Small maps?

Today I was thinking about how Empires has maps scale all the way up to 64 players, but there aren't really too many maps good for less than eight players. How can we appeal to LAN parties or small groups of friends if the teams required for an epic match are large? I know my own computer can only handle around 8 players before it really gets too laggy.

Disclaimer: Some of these are not my idea, but I think they might be fun anyway.

Race
- pretty much what it sounds like
- needs lots of random moving stuff to knock people off the track

Team deathmatch
- infantry only, each team gets a protected spawnpoint
- one or two flags
- flag has a VERY slow ticket bleed
- no walls, no turrets except MAYBE level 1
- maybe have starting turrets for defense

Vehicle deathmatch
- Use the vehicle spawner to make vehicles that contain spawn points for players to spawn in
- Surround the arena with MG turrets, so people aren't tempted to get out of the vehicle

Sabotage
- infantry only, each team gets a protected spawnpoint
- each team has a series of objects they must protect
- try to sabotage/deconstruct/destroy the other team's objects, while defending your own



OR SOMETHING LIKE THOSE

I realize one of the biggest problems with this is the lack of round-style gameplay. Without having multiple rounds, people could get frustrated by not having a second chance. The only solution is to make the maps last 10-15 minutes normally. Race maps could be really long, and have slick surfaces such as ice. Other types could mostly be fixed by tickets.


WHAT DO YOU GUYS THINK? CAN WE MAKE EMPIRES MORE APPEALING TO SMALL GROUPS?

 

Money >_>

 

what about a mini_money with a "slinked down" commander function


im thinking quickbuild and /5 resource times

something with flags


basically just maps adapted to the very low player count

 

There used to be a great race map on sourceforts, it used airboats. Then a new version destroyed them, which you might think would've made the map fail. But I discovered negative friction racing, one of the most hilarious things ever (set sv_friction -1).

So yeah, race maps or destruction derby type things. either arenas or courses, meds only, all guns allowed.

 

What about smaller classic maps? Like say a little bit bigger than urban chaos.. I would just hope they don't end up on the rotation of one of those 64 player servers

 

I started working on a tower map. Basically, each side would spawn at the bottom and fight their way up to the top where there was a bleeder flag.

 

Not unless you improve the gameplay for small fights.

Empires isn't really fun unless you're blasting a shitload of enemies in your tank.

If you try to do it with eight people it just plays like a very bad and unpolished version of CSS because engineers and grenadiers are useless, scouts are pretty useless, and only riflemen with ARs and HMGs are any good because the maps are close range.

Empires isn't a small group game because most of the content is designed for large servers of 32-48 players and the bigger it gets the better it gets, pretty much like battlefield really.

Besides I don't really see why you'd want it to be played by eight people on a lan party, that doesn't contribute anything to the mod, you want big servers full of people on the internet.

 

I love 4 versus 4 district

 

I think we could streamline it a bit. For instance, we could make a version of money with all of the refineries places, 2 barracks and a VF and armory and radar already placed. starting res at 600. That skips about the first 5-10 minutes of money.

Maps that take many people are maps that require expansion and upkeep. The fact is that a map is just a mindless tank slaughter without any objectives other than cap res, kill enemy. We really need another game mode completely for this to work.

Also, having auto research defined in a script would be wonderful, or just script in research to be completed every minute, First minute you get 2 engines and 2 armors, second minute you get MKII's and 2 weapons and RPG upped, 4th minute you get.... and so on and so forth.

 

I have a map I've been working on, but it will take time to release it, but here's my idea, it helps if you've played UTHER PARTY for WC3.

Two teams, gets a spawn point in one room, then both of them compete to whom wins it first, the team that wins get one score, then they all die (trigger_hurt)/teleport to another room where they have to do another task, like dodge the balls or scout wars. I've played it on my map with 3 people and it was great fun (Grenaider wars).

 

Nobody else does.

You could do all that with the exisiting entities I think, depends if emp_sv_research or whatever the 'unlock technology' command is called is a cheat or not.

It still wouldn't be much fun, it'd be more playable than normal small empires I grant you, but not much fun.

 

Ha... When did you start speaking for everybody?

 

If lots of people liked small games we wouldn't have one huge server, we'd have six with ten people on each.

People will tolerate pings of 150 more than they will tolerate playercounts of less than twelve.

 

Well district is one of the only maps that is good with small amounts of people but usually after that map ends the server goes ghost..

 

District does work better with fewer players than most maps but it still doesn't work very well with five a side.

Even if it did, it would only work well for empires. It wouldn't hold a candle to other games which are designed for that sort of thing.

There simply aren't enough enemies in a pure PVP game with fewer than about 16 players unless you're playing tekken, the only games that do work with few players are cooperative ones.

With that in mind you could make a race map because you aren't really fighting each other, you're fighting the track, but source has shit vehicle physics so it wouldn't be much fun.

 

8-player LAN parties DO help Empires. If people like those, they will be inclined to play on major servers too. As long as they have SOMETHING to do with Empires, it is good for the mod.

 

what about small mission orientated maps?

something like district but with a bombsite and stuff to keep people busy

 

EmpiresCounter-StrikeDayofDefeatSourcemod ftw!