DM_kowloon

This is the first map I've released and I've been working on it for a good few months now, after months of procrastination since beta 5, I've finally dusted off the final version(which I never actually envisioned happening). It's a medium/large map with a somewhat symmetrical layout.

You can grab it here: http://www.filefront.com/14189859/dm_kowloon.rar <---- new bsp updated with proper cubemap files.

The previous beta versions had been posted around on some other community sites but I saved the final version for here

The name doesn't actually have anything to do with Kowloon, or the walled city of kowloon, the map started out as a map on the rooftops of that city but it eventually changed to what it is now, though the name stayed the same.

I don't really have any clue as to how to organise some sort of a play test session so if somebody could pretty please push me in the right direction i would be very grateful.

If some of you guys could download it and check it out I would be above grateful, thank you and enjoy!

I'm impressed, Really very nice job man. Okay first thing, you should clip the stairs so you get a ramp out of player clips. That makes movement easier. I guess you should come up with an idea to make it ahrder to get the RPG also. I don't have much time really. I will look at it more closly later. Just a few tips here. More will come.

I havent had a chance to look at this yet, but one impression I have is that the room in the top pic may have too many props in it for good movement through the room. Rooms choaked with stuff that you continually get stuck on will kill an otherwise good map.

This is just an excellent all around map! Very realistic with great lighting and weapon placement! I will update my servers right away! Thank you for the great work!

I've commented on your excellent single-player eye for detail, so I'll say congrats on punting this final release out. Lighting is most excellent now.

I think you might be pressed for time, there's a few things a final release shouldn't have; I see you made 75% of the detail props nonsolid, why not the rest? Some clips are missing. And no LDR buildcubemaps??

Too bad this is a killer for people with lower end machines. I hope you do another one for this game, there's an audience for immersive-type maps out there.

Paradox wrote:I havent had a chance to look at this yet, but one impression I have is that the room in the top pic may have too many props in it for good movement through the room. Rooms choaked with stuff that you continually get stuck on will kill an otherwise good map.

The only things I see bad in that pic are the mattresses. They are really worthless in a dm environment. Other then that, I think the room is big enough to hold that many props. From the screens, it looks like a very nice map. How it plays, only time will tell.

Yes I was specifically looking at those too Sacrifist

yea way to many props throughout the whole map i think but im very picky with the maps i like. I think this map would make a good tmd pub map

haymaker wrote: I think you might be pressed for time, there's a few things a final release shouldn't have; I see you made 75% of the detail props nonsolid, why not the rest? Some clips are missing. And no LDR buildcubemaps??

Too bad this is a killer for people with lower end machines. I hope you do another one for this game, there's an audience for immersive-type maps out there.

I'm seriously kicking myself right now, I've done that before and now I can't believe I forgot again. Arrrggghhh I'll have to whip up a new bsp with the cubemap files included I guess, I'll get that done in the afternoon. Thanks for pointing that out though.

Thanks for all the positive feedback so far. I don't mean to sound too ahead of myself or what not, but if the map is put into circulation on a server I'd really appreciate it if you could quickly PM me the ip address so I can play a few games there myself.

[FF]FNDR.Jake_Brake wrote:This is just an excellent all around map! Very realistic with great lighting and weapon placement! I will update my servers right away! Thank you for the great work!

This guy's servers =

63.210.148.165:27015
8.6.8.197:27015

Nce lookign map, it is possible to get outside the map using gravjumping and phys climbing or watever you want to call it.
I founs some doorways a tiny bit narrow.

Got the new bsp with the LDR cubemaps up and going which i neglected to put in the original file due to my idiocy.

http://www.filefront.com/14189859/dm_kowloon.rar

Put it on my server for tests no timelimits or fraglimits.
[url]steam://connect/81.19.210.38:27015[/url]

Well, unfortunately your newer release of the "final" occasionally crashed my Linux servers so I had to remove it. I am not sure if it was related to the cubemaps or not so I will try your latest today. Also, I will have to rename the map file as there are a lot of players out there with the older version with the same map name. If I don't rename it, then when they try to connect they will get the "map differs" error. I will let you know if I still have issues with this newer version and thanks for updating it!

[FF]FNDR.Jake_Brake wrote:Well, unfortunately your newer release of the "final" occasionally crashed my Linux servers so I had to remove it. I am not sure if it was related to the cubemaps or not so I will try your latest today. Also, I will have to rename the map file as there are a lot of players out there with the older version with the same map name. If I don't rename it, then when they try to connect they will get the "map differs" error. I will let you know if I still have issues with this newer version and thanks for updating it!

Renaming it will break all the cubemaps

I am not sure how renaming it will break the cubemaps since I am not changing the .bsp file. Just a dumb question but aren't the cubemaps embedded and are part of the .bsp file?

If I can't rename it, then I guess the only option is to not run the final version of this map on the servers, as there are many players our there who downloaded the first version of this map with the name "dm_kowloon" before the second version of the same name came out. I'll see if this final version is still causing issues, and if so, I guess I will have to roll back to the pre-final releases.

If you rename it, cant you go into a local server and use the buildcubemaps command in console and then upload it to the server? Or would that not work?

Da1 wrote:If you rename it, cant you go into a local server and use the buildcubemaps command in console and then upload it to the server? Or would that not work?

that will work howver the file size will be that much larger, as the original cubemap vtf's are still there just not being used

author should release an r1

Yeah looks like I screwed up pretty bad. I can't keep working on it though because the latest version's vmf is messed up and the compile tools just doesn't seem to want to be working with it.

Hopefully next time I push out a map things will be a bit smoother

But thanks for having the map on your server at all - the warm fuzzy feeling associated with people playing (and hopefully enjoying!) a level you spent months toiling over is awesome.

popcornjake wrote:Yeah looks like I screwed up pretty bad. I can't keep working on it though because the latest version's vmf is messed up and the compile tools just doesn't seem to want to be working with it.

Do you have Hammer Autosave enabled? You could just go back and look for the most recent working version and try again. ...and include _r1 or something after the map name so we know which version is which.

Popcorn, this is a quality map! I get rave reviews from many players. If you could release a r1 version it would be fantastic!

[FF]FNDR.Jake_Brake wrote:Popcorn, this is a quality map! I get rave reviews from many players. If you could release a r1 version it would be fantastic!

I just had a little run around on your server and to get the cubemaps working properly you can do it all yourself. If you don't want to use the dm_kowloon.bsp I uploaded you can just copy paste it and rename it to dm_kowloon_r1.bsp and then build the cubemaps yourself.

That way everyone can play by just downloading that bsp from your server - and more importantly I won't have to upload another bsp to a bunch of sites

If you don't know how to create cubemaps you just open up a match with yourself via the "create server" option and then just type buildcubemaps into the console. The cubemap files will then be embedded into the bsp and you need just to restart the game for them to appear as planned.

Anyway I hope I made sense and thanks a lot for hosting my map, I'm sure you know it means a lot.