Alpha 3 is now available. Here is a little preview screenshot: Lift-off! Changelog: added some textures added some details to the city added some foliage fixed the minimap not showing up added the launch animation
Type buildcubemaps in the console after you add the entities. Also reduce the fog thickness, you shouldn't ever have total grey in the distance.
Instead, I'd say make the fog lighter so that it blends more with the sky (e.g. you can see clear tree outlines, but that could be better done with the fade distance on the prop_static so maybe not a good example). In my experience, thick fog normally covers the sky too - which would make source do things an odd way. If you don't have fog over that sort of area, you'll be able to see the ground and players etc will just vanish at a certain distance (no idea what that point is as noone answered when I asked).
The mist makes the crater edge look like the hills in the distance when I look out of my window in the morning. They are several kilometers away and I still can clearly see the blue-gray outline of every single tree in front of the light blue sky. Also I thought it looked cool to see the contour of the base walls and towers stand out when looking up from the bottom of the crater.
You can bring things very close to total grey, but it shouldn't be absolutely grey and also you shouldn't start seeing it about half way through the map, because then it looks silly when you can still see the sky. In kutm the pale yellow fog is only for distance effect, all it does is make the mountain more desaturated so that you don't pay attention to it if it's in the distance.
couple of us tested the map, comments incomming. Well first of all I think you should increase the scale of just about every texture on the map, they all look like they are .25 default atm, I'd say you move them all up too 1 atleast, need some more less hilly parts of the map, maybe make the crater a little flatter on the bottom like you would see at a mining pit or something. this isnt a mining pit but it gets the point across I hope. thats one of the things I think is the biggest pain with all the outdoor maps for Empires is the need too keep alot of terrain perfectly level. One thing that DEFINATLY needs too happen is to add more resource nodes. Not just increase the ammount of the current ones(though I think that needs to be done too). The map is too big for people too walk everywhere, and as it stands you can barely get a couple vehicles out by which too fight with and if one side takes both the edge res points they basically win because only haveing 1 fallback node will just make the game determained within the first 10 min of fighting. Also I'd say you need to put a node or 2 in the main start, not have the begining one start outside the base, to easy to ninja away the one ref that is a gaurnteed yours. Like I said you need more refs too support vehicles which is needed by another side effect of no real defenseable positions for anyone to occupy except maybe the center, which is only good for the first half the game until heavy tanks with decent cannons or artiliary can lay waste too it. The city, well, im not going too lie, atm the city is fail. its like walking into a maze with REALLY sharp corners. There is no building room in the city, no spaces between buildings, and you cant drive the NF CV through it without the risk of getting stuck trying to make one of the skinny road corners. Needs to be more open in my opinion, you can block movment without making the buildings touching each other. and you shouldnt have too spend 5 min driving through a maze. also the ref in city is too easy to defend, making only infantry able too access it through so few and such coverless entrances requires alot of time to take it down where it takes little to no time to put it up. I would also advise shortening the amount of switchbacks on the southwest side, maybe make them longer but fewer of them. the lvl 3 MGs in the main bases dont really do anything either, rediculously easy to avoid, you can just go up too the MLs, calculator them to death then roll all kinds of vehicles through the base. an idea for the northeastern side of the crater a platform of ground coming out from the city (or from one of the NF or BE sides)creating a lip of area over the side of the crater, this would allow you to build there if you made it thick enough, cement walls style, or you could just be able too build near it on all the asphault coming from the city. you could also make the area under the platform that is holding all the beams for the platform flat allowing you to build there, a few sets of stairs or ramps would also be nice. with there being building in the center of the crater, making the switchbacks non terrain isnt out of the question either, maybe make the same thing on that side as well with a platform coming off and some ramps build maybe like stairs in tall buildings overlaying each other. having these 2 points meeting in the middle edges between the 2 bases would create chokepoints to fight over for up and down access to and from the center(well from i guess since its rather easy too fall down a cliff). which means you WANT too be able too build on either side of them or in the middle of it somewhere have a rather large platform coming off the side of the ramps where you can fit a barracks or so there. make the building in the southwest so that you cannot build walls inside of it aswell, cause it can get kind of rediculous with the one little doorway. on the up side the crater walls are hella fun to drive tanks down oh and we want too see some explosions when u set that nuke off! :p I know this is still like alpha stage but these are some things to be looking at, GLHF building. EDIT: I notice that the west side of the bowl is easily climbed with a 3-phase motor or other, while the east side is not so easily climbed, never figured this out in a realy game cause we never really had the money to build a radar
gotta agree with keef, city is fail at the moment and he's right with every aspect, wouldn't of thought about doing that to the city but hey, great idea SMALLER BASES and better placement of defenses
Thank you for testing the map. Your feedback is very helpful. However you miss the point of the city. It is supposed to be infantry only. Like a little district inside a classic map. I haven't really seen this on any map before (maybe the dam on mvalley comes somewhat close to it).
well you can still make it infantry only for the most part by making the opening cluttered with say a dead APC, and then atleast make buildable area on either side of the city for atleast a barracks. Because walking 10 miles just to run into a death trap that you generally just have to throw numbers at isnt very fun. You need a place for quick spawns, actually you could maybe even have flag capture areas if you dont make room for a building, and you are able too spawn at these flag caps.
maybe add some capturable spawns at the city then (not played the map so I shouldn't comment too much)?
Beta 1 is ready for download. Changelog: Improved the placement of the base defense Added additional MGs to the base defense Added some textures, props and foliage (aka eye candy) Blocked the access roads of the city for vehicles Placed one resource node in every start base Changed the resources per second for every resource node to 4 (was 2)
Uploading to Nachos NOW btw, you have to save the link as.... to get the file, simply clicking will not dl the file just to let the noobs out there know
ok to start off, PINK AND BLACK CHECKERBOARD MINIMAP o and make it eaiser for infantry to get through the city, took me about 4 mins to run through it to get to flag lookin' better, maybe you might want to rethink the city into making it a power generating plant, big plant with reactor in middle and scafolding you have climb to get to flag or somethin', just an idea bases look better maybe use a bigger texture for the floor of the bases, bring the lag down on it maybe a second way out of the crater
I did delete the minimap materials in my file system and then of course I also saw the checkerboard. Then I extracted the rar to Empires/ and after that I saw the minimap again. I also rechecked all paths and everything seems to be correct. Are you sure you extracted the archive in the correct location? (your Empires folder) Did it eventually ask you to overwrite something? Try to confirm the overwrite dialoge with OK. Once you know the city you can reach the flag in about one minute. Just keep practicing .
yeah man, did it 3 times server side and did it twice on my comp creating a server each time gave me the same error, the checkerboard thing if someone else could try it that would be great, but for now i can't and no one that joins the server can see the minimap
When I extracted the rar - the text file from resources didn't extract, so it couldn't tell the game where to go edit - ok, no scratch that - the whole extraction screwed up for me - I only got the two minimap files, no extracted res file, bsp or text file. I'll try again and make sure its extract all. edit - I can confirm that it extracts fine (doh, I feel stupid now) - DrummerX, can you confirm how you're extracting files as there seems to be a consistent problem getting the minimap to work - it wouldn't be an issue if you weren't being so darned decent and putting people's maps on your server... as another point, the res file should point to itself as well, or people downloading from servers don't take the res file - making it so people can't download from them (don't know if thats ever likely to cause a problem)
