pipeline, sawmill and nucleus discussion

YM

LVL100 YM
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Dec 5, 2007
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displacement usage makes perfect sense, its very hard to get brushes to work with curves well. The ground cutting doesn't look carved, but its also quite tricky to get brushes to work with curves like that so you just have to cut them where you can. I do think it could be done more logically though
 

StoneFrog

L6: Sharp Member
May 28, 2008
395
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They really should have, indeed, used the arc tool and then vertex edited the segments. The only advantage I see to using displacements is that it's a lot easier to rescale them if you're changing, for example, the area of the pit.

What I want to know about nucleus is if that cactus sitting on one of the crater walls up there is intentional or not.
 

evanonline

L420: High Member
Mar 15, 2009
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I like Pipeline's last stage best and I wish they had at least worked in more hills for the carts to slide down. I'm confused as to why they didn't use that more.

It's a good concept and I think it's very fun, but the second stage needs to be toyed around with. The other two go quick enough to be fun, but the second stage is really just stalemate city.

I enjoy all the mapping materials this update gave a lot. Hoodoo had this track bumper for carts that works perfectly for a map I was doing.
 
Dec 25, 2007
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The biggest problem I found with Pipeline is that it's possible occasionally to get it into an unwinnable state on stage 3: the bomb can blow up and *not* trigger the round ending; in fact this happened to me the first time I played it! I recorded a demo for a few minutes after it got stuck in this state.
 

Tinker

aa
Oct 30, 2008
672
334
I enjoy playing Pipeline a lot, and Nucleus and Sawmill are just wonderful, not only because of their aestethics but also of their non-symmetric and natural feel (sawmill) and great use of the cap point (nucleus). I do however hope they will make a cp_sawmill, because arena is, well, arena.
 

Sgt Frag

L14: Epic Member
May 20, 2008
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They really should have, indeed, used the arc tool and then vertex edited the segments. The only advantage I see to using displacements is that it's a lot easier to rescale them if you're changing, for example, the area of the pit.

What I want to know about nucleus is if that cactus sitting on one of the crater walls up there is intentional or not.


Dispacements are also easier on processing, especially if a map isn't using any, and this map doesn't seem to from what I recall. No ground work anywhere, but I only got one quick playtime on it.
 

Cold

L1: Registered
May 23, 2009
31
5
Both of the arenas appear stellar with Sawmill pulling ahead because of great thematics and asthetics. Pipeline was a let down for me, there are many places that seem sloppy and it feels the same every time I play it. It seems to be whoever has the most people spamming the corridor where the cart is. Once the enemy gets close to the end of their track they can easily spawncamp you and keep pushing the cart.
 

Ida

deer
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Jan 6, 2008
2,289
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k, some quick opinions (not influenced by the topic... I haven't read any of it :p)

Sawmill: Beatiful. Love it. Best arena map ever. It seemed huge at first - and it is, probably best for 12-24 players, nothing below - but that doesn't bother me. I like big arena matches. I obviously love the rain, and the sky is beautiful. The one thing I don't like is how the spawn is closed off... I just don't see why they did that.

Nucleus: Looks ok - mostly thanks to the modeller, of course. I don't like how none of the combat is focused on anything at all. I see how they wanted the doomsday device to be the center, but it's obviously not; everyone (understandably) hangs out in the tighter corridors (snipers are very powerful in the outer arena, they either wounded me, killed me and/or did the same to my teammates immediately after almost every single round start), which feels weird. Nucleus isn't what I had expected, because it all boils down to a couple of corridors. Oh well, it's not terrible either.

Pipeline: Part of me doesn't like it very much, part of me is very interested. There are a few niggles with the details that I don't like (every out of bounds area is black... it's almost claustrophobic), they haven't clipped a single staircase, the explosion sucks... Stuff like that. Not the end of the world, sure. And there's a lot to like. I'm surprisingly happy with the gameplay of the first two stages (lots of side routes ensure that there's little spam).
However, while I quite like the first two stages, stage 3 is pretty terrible in my opinion. The cart rolling all the way down again is so depressing, it's just not fun at all. As opposed to stages 1 and 2, spam + a couple of snipers wins the day here. What were they thinking?
 

StoneFrog

L6: Sharp Member
May 28, 2008
395
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The biggest problem I found with Pipeline is that it's possible occasionally to get it into an unwinnable state on stage 3: the bomb can blow up and *not* trigger the round ending; in fact this happened to me the first time I played it! I recorded a demo for a few minutes after it got stuck in this state.
The explosion at the end of pipeline is kind of a letdown. Not to mention it tends to stutterbug me to hell about 25% of the time.

By the way, is that a huntsman spider on the Spy in your avatar? :D
 

cornontheCoD

L420: High Member
Mar 25, 2008
437
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I also thought it was lame that stages 1 and 2 of Pipeline are very bland aesthetically. Stage 3 looks awesome and is very iconic, but 1 and 2 are just so...boring looking.

Also, I wish they would have made a dustbowl-style map for this update. I'm sick of payload.
 

Penguin

Clinically Diagnosed with Small Mapper's Syndrome
aa
May 21, 2009
2,039
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Anyone decompile Pipeline yet? Or any of these, for that matter?

I wanna make my own PL race.
 

Mexican Apple Thief

L3: Junior Member<br>LEAD FARMER
Aug 23, 2008
345
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I don't like the first two stages of payload race. It's like a ctf but you're trying to essentially make the goal harder to defend, all so you can move the cart up for the most insignificant advantage. And they don't have a timer. :\

The third stage is all right, although it gets pretty spammy.

I'd like to see a map where you try to push the cart from the enemy base to your own. Could be a better version of ctf considering it won't reset.
 

zornor

L4: Comfortable Member
Jan 14, 2009
195
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At least with payload race, as opposed to CTF, you can never lose any progress on the cart (except at the uphills and when you lose, obviously). There's always the 1 minue timer on the flag.
 
May 23, 2009
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Anyone decompile Pipeline yet? Or any of these, for that matter?

I wanna make my own PL race.

Yes, but surely you can do it yourself right? vmex is freely available. What I don't get is what the nodraw "fins" by the track in pipeline are for, they arent tied to any entity so they should be walkable ingame, but aren't.. theres some in nucleus too:confused:
 

Mexican Apple Thief

L3: Junior Member<br>LEAD FARMER
Aug 23, 2008
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I don't like Sawmill. Don't get me wrong, it looks beautiful, but I don't like the gameplay. I has too many paths and pretty much ends up coming down to whoever has the most ambush classes.
 

Mar

Banned
Feb 12, 2009
607
63
Sawmills the best scout map ever. It's so much fun to do 2v2 or 1v1 on sawmill.

Excuse me as I go and change my pants.