Spam Nugget wrote:
its not generally specific elements, but their arrangement that allows ninjas.

True. I suppose I will have to think about how to best arrange things to incite the ninjas to "come out and play" as it were. I love screwing with people's heads. -evil laugh-

Something I saw in the latest Mission: Impossible movie inspired part of the map. The scene is Tom Cruise and the dude from Shawn of the Dead are creeping along a hallway that has a guard at the other end. They are using a movable rear-projection screen to hide themselves. The projector has a camera on it that is picking up the hallway behind the screen. Cruise and "Shawn" are out of the camera's view. The camera is connected to a computer which is monitoring where the guard is looking. This allows the vanishing point of the projection to be moved as the guard moves so that the hallway retains its proper alignment no matter how close the screen is to him. Cruise and Shawn move the screen only when the guard is looking away so that the guard does not get suspicious.

Once Cruise and Shawn have reached the door they need to enter, they stop moving the screen. Now, the bad guys make their move, of course, at this point in the movie.

What inspired me was the next moment in this scene. The alarm is triggered by the bad guys. This prompts MANY, MANY guards to show up at the security desk at the near end of the hall. The computer begins trying to compensate for all the sight-lines it detects. This causes the projection of the hallway to move back and forth seemingly at random. This of course, alerts the guards to the fact that they are not looking at the actual hallway. They then push the screen out of the way.

The shifting hallway projection was the inspiration for a section of hallway that is merely a texture on a wall. Sort of a Wile E. Coyote tunnel on a cliff thing.

protoborg wrote:
What inspired me was the next moment in this scene. The alarm is triggered by the bad guys. This prompts MANY, MANY guards to show up at the security desk at the near end of the hall. The computer begins trying to compensate for all the sight-lines it detects. This causes the projection of the hallway to move back and forth seemingly at random. This of course, alerts the guards to the fact that they are not looking at the actual hallway. They then push the screen out of the way.

In a way that scene is actually impossible. In order for the screen to flicker between each of the persons perspectives it would need to move instantaneously, where the machine was actually slow to medium speed.
I take notice of things like this in movies too much

If it were instantaneous, it would likely be less noticeable. Plus, it would give the audience a headache. The point, though, was that scene inspired part of my map.

I didn't actually have to go to that extreme. What I did was create a section of hallway. I took a screenshot of it. I put the screenshot into GIMP and turned it into a BMP. I took the BMP and converted it into VTF. I then imported the VTF into HAMMER, where I placed it on a wall.

The interesting thing is that the texture DOES appear to move away from center as the player moves away from center. The vanishing point of the texture actually moves with the player because of the way I made it. This results in a very odd appearance. When you move away from dead center of the hallway, the texture of the rest of the hallway makes it appear that the hallway is bending in the opposite direction. If you move left, the hallway "bends" to the right. If you move up and to the right, the hallway bends down to the left. It is a VERY odd thing to see.

That's not a wierd effect. That's how a 3d concave area looks when you make it 2d. This is because of the 3d vanishing points causing parts further away from you making it "bend" more in that direction, so it looks like it is inclined to bend in the opposite direction you are looking at it from because of the distance + vanishing point.

I know that is what is going on. That doesn't make it any less odd TO SEE.