I would be willing to help. However, I'm having trouble locating the newest version of the map and all of the required models. The latest version of the map I could find is dated march first, but there was clearly progress made after that point. I don't think it would be worthwhile to try and work on an outdated version, so if anyone knows about a more recent vmf file I'm all ears.
There's a slightly later one march 10th. https://forums.empiresmod.com/index.php?threads/emp_echelon-cooperation.17431/page-22#post-466075 I think you would have to pm silk somehow to get anything more recent then that though.
Destroyer told me there might be interest in finishing this. Knowing very well it won't happen, i guess i still should provide at least the opportunity for you to mess around with it. This version is from october that year: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/234836/mapping/emp_echelon.rar I have no idea what changes i made, but pressumably most of them are in the tunnel leading to the main base. Although since by that time i was working on it with a lack of interest, everything changed and added since march that year will only be rough changes i needed to figure out were i wanted to go with it, get a sense of scale and some idea in what would be possible and work well gameplaywise. I have no idea if any settings from entities, like buildables, are set correctly or with testing values. Edit: The link to misfire's barricades from earlier in this topic: https://www.dropbox.com/s/96itobof09sd082/empires_misfire.zip At least i think they're the dragon teeth and tank traps Materials should be the same from previous versions i put online on this topic Any other modelling progress done has never been in my possession
Thanks Silk, wish you could come back and play. Hope things are going well. I still have the models and a couple of others that need finished. I still needed to make proper "gibs" for the ones you used on the map. See if I can get that done soon if we're going to try and finish the map.
I see you actually did a large amount of work on the BE upper cliff base area since the last version of the map we had. kudos.
It looks like the only largely unfinished parts are the tunnel, which has some unfinished side passages, and Brenodi's base, which has its design largely blocked out. Also, the skybox seems to be missing (although from the videos, it looks like it's a solid color?). I think that it may be a good idea to start a new thread if we do a proper revival of this. What do you guys think?
The tunnel changes had to happen for gameplay purpose. The long winding tunnel before this one would've never been fun to play. I came to prefer a larger amount of small roads and pathways crossing and intersecting in many different ways to a few large and open area's. Partially as one of the reasons i quit playing was the invincibility of tanks which i at least could counter by designing my maps with infantry routes and cover in mind. The Tunnel area now at least has a rough layout of something that could, for the first time in this map, possibly work. Nothing about it is finished though, not even close. The base ... there's hasn't been a single second in the years of working on this where i had any idea of what to do with it. Everytime i started thinking about it, i didn't like any of my ideas at all which heavily influenced losing interest in the map. The very rough layout shouldn't even be considered to be a layout, at least i myself couldn't find a decent way to make this design work. Possible base designs i was thinking about at the time often varied drastically from this one. While it's good to see there's still some interest at least, i have to wonder if efforts shouldn't go to making new, smaller maps. Echelon was never designed to be enjoyable with 12 vs 12. In fact i guess 18 vs 18 is pretty much the lower limit, which i know empires didn't really have several years ago.
I agree from a personal interest. It's large maps like chain and duststorm, that have to played like an RTS, that had me hooked. However when the game got older and #players dropped, they were very boring to play if they even could be played. The main reason i left were the insane amount of small, unprofessional maps that played like a typical FPS. Unfortunately the game was old, even older now, and without full servers maps like this take up hundreds of hours to make, yet never to be enjoyed by anyone.
When I played this map, I thought it was amazing. Loved the D-Day feeling and loved the concept of attack, then defend for NF and defend for BE then attack. For the "Base" it could be a military city? Have lots of enter able buildings for infantry cover to snipe the NF tanks that will obviously come through, and lots of road barricades that are buildable to prevent tanks from rushing through and then have like a command center be out on the ledge sticking out and a statue on the podium? Perhaps, since you removed the long tunnel as well effectively negating the entire upper grassy platue, you could make THAT the end objective? Make it a giant radar station or something, invert the bunker that is facing outwards to fire towards the city and have that be the last line of defense. Maybe even make it so NF basically has to ditch the tanks to get in because of a ton of obstacles? Sorry, some Idea's I had while playing.
Those are indeed must haves There's 2 reasons why i removed the top part as a playable area: 1) the cliff was so long and difficult to take that it would get boring 2) massive optimization issues The view from above was very ugly, with most of the base hidden for optimization and objects coming into and dropping out of view all the time. I think the map is already massive enough, this will take a long while to finish, to have it end in the base and avoid the very creative changes we'd have to come up with for using the top area as well Harryhoot contacted my some hours ago about this, he still has some models he was working on. So if you want to revive it, there's still people willing to spend time on it
Btw I just noticed that the visgroup "hint_brushes" wasn't turned on in that vmf, and it certainly has to be for optimization testing and the final compile
I don't think that would make for an interesting fighting area. It'd have to be full of ladders to avoid long winding tunnels which isn't fun either. The base is also so high above the beach that the bottom team wouldn't have a chance. The main route has infantry path's all along though. Infantry don't have to go through the main gate like vehicles do but can climb up the wall in east and west. On the cliff road there's always at least one ladder near the edges where infantry can climb up to the next level as well. The tunnel has 1 entrance but immediately after that infantry can go into and on top of buildings, and even go through a tunnel parallel to the road. But honestly, this is a map were the beach infantry is intented to die quite a lot. Both teams will defend and attack though so all can enjoy the slaughter. Don't think anyone is working on it though
yea sry, was a dump fast comment befor i realised that the map is further developed than shown in the topic - should be updated
Reviving this thread. Will be showing some updates to this hopefully tomorrow for people to see after a day of work, so long as I get the updated VMF.
As several people seem to have several vmf's Here's the latest one that I worked on myself (i think) https://www.dropbox.com/s/9oyi8nksz2er4wn/emp_echelon.rar?dl=0 This one has a semi build tunnel entrance. Well at least the infantry and vehicle attack paths are done in a way you can get attacked for everywhere, and this way i could also block view to make the complete clusterfuck doable performance wise.
I need ideas for types of buildings to put in these areas. If you have ANY Ideas, PLEASE reply with them. I have identified where I want buildings but I need ideas for what to put inside of them/how to style them. This will be a gigantic military complex. What would YOU expect to see in a giant military complex? (Red areas are areas buildings will go)
