SD Congo a4

[ForbiddenDonut]

A jungle-themed Special Delivery map!

Credit:
Sean 'Heyo' Cutino for his 'jungle' assets from Borneo.
Dr. Spud for his 'Vineyard' assets.
Fubar for his WaterFX pack.
Psy for his altered rain/snow particles pack.

 

[McNuggetFiend]

Well damn, there went my map named Congo. Bold move, placeholder thread maker.

 

[ForbiddenDonut]

Well damn, there went my map named Congo. Bold move, placeholder thread maker.

Haha. My apologies, Nugget.

If the map fizzles and becomes a forgotten project, I'll have the admin change its name to something else so you can claim it.

 

[MarcoPixel]

Damnit, i wanted to make the same thing D: Good luck with it

 

[Mr. Happy]

Good luck, it sounds like a really cool idea!

 

[colacan]

Sounds good. I'm interested to see what you'll come up with on the platform. It can be a pain in the ass on Doomsday to defend it for a while.

 

[ForbiddenDonut]

I started blocking this out last night. Here's an early teaser of the point:

 

[Prestige]

making rocket start at the lower ground is definitely a good idea, but why not take it further than what looks like 96 units?

 

[ForbiddenDonut]

It's 128 units. I'm trying to achieve the difference between making it easier for ground level people to get onto the rocket and turning the whole area into a spambowl.

It would easy to change it to 192 if testing permits it.

 

[Sir Bubbles]

I love the concept, I cant wait to see the spawn area for the australium.

 

[Prestige]

ya, 128 should be just fine. i'm just a big dummy.

 

[ForbiddenDonut]

Mmmkay. Did quite a lot of work on this the last few days. Should be ready for a game day pretty soon.

As for gameplay mechanics - I'm going to test the map where the Austrailium return rate is 7 seconds (~50% of the current return rate). I might test it with a faster elevator. I want to see how difficult it is to capture first.

 

[ForbiddenDonut]

Okay, a download is up. Hopefully it will work. PackBSP was acting really odd with me all night - sometimes allowing the custom trees to show up and sometimes not.

If someone can check it out and make sure the trees (there's only 4 of them atm - I only did ones that are in the actual game space) are working, that'd be awesome.

 

[colacan]

I like it. Spawn area reminds me of Doomsday though. I think a rocket launch facility in a jungle like setting can be nice, so I would like to see where this will go.
And the trees are working.

 

[ForbiddenDonut]

Yay. Thanks for the check-up. It's kind of hard to deviate from the way Doomsday sets up its spawn/spawn routes because it makes a clear distinction between what areas you want to go. Other than how they physically work, it's aesthetically placeholder and won't look anything like Doomsday's spawn area once I'm done with it.

Doomsday is quite aesthetically boring to me. I'm going to give Congo some aesthetic pizazz.

 

[LeSwordfish]

SD and PLR have the same issues with spawns, in that they are "long" maps, where players will want to spawn at each end of the cart/flag path. SD has an additional issue in that the flag can't take a route too close to one player's base.

In Atoll, i tried to solve this by curving the map around, offering shortcuts, and having two seperate doors. Fundamentally, all valve maps tackling this- Pipeline stage 3, Hightower, Doomsday- do the same thing. It's bad, but its closer to working than anything else.

 

[ForbiddenDonut]

Interesting.

Congo has three routes running out of spawn at the moment: one that leads to a medium platform at the rocket area, one that leads to a balcony over the austrailium and one that drops off at around the half-way point (although a bit closer to the rocket as I assume most of the map's combat will gravitate towards the rocket.

The only other thing I could come up with in terms of how to lay out SD spawns is by having two spawn rooms: one that is active while the flag is picked up (closer to the rocket) and one that is active while it is not (closer to the flag spawn).

The problem there is that it really dryly cuts up the gameplay and can make alternate strategies more difficult. What if a scout coming from spawn wanted to get into position to pick up the flag as the current flag carrier is getting focused by the rest of the team? It'd be a more convoluted and intricate journey for him.

So, we'll see. I want to see how the map plays before making layout changes.

 

[LeSwordfish]

I recommend against split spawns for that very reason.

 

[ForbiddenDonut]

The playtest went pretty well.

I'm making a few gameplay changes - nothing too drastic:

I want to increase the route potential between the two areas so certain entrances aren't as choke-able. Flag carriers had a pretty hard time staying alive, so I'm placing an entrance here so player movement is a bit less predictable.

Due to this change, the two medium health packs were too close to each other. I've downgraded the one closer to the Austrailium to a small health/ammo.

However, I still want a medium health pack accessible to the middle of the map. So, I'm placing a medium health pack and moving the two small ammo packs in the area to here.

Lastly, I increased the width of the rocket area staircases from 128 to 160. This should make it easier to jump from the middle ground onto the rocket.

Other than that, I'm fixing a few clipping/entity issues and starting texturing

 

[ForbiddenDonut]

Started texturing/detailing. This is going to be a pretty far ahead A2. Should be ready for a upcoming game day.