[Map] Ons-Syrma-

[GLoups!]

'All the peoples meet on Syrma, as on all inhabited planets, conflicts, wars, but also the alliances, the love and friendship intersect there. All lived in harmony, until the humans were desperate to seize the wealth of the planet, using the demons with which they had spent a covenant. The latter obey therefore of good thanks to their invokers, by taking advantage of being on the continent for raiding a soul or two ... The planet Syrma became their headquarters, but their actions are still weak, whereas some people continues to believe that a peace is possible.

Download

[Cat1981England]

Ahh this is brilliant, a new map great work GL

Taking a good look at it now

[EmanReleipS]

Ooooooh, a new map! That is awesome!

I really want to give it a try, but I've spent an hour just downloading files that I'm missing so that I can play this map.....and I'm stuck now. Can't find the "CuddlyArmor_Sound" file online. Is there any way you can put it here, Gloupy?
I really hope I'm not missing more files.....

[GLoups!]

OMG It's because I thought that the whole world had install the CEONSS pack and sorry for that, here i'ts twenty second


Hope i don't forget something

[Zon3r]

OMG It's because I thought that the whole world had install the CEONSS pack and sorry for that, here i'ts twenty second

http://www.mediafire.com/download/3133u ... _files.rar

Hope i don't forget something

My ut2004 folder is 34.2GB big, i have 520 just ons maps, but was still missing some of these files
will check back after i try this
Edit: missing files:
UltimateMappingTools

[Zon3r]

Big map, quite bare,more vehicles i think for 32 players. needs teleporters or jump pads, cause if your vehicle is destroyed, suicide is the only option, that or walking 2 kilometers. the core i too well protected, its underground, plus it has walls around it, all it takes is a defender get down there with the tank, and it can be protected till overtime, but this is only my opinion. lets hear the boss

[Cat1981England]

lets hear the boss

I'm an appalling judge of maps. Thoughts everyone please.

[EmanReleipS]

Okay, I just had a look a it.
I might sound very critical here. So I just want to first and foremost say that I think it is absolutely awesome, Gloupy, that you are still making maps for this game. Absolutely awesome!


Overall Design:
Nice, esp the ruins and run-down houses, nice little details (stained glass windows at the bases)
however, design seems inconsistent (base & primaries in military base-style vs. run-down wooden houses and stone ruins) <- this might be highly subjective
all nodes offer several attack opportunities, but also enough protection for defenders
very big map, needs to be much smaller to work well (walking and slow vehicles are pointless)
edge of the map visible if you fly high enough

Node setup:
lots of nodes, no choke nodes, lots of opportunities to cut off, complex setup, but easy to understand, balanced

Weapon selection:
didn't check at every node, only at the four design types (base, primaries, house nodes and ruin nodes), but most important weapons were there, with all available at the cores
some sniper weapons at the nodes in the center of the map

Vehicle availability:
good at base, but not very good at other nodes, esp 5/7/8 (house nodes) and 1/2/3 (ruin nodes), for this size of a map it needs way more fast vehicles (slow ones are useless - the match is over before you have gotten anywhere)

Core/base:
a bit too big in my opinion, but nice idea to move it underground
for some reason my falcon respawned as a mere raptor....

Primaries:
design like a military bunker, similar to design of the bases, also very big
also underground, with two entrances, one guarded by a turrent that is useless (too vast of an area to cover, limited movement for the turrent and anyone smart enough can get to the node quickly anyway)
big hole on top of underground nodes that allow players to jump through, but flyers unable to land
shield over node protects from flyers

House nodes:
look like rundown houses and really nice design, but not very structured (can't see which vehicles spawn where unless you have checked corner), might benefit from a more structured layout
second house that is empty except for a shield - a little bit of a waste having such a big house for that
empty little room inside the house with the node - maybe put a relic in there?
only one or two fast vehicles spawn here

Ruin nodes:
look like stone ruins, great design
node somewhat hidden inside the building (might be an advantage)
not very structured (vehicles a bit hidden), lots of stairs leading to nothing whatsoever
few fast vehicles

Superweapons:
didn't find any during my short try, only found a relic of haste on a mountain - a bit useless all the way up there and so far away from anything

Personally, I really like the design of the houses and ruins. I think if the bases and primaries were like that, maybe with a clearer building structure (to find vehicles and quickly gain an overview when you get spawned), it would look even better and more consistent. Also, the map would work a lot better if it were smaller. That includes making the bases smaller in themselves. I could see this map as a bigger version of Spiffingrad, with a few tanks, but more around the size of....4 times RedBluff or so. I think the design would be stunning then, like a post-apocalyptic Wild-West map. Add a few relics and make it smaller so that people on foot and slow vehicles have a chance and I think it will be great fun and allow for very diverse and dynamic gameplay!

[GLoups!]

Firstly, Eman an Zony a big thank to both of you, do not be afraid to be critical, it helps to go ahead and give me a fresh look that I do not have necessarily after a long time passing on the same map.
I can work on most of the points that you mention here with the exception of one: the size of the map (wanted at start)
This is exactly the same size as dria with 36 vehicles against 32 on this one, but change that will be as i redo another map.

Big map, quite bare,more vehicles i think for 32 players. needs teleporters or jump pads, cause if your vehicle is destroyed, suicide is the only option, that or walking 2 kilometers. ...

Nice idea to put jumppads on the longer paths,unconsciously I put the relics of haste to try to fix it but apparently not at the right place.

... the core i too well protected, its underground, plus it has walls around it, all it takes is a defender get down there with the tank, and it can be protected till overtime...

This is what I wanted initially, at the beginning i wanted to put the mino or other powerful vehicles without pedestrians suffer a too bad fate (that's why the high protects on the nodes) ..but I agree with you, it's a bit too in the base, so I will remove the walls around the core.

for some reason my falcon respawned as a mere raptor....

Where are the campers? , it's nomal it appears one time on three, like the most powerfull vehicles (like the perses) everywhere on the map..

...second house that is empty except for a shield - a little bit of a waste having such a big house for that

There are few secrets in this house so that's why it not seem to have nothing in.

Ruin nodes:
look like stone ruins, great design
node somewhat hidden inside the building (might be an advantage)
not very structured (vehicles a bit hidden), lots of stairs leading to nothing whatsoever
few fast vehicles

You are right it should be reviewed, and vehicle location.

Superweapons:
didn't find any during my short try, only found a relic of haste on a mountain - a bit useless all the way up there and so far away from anything

1 Redeemer, 2 strike-painter, 2 Eons-nukelayer, 2 invisibility-pickup and some relics (Haste,radiations) to well hiding but it's true the relics needs to be move closer to the actions,thus somes normals-painters less hiding..and furnish the deco as well.

[Pegasus]

Hey GLoups, sorry it took me this long to provide some feedback on this, man; didn't have the time to dig into it before the weekend.

First off, assuming I'm not mistaken here, this is your first original map in UEd following your previous editing path up til now? If so, I believe congrats for popping your author's cherry are in order here, my friend . Speaking from personal experience, not many people work up the courage to stare down the daunting blank canvas and start putting together something from nothing (I know I haven't), and these days hearing that someone's made a new map for UT seems almost unreal itself. So, before we get to talking about the map itself, once again kudos for taking the big next step, GLoups! Here's hoping you keep having enough fun with it that we'll see more new stuff in the future from you.

Now then, considering others have already addressed the matter of wrangling the missing files (I was ready to start collating PWC links), and seeing how examining the map's constituent gameplay/geometric parts is a front that's already been tackled to a decent degree, I thought I might try another approach here by discussing the two flaws that I concluded prevent me from enjoying this map.

First up is the lack of character, and if anyone thinks I'm gonna get into a discussion about petty aesthetics here, lemme just assure you right now that's not the case. Mind you, I'm not talking about thematic cohesion here, as the map has a theme in mind (hilly, rustic countryside) and it manages to stick with it more or less (aberrant militarized/industrial emplacements and ancient ruin flairs notwithstanding); what concerns me here has much more to do with overall geometry & terrain design. Basically, moving around the map, from higher elevations down to the various dilapidated houses/structures that contain the objectives and away again, the totality of the vistas and gameplay-significant locations feels pretty much unremarkable. I mean, aside from the bases' coliseums and weird force fields there and at the proximal primaries (more on that later), it's pretty much devoid of interesting landmarks to the point that even if the map was without a single gameplay issue, the average player would struggle to remember anything specific about it after a match; kinda like how you'd be hard-pressed to recall anything about Aratheia, DG-SandStone, MeadowLand or SweepingSands. This isn't just a "window dressing" or "marketing" nitpick either since a map's larger geometric concept can often influence gameplay through encouraging players to explore places off the beaten path or, more importantly, by providing the framework for unique fighting/tactical situations around the objectives.
As a simple proof of the above claim, think about some of the ONS maps you've always found to be good, or even the best. Now consider what it is about their overall theme and geometric design - around their nodes' areas, the bases and along their midsection - that makes gameplay around there good. Would you say, for example, the node areas lean more towards a complex/busy arrangement or do they go for a cleaner/simpler concept instead? Does the distribution of geometry elements/structures in such popular maps tend to be uniform between areas of importance or are there any kind of unique/notable architectural set-pieces that contribute to making them memorable? For me, whenever I think of mainstay maps, the answer to both those questions tends to fall in the latter group; examples are ample too and off the top of my head would include Alien2, Ascendancy, BasementHomeTheater, BitterSands, DesertedSands, Dinora, GunShop, IslandHop, Katharos, OmahaBeach, Panalesh, Silva, SlatedWorld, Suspense, Tyrant, VolcanoHigh and a number of other, frequently preferred roster entries. There are successful maps that don't adhere to the "central setpiece" design principle, too - Maelstrom, MasterBath and BiggerBeerBattle come to mind - but you could nonetheless argue that their node areas are still characteristic enough on their own.
The point is, when you set off to create a brand new map, your chances for success are considerably higher when you already have some solid ideas from the start about the situations you'd like the players to find themselves in while fighting there. Of course that doesn't mean that you need to have the entire map's layout figured out down to the last detail in your head before even firing up UEd, but a vision about some parts of it would help a great deal, whether we're talking about a specific node area design or two, a particularly interesting structure for the midsection, a terrain location shaped in a way that would make vehicular combat of certain kinds there a unique or unusual experience or anything else. The collection of good ideas for every part of a map doesn't even need to be a problem your creativity should have to solve entirely on its own within UEd either; there's all sorts of fascinating places all around, from outside in nature (eek, the Sun, it burns!) to your place of work or study, and all the way to fictional locations from other games or movies you might see in YT trailers or whatever and find thinking to yourself, "you know, this could make a great place to fight over a node in ONS" ... or at least, that's how my mind sometimes works . Take desktop screenshots of the vid's frame, snap a pic with your phone, hell, just write an idea down in as much detail as you can when you get one - anything it takes to preserve it when it hits you - and store 'em all together so that you can later rifle through that inspirational folder to pick and adapt what might fit best. There's probably other methods one could use to come up with ideas for their map's geography so that it'll be unique and, hopefully, interesting enough (VK once went with the historic recreation approach, IIRC), but I've found the above bunch is the one that has worked the best for me.
Okay, that rant might've gotten away from me a little there, but to bring things back to the flaw in question here, most of the map is comprised of nondescript, broken down houses and ruins, and the emotional/engagement payoff from moving across that and the mostly barren hills is unavoidably sub-par IMO. A different kind of structure/terrain situation in the middle instead of more of the same idea (and maybe some of that at the non-base corners too?) could create more interesting situations and improve the impression the map leaves on players.

The other flaw I spotted was this general trend across the map's various elements and mechanics towards antagonizing the player's choices and preferred style, to the detriment of gameplay. This spans from the overwrought and oftentimes labyrinthine geometry around non-primary nodes to the numerous and sometimes outright capriciously placed ForcedDirVolumes, IonCannonKillVolumes and core-adjacent vec ejections; to the unreliable and alternating vecs delivered from the ultimate vec factories; to the needless presence of those force fields next to the cores and in the proximal primaries (seriously, why are those nodes designed in such a restrictive manner regarding how to approach and where to attack 'em from?); to the supers/pickups frequently also gated behind senseless mechanics (teleporters half a world away, 2sec ion volumes); to the overuse of stairs, doors and lifts, sometimes all together in the same locations! All of those situations are cases where the mix of elements you opted to include end up working against the player, instead of encouraging them to be investigative or creative and helping sustain the gameflow, and IMO it all weighs the map down. Arguably the most problematic among these hindrances is some of the nodes' design, so let's take a closer look at those for a bit.
From the first moment one approaches some of the non-primary node areas, the impression they get is one of numerous dead ends, narrow chokepoints in their vicinity and how all that puts a navigation hurdle in the way of successfully attacking or defending 'em under pressure. Whether they're made out of a single, multi-hundred-faced BSP or they're built exclusively out of st.meshes, the result tends to be that movement around the nodes, especially during a firefight when that matters the most, is constricted to the point where you can only dodge away in one direction or nowhere at all! I mean, I enjoy some thematic detail and ornamental/decorative attention to my ONS environments as much as the next player, but how exactly am I supposed to raid an objective such as this against its keepers and have that not always turn into a suicide mission unless I'm in a flyer? The proximal primaries' bunkers is a different spin on the same issue too: because of the wide energy shield hats caps and the steep ladders, the only way to hurt the node is from inside that area where its defenders will control the space and, therefore, have the edge. Btw, while using st.meshes for your stairs all across the map instead of (semi)solids may likely have been a conscious choice to avoid wonky BSP cuts and arising lighting problems from that, which does reveal practical mapper thinking, the steepness of their incline (especially the winding ones) can often cause players ascending 'em to expend mindshare and viewport attention to 'em lest they fall off at the expense of other events around 'em and, thus, IMO still makes the stairs overall a worse design choice than simply lowering the terrain itself to the appropriate level or using ramps or teleporters to achieve the same goal. Lighting in the cores' and primaries' areas still seems insufficient, given the importance those areas have. Couple all that with what seems to me an unjustifiably busy node distribution around the center that still leaves 2 corners of the map unused, and hopefully you can now understand why these fundamental issues are making it so hard for me to like the "meat n' potatoes" offered in this dish.
To wrap up this section on a constructive note, why not look for any relevant lessons other successful maps may have to offer on node design? Let's start from the simple observation that nodes represent entire territories of the map (usually, unless you're in Spambox) and, because of that, they'll be often prominently situated in their center, visible and approachable from numerous directions despite what geometric cover may be around 'em. No matter how you approach 'em, once you're near enough, one simple thought experiment might reveal a common trend. Consider any popular map, then - say, Alien2 - and try to guess how long the average necessary time for the average newcomer who's never played that map before will be for them to look at a specific node/core area and manage to get their bearings & understand how to access its local resources, what directions to expect enemies to arrive from and where to head off to in order to pursue their next objective. IMO in Alien2, that time would rarely exceed 6-7 secs for the nodes, maybe a few more for the core areas. This is because, regardless of any surrounding cover or multiple levels, there's enough clear lines of sight one can see far away along that make it possible for people even with zero previous knowledge of the map to quickly orient themselves and understand how that area fits within the entire landscape. On the other hand, put players in situations where they'll have to fight in obstacle-laden, low-visibility trenches or claustrophobic corridors with tight turns and scant light sources around 'em, and you can easily confuse or delay their progress even if they're experienced enough (some parts of Spiffingrad and TwinFang's buildings spring to mind). Sometimes that can be a mapper's actual intention for an area with its geometric design (say, for some high stakes [central] area), but whether that's the case or not, one effect shouldn't escape us: it will inevitably frustrate players and that's a card one shouldn't play lightheartedly. Unless one doesn't mean for gameplay around their cores n' nodes to become a grueling experience (hello, AirMars cores), they should keep gameflow and playability in mind when designing spaces for pedestrians and vehicles to approach and fight for 'em in.


Taking both flaws into account, and to borrow a pair of familiar game development terms, my overall impression of Syrma is of a map that rushed to get out of the beta stage (asset complete) before it was properly done with the alpha stage (feature complete), and that some additional forethought about what vital ONS elements should be placed where and for what specific design/gameflow purposes, as well as how the map would present players with new situations or visuals, would both likely have helped bring it well within the "good" region of the quality spectrum. As things stand, however, I can't rightly say it's close to that yet. Taking away some of the elements that more prominently clash together or go against the players' usual ONS agenda/expectations could help, but I still feel that the only way to drastically improve it is to take another stab at its nodes' and cores' fundamental design. Just as a quick example, there's no need for the bases to have an underground level, and most of what's there largely comes across as just a mapper's indulgence instead of additional gameplay challenge/nuance. Why not place the cores in the middle of those rings above ground and keep things more straightforward that way? If you're worried about cover/defense adequacy, you can always place a turret or two somewhere too, perhaps along the coliseums' rims, accessible via teleporter (DarkMarsh style), but those protective panes shouldn't remain around the cores at any rate. The map might also be better served by replacing those complex ForcedDir volumes and bespoke concrete structure BSPs with much simpler ones like the case tends to be in most other maps (e.g. orthogonal blocking volumes along the map's edges and successive additive/subtractive BSPs) - UEd will certainly appreciate not crashing every 3mins that Syrma is open in it because of that too .

To end this post with a clarification I feel might be necessary here, this review wasn't made with the goal of ripping your first map apart and I'm certainly not trying to crush your confidence here. Hell, if anything, the amount of attention to detail on show across many facets of your mapmaking was a pleasant surprise to behold, especially since some of the more custom tailored elements in it, such as the numerous BSPs/volumes used as well as those houses made entirely from numerous interlocking st.meshes that I don't remember encountering in any other map, now have me wondering whether your abilities to port over content from other sources and fashion purpose-built geometry with external tools for your maps might be more advanced than you'd previously let on. If that's the case, that's a pretty impressive arrow in your quiver to have on stand-by! It's not just those bespoke elements either. The proper use of AntiPortalActors and ZonePortals (although the latter don't tend to help much in predominantly terrain-based maps), of a textured skybox and animated skydome combo, of dusty wind xEffects, ambient sounds and numerous SunLight sources, the intricate pathing work and competent usage of custom code (embedded OnslaughtSpecials, UMTs) and triggered mechanics, all reveal a well-rounded mapper moving past the intermediate skill level ...which kinda also explains his now attempting an original creation. If you ask me, regardless of how this first creation fared in its initial outing, the heartening news here is finding out how far along GLoups has come as a mapper. That's what makes me excited to see what you'll keep making down the road and motivates me to offer hands-on help whenever and with whatever you might need it. Whether you choose to focus on improving this map or decide to try some other edit or original idea is entirely up to you, but if you need an extra pair of reviewin' eyes for suggestions or a hand with wrangling custom content or tackling any other mapping issue, just remember: all you gotta do is ask . Congrats on your first new map again!