Tiny Arena Maps from DMA Levels

[BenMillard]

Fixed the hole and lots of missing traffic directions in South-West area. Still crashes randomly.

Respawning on weapons is totally reliable - have been doing that for years. Initially spawning on a weapon (or <1 second away) always crashes.

[T.M.]

Correction: you have been doing that for years with original GTA2.exe

[BenMillard]

Updated files now available. Somewhat stable again but I did, eventually, make it crash in single player. Took about quarter of an hour of chaos, arrested and wasted several times. Many situations which crashed previously didn't crash during the rampage. It's an improvement!

Gustavob looked around and found a couple more holes which I've filled. Few things are a bit unusual, such as quirky little traffic paths:

This arrangement is stable in other levels, notably Jailbreak.

Version 24 is when I moved it to a File > New map, which I've always found to be deeply unstable. So I've copied the latest terrain back into the version 22 file, which was somewhat stable. This is now version 27.

[T.M.]

Does it crash if you remove all traffic arrows? select all blocks and untick the arrows so you be sure theres no blocks with arrows on the map.

[BenMillard]

Tried that just now and it was stable. But a level with no traffic is super boring.

So I added traffic to the places Hidden Surprise has traffic. All seemed well! But then, after my third single-player rampage for about half an hour, I got a crash in the South-West near the Pizza shop.

The newest Tiny HS Arena download has no traffic in the main version. It also includes tiny-hs-arena-traffic.gmp wich is the version mentioned above.

[T.M.]

Try keeping traffic but remove bus-stop-zones?

Edit: what about reducing the car ratio? new gta2 spawns shitloads of cars everywhere, might cause crash on tight roads...

[BenMillard]

Good news, everybody! Deckendieb and I were stable for 20 GTA2 minutes! Causing chaos, spamming molotovs, Cops were on and we did fragging for the last part. This is the version for download, so please please try it again.

Not certain what fixed it, but here's the main things I did:

1. Turned off the traffic lights zone.
2. 4-lane cars going Northbound now turn East instead of going alongside the big roof ramp thing.
3. 1-lane system is now a GTA2-friendly looping system.
4. 1-lane system in the East now circulates the other way around.
5. East end of 2-lane road only has Eastbound traffic, to feed East 1-lane loop.
6. No broken junctions or deliberate gridlock arrows.

Also refined the use of some textures. Hospital is a bit more coherent, as is the nearby Pizzeria's pavement. Added a couple more cables.

[T.M.]

Would be cool if you could find the exact problem, could be useful in my editor too, if i knew all the methods to make sync errors/crashes = better maps produced with less insanity gained in the process!

[Cuban-Pete]

Perhaps Vike can find debug-functions in the code that were deactivated for releasing GTA2. When activating these debug-functions, the next time a desync occurs it might give more insight to how/why.

[BenMillard]

TM, feel free to experiment with any of my levels for your own use. Just don't share them or make them available online.

I'll probably re-introduce some of the features I removed, one by one, as I would have liked to keep them. Once it starts crashing again, that's the first clue of what GTA2 didn't like.

Seems to be some kind of traffic, roadblock, fire truck, slopes bug or a combination for that list of changes to have made it 100% stable again.

[BenMillard]

New version uploaded:

1. Traffic lights restored.
2. Removed all original Lights.
3. Added some light sources - many more to follow.
4. Rocket island compacted by 1 block, respawn moved accordinly.
5. Shoreline near Vehicle Bomb shrunk by 1 block.
6. Bridge near Vehicle Bomb now has handrails and doesn't block your way out after getting the bomb.
7. All radio stations added.

There's a few other little tweaks. This is version 33 and is stable in single player - so was version 32, the previous release.

[T.M.]

The docs says you cant have more than 4 radio stations at once.

Also, do you mean there is duplicate radio stations with just different names?

[Sektor]

Played it for about 30 minutes and it was stable. Got on the green roof near the rocket launcher and fell through the roof. Got to the land on the southwest but nothing there yet and no way out.

[BenMillard]

• Filled in the missing roof side tile at (224,34) so you won't fall through.
• Raised the building at (174,45) so you can't access the South-West area.

I'd like to make the South edge of the level a lot more interesting. Capital City has some inspired level boundaries.

[T.M.]

Thank you for your fast answers!

-_-

[BenMillard]

Roadblocks in awkward places are my best guess about what was causing the crashes. Now I've changed the traffic and stopped it going alongside the slope, the level seems bulletproof. Hardly ever see a Fire Truck though. They are somewhat common in Tiny Tiny Town Arena, IIRC.

Newest version has a few radio stations in it. Trying to figure out which have the best DJs and which have the best deathmatch music!

(EDIT) This version also has more lighting in Dusk mode. Not quite complete, though.

[Sektor]

I tried the current version and got a desync at the start every time we played with Malone. With different people it didn't quit with the desync Remote/local error. I need to do more testing. Do you still have the previous version of the map?

[BenMillard]

I have all 36 versions of the GMP, with a full backup of all the files from version 18, 35 and 36 - the version I have just released.

Players now start in the South-East, around the Machine Gun by the long 2-lane road. Several powerups and weapons are near that area, as well as natural traffic. So the starts should be quite varied! There's an Instant Gang nearby, too, which should add to the chaos.

The garage where you get Double Damage also resprays your car, now.

(EDIT) This version still seems to have desync issues.

Might try playing with GTA2 v11.40 or older for a while, see if it's any more stable. But I'm on holiday from Thursday to Sunday, so might not get to that for a week or so.

[BenMillard]

I removed the flashing lights, not sure it will have any effect. Vaguely recall early versions of Dafe's Death Valley had desync problems with rapidly flashing lights. Mine were randomised but sometimes flickered fast, by design.

(EDIT) This seems to have eliminated the last cause of desync!

[BenMillard]

As the South boundary is so boring, I've built a church in the South-East. Just as scenery.

Some time ago I re-textured one of the central buildings. It's the one near Molotovs which leads to the Rocket Launcher island.

Hoping to more of this, so it's the same layout but more scenic. Much like I did with TTTA.

(EDIT) After 1 hour of "stability testing" in Tiny Hidden Surprise Arena (wil.sty) I got the WIPE OUT! message:


New scenery along the South is progressing fairly well.