New Map: Brozmap (xbmap1 remake)

[MyeRs]

Brotherhood Mapping Presents:

Brozmap - a remake / modernization of xbmap1

Most up to date version: Beta 1

Xbmap1 is a loved map by 3 members of our community, however other teams forfeit the second we put it on because they do not want to play it. The imbalance (certain jumps only possible on 1 side), the 'line fest' mid, the ladder to window path being a waste, and the inability to grab being issues the biggest haters have. That doesn't even account for fact every texture on the original is not aligned. We searched into the numerous Xbmap remakes, but all had identical issues.

With the help of the XBMAPfanclub group (Juic3 and Fzx), I have made a modernized version that maintains the areas this fan club loves, while improving aesthetics and adding changes that the haters approved of.

There are a few misalignments probably - they will be fixed by Beta2. I had to manually change all textures to SX/SY 1:1, as I had everything to 0.5 which made the map stunning but that was a major contributor to my poor rspeeds. I removed some details, manually reverted all textures back to 1:1 (and tried to align as I went, but I definitely missed some).

The middle bridge "bunkers" are raised by 2 units, which changes the mid speed (as it can stop you) - but you can adjust your path to the sides of it. You can also utilize that 2 unit raise to DJ off of the bunker straight to roof.

A new path was added to allow a break in the line - and new tools around the side window were added to create more value to that spot (a hole to drop water, a window to shoot out of, a barrel for some cover, and a triple jump to access it from the non ladder jump).

I also utilized clip brushes to fix the DJ's that would only work on 1 side of the map.

I'm not sure I like my light settings... always open to suggestions. It does not have ambient lighting - sun_angle is set to 45 and sun_light is 160. I forget what sun surface was.

This map is currently on all [NA] match servers as beta/brozmap_b1

[jitspoe]

Attached a demo from the Social Saturday play of this one as well.

The biggest thing to fix is the performance issue -- it seems way more of the map is visible than should be.  Perhaps some things are marked as detail that should be blocking vis?  I noticed the zig-zag back path seems to be rendering other parts of the map when it should be completely sealed off.  Also, it might be good to add a more accessible main path to the flag for new players and bots so trick jumps aren't required.  I added a ladder on the side of pgptrain, and nobody took issue with it: http://dplogin.com/files/maps/pgptrain.bsp (had several complaints about it requiring skill jumps before).  The dj will still provide a competitive edge as it's faster but it can be both competitive and accessible!

I'm not sure how many brotherhood maps you're planning to make, but it might be a bit confusing having a bunch of brozthis.bsp and brozthat.bsp.

[MyeRs]

Attached a demo from the Social Saturday play of this one as well.

The biggest thing to fix is the performance issue -- it seems way more of the map is visible than should be.  Perhaps some things are marked as detail that should be blocking vis?  I noticed the zig-zag back path seems to be rendering other parts of the map when it should be completely sealed off.  Also, it might be good to add a more accessible main path to the flag for new players and bots so trick jumps aren't required.  I added a ladder on the side of pgptrain, and nobody took issue with it: http://dplogin.com/files/maps/pgptrain.bsp (had several complaints about it requiring skill jumps before).  The dj will still provide a competitive edge as it's faster but it can be both competitive and accessible!

I'm not sure how many brotherhood maps you're planning to make, but it might be a bit confusing having a bunch of brozthis.bsp and brozthat.bsp.

I changed the download link as I realized I made some errors on my detail brushes (and scaling) - that did bring down R_speeds (especially in the side path). I'm not sure if that was the one you had downloaded - I should have changed it to B2 to make it more visible/clear that there was a change. I tried to keep the main "map" identical to original, just with added side paths to break the 'line fest', since my main goal was modernizing the map.

In Beta 2 I will:

1) add a ladder - I did not think about it because I was trying to follow the same scheme as original. But you are right - helps newer players, and has no negative to competitive.
2) Try to see what I can do to reduce r_speeds /wpoly even further (still learning how to do this efficiently, the side path is down to about 600 now. Mid peaks at 4.5k, which seems fine for most systems but definitely not optimal.

Regarding the Brotherhood naming (Broz_mapname) - it was because we are planning to host "Brotherhood tournaments", so we followed the stylistic way pbcup went. This is the only map that doesnt have an underscore (as a play on "xb" map). It also helps us as we get older and have worse memory... as the "broz_map" file names will all be sorted beside eachother, so we wont have to try to remember each individual name. We barely could remember the map names we released in 2020.... maybe the maps were just forgettable. But when we try to have our kids restock 

Thanks for the demo! Will look at it later today and update this message with any other areas that B2 will plan to tackle.

[jitspoe]

If you type "gl_showtris 1" at the console, you can see what's rendering.  Note that if you look at the back path from the middle or go into the back path and look toward the middle, nearly everything is rendering, even though there are solid walls blocking it.  I think this is the primary issue.  I'm guessing you have some surfaces marked as detail so they aren't blocking visibility.

[MyeRs]

Beta 2 attached.

Not a huge update:
1) Ladder to flag added
2) Fixed most of the alignments on woods
3) Lowered R_Speeds (still learning how to reduce more, but got to point where nobody was having FPS issue in play tests)

[jitspoe]

You still have a bunch of stuff visible through these walls.  You sure you don't have the detail flag on them set?  Even without hint brushes or any fancy stuff like that, these areas still shouldn't be visible.

I believe you can compile the map with -nodetail to hide all the detail brushes and make it apparent what's hidden that should be blocking vis.  Also, if you're using BSP, you can do Group | Omit detail to hide all the detail brushes and see if there's any gaps or missing walls allowing line of sight.  Sadly, I don't think there's anything like this in Trenchbroom.

[MyeRs]

You still have a bunch of stuff visible through these walls.  You sure you don't have the detail flag on them set?  Even without hint brushes or any fancy stuff like that, these areas still shouldn't be visible.

I believe you can compile the map with -nodetail to hide all the detail brushes and make it apparent what's hidden that should be blocking vis.  Also, if you're using BSP, you can do Group | Omit detail to hide all the detail brushes and see if there's any gaps or missing walls allowing line of sight.  Sadly, I don't think there's anything like this in Trenchbroom.

I use BSP.

I originally had everything set to detail except outer edges of the map because chatgpt told me to... and then I selected all walls and checked detail box and then "remove contents". I assumed it worked because it r_speeds were down by 500-1000 in most spots. I also used hint brushes along those walls as one of my trying methods to reduce r_speeds....

I'll try compiling with -nodetail or group/omit detail to see what I'm doing wrong.

[jitspoe]

Yeah... don't trust chatgpt.  You should only make things detail that won't have any chance of blocking line of sight.  Things like the wooden frames on the bunkers and such.  The only thing the detail flag really does is speed up vis times.  If you're using the ericw tools, it seems -nodetail actually just disables the detail flag and -omitdetail removes the detail brushes.  Since you're in BSP, though, you can just do group|omit detail to see what's detailed.  I'd suggest this:

- Select everything (~ key)
- Press the [-Det] button to remove all the details.
- Explicitly select the frame brushes and such and press [+Det] to add detail to those.

I tried compiling with -omitdetail and huge chunks of map are missing that should be blocking line of sight like the terrain, and there's even an open gap to the outside here which is probably why vis'd so poorly.

[jitspoe]

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2672688485 is the Twitch VOD from when we played, though we were all ranting about the price of things and stuff so nobody was really commenting on the map, lol.  Might be useful, anyway.  I do like the hole that drops down from the window path to the water.  That offers a nice little mixup.  I do think the back path could stand to be a little shorter, though -- maybe cut out one of the zig-zag walls.