ns2_co_skylight
DarkSeraph
Join Date: 2004-06-07 Member: 29174Members
Join Date: 2004-06-07 Member: 29174Members
Link: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=129576328
Before there was a biodome there was the Skylight Test Facility. Designed to test the light limits of organics on space stations the facility was placed on a planet with plentiful water and constant light - on a planet orbiting three suns. However, on one of the darkest days of the year an infestation is discovered and must be expunged!
Getting turned around? Red lights are alien side and blue lights are for marine side. Also EXO can't go below catwalks in skylight.
To do list:
-Make long hallway floor pattern curve with wall prop
-Place-able invisible cysts in combat (Help me @JimWest! My fake infestation looks like shit!)
-logic_worldtooltip to be visible by people with ready room status (or the option to change who its visible to) with the above tip when you stand in front of a terminal
Skylight, where most of the action should happen
Marine Start - Command
Hive - Ventilation
Long Hall
Curved Hall
The map has performance issues when you are at a far end looking across - help me improve performance (without having to delete half of the models)!
Please give me constructive criticism!
Before there was a biodome there was the Skylight Test Facility. Designed to test the light limits of organics on space stations the facility was placed on a planet with plentiful water and constant light - on a planet orbiting three suns. However, on one of the darkest days of the year an infestation is discovered and must be expunged!
Getting turned around? Red lights are alien side and blue lights are for marine side. Also EXO can't go below catwalks in skylight.
To do list:
-Make long hallway floor pattern curve with wall prop
-Place-able invisible cysts in combat (Help me @JimWest! My fake infestation looks like shit!)
-logic_worldtooltip to be visible by people with ready room status (or the option to change who its visible to) with the above tip when you stand in front of a terminal
Skylight, where most of the action should happen
Marine Start - Command
Hive - Ventilation
Long Hall
Curved Hall
The map has performance issues when you are at a far end looking across - help me improve performance (without having to delete half of the models)!
Please give me constructive criticism!
Comments
Unfortunately I doubt I'll get many people to play it until it's optimized a bit, though I'd love to get some playtesting done if anyone with a server wants to contact me.
I'm confused. Do you mean use the glass texture in the places where needed? From what I've seen from summit window/open areas is they use the dev texture for occlusion but out of render range. If I use dev texture right in front of the window what is telling it not to render?
Thanks for your help! Sorry, occlusion is very confusing to me.
Oh, this is helpful. And it has to be the group, not the layer, right? Maybe that's where I was getting confused, since I rarely work in groups.
It sounds like I have a lot of work to do! Thanks!
The occlusion geometry doesn't really care about the texture it has as long as there is a face. The face will occlude geometry and props behind it. The skybox is always rendered anyway. So if you have nothing behind your window and you are looking to the skybox, you can have the occulsion geometry right up to the window. But, if there is a scenery you want us to see out of the window, you need to include that in the same 'occlusion room' as the one with windows.
The one other thing I wanted to mention is despite my best efforts there are still a lot of minor lighting errors - things the engine does odd things with my 'sunlight' on some faces.
I'm hoping we can test it out this weekend.
I'll look around for what I can add. In a lot of the rooms I shied away from too much spot lighting in hopes to emphasize the lighting from the sky itself (I might turn up some intensity there, but I've been trying to limit the atmospherics)
I do really feel like the main skylight room needs something more to 'pop', but I'm not sure what yet. MS could use some spice, but I'm actually pretty pleased with the hive lighting (and already several spot lights in there). I think I'm OK with the Long Hall, but I'm definitely open to suggestions on how to spice up the curved hall (lighting looks bland).
I have not played this at all and would love to see some playtesting - please message me if you can host some NA play testing one of these nights!
The map looks really nice so far, good job. The problem is that it is almost impossible to win as alien (at least on a 18 slot server). The hallways are too narrow to engage the inevitable exo train of doom.
- the distance between the techpoints needs to be increased
- the hallways need to be widened a bit (+ offer more cover)
- there may need to be 1 more path on both sides
The current layout might work on a 12 slot server though, not sure.
Thanks for the suggestions - I haven't managed to play on a full server yet and aliens seem to have an advantage in small games. I'd love to see more actual stats, but very few combat servers run ns2stats which makes it difficult for me to keep track.
I'll think of how to improve it - the total size isn't much different from faceoff which had a ~38% marine win % before last patch. After last patch all data seems to disappear
The EXO train is a serious concern, but there should be enough ways to flank them by the time they actually enter the skylight room. I'll have to watch more gameplay and figure something out.
There is an issue - the opening for the vent in the curved hallway isn't large enough to let lerks through. I'm also not pleased with the view distance down the curved hall into the hive room - on marine side it gives defensive advantage intentionally, but it's bad on alien side of map.
I'd make the corner here larger, where the fade is fighting, so players aren't constantly on a tight path which leads to clusterfucks.
I'm a bit confused from that game though, aliens complained all game and then won.
I've just uploaded these changes:
-Vent entrance curved hallways larger (can't fit fade or lerk)
-Line of sight from curved hallway into hive room obstructed (alien side only) - I don't like how that spot becomes a camping zone
The complaint about EXO train still seems valid, but that game aliens held against EXO quite well. I'm still taking suggestions on how to improve anything, so please speak up.
Edit: This image is my favorite, pretty cool looking:
Vents were also underutilized early game by aliens - I'm not sure how to increase that.
3 issues I've seen:
- the lower pipe in the Alien start slows an Onos down, it should be a bit higher
- in skylight, the space between the stairs to the upper level and the pillars the upper level rests on seems big enough for a Skulk to climb through (right on the side of the stairs' handrails), but you can't. Make it either narrower (so players instantly know they can't go there) or wider (so Skulks can climb up there)
- the 3 rooms and 4 hallways should all have names so you can tell others where something is
Aww shucks - thank you very much, I worked hard on it. As usual I'd do somethings differently, but that's life.
-The pipe is fixed - the whole point of it was to keep EXO from switching sides easily once in there, but its not worth the cost of onos having to crouch.
-Good call. I've put crossbeams there to try to give the signal that you can't fit.
-I thought the hallways are easy to call - curved & long/straight hall, marine or alien side. I guess I could label them a letter or something. Hall X?
I want to thank Korn of Team GG and the NextLevelGaming guys for helping me get some more playtime on this map.
Edit: 3/26 added reflection_probes (I hope I didn't overdo it, had to turn strength waaay down). Also added a little fun something to the RR.
3/31 - fixed vent into skylight so fades can fit through. Still not sure anyone has found secret room.
4/5 major edit to attempt to favor marines a little more - long hall is wider with no more railing and the vent on the marine side is mostly open now. Widened some vents to encourage jetpackers. Thanks to Korn again for a good suggestion.
The flow and dimensions are based on faceoff - the main difference is parts of faceoff are more open. I thought this was a problem in the center because you always end up with hydras in that vent which favors aliens heavily. As someone compared: faceoff has corridors that are more winding but more open areas.
Faceoff's most recent win rate for marines was 36% (in Feb). My guess is that combat balance is off overall and has at best a 40% win rate for marines. I feel this is largely due to the fact that when alien life forms are not tied to any sort of time constrained resource the lifeforms are highly overpowered, and that aliens win by time default (for plot reasons?). A last stand mode with no cc/hive healing would be awesome.
Lastly - go to the combat forum post and encourage them to do a last stand mode instead of alien default win and give your opinion. Then go to the ns2stats forum post to awesome JimWest's post and get them to hook their files in and fix stats in combat!
I can put a frame on the vent so that vent in the middle of that corridor is easier to find. But as you mentioned I don't think that'll improve marine win %.
Please I'd love some advice or suggestions on how to adjust balance from anyone at this point.
edit 4/9: The more I think about it I think I should not change the map heavily until ns2stats and last stand are implemented. Last stand will change the balance heavily and ns2stats will give me a better idea of how large the issue is, and then I will adjust from there.
The problem really is you made a half copy of the map, so marine and alien accesses to central room are the same. This is (in my opinion) a wrong choice. Marines need bigger areas so its easier for them to kill from the distance while aliens need the opposite. Maybe making the marines corridors bigger, maybe creating 2 more access points from the bases to central point or something.
Also, the central area is dominated by a big f*******g biodome in the middle. In my opinion (dont take it as a harsh comment please) it sucks. Theres only 1 choke point area in the map and its not a wide open area, its totally blocked by the biodome so combat takes places at the entrances of the corridors, which doesnt help the gameplay. IMO it would feel really better to access central area and have a wide open space. Some covers at the entrances of the corridors would also help to keep the combat in that area.
Anyways, i really like the map due to its small layout. It really helps to spawn and be in the combat in about 6-8 seconds. Im already bored of running 20 secs to the hive and getting killed and then the same patern all the game around.
The other piece that would help is last stand mode (no healing hive or cc after 25min) implemented for combat to even out the alien default win. Without that my best guess is that marine win % should be ~40%, but it's difficult to know since some maps will stalemate more than others.
Again I really appreciate the feedback, and would love to get more once I adjust the map some more.
However, after multiple play sessions, I love it. Good work!
I like the biodome. Don't change it.
My only request would be to give aliens closer vent access to the command station. Close enough that gorges can harass the command station.
I'm glad you like it! In actuality the last few games I've played have seemed fairly balanced - removing those crates seems to significantly improve balance. I think initially the gameplay can be frustrating for people, but there is a surprising amount of give & take on such a simple flow layout. Fade overbalance definitely shows however.
Vent near the CC? That is a big no-no, even on classic style maps. Gorges bile bombing from a vent in marine start sounds like a disaster. Sorry dude. In addition no decent combat map has a vent into MS - at best just outside of it, which I've already made more convenient than most maps.
As for the biodome - I really have no intention to change it until I have a better understanding of the map's current state of balance (come on ns2stats!). If it's balanced as is, I will not remove it (as it's important to the 'story' of this map). The real last piece of balance is last stand mode for combat - no healing hive/cc after 25 min (alien default win is BS). Please go to the combat thread & suggest it!
Thanks for playing and especially thanks for taking the time to post - I really appreciate it.
Edit: the more I think about this, and watch some games, I'd really prefer to widen the hive room. Even the best marines end up stuck outside the hive unable to push in. I'll think on it more.
We'll see how that plays - part of the trouble is I can't widen the entrances to the hive without moving the halls (since you don't want halls looking straight into hive). Any more suggestions are more than welcome; the next major change that I want to try (once ns2stats is up) is removing the biodome.
You can also sit comfortably inside the fan while its blades pass through you:
This isn't a bug or anything, but I think these blinds (I'll call them that for now) would look better if they were trimmed in a more robust manner:
Decided to make a quick example to illustrate what I mean: