd appreciate feedback on how I could improve, what I should look into, a way to make finalsun stop lagging any time I try to do anything, as well as a way to make it so I don't need to delete FinalSun.ini every time I want to load the program.
Let's see what I can do next. _________________ STAY-AT-HOME BATTLE-ROOM UNCLE
YOU'VE DESTROYED ME QUICK_EDIT
looks good. i like how you incorporated the first firestorm map.
hard to tell from the tiny megamap, if it's ingame. If yes, the map needs some better lighting set and many invisible lightposts for some more detail.
The tiny Kodiak buildings should be removed imo. Having them on the same map as the crashed Kodiak looks bad due to the different scale.
I think Bittah included already my big Kodiak into the TS Client. Since the Client is the standard/default TS version nowadays, you could use that big version instead. Though i would suggest renaming it into "1F Solomon" or something else and also place only a single one (not three), considering how rare these big ships are.
Most of the top cliffs seem unreachable for ground units. If made as a MP map, it might be good to add a few destroyable cliffs for access and some tib fields on top of them, so they aren't useless space. _________________ SHP Artist of Twisted Insurrection: Nod buildings
Right, one of the things I should do is set lighting, as well as set the overall tone to like, early morning/late night.
Yeah the scale of the Kodiak building in comparison with the crash is jarring, so I could stand to remove it and/or replace it with the larger variant. On the note about the client, is there a place I can pick it up? If it's the standard, it probably has more tools and assets involved that I could utilize.
As for the cliffs, I was thinking about it, but for the most part they were to eat up some of the empty space, since I didn't want to have so much empty space, so I didn't plan for them to be accessable top-side. I could change it up and make the one near the GDI base and the one near the Kodiak crash accessible though, but since it's designed to be a SP Map I'm not too worried about it.
I appreciate the feedback, and I'll set out on taking care of these issues! _________________ STAY-AT-HOME BATTLE-ROOM UNCLE
YOU'VE DESTROYED ME QUICK_EDIT
So, for some reason my map is crashing when I try to run it through the mission selector. The first thing I did was remove all Tiberium off the map- because removing it off the slopes didn't fix it, so I went full nuclear. When that was done, I tried running it again, and still nothing. I've attached the map in its current state so I can get some insight as to why it keeps crashing.
The mission looks interesting. The map is pretty well detailed, although the use of different ground types could be more interesting. The layout seems good too. I also like how you've included the first FS GDI mission there.
The city areas could use some Alpha Light Posts (or just normal light posts, depending on which you prefer), otherwise they seem well done considering the low amount of variety in vanilla TS city assets.
Honestly, I'm actually starting to feel inspired to work on it now... Don't do this to me! I'm not ready for the map to crumble to pieces!
Anyways, I was adding a custom building to the map (the Port Authority building), and whenever I tried to place it in-game it would... place a GDI Power Plant. Not a building that looked like a GDI Power Plant, an actual GDI Power Plant.
I cannot fathom why it would do this, and all my efforts to fix it didn't work. The only way I could fix it was by going into the map file and manually changing it from GAPOWR to PORTAUTH. It's fixed now, but I'd like to know what I was doing wrong for this to happen, so I can prevent it again in the future.
Here's what the code looks like for the building, which I added to the map file itself before anything.
I'm also using the TS Client and the TS Client's FinalSun variant, I'm not sure if that's affecting it at all though. _________________ STAY-AT-HOME BATTLE-ROOM UNCLE
YOU'VE DESTROYED ME QUICK_EDIT
and whenever I tried to place it in-game it would... place a GDI Power Plant. Not a building that looked like a GDI Power Plant, an actual GDI Power Plant.
Did you mean in-game or finalsun?
Use rules.ini, not firestrm.ini in INI folder of TSClient. Just tried, it works.
Though it is better to put in map, as when sharing you don't have to share
rules.ini also. QUICK_EDIT
Er, I should have put a comma before that in-game. It shows up as a Power Plant both in-game and in FinalSun, and I had no idea why.
As for where I put the code, it's all in the map's file itself, not in rules.ini or firestrm.ini
_________________ STAY-AT-HOME BATTLE-ROOM UNCLE
YOU'VE DESTROYED ME QUICK_EDIT
I suppose, it is one of inadequacies of old finalsun, not your fault. You
could add it to rules.ini then and make it easy for mapping. When the
map is finished, those extra stuff could be added to map itself if needed
for sharing.
Keep in mind that if TS Client goes online, it will overwrite changed
content, so don't update it. QUICK_EDIT
Right, I don't plan to modify the core files directly- aside from tutorial.ini, which is where the dialogue strings are for the mission, as well as battlefs.ini for the mission selector stuff. I should probably back those files up though so I don't accidentally lose them. _________________ STAY-AT-HOME BATTLE-ROOM UNCLE
YOU'VE DESTROYED ME QUICK_EDIT
With the TS client it's also possible to insert new text lines into the map itself and override existing tutorial.ini line IDs, so you wouldn't need to distribute tutorial.ini with your map.
Simply create a [Tutorial] section in the map and list your new lines there, with the same syntax as in tutorial.ini.
Sadly, FinalSun does not support the functionality, so when creating text triggers for the mission, you'd need to manually type in the line IDs. In case you'd override original tutorial.ini line IDs, FinalSun would also still show the old lines, but in-game the original lines would be replaced with your own. _________________ CnCNet Client | CnCNet TS patches | More Quality-of-Life Improvements for RA Remastered
That's... actually really handy, I should have thought of doing that! Thanks for the info!
EDIT: This is all I'd have to do, right?
Or do I have to renumber it to 1, 2, and so on and such forth? _________________ STAY-AT-HOME BATTLE-ROOM UNCLE
YOU'VE DESTROYED ME QUICK_EDIT
I tried keeping them as were as well as re-numbering, and it didn't work. Not as they were made the lines not show up at all, re-numbering just showed the lines in tutorial.txt
_________________ STAY-AT-HOME BATTLE-ROOM UNCLE
YOU'VE DESTROYED ME QUICK_EDIT
Time to put me out of my misery and get this over with:
Is it possible to get vehicles in a ground-based transport? Like, at all, even through backwards hacky measures? Or am I going to have to resort to smoke and mirrors when it comes to getting the convoy boarding a transport? _________________ STAY-AT-HOME BATTLE-ROOM UNCLE
YOU'VE DESTROYED ME QUICK_EDIT
I'm not sure, but i think via trigger/scripts you can even let vehicles enter a transport (because they are forced to do so).
If not, only as reinforcements transports can have vehicles stored internally.
So a smoke and mirrors way would be
a) let the transport enter the map via reinforcement trigger and include in the team of the transport all the units that you later want to enter (so the transport has them all already inside)
b) when it's time for the vehicles to enter the transport, simply remove them from the map (script delete team members), so they just vanish when next to the transport
c) move the transport and unload it at the target. this way it looks like the units were transported inside (even though previously lost or damaged units are replaced/repaired) _________________ SHP Artist of Twisted Insurrection: Nod buildings
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