NS2_ATCS - Re-Remake (Advanced Tactical Combat Simulator, the de_dust equivalent of Tremulous)
Old discussion: http://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/143464/new-to-spark-editor-replicating-a-famous-map-from-tremulous-atcs
Old Steam workshop: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=810328380
New Steam workshop: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=818860706
Top: NS2's Editor with symmetrical sides duplicated
Bottom: ATCS (January 2006 for 1.1's standalone release) rendered on Tremulous 1.2 (GL 2Renderer + Sun/Shadow effects)
What it looks like if i combine the new and old recreations together:
Well, woodja look at dat beauty!
I've restarted the map creation progress due to serious issues with the editor which ended up causing a lot of bugs in the atcs map that i had worked up until then. This time i started developing from the center bunker instead of the main base so it will be a while until it becomes playable.
Thanks to Biege for his *hidden* youtube tutorials which i found randomly browsing the net - without them, i wouldn't have gotten this far..
Old Steam workshop: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=810328380
New Steam workshop: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=818860706
Top: NS2's Editor with symmetrical sides duplicated
Bottom: ATCS (January 2006 for 1.1's standalone release) rendered on Tremulous 1.2 (GL 2Renderer + Sun/Shadow effects)
What it looks like if i combine the new and old recreations together:
Well, woodja look at dat beauty!
I've restarted the map creation progress due to serious issues with the editor which ended up causing a lot of bugs in the atcs map that i had worked up until then. This time i started developing from the center bunker instead of the main base so it will be a while until it becomes playable.
Thanks to Biege for his *hidden* youtube tutorials which i found randomly browsing the net - without them, i wouldn't have gotten this far..
Comments
I look forward to trying your mod on your map to see how it plays.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=818860706
It's not complete and not playable yet (I even overwrote the atcs-demo.level file and that file has not been made playable yet) and i'll be going to indonesia for the nest 7 days or so so it won't be complete in the next week.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=818860706
Aside from the fatal bug, the map is complete. In fact it's been complete for about two months.
The pithole bunker has been changed and thge entire room has been depressed so players won't get stuck spwaning from the hive.
Also, recorded some AvA/AvM/MvM gameplay:
Some strategic tips for AvH:
-Marines should focus on hallway and try to block off alien flanking manouvres through their main base. Sentries are important to preventing skulks from doing this if the game is small. Once marines have access to jetpack, they can dominate the bunker area.
-The pocket behind the tech points can be exploited. A marine with a shotgun can sit behind the hive, and a skulk can bite the CC from behind or ontop of the CC, like in Tremulous. Thus, it is highly important for marines to setup an alternative tech point CC.
-Shift or craig upgrade is recommended over the shadw hive for aliens first.
-Even without shift upgrade, the onos can charge-jump over the gap. By the way, that gap is exactly 8 metres wide, meaning that it is just barely possible to jump over if you run at 10 metres per second, but confidently easy if you strafe jump it, with the TremNS2 mod. Unfortunately the TremNS2 mod is no longer compatible with the current version of Ns2.
-Gorges can place the spiney things on ceilings and the shallow pockets behind the walls so only the flower head things poke out, making them a much harder target to hit.
-Aliens can barricade the hallway entrance with one gorges' set of clogs fairly easily because it is narrow.
-Skulks can conceal themselves in the pockets in the ceiling in the main bases. They can also hide half their body in the pockets in the ceiling in the hallway and donut entrances by the ventilation-thingies.
-ARCs are able to hit both of the tech points in the middle from the hallway or outside the bunker area. It is very difficult for aliens to attack marines defending these arcs in these areas due to the openness
-If you can, blitzkrieg through the enemy's front lines if you can in a competitive setting. Speed is highly favoured in this map. Deny the opposing team's secondary and tertiary natural res points from being built early game for as long as you can to ensure an early victory. Once the secondary has been built, it is probably too late for this tactic but you can continue denying the hallway/donut res nodes from being built further. This is a unique gameplay element for this map relative to other NS2 maps; every tech point is accompanied by two res nodes rather than one, making control of these tech points very valuable.
-As said in the first point, flanking through the main base of the enemy to strike the enemy's back in the hallway is a very effective short term tactic to ease off the pressure on the front lines in the hallway as aliens provided marines haven't set up a beacon/obs there.
-Aliens should push for securing bunker. It is easier for skulks to control this tech point early game due to their advantage of being able to scale walls but may suffer in the long run if they aren't able to control at least half the res nodes in the map by the time marines get jetpacks.
-Skulks should stick to walls in hallways when possible. Unfortunately combat in regards to using walls isn't very friendly for skulks in NS2 compared to trem, but in case you're interested, tremulous had two types of wallwalking settings both of which are the sticky type, unlike NS2's floaty and NS1's touch-only system, allowing you to attacking while clinging to walls. The downside is that it is easy to get disoriented while using the ability, but there's a lot of potential with the skill as it allows you to effectively dodge and attack humans while using walls, ceiling and the ground. The closest you can get to this in ns2 is twiliteblue's skulk mod.
- Marines need to remember to distance themselves from aliens, and spread out when it comes to dealing with a small pack of weaker aliens like skulks and lerks.
- Marines working in pairs of two, should have one run past the alien attacking, having the "bait" human dodge backwards back to his own base, and have the offensive marine on the alien-base side of the hallway. This way if the alien tries to flee, one marine is able to trap/catch or at least chase down the weakened alien. Marines may not be as manouvreable as they are in Trem, but you shouldn't understimate teamwork.
- Aliens teamwork with tankier alien classes like the fade and onos shouldn't rush in together in the hallway. Rather, they should be doing "tag-team"ing, or "rope a dope" in dogfighting terms, where one acts as bait, and when it has its share of combat and is wekeaned, retreat past the support alien, where the support alien sandwiches the marines. To be honest, this tactic works on other maps with somewhat open but clear areas too like ns2_veil, and works even better where ventilation routes exist, but unfortunately, the original version of ATCS does not include ventilation.
___
I may further modify ATCS to suit various modified versions of the 30-50 or so variants of ATCS tremulous had, such as -2yb (two years beyond anniversary of 1.1's release) that adds a few props and a few holes/cracks in the bunker to give humans a better chance of securing the area. Another used-to-be-popular variant is actually a recreated from ground up map, zone alpha, which includes a more complex ventilation and underground section than -2yb. Other easy-to-adapt variants include -x2, literally copied and pasted mirrored ATCS, -onice, literally an icey map version, which includes an underground section connecting the middle hallway to the main base of either side, -upsidedown, literally what the name implies, and -HD, HD textures done by Ingar, and maybe some of Yalt's 2015 editions of ATCS. I think yalt made like 4 or 5 of them beacause why the hell not. It is afterall, the dust2 of tremulous.
* Middle Hallway has been renamed to Hallway Base as people were calling it "middle" (original trem referred the bunker also as mid, hallways was referred to as hall or tunnel)
* Easteregg teleport added behind the SPECTATOR team selection in the readyroom which takes you to an overview of the actual bunker... The room is above the commander's camera max height (hopefully), and there's also one-way occlusion geometry so people in the actual game map shouldn't see people floating in the sky. I was thinking of using a portal camera for this but that might not work out too well. My original ready room concept actually was supposed to be over the map too but it might be a bit too complex in regards to how occlusion geometry works in ns2. There's also an additional easteregg in that invisible floating room, but it's invisible. You might not be able to access it with onos though.
* Lua files in regards to a Mod Panel has been removed as they caused bugs on Nin's server, which I did an emergancy removal upon request before this update. The mod panels are going to contain basic strategic tips and the gameplay differences between standard ns2 maps and ATCS (As mentioned above), and also a link to one of my guides on my website although that may or may not work (since iirc they were adapted to Las' version of mod panels, even though they are supposidly compatible) so the panels may not be re-added soon.
* Added more occlusion geometry in various places although it is still not perfect especially in regards to how drawing into empty space accurately is a b***h in the spark editor.
* Fixed some missing texture spots outside the bunker that people may have never noticed
* Realigned collision no-cling surface so it resembles the actual caulking used in the original A.T.C.S. map. Also, you can now only wallwalk up the glitchfence in certain spots, while there are still 8 of them, the original only had 2 of them. TODO: swap out the nocling on the ceiling caulk surface to a regular caulk surface so you can cling onto it with skulk
* Hid some annoying beams along the middle pillars in the main base that showed up on Commander cameras. Now it should be easier to place whips/sentries in commander view under the pockets in the main base.
* Moved the both powernodes (which were assymetrically aligned previously) to both be on the north spot of the room. This should reduce the assymetric balance on MvM mode. Also it pulls the node out of range of the ARCs in the hallway and from being annoyingly stunned by infestation laid in the hallway.
* Properly Added the original licensing credits readme.txt to the output folder manually before exporting to steam so it gets distributed with the workshop so people can access them publically
* I was going to add some caulking to help AI player bots climb the ramp in the main base and in the bunker but I might do that later instead as it generally isn't an issue.
* You can now press the fart button
* TODO: add the original ATCS fence. I probably need help figuring out the .materials flag script specifics for it
Hey I want those tutorial too !!
-Fixed some stretched textures and misalignment of the forcefield along the stretched texture areas along the corners of the open area. The positioning of the corners isn't exact but NS2 doesn't exactly have a nice trim tool to fix up the position exactly as it should be, so it will have to do for now. Doing so also properly puts the forcefield behind the NO_CLING surface but shouldn't entirely prevent the intentionally introduced bug that allows you to wallwalk up the fence. I'll properly replace the upper portion of NO_CLING with an invisible wall-walkable surface later if I feel like it although the current experience is that you can kinda glide accross the NO_CLING which is kinda cool. That's not me, that's an ns2 specific bug.
NS2_ and CO_ (for the combat mod for NS2) editions have been updated. I'm feeling a bit lazy on the siege++ edition since it isn't even being hosted anywhere from what I know and have checked.
I believe I also fixed the skybox some time ago, but I can't remember when I did that.
And hte base of the fence pillars are also wrong (they have that flared out base)
i can only imagine quick combat maps on this tiny arena!
I also agree, doing a detailed version of the map with a unique twist or just making it look more modern rather than using the dated textures etc would definitely add to the appeal of the map.