emp_atomic, also chris0132's fabulous blog.

Let the earth and heavens tremble, for I have once again taken up the hammer, and shall forge with it a map to end all maps!

Not really, but I am making a map, and with a purpose as well.

See my university has assigned most of my workload this year to a project of my own choosing, and as I'm doing a games course I decided to do a level as my final project, partly because the other option is something like a 20 bazillion word instruction booklet about how to make games, but mostly because I haven't done it for a while and want to do it again.

So to this end I am going to be keeping a running record of stuff I think is worth recording during the development, and seeing as I don't keep a diary because I am aware of how insane talking to myself makes me look, I figure I may as well blog about it here in a development thread.

With that out of the way, on to the map itself:



This is the basic layout. The map as you may guess from the title is set in a nuclear power plant. The two teams start in the yellow buildings in the northeast and southwest, and fight over the central buildings in order to cap all the opposing flags.

There are five flags on the map, however I am going to see about turning flags on and off based on how many people are on the map. If I can do this I will start with the stations and the generator building, then open up the admin building and drainage canal as more players connect to the server.

The key idea behind this map is scalability, given my last effort in mapping I'm sure everyone will be glad to know that this one should be a lot more scalable. If I can turn the flags on and off, the map should function as well as district on three flags, but on five should accomodate 64 players with ease, without needing to restart the server. Hopefully this will make the map a popular startup map.

Flag layout is thus:



The beneficial thing about this setup is that it allows players to fight from any flag to any other flag, more or less, each flag has at least three possible routes leading to and from it, with each being relatively dissimilar.

Fighting between the stations and the generator building will be mostly interior, as the two wings of the generator building will be large enough to house plenty of obstacles and cover, the walls of the building also allow the possibility of elevated catwalks covering most of the combat arenas. meaning that height should come into play a lot.

Between the central building and the stations should be mostly an outdoor industrial setting, with plenty of machinery and pipes to hide behind. The buildings here function as strong points, being the most elevated positions. Fighting here should be more two dimensional, but still quite dense, with small walls and obstacles giivng plenty of cover.

Fighting in the canal should be more like empires classic, I hope to put some light vehicles in there and have enough room to let them move around, the walls of the canal will also be slanted or possibly a halfpipe of sorts, which should allow for some entertaining vehicle antics. The flag in the northwest should be located on a small elevated point inside a basin in the canal, meaning it will have to fend off vehicles from all sides, but the improved visibility will help spot threats. The canal is very flat with few changes in elevation, and will be a lot more sparse to facilitate vehicle combat, the use of vehicles also means that it may be possible to run from station to station and bypass the northwest flag, so players should be on watch for that.

With regards to linearity, I'm not sure how it should be done. I am looking towards making all flags always cappable, but may introduce some degree of linear constraints, possibly requiring at least one station to be held in order to capture the generator building, but the linearity system in empires is kind of wobbly, so I might just make them all cappable all the time, unless I can hack it together with entity logic.

The generator building is probably going to be the most detailed and if I can't get the flags to turn on and off, I will probably release a version focussing on the generator and the admin building.



All in all this should be a fun infantry map with a bit of vehicle combat and excellent scalability. The map itself should not be very big, but it should be dense enough and with enough connections between buildings and routes of attack to make it work very well with a lot of players. I'll post updates as and when I have more to show.

Oh and one other thing, it has to be finished in four weeks.

 

make sure u add radiation! I miss good ol' radiation from HL2

 

Seems like a nice layout, although quite similar to emp_mesa by Mayama. Can't wait to see it. What setting are you thinking of doing it in?

 

I have plans for radiation.

Urban, industrial, nighttime, possibly in a thunderstorm if I can get the lightning to work without stuttering.

 

Can it have lightning rods?

 

I was going to put the lightning in the distance, I've never been able to get realistic branching effects when I tried to make particle lightning.

I suppose I could try it, but the four weeks deadline means I might not be able to spend time pissing about in the particle editor.

 

You could use an Australian underling.

 

It's a limitation of the particle system, it isn't really designed to create complex structures by itself, you'd need code support to do it well. If you had code support to create the general tree structure of the lightning in control points you could probabyl make an OK-ish lightning effect, but honestly no game has really done proper lightning because it's really fiddly.

90 minutes in and got the basic layout of the drainage system done:



Straight halfpipe into the main basin which will have a muddy displacement floor and a sort of trash fort in the middle for the flag. It should be fun to drive vehicles around in there because the curved wall sections are slanted inward. I'm also probably going to put pools of radioactive crap in there which won't affect the vehicles but infantry will take damage if they walk in it, so that should be interesting.

 

Mimic the effect in Left 4 Dead 2? The Hard Rain campaign had some flashes.

 

I don't have L4D2, but l4d1 does it in no mercy, think it uses colour correction as well as some actual on/off lights.

 

doesn't emp_canyon do it aswell?

 

Not that I'm aware of, think it just plays the noises.

 

I think u need L4D version of source for most of their fancy stuff
http://www.l4d.com/blog/post.php?id=1962

 

Not for colour correction, it's in episode 1.

 

How open do you plan on making the skywalk?

 

Not sure, doesn't really matter either way, as you won't be able to shoot at it from underneath and there isn't anything taller than it.

 

the administration building is going to be a cluster fuck, 75% of the players will not move further then it because that's where they got enemy contact and thus they think that's the front line

 

It will be the frontline for most of the game, given that it's connected to every other chokepoint, which is why it has two elevated entrances, two subterranian entrances, and probably four surface area entrances. it's supposed to be a big arena, I might actually not be able to put a spawn in it because it's going to be hard to find a place to hide it away.

 

Quick update before I go to university:



Basic look of the drainage canal, obviously it is empty atm but i'm going to fill it with a crap to make it look nicer and add a bit of cover, as well as a few on-fire things to have some motion in there and a couple of extra light sources. I haven't tested vehicles on the walls yet but i'm betting it will be fun.

 

oh man will it ever.

an early version of delta had half pipe walls in the river and I was entertained for much longer than I should have been

it's awesome that you're using a night setting and floodlights, it's gonna look sick!