Aliens vs Predator Classic Mapping Stream #10 (6 hrs, No Commentary)
Working on a remake of my old multiplayer map that I released almost 25 years ago.
In this stream I finish my object placement. Other than maybe a few tweaks here and there (or fixing the alien eggs off stream) what I have is pretty much what I want for this map. Not much to say about object placement really, other than moving them uses tank controls. Can't even take the Survival Horror out of the level editor smh.
The most major things I do in this stream however are the sound placements and the lighting.
Sound is interesting because of the inner - outer radius settings, as well as pitch. Anything within the inner radius is full volume, anything outside of the inner radius fades out linearly to the outer radius. You also get pitch control, in addition to being able to assign Strategies (game logic) to them.
Sound is supposedly further effected by Module Acoustic settings, which I also do this stream. I didn't notice any difference when testing though.
Lighting is very interesting. Light objects can be assigned properties for flickering. You have options for Runtime lighting, which defaults to off. Runtime lighting is what actually lights characters and objects, whereas all lighting affects modules. It seems to have a pseudo light baking system implemented, but I'm not sure of the technique. My best guess is that they're precalculated vertex light values added to a lookup table in the modules' data, but I have nothing to really back that claim up. Just a hunch.
It was neat trying to light the map in interesting ways while keeping each area feeling unique. One tricky aspect to lighting is avoiding light bleeding into other rooms, as lights are not blocked by walls. I was afraid that I'd have too many runtime lights trying to avoid this in the narrow corridors or nearby modules, but the map performed well in my (albeit limited) tests.
I was originally going to have the outside Desert Valley and Predator Temple Exterior areas be fully lit day time lighting, because of how dark a lot of the vanilla maps are, but then I had an image in my head of a fight outside the Predator Temple getting lit up by plasma shots, flares, machine guns... and aliens and predators sneaking around in the dark, so I opted for a night time environment instead. It certainly made it easier to avoid light bleeding.
The next stream will probably be the last for the development of this map. I'm pretty happy with it so far and look forward to a Halloween release.