pl_spacewar

pl_spacewar B29

Special Thanks to Nesman for his suggestion of occluders and hint/skips to optimize map better. Framerates have gone from 65-75 to 150-299 dependeing where you are in the map.

Other than that - enjoy! Enjoy the colours too!
Here's an update for you - not sure if it qualifies for my contest entry but no matter.

Changelog:

Based on your feedback -

- made the trigger edge that sucks you up into the void more easily seen with ! signs and warning light spinners
- mid section size has been reduced a fair amount and slightly redesigned, new flanking route to the cliff added in and if you fall off the bridge and into the trench you now die in space as well - you're welcome! :)
- have reworked the spawn rooms and teleportation system, as getting rid of the last two points wasn't an option for me. That being said I can see the battle going this way now:
  • he who holds the bridge in the center holds the advantage at the start of ther map, if one team caps, the other is forced to run all the way from the last spawn room, this gives the attackers the advantage of capping the next point IF they get their act together and do it quickly, then upon capping that the attackers spawn moves up, while defenders still have to run it. Upon next cap, attacker spawn again moves up so both teams will now be in a more head to head battle. The defenders will have to really get co-ordinated to make it back to the bridge, if they can do that then they will then have the advantage.
  • once a team has the advantage, they will have to attack, attack, attack especially at the start
- I have removed all ambient_generic sounds for the forcefields in the doors, this should solve the sound issues of people's sounds disappearing in game. In bot testing I really didn't miss them that much and I think they are more appropriate to a single player game, not where everything is going boom for everyone :)
- I have tried to do some more optimization of the map but this one's a bitch to do - the exterior for the most part can't be done - if anyone has suggestions please feel free i.e. hint skip placement, area portals, etc. although I had to remove one set as they were doing something really funky with the lighting (making parts of the map disappear although not leaking)
- solved the issue of the lag at one final cap zone. The entire map was being rendered inside the skybox in mat_wireframe 3 even though you couldn't see it in game. the 3d skybox box was moved above the map far far away and now the error doesn't happen.

My changes:

- prepare to be dazzled beyond belief! I have put in more custom textures really giving it that Sci-Fi look since there are so few moonbase/space textures out there.
- made the trench deadly as well as adding in a new flanking route in center
- redecorated center and cliffs
- optimized level more, especially area_portals opening and closing for some of the doors (the solid texture ones, couldn't do it on the see through ones)

Questionables -

- the map may have taken a performance hit for some unknown reason - the green house is no longer seen fro the mid section AND YET the fps has dropped quite a bit - will need a playtest for suggestions

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Thanks for the play test the other night - I loved watching ERK fly around the map as a demoman in the low gravity in the demo movie.

B4 Changelog:

- I noticed that hardly anyone used the downstairs tunnels so I removed them. I then replaced them with a much shorter side tunnel to the second cap point as a flanking router beside the main tunnel. This should also solve the problem of having the opposite team getting behind you. Access to this tunnel is controled by cart position at the top of the ramp.
- the teleportation booth at the top of the ramp - I removed the ceiling and the walls + put in a teleporter decal since some of you asked what it was.
- fixed 1 health pack which should have been a ammo pack
- as requested, I have put in some yield signs (with exclamation mark) facing downwards on the bottom of the space sucker so you can judge just how far you can jump up before getting sucked out into space.
- you also die much faster in space now as per your request :)
- got the animation sequences working on the birds in the greenhouse - you will now see them fly or glide depending on where they are on their paths
- fixed a bug inside blue base that caused the red directional arrows to disable making it harder for red to know where to go < the play test revealed this bug and I never saw it before.
- added in env_light which brightens up the overall map, esp mid section
- got rid of the light poles in the center of the maps and am using your suggestion of placing the lights directly onto the bridge arches at either end - this has also dramatically improved the overall lighting in the maps.
- clipped off that one cliff that you guys commented on

Again thanks for all of the feedback - this is probably my best looking map that I've made so far.
Oh Boy!! Where do I start?!!!

Ok based upon previous playtests and your comments, I have made the following changes:

- I have rebuilt the area around the second cap point for both teams (as this is a mirroed map).
- The rebuild is the addition of a control booth complex that will allow the attacking team to hold and build up ubers, etc.
- this build has three entrances - one from the cap point for the defending team, one for the attacking team and to keep defenders from becoming entrenched, a teleportation room for the attacking team, they can teleport in, build up a force and then attack with ubers etc to clear it out - teleporter is activated via a trigger based upon payload location.
- this should help with the stalemate issue since this was / is the biggest choke hold to conquor.

- have doublechecked all spawn door coding (AGAIN!!) everything seems to be working right.

- fixed the lower tunnel access route - trigger_hurt trigger changed to different logic node so it will work better (the on door doing x function was a bit buggy), the trigger_hurt has the double damage cap activated so it deals more damage the longer you stay in it. I also activated the flag on the hurt so it will kill your buildings i.e. dispensers so you can't sit in the kill zone indefinitely.

- dying in space - you no longer ragdoll and have your bodies falling randomly onto the people below - something that I personally found to be extremely funny, some dude just fallign from the sky from whereever he came from. You will now be teleported and truly die in space!!

- tried to animate the UFO model - it spins when viewing it as a model in hammer but doesn't in game - so I randomly animated it.

New add in:

- spawn room teleportation coding added into the map and this was a bitch to program it correctly (because it has to go both ways for both teams). Here's how it works:
- all triggers are disabled at round start, then as cart progresses, players will be teleported backwards or forwards to the next spawn room automatically based upon the cart loaction keeping you as close to the fighting as possible i.e. you just spawn, point is capped and you're automatically transported to the new room without having to run the entire distance to the combat zone

Other:

- More lighting fixes - 90% of the map is actually lit without lights - which saves on the ent count
- Entity count - have been able to bring the count down because of the above line - count has gone down from1430 to 1175 ish. Make the map much more stable :)
- More detailing, especially around the new building complex.

This version will most likely be my contest entry unless people find major issues with it.

Enjoy!

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Changelog:

- Since there was an issue the repawn wave times i.e. 24 seconds even though no wave time was originally in the map, I have since added one and made it 1 second - hopefully this will stop whatever was causing the 24 second long thing.
- deleted a lot of the cameras as requested, I also triggered them to enable disable depending what side of the map you are on i.e. if on blue side no need to see red's cameras
- fixed the one cap point alert sound
- added in more ambient sounds, these are stock as my custom ones tended to break the map for some reason < had some cool space ones for you too!
- changed some of the 'battlements' prop over to active arrows to tell payers which way to go put of spawn for eaiser player navigation
- fixed the blue spawn room bug - the trigger to disable blue's forward spawn now works to disable it upon red cap point capture
- Fixed all spawn room door triggers and height of them - all doors are now onstarttouch to open, onendtouchall to close them.

Changes requested but unable to do because of game limitations:

Cart outline - unfortunately the colour of the outline will always be blue, unless someone knows of the coding for it. my MPL (multiple payload) coding would work if it was that styale of map since it works off of a modifid plr code. The only other option would be to hard code it (not sure if that's possible) into client res files and then pack them into the map. have no idea if it would work or not.

Cart telportation for final cap sequence to follow a new path to destruction (you don't see it happen because it happens in the samespot) - am having to use this method instead of breaking the physics on the cart. If I use the physics break, 8 times out of 10 the cart will fly off in some random direction instead of falling down the hole. Although it glitched when we played b1, I have NOT been able to recreate the error after trying serveral times.