Buffalo Bad Asses

Please remember this is an ALPHA test only, bugs and issues are expected.

This is the thread to post any issues you have, take Screen Shots also when possible.

If you dont like the map fine, keep it to yourself, thats not what this thread is about either.

Great thanks to Rayban for his efforts and he will be running this thread letting you know what feedback he is looking for.

IP : 74.53.29.120:27960

Password : bbarules1

Once again, this thread is NOT for "great jobs" and such, INFO only.

Thread HiJackers beware, any off subject discussions will result in Forum Account suspensions.

AT THIS POINT IN TIME THE MAP IS NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION, MEANING NOBODY CAN USE IT WITHOUT DIRECT PERMISSION FROM RAYBAN OR BBA

Of course I get to be first to post anything.



Grass growing through the shack floor and something missing on the table.

Just a small wall glitch, may give unfair advantage. First screenie is of the giltch. The second is just to show were it was taken.

just to the left facing away from church on wall also on the right wall if facing away from the church





these are above the doorways in the middle building ground floor where red and blue sides meet


all of these are probably meant to be here but just wanted to show them incase they are not

First of all i want to thank all those who came out to playtest and give feedback
on the map, its very appreciated.

i have the map opened in an editor and i can tell there is going to be a lot of
work left on it before its ready, or at least for an alpha2 test. I have started
to redo/repair structural/detail flaws in the map that should increase fps, but
not change the look of it. this and what i will list is hopefully going to be in the
next alpha test.

- players spawns to be repaired.
- ctf sounds to be added.
- problems with models not showing up to be resolved.
- add the missing ambient sounds to the sides of the map ( you notice there is only thunder and wind sounds in the middle parts )
- improve lighting.
- repair texture problems.
- ajust the map time length and player spawn time.
- replace the cp powerup recharge on the mid bridge to other powerups.
- add buildable cp's for teams engineers to gain xp, as well as covertops to
destroy for xp.

these changes will get closer to a more finalized playable version, there
may be some visual changes added if i get the time, but 1st it must be
made playable.

Orginially there was the idea that there would be a few map secrets for
players to find.. these did not go towards xp, or points for either team,
just things players could look for as in mini-quests. i tossed them all out
for this alpha, but i kept a few in for looks, such as the crow.. and the
singing tree with the fireflys. these may or may not make it back into the
mini-quests, i dunno at this point... and again these added nothing to a
teams score, but were meant to add something extra to the map.. if you
heard there were 8 secrets in the map, you'd be curious and want to find
them. sort of a carrot to play the map..

but for now i will work on the things needed that i mentioned, and get a
new alphatest ready, and if it works ok with no new problems then i will
start to do the final version. if i do re-add the secrets then they wont need
an alphatest, as they are pretty simple to setup as i have done them
before.

once again, thanks for testing and i'll update when i think its ready, in the
meantime keep posting any problems you may find in case i missed something.

NOTICE: currently the map has hit a glitch. The nice glittering ET symbols have stopped, fires have stopped moving, and the lanters in the underground near the powerup have no fire what so ever.

Thats not specific to this map, ET has a bug of sorts where after the server has been running for awhile things like this stop working.

that is the animmap bug where animated textures just freeze, however i am
trying a new workaround for it in the map, i have some wall torches in there
( lowest level i think ) that use a roq video shader i made to keep flames
moving, also on the candles in the graveyard, when the other flames stop,
these should keep moving.. if everything is moving again, i will drop in the
server at a very late time to check if the freeze happens, cause i want to
make shure the roq ones continue to work.

If you hide behind one of those doors in the middle your arms/legs can be seen on the outside of the wall. Seems to be most noticeable when you are reloading.

Here is a screenie of a similar thing if you lay down in the chimney.

Here is wha blood was talking about in his first post:

the wall thickness needs to be ajusted there, and a few other places.

now, there is a problem ( which i did not anticipate ) of a place ( and probably
a few other places ) where players can lean and see through the walls. this
is because the map is heavily relying on "patch meshes" to display curved
geometry. patch meshes were introduced in quake3, and they help to simplify
creating curved surfaces, where as making those curves with brushwork was
tedious/time consuming before and the final curves did not look as good as a
patch can make it. ( however the lighting can now make them look smooth ).

the thing about patch meshes is that they can be displayed at lower divisions
depending on clients cfg settings... which can lead to gaps where you can see
through and overall messy looking geometry. and this is ok, because a client
needs to ajust their settings to get the best possible fps they can get.

but this creates the problems of seeing though walls.. ect.. and i would prefer
players to see the map as it was intended with nice curved area's. so what
i am now doing is getting rid of a lot of the patch work, and replacing it
with proper brushwork.. so now its a tedious and time consuming repair as
the map has tons of patches everywhere. a few days ago when we were
play testing it, someone mentioned that the arches in the graveyard look
lame/silly/wierd.. or something.. well, they dont actually, because i have
my divisions set high so they look smooth and proper, so i guess that
player has lower settings to increase fps.

here is an example of what i mean, from a clipped area of darkerrors
screenshot, and how i see it...

arches on the left use about 6 angle changes, while the ones on the right
use about 16 angle changes, which equals more polycount,

you can see how smooth the arches are on the right and no gaps between
the surrounding wall areas to see though. again, there is nothing wrong
with players ajusting this for better fps, in hindsight i should have
anticipated this and made these area's strickly brushwork because i want
the map to look as good as i see it. so it will take some time while i convert
the patches to brushes, and in this way im forcing the clients to see it more
the way its meant to, as there is no config settings to change brushwork.
basicly im going to enforce higher fps in these area's, but it wont have any
impact on a clients fps that much, since a good poly count of 22,000 is
recommended max ( back in the day on my trusty p3 800mhz ) and nowadays
everyone has faster pc's... plus the fact that these area's are close to 8000
polys max since i took care to create proper portals.

er... maybe some of that was techno-mumbo-jumbo... basicly im saying
its gonna be a week or longer before a new alphatest can be ready.

EDIT: actually.. this brings to mind the subway map, where playes have
said the tunnels look terrible, but im guessing they use lower patch divisions
in their cfgs, because the tunnels look ok to me, nice and smooth. im
running an amd 64 3200+ and a bfg6600gt so i dont mind at all having the
meshes appear stock. the fps loss/increase is not noticable at all if i do
change my cfg for lower divisions, even on my old p3 800, i kept them
stock since it didnt matter much. im not recommending players to set
back to default settings for patches, but nowadays it doesnt matter if
they do... and patch work in maps are generally low where the map
designer wanted to highlight nice curves, so running at default for this
does make the maps look nicer for the client with generally no fps
difference.... imo of course.

I believe i have found the CVAR that causes this effect.
^above is a code snippet that is in my autoexec.cfg

Yuppers look at what i got with r_subdivitions "4":

It also fixes all the see through walls..

Couple things:

Took a few SS of minor things I saw. I believe Rayban has already seen some of them.


On certain levels, the cables that run to the teleports miss this block. The block is located relatively close to the teleports.


Part of the wall is lifted away from the rest.


Several of the graves have this orange color patch on them. Very minor detail.

All in all, maps looking good. I remember Rayban mentioned putting in some command posts. This should be good as it will give the engies something to do with their plyers. Is there anything else the engies can build, such as the foot brigdes that are in the map?

Also talked about adding a floor mat where the ground "cushion" (a place you can fall without getting hurt) is located. This area is located around the ammo and health cabinets. The mat could have a nice design like the banners. :)

-fish