dm_spookface2 for Half-Life2 Deathmatch by qUiCkSiLvEr and Spook Map Name: dm_spookface2.bsp Release Date: November 17,2006 Author: qUiCkSiLvEr (Kevin Ottalini) Author's email: quicksilver@qsextreme.com Homepage: http://QSextreme.com ======================================================= LEVEL DESCRIPTION: Single Player: No (but can be fun to learn the tricks and traps and explore) Deathmatch: Yes Team Deathmatch: yes Suggested Players: 4 - 16+ New Textures: all custom textures embedded into the BSP New Sounds: all custom sounds are embedded into the BSP, ported over from HL1:Source New Models: all custom models are embedded into the BSP Warps: many No. of Secrets: many Deathmatch spawnpoints: 33 Filesize: ~ 35Mb Typical download time2: ~ 21 minutes direct from server (compressed @ 20k rate) ~ 5.5 minutes on fast http d/l with 768K dsl ~ 1 minute or less on fast http d/l high-end cable or dsl Optimum DXLEVEL: This map will look marginal in DX70, acceptable in DX80, 81 and excellent in 90 and 95. Minimum recommend hardware/OS/drivers: AMD1800+ (1.5GHz) with 1GB of memory running XP with the latest service pack and patches ATI 9600 128MB or Nvidia 5900 128MB with the latest video drivers ======================================================= Map description: ---------------- dm_spookface2 is an extensive upgrade with all high-resolution textures and extensive new play areas. Designed around a dark marble texture, this map has a dramatically different feel from the original white marble textures used in the earlier maps. Spook was able to locate all the original high-resolution photos which I then used with the dark marble texture to recreate all the art pictures around the map, many times sharper and clearer then before. A great deal of accent lighting was also added and the overall ambient light level was increased so that the map is bright and clear in spite of the overall dark early morning or late evening ambiance. The central "main" portion of the map is physically the same with all the same secrets preserved, but a number of new play areas were added that can be accessed via new secrets or through the new "Arch" game play feature in the map. The Arch is a map feature that will occasionally appear on the main plaza of the map announced by a warning sound and with different colored sprites depending on what area is available. The Arch also has a picture logo that shows the particular area that is currently active. The Arch should not interfere with "normal" play on the map. That is, players can choose to ignore / avoid the Arch entirely and only play in the central map area. The three areas that the Arch enables have different themes and access times. One of the Arches is also limited to 8 players maximum, players only have 30 seconds to get to this Arch before it disappears. The other two areas are free-flow access, any number of players can enter and re-enter the Arch for as long as the Arch is present. One Arch has a 60 second access time and the other has a longer 120 second window. There are alternate (secret) entrances to both of those areas though, so players that learn the map will be able to go and play at will in these two areas. If you die in these areas you will spawn back in the main map. If the Arch is still active, you can immediately run back and continue playing. In addition, there are two sections of the map which are "challenge" sections, not intended as much for competitive playing as individual skills challenge. These areas are accessed through hidden warps or as a "punishment" for camping. There is only two ways to exit these areas, you must either survive the challenge or you must die ... muhahahaha! Players that wish to ignore the Arch should be able to play the map in much the same way they do with dm_spookface1, although those players that took advantage of the white supersoldier model will find that the shoe is now on the other foot ... I've also installed some countermeasures for the extensive RPG use on the map, players will now find that they will have to work much harder to get the rpg. In addition, there is a "surprise" shall we say, that can be visited on those players that choose to camp too long on the runners in their favorite locations. In spite of the much larger over all play area, the entire map is easily and quickly accessible and should afford some very memorable game play experiences for all players. This version of the map would not have been possible without the excellent support of Spook (Bill Leeder) and several developers at Valve that took the time to give me very valuable advice. This map in all its variations has been a wonderful collaborative and creative learning experience. Technical Specifics about dm_spookface2 --------------------------------------- This map is quite large. No, ok, this map is huge. The BSP is over 35MB with all the models and textures included and was actually over 40MB until I did some optimization. Creating such a large map caused a number of problems, not the least of which was that the game server with its default settings would not compress and download the map to clients. In addition, the chronic "teleport lag / connection problem" that has haunted all the dm_spookface maps (and several other maps including some stock maps) was much more apparent, especially while running the map on a listenserver. Both of these problems have been solved with excellent assistance from Valve, specifically Yahn Bernier and Alfred Reynolds. I very much appreciate their efforts and their patience. The full fix for the teleport lag / connection problem will probably not be available until a future Source engine update, but the effects should be greatly reduced if not eliminated for most players with the changes I have engineered into the map. Weapon Changes: --------------- One additional significant change to this map is that I have removed virtually all of the weapons around the map excluding the .357 and the rpg (and frag of course). Players now spawn with all of the basic weapons and only need to pick up ammo as required. The main reason for doing this is that there is a significant bug in the source engine that probably will not be fixed any time soon. As weapons around the map respawn, they lose the max viewable distance feature that is critical on a large map like this to maintain performance. By removing all the weapons, I've removed a major performance problem and significantly improved the FPS on the map, especially the longer the map runs. For the most part, most players won't notice much if any real difference during play though. Virtually every spawnpoint on the map had easy access to the same selection of weapons. Some weapons like the crossbow where just everywhere, it was actually a relief to remove them all. Linux BSP Compatibility Problem ------------------------------- This problem has been solved! Linux Servers should be able to run this map now with no problems. Compile Time: ------------- VBSP: 20 seconds elapsed VVIS: 3 hours, 46 minutes, 14 seconds elapsed (13,574 seconds) VRAD: 18 minutes, 22 seconds elapsed (1102 seconds) --------------------------------------------- total time: ~4 hours, 10 minutes (14,969 seconds) Total triangle count: 43394 (4x more then dm_spookface1) ======================================================= CONSTRUCTION: original HLDM map: spookface by Spook (Half-Life 1 dm map) with permission (RDCSpook@shaw.ca) original HL2DM map: dm_spookface and dm_spookface1 by qUiCkSiLvEr Current version: Conceived and Designed by qUiCkSiLvEr and Spook one section conceived by Grimlock (Richard Outman) and implemented by qUiCkSiLvEr. Custom Textures: Most of the custom textures in this map were purchased from royalty-free collections. The bulk of the main level textures were from the Hemera 1 collection or were modified versions of stock HL2 and HL1:source textures. prefabs: None Custom models: All of the pottery is brought over from the CS:S map de_piranesi The Spookbottle model was custom created from scratch by qUiCkSiLvEr The Buddha model was originally created by Ritual for CStrike for the map de_truth Touched up slightly, enlarged and recompiled for Source by qUiCkSiLvEr Map Sections: Doomball: a section of this area was lovingly recreated from a portion of the CS:S video stress test map and was inspired in part (of course!) by the movie Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark. SpookSecret: This entire section was custom built by Spook specifically for dm_spookface2. Tricks and Traps: This section was originally conceived several years ago by Richard "Grimlock" Outman but never released. I recreated most of it for Source and added a number of new features and tweaks. I wish I could find Grimlock so he can see this but he fell out of touch a while ago and I can't find him or his brother Tim "Dr.Atlantis" anywhere. DoomPoles: This is an original concept that I came up with as a form of punishment for campers in the lower Spookface hallway. You have to be quite good with aiming and jumping to get across to the exit sprite! If players are shooting at you while you try to do this, they are very cruel ... (they should just stand back and watch you fall to your death!) Buddha Secret: I came up with this area as fun in-theme alternate for the main Spookface level where players have lots of places to run around and fight, somewhat killbox-ish but it will take some real strategy to play because of the unique layout. Players must come down to the ground to get ammo and must use the boucepads since this is the only way to recharge their health. Players can return to the main level via the warps or via death. editor used: Hammer 4.0 (Source) Build 3576 utilities used: Valve Source SDK, Microsoft Image Composer, PSP7, Microsoft Imager, and a few others! FGD: Customized HL2DM FGD known bugs: players should no longer experience the "teleport lag" as Valve released an engine update. There is an interesting bug where a perfectly thrown frag will freeze the doomball until the frag blows up. The first time the doomball rolls and destroys all the breakables, some client FPS may drop below 30 for a few seconds. HL2DM Dedicated Servers (SRCDS) currently have a bug that prevents airboats from spawning. This feature will work on ListenServers though. compile machine: Intel 3.2GHz HT with 2GB DDR RAM compile time: ~250 minutes total map edits: version 7Q shows 1063 edits from May 6,2006 (started with 176 edits) to November 13,2006 (so ~26 weeks total for 887 edits) or ~4.9 map revisions a day on the average. More then 400 hours on all of dm_spookface2 with an additional unknown amount of time spent by Spook for the new SpookSecret portion of the level. ================ *SPECIAL THANKS* ================ Players that have been extremely helpful in testing this map include (among others): [USA]G-man, Suzi-Q, [WAM]Olrik, [USA]Shadow Santa, Wasp (Death Stars), [USA]X-15, [USA]Rev and [USA]MrT For their excellent advise and feedback on dm_spookface and dm_spookface1: Ko-Tao and [GoTg] Walking Target, [EyE]Valar and [EYE]Loki Special Copyright Note: I've been seeing a few very tacky mappers disassembling and using identical portions of dm_spookface1 or dms_spookface1 in their own maps. This is against the copyright agreement for this map and it's just plain wrong. You are NOT authorized to disassemble and use any portion of this map! Please read the full copyright at the bottom of this readme. ======================================================= <><><><><><><><><><><><> dm_spookface1 readme: <><><><><><><><><><><><> dm_spookface1 is an update to the very popular dm_spookface map that was released June 18,2005. Over 100,000 players have downloaded dm_spookface during the last year (that I have numbers for), over 25,000 just from my little server. This update keeps all the existing textures but considerably improves the performance of the map and adds a few small secrets as well as much needed weapon placement changes (mostly removing slams and reducing the number of RPGs). These changes were developed in anticipation of the release of dm_spookface2 which has a very complete texture update and other additional secrets and play areas. Compile time for dm_spookface1 was almost exactly 2 hours on one 3.2GHz computer. Elapsed time to implement all the updates to the original map was 5 days, but many of the changes were done previously during the development of dm_spookface2 over the last 3 months or so. Playtesting was very helpful and I had great input from {EyE}Loki, {EyE}Valar, [USA]Shadow Santa, [GoTg] Walking Target, (GoTg) Bluesman, [GoTg] Floozey, Ko-Tao, Wasp(Death Stars), [USA]MrT and [RDC]Spook. Primarily, this update is a performance update that should give everyone from 2x to 3x better FPS, especially out on the far runners. Comparing the old map and the new from out on the far runners looking back to the center of the map (worst-case): System: 3.2GHz Intel P4, 2GB memory, Nvidia 6800 Ultra: ------------------------------------------------------- old: ~15ms render time = 68FPS new: ~5ms render time = 180 to 200FPS so I see ~ 3X performance benefit on my high-end test system. These updates should also help the occasional warp connection problem that everyone has been seeing a lot more since the July 27, 2006 HL2DM server/client update. You may still see it the very first time you warp outside and see the entire map but that should be the only time. I've worked very hard to discover and implement the changes to accomplish this update and was very gratified to see that Valve released my changes with the last SDK release. Of course, these changes had already been implemented for EP2, but I would like to think my efforts got them released for HL2DM as well. In addition to other little changes, I removed all slams from the map and removed 3 rpgs. Slams do not work well on this map, even one slam became a major play problem so fini la slam! In general, all of the changes and updates are teasers and lead-in to dm_spookface2 which has an extensive texture update and some additional fun secrets and play areas for everyone to enjoy. I was very lucky and [RDC] Spook was able to spend some time to work on the new secret for dm_spookface2, so I'm sure we will all be thrilled with what he creates. NOTE: There is one bogus runtime warning that you can ignore: "Warning, funcladder with blocked top point" Oh yes ... I also introduce a new play mode for the map, can you find it? In the meanwhile, enjoy! qUiCkSiLvEr <><><><><><><><> original readme: <><><><><><><><> dm_spookface is a very unique play environment characterized by unusual art pictures on marble. The whole map is a beautiful marble construction with three main areas situated in a very craggy mountain environment and surrounded by a shallow water moat. There are three very unusual huge trees growing out of one area of the mountains, odd and symmetrical. They must be unusual to be growing out there don't you think? The main play area is above ground with a central plaza and many hiding, sniping, running and gunning areas. There are a number of sniper cubby holes and all around the map are ramps that connect the upper areas to the plaza. There is also a crow's nest high above the plaza. There are a number of display planters and pots in the main plaza resting on breakable marble pillars. Out in the water moat that surrounds the main part of the map are the far runners which are on high marble pillars with protected embattlements to hide behind. To get to these runners there are 4 spawn points, two warps and an invisible ramp across from the top of the main play area. Below the main level is a lower play area with a long dusty hallway. On display along the hallway are some beautiful pots on marble pillars. All the pillars (above and below) are breakable and the pottery can be grabbed and used by the gravity gun. The hallway has two illusional doorways, one goes all the way down to the treasure vault. There are several other ways to access and exit the treasure room as well, you'll have to do some exploring to find them all. There is also a (slightly) hidden credit room. At one end of the hallway is a poem engraved into the marble, you can click the wall for an additional effect that complements the poem. The outside water area is designed for easy exit, just wade up to any wall and push forward (be sure to look up) and you'll bob right up to the top of the escarpment. You can jump across off the high runners to the far large dam walls and look over the sides, but you probably won't want to stay there since you're going to be a little exposed. ======================================================= CONSTRUCTION: This map is a conversion and extensive update of a HLDM (HL1) map that was released around May 2003 by [RDC]Spook. Spook has made many very popular castle maps for HLDM and this was an unusual and popular variation that he designed. Spook graciously gave me permission to convert the map to the Source engine. My feeling was that the textures would look much better and the map layout would be very suitable for HL2DM. I wanted a very very clean map, nice to look at with comfortable lighting that would enable many different styles of play but not have a lot of physics objects to stumble over. Surprise and the hunt are important parts of this map, but just slugging it out with rpgs is a heck of a lot of fun too! The custom 3Dskybox, water and far runners as well as the pottery and planters are all additions that I thought would give a much more open feel to the map and keep play interesting and challenging. original HLDM map: spookface by [RDC]Spook (Half-Life 1 dm map) with permission orig. author's email: RDCSpook@shaw.ca prefabs: None other models: pottery brought over from CS:S map de_piranesi editor used: Hammer 4.0 (Source) Build 3057 utilities used: Valve Source SDK known bugs: none specific to the map compile machine: Intel 3GHz HT with 4GB DDR RAM compile time: ~78 minutes total map edits: 173 edits from May 2 to June 18 (so 6 weeks) or ~4 map revisions a day on the average. ======================================================= WATER NOTE: As of the release date of this map, if a player dies while in the water there is a chance that when the player respawns he/she may continue to hear water gurgling and nothing short of reconnecting will stop the sound. This is a known bug in the current HL2DM engine. WATER NOTE: It is very easy to get out of the water, just run up to the any of the straight walls around the map push forward and be sure to look up. The game physics will pop you right up to the top of the wall. I tried several lip schemes but they just made things more difficult. SECRETS NOTE: There are several secrets on this map, some from the original design and some I added to improve connectivity or to provide a rest and observation areas. Mostly the secrets are here to inspire players to really explore and learn the map and how it works. ======================================================= INSTALLATION: Unzip dm_spookface.zip (there should be three files). Place the dm_spookface.bsp, dm_spookface.res and dm_spookface.txt in your HL2mp\maps folder, typically: C:\Program files\Valve\Steam\SteamApps\\half-life 2 deathmatch\hl2mp\maps ======================================================= OTHER LEVELS BY qUiCkSiLvEr: Please refer to my webpage for my map lists and pictures. ======================================================= BETA TESTERS: [RDC]Spook [Team]USA - Shadow Santa, MrT, X-15, Rev, Boo-Hoo, Boogeyman and Darth Sailor among others. Release Candidate Playtest by all the Steam forum Moderators and Valve participants and Team pfeffer organized by ocarD/Draco (many thanks!). ======================================================= *SPECIAL THANKS* [RDC]Spook for doing such an incredible job on the original map and textures. Many thanks to Valve for the incredible Source engine and specifically to Mike Dussalt, David Speyrer, Jess Cliffe, John Guthrie, Marc Laidlaw, Alfred Reynolds and Taylor Sherman for their ongoing encouragement and assistance. ======================================================= COPYRIGHT STUFF dm_spookface.bsp copyright June 18, 2005 by Kevin Ottalini (qUiCkSiLvEr) with original legacy copyright ownership by [RDC]Spook Original Poem "Touch" copyright June 9, 2005 by Kevin Ottalini (qUiCkSiLvEr) You MUST NOT distribute this level unless you include this text file WITH NO MODIFICATIONS. Please include the .res file as well so the text description file will propagate properly during map downloads. This map may ONLY be distributed over the Internet. You are NOT authorized to put this map on any CD or distribute it in any way without my written permission. You are NOT authorized to disassemble and use any portion of this map. Please feel free to email me with any comments and thank you for taking the time to read this and for playing on this map. Enjoy and have a safe day! qUiCkSiLvEr ============== Technical info ============== Object names Objects/Maxobjs Memory / Maxmem Fullness ------------ --------------- --------------- -------- models 72/1024 3456/49152 ( 7.0%) brushes 709/8192 8508/98304 ( 8.7%) brushsides 5165/65536 41320/524288 ( 7.9%) planes 3886/65536 77720/1310720 ( 5.9%) vertexes 7146/65536 85752/786432 (10.9%) nodes 2048/65536 65536/2097152 ( 3.1%) texinfos 1662/12288 119664/884736 (13.5%) texdata 73/2048 2336/65536 ( 3.6%) dispinfos 8/0 1408/0 ( 0.0%) disp_verts 648/0 12960/0 ( 0.0%) disp_tris 1024/0 2048/0 ( 0.0%) disp_lmsamples 26472/0 26472/0 ( 0.0%) faces 4210/65536 235760/3670016 ( 6.4%) origfaces 2705/65536 151480/3670016 ( 4.1%) leaves 2121/65536 118776/3670016 ( 3.2%) leaffaces 4893/65536 9786/131072 ( 7.5%) leafbrushes 1627/65536 3254/131072 ( 2.5%) surfedges 30867/512000 123468/2048000 ( 6.0%) edges 17365/256000 69460/1024000 ( 6.8%) worldlights 57/8192 5016/720896 ( 0.7%) waterstrips 303/32768 3030/327680 ( 0.9%) waterverts 0/65536 0/786432 ( 0.0%) waterindices 4815/65536 9630/131072 ( 7.3%) cubemapsamples 66/1024 1056/16384 ( 6.4%) overlays 0/512 0/180224 ( 0.0%) lightdata [variable] 1910744/0 ( 0.0%) visdata [variable] 156334/16777216 ( 0.9%) entdata [variable] 70955/393216 (18.0%) occluders 0/0 0/0 ( 0.0%) occluder polygons 0/0 0/0 ( 0.0%) occluder vert ind 0/0 0/0 ( 0.0%) detail props [variable] 1/12 ( 8.3%) static props [variable] 1/1036 ( 0.1%) pakfile [variable] 1118/0 ( 0.0%) Win32 Specific Data: physics [variable] 358942/4194304 ( 8.6%) ==== Total Win32 BSP file data space used: 3675991 bytes ==== Linux Specific Data: physicssurface [variable] 515389/6291456 ( 8.2%) ==== Total Linux BSP file data space used: 3832438 bytes ==== Total triangle count: 11192