Tropic Vendetta Version: Release Candidate 1 By: John Shandy` & [LoDw]Keef Tropic Vendetta is a map featuring a tropical island at which the Brenodi Empire and Northern Faction have both arrived in their respective blimps! Unlike any other Empires map, these blimps contain and safeguard the command vehicles. Your objective is to spawn in your team's blimp and either parachute or swim to the mainland so that your commander may begin establishing bases as you gain territory. To conquer the opposition and lay claim to the island, you must capture the enemy team's defensive SAM site (surface-to-air missile) and use it to blow out the side and bottom of their blimp, dropping their command vehicle into the sea to its watery death! Worry not, for blimp balloons have been moved to the skybox so they don't obstruct the commander view, and capturing the SAM sites to win the round is easier said than done! This is our first map for Empires, and my first map ever (Keef used to map back in the day for Natural Selection). I have been learning Hammer and the Source SDK as I go. I have [LoDw]Keef to thank for helping a ton with many things along the way. He made the blimps and customized them quite a lot. He also made the SAM sites, as he's far better with brushwork and special effect entities than I am. He's been an excellent friend and he's worked on this map as much as I have. Without Keef, Tropic Vendetta may not have come to fruition - at least not so quickly, as I started on this map around December 15, 2008 and it's come a long way in just over a month. Alpha 1, 2, 3, and 4 were used for private testing on the Nachos and Test server. Beta 1 through Beta 4 were used for public play testing on various servers (thank you to all who run Tropic Vendetta on their server). Please enjoy emp_tropicvendetta and provide as much constructive criticism as possible! Keef and I love feedback! We are expecting many negative and harsh remarks, but we hope that most of you will bring complaints & concerns to us in a civil manner that we can use to actually find solutions to any problems that occur. We will actively develop and maintain this map. We will do our best to not let older, problematic versions accumulate dust on servers! emp_tropicvendetta_rc1 Tropic Vendetta RC1 is the first release candidate of the map. For the most part, all changes to cosmetics and gameplay are finalized. Only bug fixing is likely to occur from this. SCREENSHOTS -New Screenshots (Alpha 4 / Beta 2/3/4) - Still applicable to RC1 -Old Screenshots (Alpha 1/2/3 / Beta 1) -Minimap (Beta 2/3) NOTE I personally thank Crazytalk, Founder & Project Lead of the Pirates, Vikings, and Knights II team for authorizing the use of PVKII's beautiful textures. The grass2sand blend, grass, sand, water_caribbean01 textures were designed by the PVKII team. Please give credit where credit is due: http://www.pvkii.com DOWNLOAD emp_tropicvendetta_rc1 -Mirror 1 : Sendspace -Mirror 2 : John Shandy's Blog -Mirror 3 : Reborn Gamers, Home of the Nachos -Mirror 4: kane.cx - zip -Mirror 4: kane.cx - tar.bz2 Special Thanks BumGravy -------- Suggested func_breakable as a candidate for the blimp CV floors, to allow the CV entity to fall into the water. Later on had to change it to func_wall_toggle though. Cyber-Kun -------- Occasional slightly helpful sarcastic remarks. PwnedYoAss -------- Shark model and animation. Vess -------- Shark texture. Nauz -------- Palm Tree models. CHANGELOG Release Candidate 1 ------ -Reconstructed the Brenodi blimp to defeat lingering radiosity issues. Shadowing and lighting on the blimp's balloon is now correct. -Decreased the lightmap scaling for more detailed lighting and shadows. -3D skybox improvements - realignment and defeating of shadows that were being casted onto map terrain from the 3D skybox. Improved seamlessness. -Starting resources increased to 700 to accommodate Empires 2.2x's barracks cost increase. -When a blimp is shot by a SAM site, its corresponding CV's health is reduced to 25% (previously, CV health was reduced to 80% upon this event). -Various optimization. Beta 5 ------ -Don't ask... *facepalm* Beta 4 ------ -Achieved a final solution to the instant CV destruction upon SAM site capture. Beta 3 ------ *Note, Beta 3 was susceptible to CVs being destroyed instantly upon SAM site capture due to the new brush-based entity used to fix the server-crashing exploit from Beta 2. It is strongly recommended that servers run the latest version. -Addition of 2 sharks that circle the South East island which eat players and laugh, while a loop of the Jaws theme song plays in the areas surrounding the South East island. -Various optimization. Beta 2 ------ *Note, Beta 2 was susceptible to a server-crashing exploit fixed for Beta 3. It is strongly recommended that servers run the latest version. -Retexturing. -New palm tree models. -New rock models. -Resource node output adjustments. -Starting refinery & resource node for each team relocated to be near the corresponding SAM site. -Displacement adjustments. -Displacement grass sprites and fern models. -Various optimization. Beta 1 ------ Initial Public Release
Reserved. Here are a few key screenshots. To see the rest (and so I can avoid cluttering the page), use the screenshot links in the original post above.
skybox to real map seam gone for the most part and textures lined up. Blimps no longer have odd shadow effects for anyone with high graphics
Alright if the SAM site doesn't shine like this Please post back, it seems to only reflect for half the people
Nah, from what one of the devs has told me, they've discussed it on several occasions and have predominantly concluded that the SAM sites & blimps are a "gimmick" (though we disagree), and I guess they only want straightline classic or conquest maps to be official. You might also note that emp_arid became official, while emp_bush did not. I believe they arrived at similar conclusions with Silk's random starting bases & random resource spawns on emp_bush. However, I do believe that through perseverance, some warped rationales, and some hardcore campaigning, that we can get them to make emp_rainbowroad official.
Latest screens look very nice. I'm eager to see the sam sites fire Nice job ! Oh and about the gimmick stuff, i think you're right about that yes.
that's unbelievable! a gimmick?! the first payload map for TF2 will have been a "gimmick" too, but payload maps are a staple of TF2 now. What a joke.
Why not reduce it to 0% (or 0.000001% if 0% is not possible), so that the CV dies immediately? It always seemed weird to have the CV sit in the water for 30-60s before actually dieing.
It's nice to watch the blimb expload from your position as an attacker, i can vouch for that. but yeah, when it sits in the water for ages, that's bad.
The main reason it has been sitting for ages is related to the CV buffs in the latest patches. It's so low now though, that you can't really keep it around for 30 to 60 seconds anymore. We don't want it to be so low that it's nearly instantaneous, because we like the fact that you can still turn the tables on an unsuspecting or arrogant team. It's not over until it's over. That is our opinion.
A gimmick? the map is fun to play thats all the devs should be considering when they decide on making a custom map official. whats wrong with gameplay thats a little different from the normal classic maps like isle and duststorm? this really grinds my gears
making all the fun maps "official" could set new players to think all non-official maps are crap and not worth the download good non official maps however promote mapping for empires
If the fun maps are 'official' and therefore included in the release, newbs won't drop at the first sign of a MEGA-LONG download. just rename official maps to emp[official]_mapnamehere or something then custom maps to emp[custom]_mapnamehere. Just include all the fun ones in the DL
Just change the names when the devs go to release. If nothing else, it will be considered that those were released in version 2.(nextversion) People making custom maps other than the ones included could use the convention or not, it really wouldn't matter. It can just be explained as devs releasing commonly played community maps with the game. It make sense really.
TBH, i think all maps should be downloaded from the server. If your internet isn't great then come to the forums and download them, we have a thread with ALL the maps in the first post so you can just sit there and download them all. Now granted i do agree on the part on having a couple "official" maps but the download for empires has just gotten way TOO huge. Hell it's almost as big as unreal tournament 3 (1.3 gigs). Now for the map, am i the only one that doesn't see the turrets or sam sites reflect?
Thing is that HTTP download is quite fast, you can get 200kbs easy. whereas from servers, that can be a quater of that if it's good... Also when a newb joins they want to play, not sit with their PC useless for 5 minutes for a map to DL. Seeing as the client DL takes an hour or so anyway, you know you aren't going to jump straight in, and you can do other things. Anyway, I really like this map, I think it should be official. It isn't a 'funzies' map, it's a little different, that's all. If you want a 'fun' map you want megahill jam. Now that's the sort of thing you don't want with the first download... it's epic though...
