emp_Uaxactun: OB Version requires some help! Cpl. J.T. Matthews - Brenodi 4th Batallion - Epic Squad Diary entry 14:45 Aug 2nd So they found something...so bloody what. No one knows how long these ruins have stood on this blasted mountain, and frankly, I don't give a damn, but guess what, the higher-ups want it investigated, and lo and behold, here I am, stuck on a goddamned supply boat winding up a river infested with piranhas, swatting mosquitos off my face one after the other. Oh for a quiet life, or a decent meal. God this pudding is killing me. God damned Jekotian barbarians and their "food." This crap isn't fit for swine. Bah, time to stow my shit and get on this rickety old barge. Thank christ there's enough room for the command vehicle on this thing, only barely enough room for building materials besides. This is gonna be some damned trip... 10:00 Aug 5th We took the supply boat as far up the river as we could. The terrain was getting rockier and steeper however and the river too shallow. The LT decided we should disembark at the foot of one of the larger mountains. In the distance I can make out a huge hulking shape on the side of the mountain.. What could it be? Damned if I care, I just want to go home. LT's barking orders now... 15:07 Aug 5th Set up base camp here. Figgs has been messing around with those bloody turrets again. Hope he finally gets them up and running. Engineers. Wrench fucking queers. Give me a rifle any day. What you gonna do to a Jekotian swine with a calculator if you meet him in the woods eh? Throw it at him? Pfff. I hate sitting in the middle of this bloody wilderness within no heavy defence. Damn we need those turrets now. Engineers... 18:15 Aug 5th LT just gave us our orders. We're to scout out the area. From where we are I can see a small landmass to the south. Looks pretty fortifiable should worst come to worst we can always dig in there and wait til the boat gets us the hell out of here, it's right on the river. Infantry should have no trouble getting off it, or onto it for that matter. To hell with the command vehicle. LT can look after his own hide if the retreat order is given. That island to the south looks like a deathtrap though. No way in hell you'll find me settin up camp out there. Damned Jekotians could mine that whole bridge and you'd be well n truly screwed. I'll write more later. 237 Aug 5th God dammit my feet are killing me! Hiked for hours today. Got to see most of the terrain though. Seems those Jekotian apes were up to something at that ruin to the east. They've some machine hooked up there and some drilling equipment. Looks pretty deserted now though. We left Figgs to figure out what the heck it was they were up to while me and Morrie headed Southeast. Damn that place is a nice little fortress. Looks like a waterfall or something beyond those rocks to the south. Wonder if you could swim around there... Some strange ruins there too though and a strange glowing rock. Morrie said his geigometer was clickin somethin fierce. We stayed the hell away from that thing. Let Figgs screw with it. Hell if I'm going near it. Morrie was saying he got the same readings at the South Island and the Southwest as well. "Damned thing nearly went ballistic in my hand when we passed that one in the centre, damn I hope Figgs finds out what they were up to there!" Morrie... Tomorrow we head north... damn I need some sleep. Bloody mosquitos, gonna keep me up all night! 137 Aug 6th Stopping for a break. Hiked up through that forest this morning. There's a whole damned village in there! Place is falling apart, but damn, maybe the brass was onto something. This looks like what's left of some kind of ancient civilization. Poor bastards, if they could only see what their place looks like now, haha! Probably the great, great, great, great grandaddys of these Jekotian monkies. Hah! Trouble was...we think the grandkids may have been visiting recently. Found a couple of burntout jeeps up there. Jekotian military. Looks like we;re not the only ones with an interest in the area. Figgs was saying he was having trouble in the forest, the ground in the centre is like a damned swamp. Says he couldnt even build a radar on it, damned thing kept sinking into the ground. Tanks shouldnt have any trouble getting through though he says. Thank god. He did manage to get a radar up just long enough to uplink to the geosat. Got us a nice overhead view of this place. Pile of shite sattelite missed whatever is in them northern hills though. Got word earlier, supplies are on their way up river. Should be getting some more shit built down at base camp pretty soon. Few more reinforcements headin up too so I'm told. Buddy of mine on that ship, Bungles - bastard owes me a beer! - told me half of them are green as the fucking hills. Haven't seen a bit of real combat before in their lives. Damned noobs. Gonna have to show em the ropes on the fly. Do they teach 'em nothing in boot camp?? 158 Aug 6th Sitting here now on this Northern hill. Can see everywhere from here, got a couple shots on my cam. Man this place is beautiful. I can see why someone decided to settle here, these ruins are awesome in some ways. Fog further up the mountain means I can't see a bloody thing up there, but I get the feeling there's something else up there. Figgs says it's to clear by tomorrow. I bloody well hope so. Morrie just got back from scouting out the Northeast corner, says there's some more ruins up there and another one of those rocks giving off radiation. I'm still staying clear of those things. Figgs dug one up back at base camp, not so much radiation though. LT ordered a containment put on it. Damn thing gives off a buttload of energy. I can definitely see now what the brass were after up here. Energy. Money. Same old shit. I gotta risk my neck up in this god forsaken jungle, for what? To make those bastards bloody richer is what. Brenodi Empire. Bah. Aristocratic pricks. Morrie's comin over to me now, saying he's bolloxed and wants to head back. I agree. 224 Aug 6th What a sunset! Man, for a hell hole this place has its moments. Sun's just dipping behind them hills now. What a sight! Figgs finally got those turrets up n running. Maybe I can sleep soundly tonight eh? The ferry just finished offloading the rest of the troops, kids, the whole bloody lot of em! Bunch of newbies fresh out of boot. This is gonna be a loooong week. At least they sent a few of the old blood up with them as Squad leaders. Might make an army out of this lot yet. LT just got off the radio. Says there's a dropship flying in with some more supplies. Should be landing in bout 10 mins. Sweet. Maybe they brought some beer.. 22:41 Aug 6th Voicelog - LT Sanders - Dropship Horizon ~~roger that, eta landing 2 minutes, gonna fly in over that forest n set her down due north of you LT @@ roger Dropship Horizon. boys are we glad to see you. tell us you brought somethin we can call food ~~ hehe.negative sir. just more of the same slop. @@ goddammit I should court martial you for that son. ~~ hehe, sorry LT. Next time eh? Holy shi... what the fuck was that :: Ground to Air. Fire the damned flares. Evasive maneouvres NOW dammit! @@ Airman, AIRMAN, what the hell is going on up there??? ~~ Sir, we're being fired upon....ground to air RPG...tchhhhh :: Hold the fuck onto something! fwwwwshhhhhhhhhh ~~ Woah, that was close. @@ Airman, get out of here, that is an order, pull back to a safe height and provide intel do you understand ~~ Yes Sir..Will do...oh shiiiiiiii... :: Left engine hit, losing rear thruster. We're going down, I repeat WE'RE GOING DOWN!!! ~~ I see em. I see the bastards! motherfu- @@ Who airman, who?? ~~ The Jekotians! It's THE JEKOTIANS!!!! THEY'RE COMING!!!!!
EDIT: Changed the first post so moving this here. Soooooo A new map, my first, and after the severe lack of sleep over the past week staying up all nights to work on this, I may take a break after this :p Some screenies to whet your appetite: Got a compile completed at 9am this morning. Fucking Optimization took me all night ( I still haven't slept!!!! argh) Hopefully will talk to Trickster later and have this uploaded to Napalm's today or tomorrow for a test run!! All are welcome!!! EDIT: game mechanics fixed up. func_details are still screwed til I get cubemaps sorted out. EDIT: Some notes on the map: BE start base is West, NF is East beside the green ref points Tip: Northwest and Northeast are Infantry focused. Tanks won't help you much in securing these refs!! I won't tell you everything about the map. I'll let yous discover as you go. Refineries (res/second): Green = 1x Blue = 2x Purple = 3x Red = 4x Yellow(Centre) = ???? try it n see you'll have great fun with this one hehe
It looks decent. I'm assuming Dispgen? Good work however you did it. A few minor gameplay problems I can see arrising: - It's not symmetrical Now I know symmetry isn't everything, but if it's your first map, that's gunna make balancing difficult. - The res rates are too high 5, 8, 10 and 10 are way over the top, I'm guessing yellow is something stupid as well, if a server needs more res, they'll set it, as it is, that's a gratuitous amount of res per ref. 1 to 3 res per second is reasonable, 3 is probably the utter maximum. - People don't like not knowing about a maps flow in it's thread. Tell us all the info, no server is going to add a map if you don't tell us how it plays. - Rainbow Refineries are bad, stick to either all yellow, or two colors, one for small and one for large, having red and purple mean the same thing is just going to confuse noobs. Those asside, good luck.
yeh I wasn't exactly sure how the res was gonna play out. I realise most server res rates don't actually update per second (as it does when I test the map) I'll scale these down accordingly. Also the Pink nodes were supposed to be a different amount. Somehow I ended up compiling it higher than intended. I'll recompile later and change a couple things before first release. And yes, terragen + photoshop + dispgen + Hammer displacement editor to get it just the way I wanted. And no, it wasn't just a random terragen heightmap :p . I "borrowed" the layout from an old RTS map I played endlessly as a kid (bonus points if anyone recognizes it ) Hoping to find out if it works as well for Empires. Also, I know it's not symetrical but maps that are tend to be quite boring. I I've taken several things into account while trying to balance this out and hopefully it will play well. That's what the beta is for eh
that was a mistake. Pink was supposed to be 6 or 7. Checked my .vmf after compile and it was 10. Anyway, gonna change the original post now...
emp_arid only gives x12 resources per second in total. emp_bush gives 14x resources / second in total, so if both teams own half of the refineries and flags each team will only have 6 or 7 resources per second which seems to be enough. A bit more won't hurt, but i think even official maps (with the exception of money) never go above 18. Also i think when the amount of players increases, the amount of income increases. So i guess that this amount you set in hammer, is the lowest income you have when there's only a few players on the server. I'm not sure though, someone else will have to clarify this.
My assumption when I was working in Hammer, was that I was inputting the amount of res per second as related to the readout on the res counter which would be somewhere between 23-32 res/sec I realize now that this ocunter either A) doesn't update per second I'll have to check that, or B) I was inputting what I assumed to be resources per second, not resource RATE. Either way, I intended to give an average of about 22-23 res per update, which I reckon is about 7 res per second. I confused myself with it that's all. Problem fixed, no worries folks. it's not gonna be a huge res map. The red ref is gonna be a triple or possibly 4x cause it's gonna be hard to hold. I'll see how the test runs go. Cheers for the feedback
Looks good :D As mentioned instead of rainbox colours stick to 1-2, and if u want an area to have more res then add multiple refineries. 4 yellow refineries or 2 red makes more sense to players than one purple, and players have to put the effort into building the extra refs too Hopefully it'll be on server for playtest later!
Was out most of today (and badly needed a break from staring at Hammer :p) so won't be up til tomorrow. Also I haven't really got room to be placing xtra refs so it's gonna be as it is. Going to have 4 colours. Start bases will be 1x. NW, NE, SW and SE are all going to be double, South will be triple and Centre will be same as it is. Need to make some minor changes to terrain to make sure SW isnt vulnerable to attacks from the North plateau (everywhere else is covered well enough) If you want some advance intel on what the map is going to play like then read my little story in the first post
missing textures aint the problem, i always get them when i join a server right after dowloading a map
