So I'm Resurrecting Walkway....

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Yes?


  • Total voters
    53

wiseguy149

Emperor of Entities and Amateur of Aesthetics
May 12, 2009
103
220
Hi there. I'm Wiseguy149. You probably haven't heard of me.
Back in the day, I made tr_walkway. You might have heard of that.

After a 5 year stint in purgatory, I was let out early for good behavior, and now I'm back in the land of the living and ready to resume work on walkway.



Here are some of the changes I currently have planned:

  • AI bots instead of Puppet bots.
    This allows bots to move down the walkway under their own power, at the correct speed for their class and with hitboxes that will properly match their running animations.
    These issues were the two biggest drawbacks with the previous versions of walkway, and with the changes I'm making, they've been fixed.
  • Completely redesigned aesthetics.
    Everything is being rebuilt from the ground up to look better.
    The buttons in the settings room have been completely replaced with a new system that makes the settings much more intuitive to configure. Trust me, you're going to like it.
  • Shooting Gallery.
    The last version's biggest new addition was the sentry room, and this version's is (so far) going to be a Shooting Gallery.
    Wooden cutouts of the TF2 characters will rapidly pop in an out of cover, giving you a chance to test your reflexes like never before.
  • In an effort to defeat communism, players on walkway now must join the BLU team. Better dead than RED!
    No but actually I wanted to keep it in line with the VALVe training maps, so BLU it is.

Those are the big changes currently planned for the next version, but they're not the only ones. Since I'm completely rebuilding the map from the ground up, there will be a lot of fluff that's cut out and small bits that are made more efficient. I'm also liable to come up with a lot more ideas during the course of development.

I don't have anything to show you guys yet, but that's mostly because the work I've done so far is under-the-hood type stuff, redesigning the bot deployment and navigation system and getting it to work around dynamic map elements and things like that.



Anyway, what I would like to know is what changes do you want to see made to walkway?

Is there something you would like to be able to practice that you currently can't do in walkway?
Do you want the sentry room to have more particle effects?
Do you hate how a certain feature looks?
Do you want to be able to explode the bots with your mind?
Even if an idea seems crazy and impossible, it just might work, so please let me know what you think!
 

wiseguy149

Emperor of Entities and Amateur of Aesthetics
May 12, 2009
103
220
Sounds good! How are you getting around valve disabling sv_allow_point_servercommand by default?

Considering that walkway is a map that people generally manually download off the internet rather than getting it from a server in-game or something, I can package the next release with a tr_walkway_rc3.cfg file that sets sv_allow_point_servercommand always whenever you load walkway.

If sv_allow_point_servercommand isn't enabled, I can detect that, and when you first load the map it will instruct you to fix it.

That said, I've been doing all I can to minimize the server commands that the map needs to use.
With the change to AI bots instead of Puppet bots, the only server command that the map currently cannot function without is disabling autobalance.
 

wiseguy149

Emperor of Entities and Amateur of Aesthetics
May 12, 2009
103
220
As long as the Pyro Overlord is still there, I'll be happy.

I won't say anything definite about easter eggs in the new version and spoil the surprise.
That said, I'm aware that the Pyro Overlord was pretty popular.
If it shows up again, it wouldn't be absurd to expect things to be a little bit more... fiery.
 

Zed

Certified Most Crunk™
aa
Aug 7, 2014
1,241
1,025
Did you fix the infinite kill trigger when you move the platform?
 

wiseguy149

Emperor of Entities and Amateur of Aesthetics
May 12, 2009
103
220
Did you fix the infinite kill trigger when you move the platform?
The short answer is since I'm being careful to recreate the map from scratch and not copy my work, the same bugs shouldn't be present in the new version.

The long answer is if that's the bug I'm thinking of, moving the platform involved sending lots of outputs to various moving parts at very specific time delays. The bug was caused by separate instructions being given in the same time period, preventing certain elements from getting reset properly at the end.

I've been reworking the button/configuration system to make it more robust and abuse proof by doing things like locking all the inputs until instructions are done executing.

Basically the idea is that rather than telling the map to move the ramp, you'll instead be telling the map that you want the ramp at a certain spot, and then the map will sort that out separately.
 
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Toomai

L3: Member
Apr 14, 2011
129
144
As an Engineer main, I'm envisioning the reverse of the sentry room.

So you pick a spot to set up your nest. There are two or three entrances, and every now and then on an irregular timer, a wave of enemies rolls in. Maybe they have uber, maybe they have megaheal, maybe they're all Scouts. And there's at least two or three teammates hovering around at all times, wandering in and out of the room, and eventually one of them is a Spy.

Unrelated to the above: Make it so that all bots taunt when you die. (Or at least have that as an option.)
 

wiseguy149

Emperor of Entities and Amateur of Aesthetics
May 12, 2009
103
220
As an Engineer main, I'm envisioning the reverse of the sentry room
This is doable and probable.
Maybe they have uber, maybe they have megaheal
You can't mess with loadouts on bots, so megaheal wouldn't be possible.
Uber on command might be possible, but it'll be difficult.
Edit: I forgot about addcond, this is definitely doable.
eventually one of them is a Spy.
Ooh I like that idea.
Make it so that all bots taunt when you die. (Or at least have that as an option.)
That would be hilarious.



Thanks for the ideas, they're pretty great.
 
Last edited:
Aug 23, 2008
404
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I don't have anything particular to add, but if you visit teamfortess.tv and tell them your planning to update I'm sure the comp players will have a bunch of ideas (many, of which, will be inplausible/undoable/bad, but still).
 

Toomai

L3: Member
Apr 14, 2011
129
144
You can't mess with loadouts on bots, so megaheal wouldn't be possible.
Uber on command might be possible, but it'll be difficult.
Edit: I forgot about addcond, this is definitely doable.
I guess it depends whether the bots are smart enough to pop by themselves. They don't always seem to be. (Could you get the pocketed bot to use one of the two voice commands that forces a pop?)
Unfortunately Medic-related addconds cease if the subject starts or stops receiving continuous healing, so that might be an issue (give a Demo the uber, the Medic thinks "okay time to heal someone else" and the uber goes away).

I seem to recall the original tr_walkway having airshot practice by flinging the bots upwards along the hallway. This is okay for shooting people coming at you or getting away, but not so much for people moving sideways; there's not much room to fire against the grain.
 

henke37

aa
Sep 23, 2011
2,075
515
I hope to see some shenanigans involving tf_point_weapon_mimic and all the other new entities.
 

ades

L4: Comfortable Member
Jun 27, 2014
165
58
I love walkway, i'm extreamly excited to hear its getting a update with all the stuff you say will be added :D cant wait
 

wiseguy149

Emperor of Entities and Amateur of Aesthetics
May 12, 2009
103
220
I seem to recall the original tr_walkway having airshot practice by flinging the bots upwards along the hallway. This is okay for shooting people coming at you or getting away, but not so much for people moving sideways; there's not much room to fire against the grain.

Yeah. There's unfortunately no good way to simulate airstrafing. The physics of it are super weird and unique and you just can't simulate it with any external forces. We tried to make it happen in the last version of walkway but nothing we did even remotely resembled normal airborne movement patterns.

That said, I'm still going to try to see if I can't give it another shot and figure stuff out. I'm just not optimistic.


At the very least though there will probably be some sort of opportunity to practice airshots from different angles with bots coming from different directions.
One of the biggest issues with walkway was that there weren't a lot of places to stand if you wanted to practice from different sorts of angles and vantage points, and I'll definitely be opening things up a lot.
 

tyler

aa
Sep 11, 2013
5,102
4,621
More easter eggs?
Plz plz plz plz plz
Add a secret room with the face of Gabe(n) on the walls, floor and ceiling. Also a soundscape with the Gabe(n) song or just Gabe(n) saying Gabe(n) from the intro of the devs documentary
Like the original HL (except for the soundscape)

Don't do this
 
Oct 6, 2008
1,947
445
Well you could add in a platform for engies to build sentry guns on so the can practice their wrangeling skills.

Maybe have a func_breakable that follows a random path, random speeds - engie has to shoot in with the wrangle gun - maybe a shield part too which would stop bullets but not rockets - so you can pratice where the target will be when the rockets get there type of aiming.
 

UKCS-Alias

Mann vs Machine... or... Mapper vs Meta?
aa
Sep 8, 2008
1,264
816
You can't mess with loadouts on bots, so megaheal wouldn't be possible.
Uber on command might be possible, but it'll be difficult.
Edit: I forgot about addcond, this is definitely doable.
Isnt it possible to take some of the mvm mechanics? As in that case you could even use popfiles for diffirent training settings. And loadout becomes fully controllable.