If you look back a few pages I mention having tried it - I had grand plans of a full scale secret base under the middle of the mountain (the green metal bit in the floor there was the roof to its missile silo...), with a few spawn points, loads of tunnels around to make it confusing, and general goodness (e.g. main entrance for vehicles was to be through disgused tunnel behind the warehouse bit between the two starts, other tunnels coming up lots of places like the roads above the village, the crypt to the lefthand side etc). It would have been good, but I tried and couldn't cut up my displacements properly due to the stupid (well, naive) way I made them. If anyone fancies themselves as an expert then I'd be happy for other people to chop the map up and actually make a decent number of players like it
Oh. I meant to mention: The old version of this map is still running on the KM server, right after Canyon. It seems to be getting a better reception now that people are more used to it, although since it's the old version, it still tends very much towards 'whoever gets to the center first, wins'. I did see my team lose after getting the center recently, but only because we managed to get into CV sudden death -- we'd been easily holding the center until then.
Having played a bit more, I wonder if the new version will actually be worse in some ways - it doesn't close off the annoying mortar/rocket sniping at the park and the extra paths to the middle also lead from the middle, making it easier to get out. The main advantage of the non-middle part should be trapping the centre. ho hum if I get time to play with the map again, I may force myself to make tunnels work as that'd rejig the whole thing quite forcefully. The main problem is having horrible tunnel entrance joins and not being able to sew displacements, so we'll see if I can do it (but not soon)
Epic bug. My body fell through part of the mountain and someone revived my foot. This is the result. I recommended the com put up lvl3s under the moutain, but alas he was ninjad even before I could squad revive all of my squad mates down there.
I may try some sort of killing brush - but I won't rush to it as I've not got much of an internet connection right now, also unless there's a terrain problem in a specific place then it shouldn't be too easy to do that. If there is a hole/problem area, then blocking that is more important. I've managed to make minor progress on tunnels - annoying though it changes brush numbers and so all my nice overlays will need redoing. Any feedback on the infantry paths from anyone that's played the map? does it make it more or less in favour of the middle people? I was hoping that paths up should make mortar spamming more dangerous, but am a bit concerned that having more paths out of the middle makes it stronger rather than weaker...
OK we've been running this map for a while on KM and it has a major flaw. One team parks their CV in a VF at spawn and a whole bunch of engineers keep themselves and the CV alive as the water rises. No decent weapons work underwater so they stock up on squad points for revives while the opposition basically have to sit around doing nothing. Until this is fixed we've pulled it from the server. Simplest way of fixing this - have toxic water with a kill brush!
Something I have always wondered: was it intended that buildings don't get hurt under water? Because if that gets "fixed" (or changed), the problem solves itself. I think when the team loses the VF in which the CV is parked and all those Lvl 3 turrets around it get destroyed, they have no chance.
Lava would be better, spewing out of a big volcano. But yeah this maps not really worth playing until that bug is fixed. Can you smooth out some displacements too? Make it more obvious which faces are climbable and which ones arent, instead of having semi-climbable faces that you can just kind of slide up.
I tried that as one of the first parts to making the map. I had horrible problems with everything lagging, so abandoned the idea. However, I smoothed out the water rising making things lag a bit since then (not sure if it still does a bit for some people, I think it's harder on the server than the client) so it may be viable. I hadn't realised people didn't like the buildings surviving, to the point where when I accidently had something that killed them I changed it. Mk II doesn't have the same number of turrents at each start, I think, I never meant to leave them all in for the first version tbh - I just forgot to take them out after arsing around. I can do a 'quick fix' version on the mkII to add some toxicness, but currently I haven't got broadband and I've not gotten very far with adding tunnels etc for mkIII. The nature of the changes I need to do for mkIII should mean that I have no excuse for not smoothing bits out as it means reworking a lot of the hillside. pah
I hate bumping ancient threads, but is there any chance swamprat is alive and willing to do an update for orangebox? I really miss sinking
Alive, but sort of out of the swing of Empires. Someone offered to see what could be done with the map to update it and I'm happy to pass on files etc - I lost patience with it when trying to add in an underground lair (the original intention, but a complete pain in the bum to do - when trying to get enough vis clipping to not make it all lag). I've no idea what needs to be done to make it orangebox ready, hopefully it'll be possible. It's a shame I never got the hang of mapping - the other idea I'd had (featuring the all time empires no-nos of lasers and forcefields (but buildable ones)) could have been amusing.
I think i heard that shandy got ahold of the map, looks like it'll turn out good, just hope for more refs
Yes, SwampRat transferred the maps to me. Chances are that if I have adequate time this summer I'll release updated versions: emp_atoll, & emp_atoll_sinking, with fixes, optimization, and initially only minor changes for the initial releases to get feedback on what players want to see improved. Summer releases are tentative though, as I'll be enduring some pretty significant life changes and may not be able to update and release them until later. No matter what changes about the maps though, SwampRat will always be included in any credits for the maps. I thank him for turning the files over to me so we can one day play these classics again.
