ns2_jurassic Public Beta
Hi Everybody!
I had a need to create another semi outdoors map and here we are:
(It's still a greybox with some textures, but the geometry is very basic for now as I can imagine it will need a lot of tweaking, so please excuse the ugliness
)It's not the Steamworkshop yet, so you will have to extract the level from the zip file attached to this message, into your ns2\maps folder.
I tried to make the map a bit different to the usual maps by:
-Having some semi overlapping levels
-putting all of the action into one central-ish area. (it's fairly small map).
-there are only 4 powernodes, all outside of the rooms they control
-easier to control resource towers for both teams to speed up the gameplay a little and focus on tactics instead of strategy
-creating areas specifically so that each alien or type of marine excels into that situation, and these are:
--seige vs bile bomb room
--outside gauntlet for skulks vs bunkered marines
--onos vs exo area
--jetpack vs fades area
--gorge friendly areas
--skulk ambush areas
--big lerk areas
Looking forward to your feedback - feel free to hit me up on Steam as I would love to have a game of it too
http://steamcommunity.com/id/tomlobster
PS. This is a beta for the game play concept so it's quite a blocky looking map for now.
Comments
It's not meant to play like a typical ns2 map. Whether it works and is fun to play is another story altogether.
But figured I'd try to take the asymmetric nature of ns2 as far as it can go.
It's kind of like a seige map I guess *shrugs*
It will probably be a bit of a shock to most ns2 players that are conditioned in playing a certain way. So here is how I expected the map would play out.
Aliens:
The alien team always starts on the east side of the map.
The skulks must try to make it through a sandy gauntlet - marines have a big advantage here - almost a free shot.
But if the skulks manage to make it through they have a skulk friendly area available to them, which coincidentally houses the power for 1/2 of the marine base.
So turn off the power it should take away some marines from the shooting gallery bunker, allowing more aliens through.
The alien commander will want to built the 2nd hive in the far west area asap, since it can only be assaulted by jetpack marines.
Lasty the alien commander will need to build a 3rd hive which is a little bit more dangerous, but it will allow for onos to rampage the marine base.
Gorges with bile-bomb will be critical to destroying any arcs in the siege area. As well as skulks, lerks and fades continuously harassing marines and the power points.
Marines:
They must try to shoot down as many aliens as possible through the eastern bunker window. Otherwise they will need to climb down the ladder to try protect the base power.
The marine commander ideally will want to:
-use arcs against the eastern hive asap
-use turrets inside the onos pit (you can build 3 sets due to the way the power grid is created.) until exos can be created
-and use jetpacks for the far west hive.
Also marines should only build on metal floors as sand/rock/gravel areas do not have the power grid - which will allow for a quick phase gate if using temp power, but that's about it.
A player must join and within a few minutes have grasped the concept, learned most of the map and be able to play it.
The first area with the powernode in the fence is one such very easy to grasp concepts. A person looking at that will instantly understand it can be damaged/welded from both sides.
While easy, it will still give both teams a satifsfying challenge.
Maybe add a sign that says what the node supplies power for. Don't let players find out in multiple rounds, that takes too long.
There are some other parts like this but most of the rest is already difficult. Add signs, call areas something funny and put signs. Even in the alien spawn, so you can follow the sign that says "Shooting range" or whatever.
Also, please design it so that the map will be easily readable. That's where players look when playing a map for the first time.. If that's just a jungle and undecipherable...
We've seen with spaceship and goliath that non-ns2-maps running on a ns2 classic server will fail.
Making such a playstyle on a classic server (no special mod required, like siege) could be interesting. Focus on fun and speed of access(how intuitive it is to learn).
When you have it somewhat functioning, ask the SCC guys to play it (and DO join, sundays 21cet I think).
Good luck
Understand absolutely that almost no-one will play the map the way you want them to. Whenever you want to shape someone's play you have to make a mod, not just a map