WIP CTF_Convoy

[Jive Turkey]

This map is very cool looking. I'm looking forward to playing it later tonight, but for now a few suggestions.

You can find the right tire spin with a little math. angular velocity * radius = linear velocity. So the speed of your ground texture scroll divided by the radius of your tires would give you the proper rotational speed of your tire texture (I'm assuming that is how you did the spin animation, with a material?). That's in radians so convert to degrees (multiply by 180/PI) if necessary. I haven't done many materials myself so I'm not quite sure how that operates.

You should also simulate the tires moving through their shock range over bumps in the terrain by making the tires bob up and down a few small units. You could do this by tying each tire brush to a func_door entity and giving it a lip equal to the tire's diameter minus a few units. Then you repeatedly open/close these func_doors with the randomized firing of logic_timers. You could even have the doors play some sort of slight suspension sound.

And as someone else suggested you should use an env_shake. Set its frequency to 255 and give it a suitably small magnitude to give a slight rumble to the passengers.

They're all small touches but I think they'd go a long way to selling the speed and the mass of the convoys, which is the most attractive part of your level.

Also, have you tried putting a few phys_ragdollmagnet entities along the ground around the convoys? It could be a little tricky getting the right number of them and the right radius (so as not to affect ragdolls that fall onto the convoy vehicles themselves), but the effect could be pretty damn cool watching dudes you just killed have their lifeless corpses get tossed far behind the convoys menacing advance.

Anyway that map is sweet looking, gonna try it out later this evening.

 

[Jive Turkey]

I just thought of something else. You could use the same logic_timers to fire each line of tires, with small delays on the rear tires (delay = the distance between tires divided by the speed of the ground scroll). This would make it look as though the tires were hitting the same bumps in a line.

As you can see, I have more fun thinking about the entities than anything else

 

[YM]

We played it on our full 24 server and we love it, but it has a few problems:

There aren't enough crossing options, either a walkway nearer the front and/or demomen and rocket jumps are needed.

There is a crazy snipe fest which made it a little lame so lots more cover along the two adjacent sides.

Don't get me wrong, its an awseome map but there are some quite large playability problems. We're thinking of puting up a sniper restriction for thenext time we run it, hopefully that will make it much better

 

[hacky]

The map timer is way too long! First game went 25 minutes, second game the timer quickly went to 70+ minutes and was a deadlock until teams stopped trying at around 25 minutes left.

Consider either not adding map time on cap, or adding much less time per cap.

Also, rocketjumping across is possible.

 

[Varadero_be]

Well, only for the idea, you deserve the 10/10 I gave you fpsbanana!

Only 2 little things:

- I agree with youme for the crossing options.
- The crossing ways are too "heavy material". It doesn't look as a bridge only used for an assault. the idea is to get little bridges fixed on a vehicule but not on the other one (don't touch the other one), like the drawbridge of a middleage castle. Sorry for my english, I hope you understand what I mean.

 

[jahrain]

I don't know if anyone has played this map as intensively as I have for the past few weeks on heavily populated servers, and I feel as if allot of assumptions about the gameplay are being made from a quick look or run around the map. I usually assest the gameplay of my own maps by playing the repeatedly as all the classes to see what frustrates me or how frustrated can I make other players, and how I could improve it.

Rocket jumping across is indeep possible, and I have done it many times. Its really easy if you have it hot-keyed, but not as easy as the sticky jump. All you need to do is jump onto the ground from the front end, jump across as far as possible, then rocket jump onto the other side right before you reach the rear tires. It takes some practice and timing, but its possible, and very useful. Its even possible to get across as scout, but this will take you 100s of tries, and is something to try to do if you are bored in a low populated server. Just double jump onto one of the rocks passing, then double jump across right away.

And about the proposed sniper issue. I have played offense and defense in many rounds on 32 player servers without being sniped once (mostly playing as demoman, engineer and scout). I intentionally made the outside area easy to snipe people, but its so easy to avoid if you take the interior and non adjacent routes to the other end of the carrier. The areas where its easy to snipe out people is where you want to travel on when on the opposite team's carrier so a sniper can pick off people chasing after you. Its actually the snipers who are easy targets for other snipers because the snipers hardly have any cover. I have played as the sniper once, and scored 25 head shots on other snipers from a certain spot on the map before running out of ammo and dieing. If anything this map would be most frustrating for snipers because of the lack of cover out in the open. I think the 5 snipers I sniped out repeatedly went to different classes out of frustration after I did that because there was barely anywhere for them to hide behind while sniping. If I added more cover out on the deck, the snipers will have access to the cover the make them harder to cancel out with other snipers giving them a bigger advantage over other classes.

The only place where its possible to be sniped if you are aware is when crossing the bridge, but when a sniper is looking down at that area, any other sniper on the other side can snipe them out since they are not paying attention to anywhere else. It can be a sniper fest, but only if there is a bunch of noobs on the server to snipe at all the time, but it would be worse if more cover is added on the upper decks, especially placed on the adjacent sides. I realized this in a much earlier beta, and removed some of if the cover the adjacent sides had. Make use of the lower passages when on your own carrier as well as the pathway on the upper deck that doesn't face the other team when on your own carrier. Use the upper catwalks near the rockets and adjacent sides of the carrier when you are infiltrating the other team's carrier. Also, scouts, demos, engineers, and soldiers have a free ride to the intel room if they travel on top of the rocket, since it is pretty much out of the line of site of any snipers until you reach near the intel room. There is also a defense rout straight to the intel room that is also completely interior and out of the line of sight of any snipers. When playing, i see allot of people running outside, then going up the steps to enter the intel room and whining when they get sniped. Thats silly.

Also, I noticed getting across the map is extremely easy for almost any class but heavy on a full server mainly because its almost impossible to hold the areas near the bridges. Getting across from one side to another is not a problem if you played the map enough times to realize. There are already 3 choices to choose to get across if you are not launching yourself across as demo. That is, the upper bridge, the top of the rear bridge, or directly through the rear bridge. If the team has a defense built up near the rear extension bridge, the upper bridge onto the catwalks would be completely out of the line of sight for any sentry guns and provide access for people to take out their defense of the bridge from behind.

I have decided however, that I will be adding some cover on the lower deck outside the spawn. And perhaps a jump or launch pad on the back end of the vehicle next to the rear extension bridge that is directed to launch people over to the top of the rocket. I don't know how to do jump pads yet, but I will experiment with using the trigger push entities for that. I think it would be allot more exciting for attackers if more classes were able to travel along that rout for ambushes. Especially for pyro's.

 

[hacky]

Another thing that I noticed that I'm not sure if anyone caught, is that the stairs don't have playerclips to smooth them out.

 

[Deadeye2007]

I played 1 game on this map the other day.

The map itself is gorgeous. You really do have some great skill in brushwork. I would rank this map right up there with valve maps as far as professional design goes.

I did find sniping on this map to be quite easy - I am a very skilled sniper though. Sniper vs. sniper in the centre of the map is great fun. I can even pick off passing soldiers/scouts etc. as they run from end to end.

The wind effect in the centre is a bit annoying for shooting rockets/grenades across to the other side. I imagine you did this intentionally so as to prevent too much mayhem and promote actually going over to the other team's convoy.

The game dragged on a bit . . . a lot. You may want to think about reducing the timer a touch. There were a few people (not me) who were complaining about the game lasting way too long.

Overall, I would give this map a 10/10 for aesthetic design - I haven't seen a nicer custom map yet. For gameplay, I would rate it at about 7/10 currently. There are some issues with length of the game.

 

[Snipergen]

The gameplay is great imho. You did a great job man. I played it a few times, no comments anymore from me, its a great map.

 

[Scoobingsthe2nd]

I played it. Overall I think it's a good map. It's beautiful that's for sure, although I'd like to see a little more variation in the terrain that passes by but that's nit picky.

If I had to say one thing, my big problem is how much this lends to snipers and spies. I think gameplay needs to be worked on, and I think adding another crossover point would do just that. Also the flag room seems ridiculously easy to defend, but that just might be because my team was using terrible teamwork (none).

Overall I have to say at first I was disappointed that this wasn't a remake of the UT map that this is obviously influenced by, but it carries it's own CTF gameplay strong, and it leaves the possibility of making a map like that for myself so I'm not complaining!

Overall I think it's good, just needs some gameplay tweaks.

 

[jahrain]

I played it. Overall I think it's a good map. It's beautiful that's for sure, although I'd like to see a little more variation in the terrain that passes by but that's nit picky.

If only I knew how to tie a displacement to an entity, I would have the entire skybox move though variations of terrains instead of just a texture on a terrain moving.

 

[YM]

Could you move the sky_camera instead? Radical idea but it may or maynot work.

 

[Noggin]

Very unique and very well done.

 

[jahrain]

Could you move the sky_camera instead? Radical idea but it may or maynot work.

Well, the sky_camera entity cannot be parented to any other entities so I don't think it would be possible.

 

[Scoobingsthe2nd]

so currently you have a displacement with the texture scrolling across it?

 

[Noggin]

I think the illusion is great altho its kinda funny falling off and not moving... couldnt u just put a trigger push on the ground to move the players?

 

[jahrain]

I think the illusion is great altho its kinda funny falling off and not moving... couldnt u just put a trigger push on the ground to move the players?

Have you played it? It already uses a conveyor entity to move the players. For some reason, it doesn't move projectiles, gibs, or ragdolls.

 

[Snipergen]

Have you played it? It already uses a conveyor entity to move the players. For some reason, it doesn't move projectiles, gibs, or ragdolls.

And, if you made invisible brushes low to the ground that move but in a higher ratio like the rocks, that push the ragdolls backwards? Wouldn't that work?

 

[Squirrelly]

Looks really good from the outside! Good brushwork too!

I'm really interested into how it plays, if it plays well well then u are golden!

 

[VelvetFistIronGlove]

I have to agree with everyone else -- this is a fantastic looking map.

However, I don't find it plays quite right: it seems to be mostly lots of different long corridors, and I found almost all the battles ended up being 1 on 1 in a corridor. There weren't a lot of areas forward of the intel that seemed good for setting up defences either.

I guess to me it feels very deathmatchy.