I played this map last night. I really like it, but it needs some work. Some were complaining of poor performance, I'm mostly complaining about things that looked messed up. It's a really good thing this isn't being used for the league this season, but I really hope it is fixed up, cause I really like it. One of the weirdest things about this map is the random bridge that goes out over the ocean and comes back. That thing really needs some guard rails. Also, why would anyone put a bridge there if there is no road on either side? Have a road that goes around the island. Also, fix up this part, you can sink into the bridge here. When you go prone, you are actually in the bridge model and appear to be floating. When you go prone, you are actually in the bridge model and appear to be floating. One of the things I liked was the village, that was really fun. Annoyingly, you can fall behind or between the houses and become stuck. Have the house go right into the wall to prevent this. Additionally about the village, some of the houses are off the ground, that should be fixed. (it's hard to see from this pic, but this is the general area) Finally, this bush is a little off the ground. Well I took lots of pictures of visual problems, but there are many more gameplay issues I won't really get into right now. That being said, I really had a good time and I can't wait for this map to be finished.
Yeah, the bridge is rather random. There was originally going to be a long tunnel, but when making the map size constraints made that a no-no. I think the water I put in for atol (being shinier than for the sinking version) may be behind a lot of the performance dips - also it was hard to cut off the vis so there may be some screwups there. (if you look very closely, theres a tiny gap between the skybox water and the water - its less than 0.1 units big though making it an arse to close off (in that I think it means rejiging the skybox positioning a bit)) At some point I'll bung in a load of no clip brushes / thicker walls behind the houses. I may also just make the floors thicker to keep all the houses from floating. Thanks for the feedback. Are there any specific requests on the random bridge other than guard rails? I could scrap it but that makes the flat area there a little too secure (I could take down the walls there I suppose). Roads would be nice, but I decided that they'd be a pain to put in (i may be wrong there) given the small curvey roads. "but it needs some work. Kylegar said he would help" I've uploaded the vmf somewhere (i can look for the link and pm it, or just post it here) and if someone who actually knows what they're doing wants to mend things I'd be happy to let them (retaining some credit but no blame is what I'm aiming at...) how bad were the gameplay issues? Personally I preferred the sinking version, which was sort of what the map was designed for. I have also tried putting zombies in, but they arent supported apparently Oh, and eventually they'll be an underground base, but I decided I should pause work on the map so thats not in. Also I tried making holes in the displacements and had trouble getting it right (lack of experience and forward planning) so thats another obstacle.
this map is serious business The textures for the ground and the sides of the hills could use more differentiation to break up the map a bit. Right now it is just a giant green blob. Also, for the really steep cliffs, could you put in some broken fences or something. Nothing to inhibit movement, just something to let people know that there is a massive cliff in front of them. Driving in this map is a nightmare for tankers. You need a powerful engine to get up some hills/out of valleys you've rolled into, and it's that powerful engine that makes your tank a nightmare to control. This gives infantry a leg up on this map (now if only it wasn't a pain to walk around)
Without wanting to make excuses for my lack of skill, I think a lot of the tank problems would have been hard to avoid (other than ones where I have a stupidly uneven road where I accidentally lowered a bit of displacement) given the map area versus height gain. In 1/2 scale it would have been a lot easier to make roads more level without having them be super narrow. As long as it isnt silly then I like the extra power to infantry in some areas, tanks should still hopefully be good and there might be plenty of resource flowing about. Fences are a good plan. Textures are another problem from my fairly useless starting point on this map - all the displacements are from huge square sections meaning that there isnt a natural place to change textures. Remaking it from scratch would be an answer - but I'm not doing that by hand (if theres some funky height mapping that can be used then someone can do that). oh and dizzy, why's he being funny? I was quite surprised how close it came
If you have the VMF, I can do quite a bit for the map. For the bridge problem, ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS keep the texture glued to the brush. Also...it just seems...Out of place for that bridge to be there. I would say get rid of it, because it serves no gameplay purpose (theres already a passageway there, it just has a gate.) If you Open up part of the wall for Infantry only to enter, and add a nobuild brush around the entrances, You could have a nice Infantry objective when assulting that wall. Tanks need to clear off the wall so infantry can go into it, then the infantry enter the wall and open the gate. EDIT: Also, play with the texture scaling, and see if you can lower some of the diplacement's vertexes, that way you dont strech the textures too much.
IF your a careful driver making it across that bridge even in something as huge as a CV is easy, however Temp, I love the map but the water doesn;t go all the way to the top, I just played a game where I was comming, BE took the top and fortified it, but we moved everything we had to the top and set a barracks right down next to the northern entrance, the water came up waste deep and stopped We were able to park our CV next to it without sinking it and from there we fought a 1 hour stalemate before I got bored and drove the CV into the water screaming "ALLAH ACKBAR ALALALALALALALALAL!!!" over the mic.
I've updated Atol as follows: -grounded the floating buildings (I think I got them all) -filled gaps behind houses -changed the minimap for one with no lighting, to improve clarity (but it makes it look even worse so it may not be good) -new bridge with guardrails - I should have made them constructable but didnt. -changed cheap-water distance to hopefully improve performance a touch. -played with resources a little - theres now only a couple of double respoints rather than 4, also fewer res given by the town refinery -res nodes smoke a bit -tweaked the gate to let the nf comm drive through I probably should have made the changes to emp_sinking instead as I still prefer it myself (gimmicks are good). Anyway, this is done for now, I'm not good/patient enough to be able to put in the underground lair I wanted for now at least. The new file is hosted on Qwerty's hosting place
