Tropic Vendetta Version: Release Candidate 4 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 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_rc4 Tropic Vendetta RC4 fixes the hole in center mountain and NF dropping D3 ref but the RC3 changes mainly fixed the starting res. We set it to 700 res because the barracks used to cost 400 res for awhile and it ruined beginning gameplay in our opinions so we upped starting res to compensate, but now they are back to 200 res and the map has been stuck at 700 res making people just drop a VF at the beginning of the round. So while updating that I figured I would get some of the planned features from long ago in, like the blimps and particles Empty made for me ages ago. NF has a new blimp as well. They're not done as polished as I would like but I don't really have a ton of free time to spend on them, I would really like the blimps to be models with death animations. 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_rc4 -Mirror 1 : Sendspace -Mirror 2 : John Shandy's Blog 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. PwnedYoAss -------- Shark model and animation. Vess -------- Shark texture. Nauz -------- Palm Tree models. VoEC -------- Wave textures Metal Smith -------- Testing my maps and finding all the missing stuff LordDz -------- Finding the waves getting bullet holes CHANGELOG Release Candidate 4 ------ -Hole under displacement let you get into large mountain -D3 Ref wouldn't place for NF Release Candidate 3 ------ -Finally added Empty's particles he made for me ages ago -Made blimp undercarriage blow up and balloon sink into the ocean -Fixed starting res back to a reasonable value. -Added waves -New NF blimp Release Candidate 2 ------ -Fix by [UK]Steve to make work with empires patch. 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
Ya you can straight up crawl into 3 of them in RC3 lol, though why NF cant drop the ref in RC3 is beyond me, I never even touched it or its terrain. EDIT: oh yes, and as complete posted in the last thread http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWi19DZZYxA
