Marvel New York Megamap Mod (say that 10 times quickly..)

[tommyboy]

Sooooooo......
those of you with excessively long memories, or who read the old archived forums may recall my working on a map so big that it was quite big indeed. And in said map were new buildings fashioned in the manner of New York City(real) and New York Marvel (fictional).
Here's a smattering of pictures to jog your memories or pique your interest:

Spoiler

The view from above. Far far above.

And a brief tour of places of interest, starting with the baxter building and kooky greenwich village

Views on the riverfront, Lady Liberty and errr... some Bridge, possibly Brooklyn, or GW.

Why not take in a movie in colourful 1970's Times Square? Or visit the UN building? Anachronisms? We got 'em.

5th Avenue hosts swanky Avengers Mansion. Gasp at the grandeur of the Flatiron and Chrysler Buildings.

These are just some of the sights of New York, theres also a lot of smaller buildings, cars, boats, bridges, the helicarrier, columbia university, central park and probably some other stuff.
If you want to see more pics, and read lots of development discussions, go here:
http://freedomreborn.net/archive/index.php?topic=47730.0

"Why are you telling us all this? Where is this leading? Get to the point. You are starting to aggravate me." I hear you say.
OK, OK. The point is this. There are still some bugs, like not being able to stand on the taller buildings, and some other buildings dont have a "destruction" version. I ran out of steam. They aren't getting fixed by me, any time soon.
But it would be a shame to just sit on what I have achieved, and maybe someone else can fix the probs or use some of it, or just play with it.
So, I propose to release it all "as is", unsightly warts and all, in a Mod format.
But you don't want a Mod you say. You just want the map. Tough. It's being released as a Mod because it contains the FF to FFV3r mappack buildings, FFX, and several bonus maps (and by "bonus", asssume I mean unfinished, broken or otherwise unreleasable). You need the art assets, you need the building templates entered in the Dat files. You need much of what's in there.
Should someone else have the time and energy to just package up only the bare minimum needed for the Marvel New York map (or any of the other versions contained in it), that's great. Good on you.
You can plunder it for your own maps and Mods, or simply use it as the starting point for your own Mod.

CAVEATS, WARNINGS, BEWARE, ACHTUNG, DANGER WILL ROBINSON!
this Mod weighs in at 195Mb when rar'ed up. When installed it comes to approximately 1.3 Gigs. Make sure you can spare the space.

Each version of the megamap/new york is typically over 100mb. It takes a while to load up in the game, and a looooong time to load up in the Editor, or to save it after changing anything in the editor, for me it was typically 30 mins to an hour to load up and save the map in the Editor.
If you are impatient, this is not for you.

The Marvel New York Map has 25000+ items in it to load up. If you have a slow PC or not much memory (I have 2 gigs of memory, so I know that much works), it may not run at all, may run very slowly, may crash the game or even crash your PC. None of this is my fault/responsibility/problem. It's a sort of Beta, unfinished Mod thing. If that worries or bothers you, don't download, install or run it. I make no promises that it will work on every PC, or that it will cause no damage. I can only tell you it runs on mine, and appears to not have killed my PC yet.

If it won't run on your system, live without it. It's not that good, or that important. It's just vaguely cool for a while to run around a bigger map than usual. I'm pretty sure any of the custom buildings and stuff I made that are any good will appear in other maps in due time. There is nothing life changing about a bigger map, it will not bestow upon you happiness, enlightenment, financial acumen or charisma.

Minimum spec to run it?
I don't know. I have a 2.6gig core duo, 2 gig of memory and a geforce 8800gt running under winXP, and I can run it at 1280x1024 with all bells and whistles, at a nominally OK framerate, (though it stutters a bit if you spin the view round quickly). Lesser PC users may want to turn off shadows, AA, drop the resolution etc.

Is it FF or FFv3R?
Both. There will I hope be one Map mod for each game. For now the one I have "ready" to go is FFV3R. Soon as I can, I'll bundle up the FF version.

When will it be out? Is it out yet? How about now?
I have yet to write a readme/credits file, that may take a day or two. That is the last thing I need to do (unless you count making something work properly, and clearly, I don't). Oh, and it may not upload as one 195Mb file so I may have to split it into smaller chunks. So lets say, "out within a week, provisionally".

[crimsonquill]

Woohooo!!! 

You can count on me being the first in line for downloading that map... unfinished or not. Just looking at those pictures just begs me to have a massive rumble room brawl between a handful of Sentinels and a team of X-Men. Within less then the time it takes to microwave a bag of popcorn half of that massive map will be smoking rubble and probably with Wolverine standing on a husk of a building eye to eye with the last remaining Sentinel going "Okay, Bub...I get it... We do it the hard way!!! *snikt*"

- CQ

[Johnny Patches]

  ???

[GogglesPizanno]

I have a feeling my laptop specs, and my sheer level of impatience will make this hard for me....

[M25]

It looks incredible.  Glad to see it will be released.

[yell0w_lantern]

 

[gengoro]

It is the God of all maps.

[Gremlin]

YES.

Woohooo!!! 

You can count on me being the first in line for downloading that map... unfinished or not. Just looking at those pictures just begs me to have a massive rumble room brawl between a handful of Sentinels and a team of X-Men. Within less then the time it takes to microwave a bag of popcorn half of that massive map will be smoking rubble and probably with Wolverine standing on a husk of a building eye to eye with the last remaining Sentinel going "Okay, Bub...I get it... We do it the hard way!!! *snikt*"

- CQ

I'm thinking massive alien invasion myself. Or Superman fighting Doomsday. Hulk destroying everything. Godzilla!

Speedsters, teleporters, fliers and jumpers are gonna be WAY more important on this map. I can definitely see a mod on this where you have to stop some threat that spawns in a dozen areas at once and you have to MOVE. Or maybe an extended version of Patriot City? That'd be cool. Spawn in random threats as you go patrolling.

Is anyone considering finishing this up?

[DrMike2000]

That is the insane-est thing I've seen for this game yet!

Congratulations, Tommy. I'm just gobsmacked

[detourne_me]

MWA-HA-HA-HA!!!!
Death Destruction
Carnage Corruption
Godzilla versus Galactus versus Sentinels versus Robotech Monster versus Optimus Prime versus Voltron versus Hulk!!!!!!!
Tommyboy, you are insane! I can't wait to play with this!!!  Is it EZscript ready?

[tommyboy]

Is it EZscript ready?

Sort of.
Because I wanted to use it in freeroam mod, it has some encounter markers in some of the maps.

[M25]

I worry that the custom AI might not be able to handle that many objects smoothly.  I'll have to do some tweaking of the code.

[Podmark]

That's pretty scary in it's size, but very cool.

[tommyboy]

I worry that the custom AI might not be able to handle that many objects smoothly.  I'll have to do some tweaking of the code.

Something else I failed to consider...
If it helps any, I've run large-ish battles on the map with ffx and m25 AI in effect, and I didn't notice any issues, but I suppose the danger may lie in slow-down once you have 10-40 AIs all trying to unfold their tourist maps and itineraries:
The Wrecker; "I wanna see the Guggenheim and then catch Mama Mia on broadway!"
Count Nefaria; "I'm off to ellis island and thence to rob a bank somewhere."
The Hulk; "hulk smash tourist destinations!"

Anyway, unforeseen reasons why it may not work aside, we have a good news/bad news scenario viz the release date. This morning I  received an email from OW_TIOBE_SB containing his promised contribution buildings. This means we get a Daily Bugle, and nicer versions of the Baxter Building and Sanctum Sanctorum (though I'll leave my old ones in in case anyone wants 'em, they wont be on the map). That's the good news. The bad news part is integrating them into the map may add a few days onto the release date. It may not, but I'd prefer caution to blind optimism.
So, it will be better, but possibly slightly later. Since you've waited since last august, a few more days shouldn't be too much to bear, I hope.

[C4]

This is great. Congrats on finishing it Tommy.

I am tempted to work an altered version into my mod. Though I would prefer something maybe half of that 

Those modern buildings really entice me. For obvious reasons. 

[tommyboy]

This is great. Congrats on finishing it Tommy.

I am tempted to work an altered version into my mod. Though I would prefer something maybe half of that 

Those modern buildings really entice me. For obvious reasons. 

thanks.
I actually have a map "template" that is smaller, but it's unpopulated. What I may try to do if my enthusiasm holds up is to make maps half the size and 1/4 the size, and have them "generically" populated via Stumpy's excellent python scripts. This would mean the same four blocks repeated over and over, but its a start. In theory I could edit down my level.txt for the megamap to the smaller sizes, but for now I just want to get the big one out before I become sidetracked yet again.
As for the modern buildings, they can be removed from the megamap and re-used, and when I get time I'll make them downloadable separately for map/mod makers to use. My releasing the helicarrier mesh was the first step down that road.

[cmdrkoenig67]

It's a gorgeous and positively gigantic map....Amazing work, Tom....And I'll never, ever top it (Runs away crying).

Dana 

[Champion 2 of 11]

Im geeked about this! I've been wondering what the update was! But I can wait shoot I'm soon getting a gaming laptop that should handle the map no prob! Besides I'm just gonna have gaming stuff and comic scans on it anyway!

[daglob]

Well, my poor old computer probably can't handle this in anything like a useable timeline, but here is no way I'm not gonna download this sucker and burn it to a CD, because one day, when I get my Cray...

[M25]

I worry that the custom AI might not be able to handle that many objects smoothly.  I'll have to do some tweaking of the code.

Something else I failed to consider...
If it helps any, I've run large-ish battles on the map with ffx and m25 AI in effect, and I didn't notice any issues, but I suppose the danger may lie in slow-down once you have 10-40 AIs all trying to unfold their tourist maps and itineraries:

You would have seen a significant stutter in gameplay every 5 seconds or so with even a single AI.   If you didn't, then there may not be an issue after all.   

[BentonGrey]

Alright Tommy!  You've finally got this out.  This thing is unbelievably HUGE!  I can't believe all of these beautiful new objects....I can't believe you'd got Lady Liberty in there.  That's just beautiful Tommy.

[Xenolith]

I worry that the custom AI might not be able to handle that many objects smoothly.  I'll have to do some tweaking of the code.

The Wrecker; "I wanna see the Guggenheim and then catch Mama Mia on broadway!"
Count Nefaria; "I'm off to ellis island and thence to rob a bank somewhere."
The Hulk; "hulk smash tourist destinations!"

[UnkoMan]

Amazing. I'd never be able to play on it but it's still a feat.

[cripp12]

Awesome,
When and how will you be releasing to the public.  I would like to see if my PC can handle it.

[tommyboy]

Awesome,
When and how will you be releasing to the public.  I would like to see if my PC can handle it.

See the first post:

When will it be out? Is it out yet? How about now?
I have yet to write a readme/credits file, that may take a day or two. That is the last thing I need to do (unless you count making something work properly, and clearly, I don't). Oh, and it may not upload as one 195Mb file so I may have to split it into smaller chunks. So lets say, "out within a week, provisionally".

As to how, as a mod, available from my website is the current plan.

[The Hitman]

Holy Moley! That is impressive, man! Great Job!

[tommyboy]

I just took a couple of hours to throw this together:

It's a bit dark so it's hard to see, but it's a smaller version of the Megamap, called Huge_City. It's a "mere" 10x10 blocks (the megacity was 14X14), so there's "only" 15000 or so items to load.
It should provide an alternative to those whose systems are hard pressed to run the Megamap.
And obviously, I'll be trying to make a smaller one than that, maybe 7X7 blocks, still bigger than any existing map, I think, but in a range that everyone should be able to manage. Thankfully Stumpy's map populating Python script does most of the hard work of filling in the buildings, lights and whatnot, I just have to delete stuff in Max and re-export. Easy Peasy.
Again, the inclusion and creation of these extra maps may add a day or two to the delivery time, but I think it will be worth it.

[tommyboy]

Another "bonus" map that will be in the Mod, Moonscape:



It's a decent sized moonscape textured with a few modeled craters for good measure, and a built in "starry" skyscape.
There is a version included with some rocks dotted about placed via the editor.

On the minus side the huge_city version is being problematic as I try to add in the custom buildings layout. I'm sure I can fix it, but it's holding things up a bit.

Mod ETA thurs-fri-sat of the coming week 26-26 feb 2009. Do not sue me if it fails to appear then...

[tommyboy]

And in a similar vein, a Mars map:

[laughing paradox]

This is truly awe inspiring.

I'm glad my computer is up to snuff.. I'll be rocking that mega map a lot!