Oh, another thing. Make your building architecture a little more interesting. some parts in your mapped looked really good, while others where just... plain...
I like the map, but I feel that some of the interiors and cap points are a bit plain. Also, are there any APC spawns? With the vehicle spawning, I suppose that the max can easily be reached. APCs would be a bit better than the AFVs, especially with deployment.
Ok...We played 2 rounds on the g4tc main with 64 players. And fucking wow. This map is one of the best I've played in a long time. The intricacy of it is just so fun. But anyways, I have a list of things we all agreed should be fixed: Fog: Fog...yeh, glow in the dark is bad. Skybox fog...too thick, makes the skybox look like it doesn't exist until up close. I might even consider turning off skybox fog. Outside: Lighting is a little bland, and needs some way for the light to appear, street lights and stuff. Needs way more cover. Needs less square buildings. Inside: Really nice. Needs way more cover. NEEDS BREAKABLE GLASS D: Vehicles: The presets you've used are just...bad. And they don't come frequently enough. Which is bad because the vehicles suck. I recommend either putting a VF in with a fixed res rate, or taking suggestions for stuff. The worst thing is the lack of armour on the LT. Remember, you can make the tanks however you want them regardless of weight limit, so IMO put full armour on all the tanks, but make the type of armour fluctuate. As for weaponry, do what you wish, it makes it interesting. APC SPAWNS. Flags: Don't use the little floating flag things, they're kinda silly. Put the actual flag pole if you have one, in the centre. The biggest thing is the lack of cover outside, and everything seems a little sparce. Most of this stuff could probably be fixed with an hour or so. We had some "bigger" suggestions that may or may not be possible. Make the buildings serve more of a purpose. Do this by making them part of the next idea. You made a subway station. We think it would be awesome if all the buildings you could go in were stations, and it went around the entire map (the track). Don't know about the train itself, it may or may not be possible, but the main idea is that there is an entire underground system, rather than at the moment where little bits here and there are underground. There is no reason you can't link this to the car parks and stuff. Whatever you do, don't change the positioning of the flags according to where you spawn, but maybe add uncappable flags in the spawn so you can change class. For both teams. But seriously, the roof access overlooking the centre flag is so fucking awesome. I'll post more as we test it, but I do love this map. I'm not sure about engy restricting, as I think walls could be ok, but they could make it a cluster fuck. Turrets will be fine if 1) You limit them to level 1 or 2 at a push. 2) You add that cover I mentioned. Cover can be anything, crates, benches, bus stops, whatever you want. And above all, a huge problem. THE ENTIRE MAP IS A1. There are no grid squares, the entire map is A1. It makes it qute disorientating. I recommend fixing that asap. And the weird BRENODI EMPIRE WILL WIN IN 60 or 30 SECONDS shit. I don't even know what the winning conditions are on this map, but you should explain it more clearly, make that simpler and don't use in your face annoying writing. But seriously...this map is fucking fantastic.
I agree, the gameplay is fantastic. The inside could use some props, and the outside could use prettier buildings, (altough, I like the buildings in the south_west, they have a very unique atmosphere.) Personally I found the lighting somewhat odd in some locations. And Trickster, that is possible. You can make a railway/metro station and a train that moves on a track. As for infantry, make more passages trough the buildings, Here are some websites for effects and good lighting; http://type3studios.com/civilizatio...uts/Effects1_CustomMaterialsWithPhotoshop.php http://type3studios.com/civilization/tutorial_render/sdknuts/Light1_wiseLights.php
Yeh amethyst but I meant, it can look stupid. You tend to rubber band or the thing moves whilst you stay stationary, until you get stuck against a moving wall.
Well, what about trains in Half Life 2 and in other mods. Doesn't it parrent you to the train automaticly? I have seen trians before in mods, so why would Empires be any different? We might also need a good train model for in the future, we got plasma, genetic modification, and nano-tech. Even tough this is a different universe, it still looks to simillar to our world. We need more moddels, textures and props. I'll try making an example.
Tested it, and it works propperly - THe players parrents to the train. But you will have to parrent a prop_dynamic or a brush to the func_train first to make it work.
imo: 1) streets are waay to wide - it would be good for tanks to manouver but there are very few of them and it makes inf suck 2) no cover and large plain spaces - with walls disabled (yes!) it makes inf get gunned down fast, especially if combined with 3) rooftops that makes people camp the flag sites with mgs and hmgs so -smaller roads and/or more obstacles on it to use as cover -no rooftops at all or making them camp prooof (turrets disabled , less cover on them or trigger_hurt ontop of that blocky coverto prevent hmg whores from camping - less burning napalm on wrecked be heavy at A1 (seriously, thats an overkill) - most vehicles spawning near factions HQ's - detailed what when where in description ( how long it takes a veh to spawn, which flags cause bleeding etc.) -little less time to cap (it takes ages) - nobuild near ladders.. - more then one player needed to cap (too much scouts going around contesting ( which is quite fast) i think small flag icons are good also problem is that you need a full server to really enjoy the map edit: i admin that map has potential
Ok thanks for that feedback from your testing. First I have a new resource file to fix the broken mini map (emp_fogtown_beta2.txt). The new files goes in <Steam Dir>\steamapps\SourceMods\Empires\resource\maps. Anyone who downloads the map from this point forward will have the new resource file. I'll be working on adding more detail and cover next. For me, that'll probably take a while. More than an hour for sure. I'll also try to make the victory messages more clear. I also like the suggestion of restricting turret building on the roof tops by Z100000M. For the time being, I can't promise much with the fog or lighting. Unless anyone can explain how to get rid of the glowing fog. I'll have to keep experimenting with it. Thanks for the lighting info, TheAmethystDuke As for the vehicles, I take it from the suggestion for more armour that they were bad because they were dying too quickly. If so I'm curious as to what were they being killed by, infrantry, other tanks, or turrets? Whatever the cause I am not against increasing their armour and spawn rate a bit, provided they don't end up being created faster they they can be destroyed (the vehicle limit appears to have no affect on the vehicle spawner and I haven't found a way to count the vehicles active for each time through triggers). Unfortunately, I'm not looking at expanding the subway into a small line. I had hoped to have a little three station line when designing the map initially, but abandoned that idea due to the station taking up more space than I hoped it would. Three stations would fit, but I don't really like how close the exits would be to each other.
I think a lot of the tank deaths have to do with people not knowing what armor they're using. The fact that sometimes you'll get, say, a reflective tank and then a standard armor tank right after that is jarring. I've only played two rounds, but it seems like most of the deaths come from being raped by another tank - usually a medium. Because of the open roads and abundance of MGs on the chassis, infantry aren't a problem. I like the idea of making the rooftops un-campable. I think they're a neat position for grens, but turrets are annoying. EDIT: The download link for that .txt file doesn't work Also, that one AFV mark 2 chassis - the one with ranged cannon, 1 std ml/mg and reflective armor - is pretty rape against everything NF gets. I ended up with a 20 kill streak after dying to a surprise sticky from a rooftop.
My webhost seams to be having problem with their server and the whole site is down. Unfortunately I can't really do much about it right now. With any luck though it's probably just a power outage due to the storms that rolled through this weekend. If the site is still down tomorrow I'll start looking for alternative hosts.
I've done shitloads of work with trains in empires. They're compatible with everything except capture points being parented, they're also shit to make tracks for because it's an absolute bitch to make a realistic smooth track without taking 4 hours.
Yeah, make the fog black and set the max distance to something like a hundred thousand units. Fog doesn't look good if it's solid, it looks better when it's thin. It never looks good when it's brighter than the horizon. There are two fog colours that work: 1. Black. 2: Same colour as your skybox. And one distance that works: 1: Far enough so that it never becomes completely solid.
When you think about it, black as a fog color doesn't work either. It only works in dark, enclosed spaces where there is no light, but if there is a light, then you'll see it dimmed by the fog from a distance, which is just weird. (And if you're really out there in the mapping badlands, a blue or green fog colour can work for an underwater map, and brown or reddish for the dusty underground.) Also, as regards distance, it can be possible to have a distance where the fog becomes solid without being ugly. However it works perfectly only when the skybox fades into a solid color by the time it reaches the horizon level, so that the color of a completely fog-covered object is indistinguishable from the skybox. This also helps to hide the FarZ distance, and is really the only point where you can get away with the FarZ without hurting image quality.
You can make it completly solid if its the same color as the skybox. Btw you can use black fog to simulate night.
No, it works well in any dark map. Yes it does dim lights at a distance, that's sort of the point of fog, it fades out the distance and makes the foreground look more vivid. Or if you're still living in the nineties, it 'hides' the painfully obvious z cull plane. Still looks like ass compared to how it would look with thin fog and half decent mapping. And this is a videogame, we 'simulate' night by 'simulating' a dark environmental light and using a night time skybox...
