Not sure, but realistically you'd be better making them look thicker (for the railings at least), so it's clear that the rounds don't pass through.
Try making the railing brushes themselves into func_brush set to no collisions (func_illusionary works as well but is a legacy entity), and then have separate brushes with a player clip tool texture to prevent people from walking through the railings.
If I did that then you could shoot rpgs and throw grenades trough them, but if thats acceptable then I'll do that.
I'd rather the railings where solids where you also can't see through and all the hitscan passes anyways.
The railing textures I see in the screenshots are open enough that I think it's ok for RPGs, Grenades, and Mortars to pass through, but all those things are physics objects and can be blocked by a physics clip or func_brush with solidarity against physics objects I believe (dumb thing about emp: grenades are treated as physics debris by the engine which is why they bounce so boringly).
I hate those railing textures on every map they're on. On top of that, they're fairly poor when you look at them from different angles.
Floor grids are a bit different in terms of the actual texture itself. I mean, you don't tend to look at it from 2 different sides, nor on the corner.
Trickster, I thought you knew I didn't care about the looks. My question was obviously aimed at the shoot-through-ability.
Nothing else in this game works the way to looks like it should work. Why start now? /stillbitteraboutgrenbeinggoodatantiinfantry Terminator, you have a great start. Finish the map the way you want it. Trickster will still lap it up like a thirsty kitty.
That looks awesome man, it even has a somewhat niche setting - similar but unique in it's place in the Empires "canon" maps... future stock map for sure, very nice. Kudos for seeking feedback, that's what makes a map actually good for Empires. Couple things - I wanna throw my vote in for not having any bleed on the map whatsoever, and I'd like to suggest that when having different resource rates it's the knowledge of those rates that's usually lacking... Like we all know around here that the dam in Mvalley is x2 but why do we know that? just cause we've been here too damn long. Silk's emp_bush has a minimap that identifies variances in res (and even res spawns) with yellow text, it's actually very helpful, you should check it out if you haven't already. Have you played much Empires Terminator?
Almost to prove your point here about the lack of knowledge regarding refinery rates, Dam isn't actually 2x, it's 4x. Both North refs are 2x, as are A4/F4, with the A1 and F1 refineries being 1x. But no-one knows that, which only stands to prove your point that writing refinery rates on the minimap (rather than the description no-one reads) does a world of good.
Oh man if the average emp player knew how stupid stock Slaughtered's res rates were they would freak out. As you all know the official version has 6 refs (the towers do not give res). The positions of the refs are pretty much mirrored north and south. Most of the time, the east side refs are being contested, the losing team usually loses their east ref first, then their middle ref, then their main. What you probably don't know is the almost absurd distribution of value for the refs. The northeast and southeast refineries are worth 5 res per second each. The middle refs are both worth 3 res per second each, and the main base refs are worth 2 per second. That adds up to a whopping 20 res per second total output; total output on slaughtered is closer to the total on money than it is to the total on canyon. This also means that once you've lost your eastern ref, the ref that is usually the first to fall, your team's income has been cut down by 50%. If the enemy is allowed to drop a ref on your eastern point, your fate has practically been sealed. Losing your middle ref as well means your teams income has been cut to 20% of it's usual rate, a mere 2 res per second to the other team's 18 res per second. Honestly I think this massive difference between ref points that is virtually undetectable by the players is a big contributor to the whole idea of the "slippery slope" in empires, the inability of a team to win by conventional means once their opponents start getting the upper hand. If the values for each of the refs were even, say 3 res per second on each making a total of 18 res per second, I think games of slaughtered would be a lot more interesting, instead of a slow retreat back to main and eventual extinction for one side.
this explains a lot actually ... i think refs should have either equal output throughout the map or indicators for the multiplyers. how is anyone supposed to know? and this is vital information, you cannot expect people to decompile each map and look for themselfs ... empires diguises too much to the end user. gui rework should be priority #1 - or have been, i think its too late now and all further fixing is a lot of wasted time that should be put into empires2.
yeah that's why you get crushed so hard when you lose 1 ref.... man Ive been bang on w my ref denial strats on slaughtered... :D If that was fixed it'd improve that map a bunch.
