Melee Fort

[The Asylum]

hi kids, i've been seven kinds of all fucked up since saturday. the turkey wasn't the only thing getting sauced.

thankfully i've already done all the major changes to rctf melee fort, and the new soundscape setup for the titantrons is still a little finnicky, so saturday is when you can expect new melee fort.

 

[The Asylum]

While I get the new Titantron system in working order, I've been pondering something. Way back when in the old Meleefort builds, CTF Meleefort's Intel just sat there in the middle of the courtyard ring. No gimmick, no prop, just HERE IZ INTEL DERP. Now that I've swept the old Meleefort under the rug, I of course want to make things more fun to look at, and play on.

Originally, the gimmick for CTF Melee Fort was having the Intel suspended up above the ring, and players would have to "climb" a ladder to get to it, like a Ladder Match from pro wrasslin'. (For the uninformed, this is a ladder match). Climb the ladder and run away with the intel to your base, as is the standard-issue CTF objective. My first and only attempt to get a sufficient "climbing" game mechanic in there was having players jump onto a first rung, then onto the second, then the third to get the intel briefcase. That didn't go very far as I thought it was too time-consuming, so I thought I may as well just put a cage around the ring instead, to limit the effectiveness of the almighty Scout Rush. So if you were ever wondering why the Intel is placed where it is, that's your answer.

I've been really thinking about this recently. The intel placement makes no sense where it is, does it? Maybe I should bring the ladder climbing gimmick back, and do away with the cage. What do you guys think?

 

[The Asylum]

i'll save that decision for a later build, but for now...

NEW AND EXCITING!!! It's Melee Fort A12!

http://gamebanana.com/tf2/maps/171354

CHANGES FROM A11A

- General Changes
-- Mecha Update compatibiity added
-- New Titantron system in place! Same bad-ass tunes, less low-end computer unfriendliness!
-- The stripper system should behave better after round end
-- Some minor optimization tweaks

- ARENA Changes
-- Fixed issue with invalid spawnpoints

- CTF Changes
-- Titantrons no longer trigger on capture
-- Fixed BLU's title belt appearing upside down when carried

-DUEL Changes
-- The Flying Guillotine is now stripped, as it should have been

- RCTF Changes
-- Added some really obvious hints for BLU team on where to take the intel
-- Blocked in the Slobberknocker Storehouse from RED's side. It's a One-Way, RED-only doorway until the first point is capped.
-- Fiddled with the return and defense times
-- Match now ends OnTimer, regardless of wether the intel is in motion or not.
-- BLU's spawn has an additional exit
-- Added some health and ammo outside the Storehouse

- DM, KOTH, PLR Changes
-- nothin foo' they're perfect

-SD Changes
-- never happened you all saw nothing ok

 

[The Asylum]

workin on the *new* new SD Melee Fort

Goin' with a mashup of the original layout and the expanded CP layout, with the RCTF spawns. I am outright mutilating an old pre-snow CTF build, and I'm likely going to have to rebuild its skybox from scratch as well.

why do i subject myself to this

 

[The Asylum]

there, that fits the whole "secret spy base" theme much better than the old one, dont you think?

 

[Limeaide]

there, that fits the whole "secret spy base" theme much better than the old one, dont you think?

Shouldn't that door have the rails on the other side? I'm destroying my brain trying to wrap my head around how that's meant to close with the rail thing on top.

 

[The Asylum]

I'm thinking of it being like a simple covering that someone can just lift up and shove onto the side of the tunnel, provided that the train car is moved forward. I thought it best to futher explore the little-used theme of a blatanly shoddy facade (the wooden cows in 2Fort)

Also thinking of putting a sign on the board saying something to the effect of "It's not a secret entrance if you forget to put the cover back!", but I just can't think of a funny way of saying it.

 

[The Asylum]

Needless to say, I think my plate is full up when it comes to new Melee Fort. I've got SD to finish, MVM hasn't even been started yet, and I have just about zero ideas for a new chooser. Recently, however, I recieved a request for a Halloween Melee Fort. I, personally, would love to remake Melee Fort to give it a special-occasion Manor/Harvest theme. I would hate, however, to go and rebuild ten different maps. Yeah, that's not happening.

So the question goes out to you, dear reader: If a Halloween Melee Fort were to happen, which build would you like to see it happen with?

In the meantime, here's a near-final version of the new platform for the new SD Melee Fort:

Thank you, Acumen, I love that chain model.

 

[The Asylum]

oh shit

oh shit oh shit oh shit OH SHIT Why didn't I think of this before!?

Sending a looping kill input to obj_sentrygun = no sentries, evar. Engineers can still build dispensers and teleporters, but not sentries. Engineers won't be so incredibly useless anymore!

Could you imagine a Melee Fort with teleporters and dispensers?

 

[The Asylum]

Gather 'round children, and hear a tale of many a year past...

Way back when, a young mapper named Asylum first picked up Hammer, and he made a shitty map called Meleefort. Having just about zero clue about the can of worms he was opening, he thought it'd be awesome if he made different game modes out of it just by swapping a few entities around. The resulting CP map was tiny and dinky and stupid, and the rest weren't much better off. Then Meleefort caught sv_cheats rabies and asylum took it out behind the woodshed and blam the end

While cp_meleefort_a1.bsp has been lost to the ages, it looked like this:

Ugly, isn't it? There were just three points: The courtyards and the middle point shown. Then came Meleefort B3, which introduced the expanded 5-point monster you're probably more familiar with.

As I mentioned before, I've gotten a few requests for a Halloween Melee Fort, and I was at a bit of a standstill when it came to deciding which game mode I should multilate. I looked to the Valve Standard for inspiration, and lo and behold, it hit me.

cp_3melee_fort_event.

Like Valve turning cp_gorge into cp_5gorge, why not make a totally new CP Melee Fort, with 3 CPs instead of 5? Thankfully, I still have an extremely early pre-alpha .vmf of Melee Fort (before I even game it prefixes!), so blowing up the middle ground won't be a problem.

7 and a half months. I like my chances.

 

[The Asylum]

So from a gametype-related entity setup standpoint, SD Melee Fort is done. The map is all sealed up too, so now all that remains is fitting in the stripper system and rebuilding the skybox. The skybox may or may not happen in time for A13, however. That all will depend on how far along I get with 3Melee Fort Event.

Speaking of which, here's some screens. Enjoy.

Doesn't look familiar, does it? Obiously this base isn't quite finished yet, but the Manor theme is being put to good use

Stupid amount of detail for what's still an unfinished alpha, but once I started I just couldn't stop.

The toll booths have been replaced with a shed... that's really just a facade for an escape tunnel into the courtyard- I mean, "secret lab"

And what does the secret lab look like? Oh baby. I've got such a sweet final point that I don't want to blow the lid off of it yet. So in the meantime, here's a teaser:

Strikes one's fancy, eh?

 

[The Asylum]

Middle point. A shitty mockup of a bridge will have to do for now. I know I like to go crazy with detail way too early on, and I'm really struggling to restrain myself here. See that tombstone in the back there? That serves as a forward spawn.

My own modification of wallpaper03.vtf. I hope YM doesn't mind.

 

[Fish 2.0]

Asylum, Just curious, I'm making a fool around map and I was wondering if it was possible to strip players of all weapons?

No guns or melee, just nothing. Is there a trigger for that or something?

 

[The Asylum]

If you're not planning on letting them have their weapons back and don't mind having small healthkits drop on death, put a tf_logic_medieval down in your map. That'll strip the bulk of all weapons. Then you'll have to make a trigger brush that'll send a kill input to the medieval whitelist weapons (Hunstsman, melee weaps, etc)

For a list of weapon entity names, click here: http://forums.tf2maps.net/showthread.php?t=1805

 

[Ælement]

if you want no weapons at all, you can just kill tf_weapon_*

The star makes it so that everything that starts with tf_weapon_ gets killed

 

[The Asylum]

Curses. Foiled again.

 

[The Asylum]

So I think I've got a good idea for a new chooser- Heavy Bag Hunt. Here's a real quick rundown.

There are so far 11 versions of Melee Fort, some of which don't yet exist. Readily chooseable amongst these are:

1 - Arena
2 - CP
3 - CTF
4 - DM
5 - KOTH
6 - PLR
7 - RCTF
8 - SD
9 - 3CP

The other two, Duel and MVM, not so much. I'll explain later.

My plan is to have color-coded heavy bags (which are really just func_breakables), each corresponding to a "chooseable" gametype. Orange being Arena, White being CTF, etc, 10 for each gametype, which brings us to 90 in total. The map itself will be a giant circle, with players all on one team spawning in the middle. The heavy bags will randomly spawn around them, in between a number of fake heavy bags. Whichever gametype has all of it's heavy bags broken first gets set as the next map.

Squirreled away onto the very very far sides are control points for Duel and MVM, each with very very long capture times. Because of the special nature of these two, a near-unanimous desire to play on them will have to occur.

Now I know what you're thinking: This is absolutley retarded. And I partially agree. Going to this amount of idiocy is neccesary, however, if I'm going to do something other than HURP DERP CONTROL POINTS to choose maps and keep the "Melee" theme. Also, I'd like the Chooser to reflect the choice of the players, and not some random Plinko-lottery crap.

...honestly, I don't know if I can pull this off or not.

 

[Fish 2.0]

It's easy.

For a project of that scale just use the ABS library. I'm sure it isn't cheating.

 

[The Asylum]

^^ way ahead of ya

So I was doing some plotting out at work today (I rarely do any real work), trying to figure out which bags should be placed where. As it is, making the bags spawn in random locations is a nightmare, so I'm trying something much easier for now- randomly rotating the "rings" of bags around them.

Right now, I've got three rings of heavy bags, each encircling the middle spawn area. With 90 bags in total go spread around, I've decided on putting 20 in the inner circle, 30 in the middle circle, and 40 in the outer circle. None of those numbers divide evenly into 9, however, so instead of having an equal number of type-specific bags in each ring, I'm gonna have to fudge around a little.

This is where your input comes in.

I figure I can use this imbalance to create a priority system, where particular game modes can have their bags busted sooner, being closer in proximity to the spawn. The rough draft is as follows:

Inner circle (high priority): 2 bags per mode, + 1 CP and +1 CTF (20)
Middle circle (medium priority): 3 bags per mode, + 1 Arena, +1 SD, +1 KOTH (30)
Outer circle (low priority): 4 bags per mode, +1 3CP, +1 DM, +1 PLR, +1 RCTF (40)

This means that CP and CTF will be easier to choose. 3CP, DM, PLR, and RCTF not so much. If you think you can create a better priority order, I'd love to know.

 

[The Asylum]

something to look forward to