Ive been wondering. Its been talked about quite often how there should be maps where paratroopers start in parachutes descending onto a map. Ive been wondering if anyone of the good (ie experienced) DoD mappers have actually tested this on a map. I think the ol Hedgerow would be great test bed for such a thing.

Well I've been brainstorming a few ways to have an interesting in drop battle, but I have yet to try it out...maybe I should soon.

Maybe a 20 foot drop if we're lucky, but maps are considerably small if you don't want lag. It's it's going to be an open map even shorter.

lol remember dod_omaga???? when you would float down into the spawn like a para drop in market garden.

there was a discussion like this on the old forums , probably multiple discussions


and the ssame answer that came out all the times


was that it was pretty much impossible to do with the half-life engine

it would make the r_speeds horrible to see the whole map.but is should be possible to make a player flote down with entities, but i dont know about the cheut (sp? lol)

How I see it, its a possibility. Given with some limitations of course.

Ever play para_rzchateau? The allies spawned in a great plane sequence, with guys parachuting all around and fighters zooming past, they fell a ways until they were teleported I believe, you might have to download it to see it done, but it was a pretty darn cool sequence.

I think thats the main way to do it, a seperate skyboxed in area and then a teleport, if it was smooth enough players wouldn't even be able to tell.

Getting parachutes I'm not sure how, but I'd bet there'd be at least a rough way of doing this, even if it wasn't perfect.

But overall I think you can work around things and get a passable para drop if not a good one, its a good idea and it could be implemented more.

I have an idea how, and it al relys on a lew level clouds.

Player view:
The allies are parachuting into some mountainous terrain. they jusp out their plane, drift down viewing everything they pass through some clouds, the come out of the clouds in a valley and touch down.

Mapping:
Have 2 areas, 1 "cloud" area and 1 map area. take an overview shot of the map area. make that the floor of the "cloud" area. make sure the clooud area has a large bunch fo clouds at the bottom dirfting along etc. The players spawn up top somewhere near/in the plane. they jump out. then u do the gravtiy trick. when they hit the clouds simply teleport them to the play area. now the allies will be drifting down into a valley, this will be cordened off and best having the a tunnel that leads down. just make the skybox relativley cloudy and throw some sprties in only the alleisd drop area to make sure.

all i have to say is:
the overrated, super-duper, extraordinary, one shot kill, almost 100% accurate, easy to use, rarly missed shots, "pop, kill, and run", bs shot mauser + people in sky = .......

but nevertheless, it still is a great idea and i'd love to see this:D :D :D :D :D

Wait for dod2...

:D don't say that! i'm gunna have troubles sleeping at night now, now i'm going to be thinking of dod2 all night:D :D :D :D

err, actually, ive already made a para test map and it works fine, i didnt think of releasing the rmf but maybe i will.

it works on the idea of one seperate part of the map where the plane is, and u teleport the the main map. and with some sounds, shakes, gravity and pushes it makes in very nice and realistic.

Originally posted by gen.mckee
it would make the r_speeds horrible to see the whole map.but is should be possible to make a player flote down with entities, but i dont know about the cheut (sp? lol)

Either wait for DoD 2...

Or in DoD 1, make a model for all the terrain and such! This map doesn't need vis blocking. In fact, the purpose of such maps is to see the entire map, allowing you to snipe across a distance of 400 meters or more! It's basically open combat to the max! That's the premise of the gameplay. The purpose of such maps is to NOT use vis blocking at all. Allow people to occupy extremely high structures (eg. church steeples, bunker ring stand tops) to use as sniping spots/grenade throwing spots and snipe across the open air without any worry of sky walls absorbing bullets/grenades. Call artillery to blow church steeple that can be seen through the treeline across a 400 meter distance(yea, no sky walls to block things.), etc. Or even better, use bazooka as a trajectory weapon to hopefully fire and hit something far far away u actually can't see. Epoly max at 5000 (open terrain, some stuff, etc.), and wpoly max at 600 (buildings, other stuff, etc.)!!

I've always wanted to use my method of .mdl+map to allow you to paradrop from high high above without any high r_speeds from any position high up in the air due to the usage of .mdl that replaces the majority of the map. This is indeed possible 'cause i jumped close to 8512 units (400 meters) high up in the air and my map net epoly was at 4000 and my wpoly at 685. That's pretty reasonable r_speeds by dod standards.

Another thing, since you are talking about a terrain landscape .mdl, the .mdl can extend beyond the boundaries of the WC grid, giving the illusion of an extremely large environment as you parachute down below (the environment extends all the way to the horizon!). In fact, with some good UV texturing (top Decal texturing.....top Per Patch texturing), you can paint nice hisotircally accruate/shaped flooded regions/swamps, historically accruate hedgerow field shapes/patterns, and such at the faraway unreachable .mdl faces, etc. From above, it's possible to get a breathtaking view of the network of hedgerows, the sunken roads and the inundated flooded regions. The entire .mdl will be so large that it would extend beyond the player's eye level from below. (or at night, you could have some fog and reduce visiblity). Whatever it is, no ugly void edges! A full fledged environment.

Of cos, it would be pretty stupid without a parachute model :D (maybe should try it with Parachute) And 400 meters is pretty low altitude jump. In HL2, you can go up to 1600 meters :D And the plane flybys go across a distance of 1.6 km! In HL1, the battle lag might easily be a killer, considering you can see the entire map at once (but since you are parchuting, this isn't critical)! Hint brushes might be needed once you get on the ground lest the lag continues on the ground. Maybe i'll convert a knife v_model as a v_parachute model and see how it looks as i descend down slowly using the modified knife model as a spoof model, and record a avi of how it feels. Perhaps this can be a big influence and great idea if there could b something tangible made out of this.

MOst important thing though, i need authentic hedgerow textures. Anyone got those?

my ideia:

Take a overall screenshot of your map.
Now use it as a texture for the bottom of a room.
Over each "room", make a portal
U can make a cheap geometry to make this screenshot not so flat.... :)

Yes... we should get a modeller to make a huge amnt of terrain like for use in maps, it would get a really cool feel to see the low epoly terrain stretching out into the distance....

But who could pull off such a feat of modelling grace? Who can help us in this time of need? *play batman theme song*

I didn't know Batman could model...

Glidias: Great idea of course, how are you going to work the dropping though? In terms of spawning: you'd have to havea model c47 if you had such a big map otherwise you'd be in trouble with r-speeds witha moving c47, it'd be pretty retarded to make such a nice map and a stationary plane. So you'd use a model c47 with a flybye animation but how would you coordinate it with spawing? Or am I missing something?

Klein of course has some nice hedgerows textures but don't know that he'll let you use them.

If you decide to do a map like this contact me and I'll be glad to help out somehow, I'd been planning a paradrop map anyways.

You can spawn in the air near the AC47, fall and see the plane, then teleported in the clouds, then teleported in the map. In the map you could go somewhere else via a tunnel, which the best way to keep r_speeds low.

The clouds are a few particle_shooter (yes AB we had the same idea at the same time, lol).
There are only 2 info_player_allied (1 for each door). But you can create a whole C47 with a prefab.

I made some tests like this a few weeks ago, it is very nice, even if the players fall in the air without parachute :(

The players on the ground can shoot at the paratroopers. That's why I added 3 trigger_gravity in the last part : the 1st to make the player fall quickly, then more slowly, then gravity 1. Not easy to shoot someone who falls at high speed.

Originally posted by Whoopy42

Klein of course has some nice hedgerows textures but don't know that he'll let you use them.


I do ? The only ones i can think of are the jagd ones... which suck.
I will make some new ones for dod_honor though.. Will do a snowy and non-snowy version of each.
Ok time to cease the thread hi-jacking. I'll open a new thread about my wad when time has come. The wad has just passed the 2 MB mark so I would say it's progressing nicely after around 3 days of work. Check out for my website (http://kleinluka.dodfi.net) to keep yourself up to date on progress ;)

For the parachute models.. someone was doing one on the MSA forums...

And u can use jumpman.mdl from dod3.1b... this can make you think u are not throwing urself alone into the darkness...

Has anyone here even heard of Firearms?

Originally posted by Angry Beaver
I have an idea how, and it al relys on a lew level clouds.

Player view:
The allies are parachuting into some mountainous terrain. they jusp out their plane, drift down viewing everything they pass through some clouds, the come out of the clouds in a valley and touch down.

Mapping:
Have 2 areas, 1 "cloud" area and 1 map area. take an overview shot of the map area. make that the floor of the "cloud" area. make sure the clooud area has a large bunch fo clouds at the bottom dirfting along etc. The players spawn up top somewhere near/in the plane. they jump out. then u do the gravtiy trick. when they hit the clouds simply teleport them to the play area. now the allies will be drifting down into a valley, this will be cordened off and best having the a tunnel that leads down. just make the skybox relativley cloudy and throw some sprties in only the alleisd drop area to make sure.
Damn that minimap! I would be pretty cool to do that with a stationary C47 that's rocking around, perhaps other C47s, shrunk to imitate them being far away, and some close ones, maybe an odd fighter, and all it really was was just a stationary plane with a few other models in a really cloudy area so you can't see it's not moving, maybe a moving fighter flying by or something. You jump, after about three seconds you hit the teleporter(maybe have 9 of them in rows of three, each leading to a different spot on the map to give the player control of where he lands), and then players must regroup and take out the objectives. After the teleport you just use the technique Chow, the guy who made anzio, did back in the day with elevators or something, I don't really remember. Unfortunatly, players would catch on that their minimap isn't moving, and sooner or later they'd figure out how to control their landings to maximize being an *******, and, oh yeah, it'll send you r_speeds to hell.
*edit*
@freak, Firearms does it wrong. Mainly because they're unrealistic as hell, and also because they let the players open their own parachute. irl, you hook up, jump, and there's about a 4 second wait before the chute opens itself. There are some controls above the paratrooper's head to control landing...well, sort of control it, that are still in use today, but not much. America's Army does this well, except not perfectly. If it's implemented in DoD2, it shouldn't have the flare thing, just very hard to use controls.

Originally posted by Whoopy42
If you decide to do a map like this contact me and I'll be glad to help out somehow, I'd been planning a paradrop map anyways.

Good stuff! I would love to see a remade DoD_Hedgerow (erm para_hedgerow).

Glidias could you write a tutorial on how to convert terrain in worldcraft to .mdl. You are always talking about this procedure and its benefits but I have no idea how to do it. Is there a simple program that converts .map or .rmf to .mdl or is it a little bit more complicated than that? Please enlighten the dod mapping community please, I am sure we would all like to know!

Thanks

Easy way:

Nem's Terrain Generator (i don't use the latest version 'cause it has problems with dxf export). Convert the terrain you made in Nem's to .dxf. Convert the terrain you made in Nem's to .map and this .map will act as your clip brushes for the terrain (select the entire terrain and use func_wall texture render 0 to act as clip brush). Of cos, i would normally optimise the brushwork terrain and ensure the terrain concept isn't too bumpy 'cause HL has a clip node limit (make sure you use clip node economy in zhlt compile tools!). Texture it (using per-face/patch texturing.) UV Texture it again. Manually UV paint your roads and decor and such. Export to .mdl.

Problem wtih .mdls might be due to lighting and flickering/aliasing and HL's ugly way of rendering models.and the inability for shadows to be cast on models. It's a price to pay.

Hard way:

There's a way to convert your rmf brushwork to modeled geometry. I'll try and dig up some old info.

Also, HL multiplayer can't handle moving vehicles well due to lag and jerkiness (if there are occupants inside the vehicle), so the compromise (which would look nicer in my opinion), is to have a solid C47 model fly across the sky. When the C47 flies into the the map or above designated dropzone, the para spawn points below it will be active. When the C47 is outside the map or dropzone, the spawn points below it will be inactive. Thus, you can only spawn in the air directly below the C47 the moment it flies into the map/dropzone. You can control when you wanna enable/disable the spawns accordingly so it's up to you. This basically creates a Operation Flashpoint/Red Alert effect, which involves paratroops appearing suddenly below an aircraft flying by. This also gives a better feel of the "wave of reinforcements". OFp's style is as simple as it can get. You just spawn in the air with a parachute at the scripted moment.

So, info_player_alliedpara? info_player_axispara? Pleeeease? It's merely a spawn point that will make the player spawn with a parachute. The moment the player touches the ground, his parachite dissapears and he can carry his gun. Simple to code. Simple concept.

I was saying It's possible to code an entity that would act as a parachute in the half life engine. With a little tinkering you could make it work for dod.

like the fuzzman said wait for dod2, but if you cant

Do a env_push and slightly push of from the ground


its hard to explain but with a few tweaks you could possibly pull it off...

-Eagle

it was done in a firearms map, worked quite well too, and when you landed you pressed the use key to release the chute.
you could also release the chute in the air and drop to your death :D

In that sense, it would need to be coded in and modelled (parachute)

Originally posted by Pvt.Malarkey
lol remember dod_omaga???? when you would float down into the spawn like a para drop in market garden.

lol, I remember, it was my first map :) I'm glad someone reminds it, you really played it?

:D

well after a few min's of work i have a C-47 version with a mdoel transparency hole in the side. I'm making the inside, but I've nto been abel to do to much cause of mdoeling prog woes for ages.

I remember there used to be a parachutte map in firearms, I'm not sure of the name though, but everything was fine on it, no horrible lag or low fps.

Long ago i edited a dod beta 3.1 c47 and it's crudely made i guess.

model goes to models\mapmodels folder

i don't know if anyone has said this but y cant someone just make a flash intro with the ppl jumping out oof the c-47 then come back into a 1st person view with about 20 meters to go till the ground and yeh i dont no what im talking about, im not much of a mapping person but i would really like to see a para map where u actually jump so good luck.

1) HL dosn't support flash
2) people don't like the wait before playing
3) we want people to control whats going on
4) with your thing everyone would have to spawn in the same point
5) the ideas presented here are better in the first place

your abit of a arse mate next time your visting the mods and skins froums im going to be a ***** to u. I was only trying to help so i think so be more considerit.

Angry Beaver is right tho, so dont call him an arse.

ok I didnt think i was being an ass at all. all i thought i did was present the problems in bulelt form cause i was to lazy to make sentences. however having you pissed at me sin't good so I'm sorry and i hope you can calm down.

on another note why on earth would you take the childish attitude of youwere rude so I'll be even rudere back. that solves nothing. first you try be nice and find the misunderstanding. if after that both parties are jackasses, follow whatever route you think approiate. but try fix it first.