Giant Playable Piano (2)
By BlueNinja
Date: 06-22-2010
Version: 2
Screenshots
Readme
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JK3: Jedi Academy
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A Map by Blueninja
Title: GIANT PLAYABLE PIANO
Authour: Blue Ninja (a.k.a. Ascendedfish, a.k.a. Fishwithoutwings)
E-mail: fishwithoutwings (at) hotmail (dot) com
"Websites:" Youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/fishwithoutwings
Deviantart Page: http://ascendedfish.deviantart.com/
Music site: http://sites.google.com/site/ascendedfishmusic/
Filename: pianomapv2.pk3
Pk3 size: 45 MB
RELEASE DATE: 22/6/2010
How to install:
Extract the playablepiano.zip with Winzip, place the .pk3 of the same name into the C/programfiles/lucasarts/.../gamedata/base folder.
Features:
New music (same as v1 though)
New sounds (yeah, about 88 of them!)
New shaders and textures
Bot Routes
Version 2 now features:
YOU CAN PLAY THE PIANO!
An entire new map: The piano as before but instead of a small room, a house!
One new instrument: a viola (you can't play it though).
Description:
Version 1 was a small room, but this time I have mapped the upstairs section of a house I used to live in, using a video for precise reference. The house is gigantic, and is really meant for long range sniper battles. There is a lot more to do and see in this map than in V1!
There is a living room with modern sort of couch, coffee table (with a viola on it!) and some chairs. The dining room is very simple, but the kitchen has some interesting things: Cheez-it box, knife... and a garbage disposal unit! Have fun pushing people in there. There is a bedroom... and a bathroom with a toilet... that you can swim in. Swim down the tube of the toilet and there are some powerful weapons and some medpacks. You might consider it as a secret area, and the fact that I'm telling you about it doesn't ruin the secret, because I doubt many people will read the readme. There is a staircase, but the map was just too big to make the whole downstairs, so there isn't anything down there. HOWEVER, there might, just might be a v3 with a full downstairs, but I don't have time right now.
IMPORTANT-- GETTING AROUND:
It's big, so I put some vehicles. There are two swoop bikes, one in the dining room and another behind the end of the piano. There is also an ATST by the fireplace, an X-Wing on the dining room table, and a TIE fighter on the kitchen table. Think of these as very cool toys that belong to the giants.
VENTS: There are AC/Heating vents that push you up to different places and sniping vantages:
Bookshelf
Chandelier
Top bunk of bed
Fireplace mantle
And also vents to tables and counters. All of those places mentioned above have disruptor rifles waiting...
There is also a kettle on the stovetop; it pushes you to the half-wall of the kitchen. A great sniping vantage point!
There is a bathroom and bedroom, and you get to it through some mouse holes, like Jerry. Seriously though, you could have some interesting role playing with Tom and Jerry models!
In the kitchen is one drawer that opens (the only one with a knob) with a force pull. I placed a jetpack in the middle of the map, and I think you need it to open this drawer.
THE PIANO:
You can now "play" the piano. Simply aim at a key and press the "use" button. I set each key up as a door, and it targets a speaker that plays the note! Just get a bunch of friends together, and give everyone a note, and play something! Kind of like a handbells ensemble, only a giant piano.
What's on the walls:
Now there's a drawing of mine, and it's Prokofiev at the piano. I like how it lines up with the map's piano keyboard. There is also a random painting of two girls at a piano, from Google images. In the kitchen is Van Gogh's sunflowers, and in the bedroom is another of my drawings, and it's a Clone, so finally Star Wars related! Best of all is a portrait of Liszt in the dining room, probably the best pianist of all time.
BUGS:
OK, this map is a bit heavy on the bugs, but here goes...
Maximum visibility exceeded. I sort of "bit of more than the JK3 engine could chew" with the size. At any extreme end of the map, the engine no longer draws bits at the other end, and this is actually worse in MP than in SP, so I didn't really know that it was such a problem until I tested in MP, which was very late in the creation process. Whatever, it's more of a novelty map anyway, right?
Certain distances are too far for the guns as well.
FPS: in MP, the fps is much, much better than I could have expected, at least from testing in SP, where the fps is quite bad. After a few minutes, it gets better. My computer is old and slow however, and might not be bad on better computers. But at least the frame rate is better in MP!
Keys don't move the way real ones do. Technically they should move as levers, rather than straight down. But it would take a million years to script all 88 keys into rotating, and I've never successfully done one. I still think it looks convincing.
Bot Routes: Bots' intelligence level is not great, and because many places are only reachable by vents, bots aren't necessarily going to know that they need to go to that point to get to a position. I still made bot routes anyway, but don't expect perfection. Also, the sheer size of the map required a certain number of bot routes, and I just exceeded the limit at the end, so I don't think the bot will be able to go on the lid of the piano. For your reference, the limit is 3850 waypoints.
MUSIC is same as v1, but I'll keep the original description:
The soundtrack is a combination of short (and one long) piano pieces, and not surprisingly they're piano solo works. First is a 2 minute piece by Bartok called the Chase, from the Out of Doors Suite. It's rhythmic and percussion like, very dark and dissonant, perfect for fast paced and brutal fights. Next is a very exciting piece by Nenov, a Bulgarian composer, 9 minutes long. Then an Etude by Prokofiev, op. 2 Allegro. Lasts 2 minutes. Finally, another Prokofiev, the last movement of the 7th Piano Sonata in Bb Major, opus 83. You can find these recordings on the internet, for example pianosociety.com. None of these is a classical piece; they are all modern works composed in the 20th Century. The total is 16 minutes, so you won't have music that repeats every 2 minutes, which I can never stand.
Comments:
To get to the map in SP, type devmap playablepiano.
If you'd like to fight the "giants" that live in the house, make an npc of some character, and add the key "scale" and the value "3000" or so, then spawn this character in game (MP though, not SP).
Build time: I made this in just over a week, but I spent many hours each day working on it. Probably around 100 hours I guess, probably more.
The Credits:
Some of the textures were made by me, otherwise:
Textures:
www.sharecg.com/v/8779/texture/parquet-floor (kitchen floor)
http://www.aussiesnrg.com/KiamaGame/Files.php (couch, chair)
http://members.at.infoseek.co.jp/godhandevilleg/works/texture/index.htm
got3d.com (wood)
http://www.m3corp.com/a/download/3d_textures/pages/woodpg/wood1205.htm
http://etexture.net/detail.asp?pid=1377 (excellent carpet texture)
http://www.sharecg.com/v/23313/texture/6-Seamless-Wood-textures-05?PSID=6044981b334b4430618149ba1c55ffea (other wood textures)
Special Thanks:
As always, a special thanks to RichDiesel, whose mapping tutorials are the only reason I've been able to do anything with radiant.
A very special thanks indeed to Bartholomew Christofori!
For this version in particular I thank JK3files member Arkan, who made a comment on v1 that helped me figure out how to make the piano playable!
THIS MODIFICATION IS NOT MADE, DISTRIBUTED, OR SUPPORTED BY ACTIVISION, RAVEN, OR LUCASARTS ENTERTAINMENT COMPANY LLC. ELEMENTS TM & LUCASARTS ENTERTAINMENT COMPANY LLC AND/OR ITS LICENSORS.