Bomb Factory a7

[The_Ulf]

Confusing to new players, but goddamn FUN.

Possible suggestion to rename to ctf_jihad

HUD was useless, but that's no surprise because of it's complexity.

I got stuck as well in the big pit room where the flag is at the bottom, had to suicide to escape.

But overall, I loved it. You've inspired me to make a map with this gamemode

Haha, my family raised some eyebrows when I tried to explain what the map was ("but that's suicide!"). I think I'll leave ctf_jihad to you (not sure I wanna take the name there...) when I release the backbone entity setup when it's a bit more finalized.

I'll have to take a look at the demo to see what happened with the pit and you (I know exactly where you're talking about, but I thought I took care of it with a trigger_hurt - I'll have to double check).

 

[Fearlezz]

Holy shit how come ive missed this? :O
Looks great man, keep it up!

 

[The_Ulf]

I got stuck as well in the big pit room where the flag is at the bottom, had to suicide to escape.

Found it. I hadn't created a trigger hurt volume for the basement itself, just the flag room. xD

I've added it as an always-on "fell to your death" pit, separate from the one tied to the basement doors opening and closing.

 

[The_Ulf]

Alpha 4 bump and Changelog!
-There's a tonemap now so you won't go blind
-Basement death-pit fixed (aka, added)
-Added/improved instructional HUD messages
-Fixed and shortened respawn wave times (they should never have gotten up to 30+ seconds, sorry about that)
-Added a second traintrack and more prop geometry to break certain sightlines
-Exterior texture pass
-Lots of missing playerclip that was bothering me
-Moved the func_respawnroom_visualizer to all the way back up against the actual spawn door and removed the func_nobuild so that engineers can build tele entrances where they naturally feel they ought to. I just didn't any buildable areas that spies couldn't reach/ride teles from, but it appears that the maps monstrous scale (whoops) will be preventing that anyway

Thank you, everyone who participated in the playtest! I was working on alpha 4 while waiting for the gameday demo to hit, so I'll be addressing more of the issues raised by you guys in alpha 5 - first and foremost of which will be the map layout (I try to avoid making my maps too small, but it looks like I just plain don't have any sense of scale!) which I am shrinking drastically. I am only really posting alpha 4 as is (and not working on scale already) to have a fallback because of how much revision will be necessary.

Additionally, I will be examining some aspects of the gametype itself and its underlying entity structure. Currently, you are essentially just playing capture the flag, with the stipulations that there is only one flag and your capture zones are in your opponents bases and only turn on briefly. The entity structure is ctf based as I wanted to still have the ctf HUD and ctf announcements, but it has become clear that the ctf HUD is relatively worthless (multiple players repeatedly asked where the flag was, despite both on screen indicators always pointing to the flag-bearer) and that having to hold the flag to make a capture was not only confusing and unintuitive, but also unsatisfying (there were several moments in the demo where even I, just watching, was disappointed by an explosion not counting towards a capture because the flag-bearer was killed at the last second).

As such, I am going to be overhauling the capture system into using point_proximity sensors and a ghost control point HUD and skeleton. Expect alpha 5 to be a ways off.

 

[Micnax]

...multiple players repeatedly asked where the flag was, despite both on screen indicators always pointing to the flag-bearer.

Mine wasn't pointing to anything. Maybe it's just me or your HUD dosn't work on other players.

 

[The_Ulf]

Mine wasn't pointing to anything. Maybe it's just me or your HUD dosn't work on other players.

Bleh... nvm mind then, all the more reason for me to get my arse around to switching the HUD. ::

 

[riuthamus]

This map does really well, although it seems nobody can set up the bomb once two or more sentry guns are placed....

 

[The_Ulf]

This map does really well, although it seems nobody can set up the bomb once two or more sentry guns are placed....

Yeah... I'm going to need to test the hell out of this to find the right timer lengths and line-of-sight blocking to make the map playable, particularly regarding sentries. :bored:

I'm hoping the new mechanics system will help this somewhat in allowing teams to still destroy points by merely dropping the flag on them (perhaps a zealous, last second rush into sentry fire to get the flag into the cap zone will do the trick).

One of the things I'm trying to make this map to be, besides a stupidly hilarious suicide-fest, is a ctf map that requires radically different strategies from other flag systems. I wanted to de-emphasize scouts and spies as viable flag-bearers (which I failed at by making the first layout at a scale that only scouts could traverse at a reasonable speed, :blush: - new, smaller layout is in progress) and promote offensive strategies of actually moving into and taking hold of enemy territory (via offensive engineers and medic support).

I'd love more feedback like this regarding sentries and defensive positions, particularly pertaining to how easy and area is to defend and/or take and hold (because I know I don't have a clue ).

 

[Penguin]

I wish you the best with this project man. Sounds spot-on to what I expected.

Both of us have a lust for destruction, it seems.

Could use a cooler name, though.

 

[The_Ulf]

Could use a cooler name, though.

Yes it could. ::

I'm also open to gametype name suggestions, although I'm currently partial to the "Bomb the Base" suggestion brought up on gameday.

 

[Penguin]

BTB sounds good.

I can't think of much, though.

 

[riuthamus]

Well, like i told the guy who is making glacier. This map will be part of my 32 player rotation. If you ever want to drop in and test is let me know and ill arrange a visit so you can hear 32 players thoughts.

 

[The_Ulf]

Well, like i told the guy who is making glacier. This map will be part of my 32 player rotation. If you ever want to drop in and test is let me know and ill arrange a visit so you can hear 32 players thoughts.

<3

 

[captainAngry]

 

[The_Ulf]

The new layout is slow going, particularly since I haven't had internet access these past several days and am leaving on a trip tomorrow. -_-;;

As such, a5 is a ways off - but I got a first draft of the new underlying game mechanics and decided to release and test it as alpha 4-a.

The new system is proving extremely useful as it's letting me a) make the bomb behave in a more bomb-like manner and b) severely improve the HUD (more to come on that one with a5).

Now, simply killing the flag-carrier won't save a zone - you have to get the flag off of it before it detonates. I need to tweak all the threat-range radii for each point (the hazard strips on the ground are roughly meaningless now) to make them reasonable, but standing/setting the bomb on or by the control point models will always work.

One thing I'm worried about now is that the new system allows for griefing and/or confused players to bring the bomb to their own base and destroy it. I'm not certain of how I'll address this if it presents itself as an issue.

One thing that I know is a problem with the new system is that the new, control point based HUD gives roughly zero indication of whether or not you are holding the flag. This might prove entertaining/encourage teamwork or it might be flamingly obnoxious/horrible.

 

[captainAngry]

We were still on a3 but we did get a chance to play last night. It sounds like your ideas for a5 will take care of most of the issues we had. About half the server knew what they were supposed to do while the other half did not. It was a fun map but for some reason people don't understand GIGANTIC ARROWS pointing to where you are supposed to go.

With a HUD update I'll be happy. With more play we will get more people to know what they are supposed to to. Anyway, demo:

 

[The_Ulf]

Thanks so much for all three of those demos, Captain!

I'm finally back home after a rather obnoxious family vacation and am reconnected to the internet. As such, I'm back at work on a5 in full force and have gotten the new HUD mostly in place (just figuring out one last feature I want to add) and I'm rebuilding (again) the map from the ground up at the hopefully appropriate scale.

Screens and details to come.

 

[captainAngry]

I totally forgot. EVERYONE was complaining about the respawn times. I don't know if this was intentional or not but we were getting 40 second respawn times which is ridiculous.

 

[The_Ulf]

I totally forgot. EVERYONE was complaining about the respawn times. I don't know if this was intentional or not but we were getting 40 second respawn times which is ridiculous.

Yeah - my bad on that.

The respawn wave timers are what I'm using now to enforce more of a win-more gameplay (losing a control point adds time to your teams spawn timer), but because of how Valve set up that system (and because of my not understanding it at first) you'd wind up waiting about twice what I thought to respawn.

That was the first thing I addressed with alpha 4 - switching the wave timer down to a base 4 seconds plus 4 per point lost (leaving players dead for about 16 seconds at most) over the old 10 plus 5 per point lost (which often left you out of the game for an un-godly half a minute).

I'll try to have a5 out soon - but a4a is up now if you really want to play it.

 

[captainAngry]

The updates from the previous version is great. Now that more people on my server know what to do, the matches are going better. With an updates HUD so there wasn't as much of a learning curve, you would be in great shape. It also might be helpful to add the point letters to the HUD if you had that in mind.