Syndicate: Initiation will be a small SP level for Jedi Academy. This project was formerly known as The Puzzle, and it indeed contains a large amount of complicated, scripted puzzles.

The events of the Syndicate:Initiation will take place during the attacks of the Cult of Ragnos against the Jedi Academy. When Luke was sending the few Jedi available to guard places of residual Force activity, one of those sent found more than he bargained for...

For more information, you can have a look at the Serpent Code Productions website (the site is unfortunately very 56k unfriendly.)

Some screenshots for your evaluation:




All kind of feedback is welcome: short or long, positive or negative!

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Frozen by ICARUS

[This message has been edited by lassev (edited April 25, 2004).]

Sounds interesting and looks promising.

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"Häb Pfrässe, süsch chlepfts!" - The coolest language in the world (besides Cherokee)

Yay... a SP level... looks nice.. keep up the good work.

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"The quality of the levels you make is determined by the skill of the person not by the editor in which they use!"
-Michael Kyle

I love the headless Sith.

I don't know if it's just me but doesn't the lighting look off in the first pic.

Probably is just me...

i don't like the grating in the last pic. it clashes like mad with the theme.

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Current Maps | Inclusion | Restless Endeavor

There is a thin line between insanity and stupidity. I am that line.

Hmm... I wonder what you mean. Still, I admit that lighting is one of my weak points in mapping. I don't give it the time and thought it would require.

However, if you are concerned about the lighting, I do have one very good bit of news for you: Gothix will have a look at this level, when I'm finished with it, and lighting is indeed one of the main points I expect he will fix, according to our agreement.


That's interesting. I never found it so offending. You might be true that it doesn't fit the last room (the chamber of the last pic) so well as the other rooms, but on the other hand, grating is one of the consistent things throughout the level. Most of the rooms and corridors have it.

I would have preferred an ornamental grating for the chamber, but my skills with PSP/Photoshop were vastly inadequate, as I sadly learnt out However, your comment made me want to retry (and maybe I can copy the design from somewhere). I'm afraid there will be grating always, but the chances are it will suit the room better.

Thanks for the feedback, all of you!

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Frozen by ICARUS

I agree on the grating, it looks fine in the first pic but not so much in the last. The first pic looks pretty awesome by the way! As does the rest actually

From the screens the atmosphere looks really great, I can just hope that you have equally good music/sound effects to back that up. Because the sound is just as important when it comes to ambiance/atmosphere.

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Call me Vedder.
Author of: A Pirate's Tale (Mots SP)
APT homepage
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<phantom> You're always going to be aloser if you attempt to aspire to massassi standards.
<phantom> They're a bunch of socially inadequate <beep> whores who have little or no lives.

[This message has been edited by ZOOIkes (edited April 26, 2004).]

Indeed. I haven't addressed the sounds so extensively yet, apart from the obvious soundsets and other specific effects. But I'll most certainly return to that when the map is otherwise complete!

In the mean time, a couple of shots:


And here's a door called the Hamburger...

...and the Sandwich:

Don't wonder the thing on the left. It's just a 19.99 Credits extra cheap floating platform... But despite the dubious price, it's really good for crossing deep chasms!
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Frozen by ICARUS

[This message has been edited by lassev (edited April 26, 2004).]

THIS LOOKS GOOD!!

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Weird Shi** Happens.
Light And Darkness

I know you already addressed it, but the grating just doesn't fit and especially with the ancient look to the map. I suggest finding a better texture or having someone make a better one for you. Other than that it looks good.

I smell door puzzles and heck I like the scent of it!

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Call me Vedder.
Author of: A Pirate's Tale (Mots SP)
APT homepage
----
<phantom> You're always going to be aloser if you attempt to aspire to massassi standards.
<phantom> They're a bunch of socially inadequate <beep> whores who have little or no lives.

Having heard this opinion now from multiple sources, I must bend and start to look for alternative options. I'll try to find an ornamental grate design and adapt it to shader usage.


You will find a door puzzle you won't forget! I promise that And maybe you will also find some you would like to forget

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Frozen by ICARUS

I love the last shot on the first post. The textures with those pretty jewels... mmm.

My only harp is the grates. They could easily change. I think the specific pic I liked could do with a Casper-shine black surface. A surface so shiny, Mr. Clean would mess himself.

JediKirby

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"I was driving along listening to the radio, when Judas Priest comes on. It was 'You've got another thing coming.' All of a sudden, I enter 'VICE CITY RAMAGE MODE' and nearly ran some guy over"
- ]-[ellequin

Looking good. I really like your SP levels.

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All your my forums, belong to me.
Duel Roadkill
Who wants to play BOOM 3?
BOOM 3

Hmm. I must consider this matter very thoroughly. I'm hesitant to lower the walking level all the way down to the structural floor - however I cannot exclude that option altogether.

The FPS is sometimes running down to below 40 on my crappy computer (so it only a warning, not an alarm) so I must plan carefully all costly effects. Mirror floor is thus out of question. I have the "tcGen environment" function (stage) in the marble shader you see everywhere (black and white), and it's costing some serious FPS already. I doubt I could invest much more than that in the floor either. We'll see...

But please don't be too dissapointed if you just see a better grate over there in the final product

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Frozen by ICARUS

Thanks for the feedback, everyone. I'll post here a closer shot of one of the lamps in the form of a thanks


It uses an environmental glass shader with glow, and flares with customised code. The thin frames are textured with a custom environmental copper shader. I hope you like it!

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Frozen by ICARUS

A shiny surface yes (like obsidian) a reflective (à la Casper's) surface no. A very dark or black marble-like texture would do well in that room.

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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat.

I believe that the grating detracts greatly from the map. A whole lot of gothic archi, and then, smack dab in the center, are these ugly warehouse-like textures cluttering it up. Smooth stone surfaces are much prettier in situations like this, and would add a very mystical feel to an already magical level. Just my 2 cents. Floating stones own.

JediKirby

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"I was driving along listening to the radio, when Judas Priest comes on. It was 'You've got another thing coming.' All of a sudden, I enter 'VICE CITY RAMAGE MODE' and nearly ran some guy over"
- ]-[ellequin

Wow, I got even a Screen of the Day! Thanks, Staff! It's good to know there's at least one site still where people don't think SP mapping is a dead endeavour...

Well, due to the overpowering opposition to the grates, I have decided to try out something else. What that might be, I don't know yet myself, but we will see. I will post some shots once I have had time to plan and test it all out.

As of now I'm still occupied with the details of the manuscript for the cinematics, and fixing the combination of the indoors areas (the shots here) and the EasyGen terrain I recently imported. That's proceeding fine, also, although I haven't yet compiled the map to test it.

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Frozen by ICARUS

Guh, I'll try to reduce the FPS loss for you a bit anyhow.

Oooo.... Mysterious....

2nd post, 1st pic:

Torches might look good on the walls.

The last pic in your second post also looks a little wierd(2 differnet kinds of grates...why?).

Other than that, great job!!!

[edit: sorry, typing too fast]

[This message has been edited by HCF_Duke (edited April 29, 2004).]

Pics 1 and 3 of the 2nd post are of the same room, actually. I'm not sure what you are referring to with the two different kinds... kinds of what? I might add that this room will always be partially very dark, and you don't want to get very familiar with the part of it that is in the shadows... You can count on my word in that

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Frozen by ICARUS

That is some seriously good stuff. Keep it up!

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ye are of nothing, and your work of nought: an abomination is he that chooseth you

All right! After long silence I come back to you now, with the change of the shaders...

Staggering under the heavy opposition to the grating, I launched Photoshop to produce some granite textures: Dark and Light. Here're the results with a suitable environmental shader applied:




I agree this is a huge step to the right direction! Thank you all who opposed the grating!

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Frozen by ICARUS

It looks a lot more sinister... like you're a pawn on the enemies chessboard

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Saberopus: omfq musical genuis j00 >mozart
Thrawn42689: Mozart = n00b

Throw some swirling mist on that floor so that it stays just below where the grating was and I'll make mad love to you all night lo-I'll like you a lot.

Looks 200% better, now.

JediKirby



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"I was driving along listening to the radio, when Judas Priest comes on. It was 'You've got another thing coming.' All of a sudden, I enter 'VICE CITY RAMAGE MODE' and nearly ran some guy over"
- ]-[ellequin

Can you actually have such mist in JA? I'm aware of the fog, although I haven't yet made such maps that would have allowed even that, but swirling mist sounds like a really hard effect.

Anyway, this is a deep indoors area, and the outdoors are pure sand desert, so mist or fog wouldn't be very realistic. But maybe I'll test fog, and if it doesn't clash with the cinematics and such too badly, it might add to the mysterious element.

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Frozen by ICARUS

You can do mist, yeah. Should be pretty easy, in fact, with the new alphaMod volumes.

Yea, that new texture looks much better

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*

I just finished building the very first puzzle you will encounter whilst roaming through the level (and last to be built. They are now all there). Like some others in this level, it's an intricate mix of wise entity use, devious scripting and a little hacking. And just as a reminder, this level is full of puzzles, short of fighting.



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Frozen by ICARUS

[This message has been edited by lassev (edited May 15, 2004).]

I just finished work with the last skin modification needed for the level. One skin for the level is the excellent hf jedi modification by Amidala from Shop Chop, the rest are more or less modified original Raven skins. Of those made by me, the most modified is the Saboteur:


On the left is the original human_merc, which served as a template.

Now that I have all the skins ready, and the architecture is about 98% ready, I will proceed with the cinematics, which is obviously very technical work and will produce no such intermediate, concrete results that could be reported here in an interesting way...

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Frozen by ICARUS

He could use some sort of... glintyness or something on his visor. Right now it's just plain black, and doesn't quite look right

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Moo.

Hmm... An interesting idea. I shall look into the matter. Perhaps some shader would be in order. Of course I couldn't edit the model itself, so it's not technically a good visor (as you can see, if you look at the original one), but some shine might make it better anyhow. Thanks for the idea!

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Frozen by ICARUS

He kind of looks like RoboCop.

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Flibbledy-dibbledy! Nyaaaaaaaahhh!

-The Last True Evil