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  1. #1

    Tron/Blade Runner - themed map on Xbox

    Hey all, I just uploaded an ambitious new Journey map called "Simulation Theory" after Muse's newest album as it inspired me to create this.
    I poured months of time into this to create a strong Tron and Blade Runner atmosphere.
    Hope you find it enjoyable.

    As a note for fellow creators: I came across several challenges while creating this map...

    AI ISSUE/SOLUTION
    - Scripted spawning only works on Wave 1, but keep in mind that if your 2nd wave have already started spawning, it will impact those Wave 1 AI that have yet to spawn via your script. As only a certain amount of AI can be alive/spawned at any given moment. To fix this, I replaced my wave 2 enemies with wave 3 ones, and have only one wave 2 enemy spawn. Therefor the entirety of wave 3's spawning parameters are dependent only on the single wave 2 enemy. I created what I call a "Death Tube" which has the wave 2 enemy spawn in a generic cylinder shape that he cannot escape, somewhere outside the map. I then created a script to trigger the spawn of "Fire Patch 01" inside the cylinder with the AI. He would eventually burn and parish, triggering the spawn of Wave 3 nice and cleanly. This keeps your later waves from interfering with your scripted spawning in Wave 1.
    You can use the same process once more with a Wave 4 victim, to spawn your Wave 5 enemies.
    (Due to the AI budget, and the exclusivity of scripting on Wave 1, it might be important to also create scripts to unspawn certain Wave 1 AI that the player might not have killed.)

    PUBLISHING BUG
    - Publishing this map introduced a couple of bugs that I currently don't know a fix for. All of my scripted objective markers have become visible right at the start of the playthrough. And many of the Blood Dragon assets with neon lights had their custom colour switched back to the default (white).
    These aren't game-breaking issues, but it's annoying as none of these are apparent in testing.

    GENERAL TIPS
    - The Blood Dragon assets are plenty of fun to use, particularly the ones with neon lights because these objects (as well as the objects found under "Lighting") do not take up any Lights and FX budget. Just be aware of the publishing issue mentioned above.

    - The game doesn't tell you but there is such thing as a "Shadow Budget" within the budget grid. If you have too many lights near each other that cast shadows, you may not get the desired shadows from specific lights unless you are up really close. Either turn off the "cast shadow" option on select lights, or space them out more.

    - When designing a somewhat linear solo/coop map, try to account for all types of players. There are certain ways we expect our maps to be played, or certain experiences we expect the player to have. Trying to force those experiences can be very difficult, because no one player is going to do the exact same thing. For example: "Simulation Theory" has a couple of driving sections that should ideally deliver the "best" experience in that area. However I have to ask myself "what if someone decides to get out of their car and go look over here?" While I don't cater to that behavior, it is also in my best interest to ensure that doing so will not deliver a negative experience. Which is also why instead of having a potential death pit early in the map that the player can fall into... they instead get teleported back onto the road, with a brand new vehicle spawn in front of them. If they try jumping in again.. well they asked for the slow death that the kill box will give them. But the last thing I want is for someone to jump into my map, die, and be forced to restart or move on (why can't we have respawns Ubi?!). This can be a pretty feel-bad experience. I'd bet most players would choose to walk away from it before seeing the rest of the map.

    Anyway, that's all.
    Yes, I would love for everyone to check out my map. And I thought I'd offer some help in return.

    Thanks everyone.
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  2. #2
    Steve64b's Avatar Senior Member
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    Yep, nice observations!

    A workaround for the objective markers being visible would be to make a script that triggers right at the start of the map. Purpose of this script is to set all markers' visibility to invisible. Then you can make each one visible with other scripts as players play through the level.
     1 people found this helpful
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  3. #3
    That solution worked perfectly! Thank you so much for suggesting that.
    I had originally thought that the best way to do it was use scripts to spawn and despawn objective markers. But using the "objective marker visibility" option is actually publish-friendly. It also works for extraction zones which is great!

    Kudos to you.
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  4. #4
    Great post.

    I would also like to see respawning and/or checkpoints. I worry that a player can spend 40 mins playing my level, and die with only a few enemies left to kill, forcing them right back to the start.
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