CEONSS

Well, I saw that the owner handling was totally off (the two or three subprojectile classes were spawned with the local playercontroller as owner, which wouldn't even make sense offline) and instigator handling was entirely absent.

Putting a node inside a tower bunker seems to be a bit more work, btw: On the middle level you can barely see the top of the shield. I wanted to give the interior a makeover anyway, adding some additional space for the node shouldn't be a problem. (I know, I could just use an Onslaught Specials node to change the height, but a short or tall node always looks weird to me.)

Hehe, yup, that's what 30mins of UEd dicking around gets ya; not even an ingame test, just a mockup to convey the general idea. Apologies, but short of a vague promise to look into it with a thorough response some 3 weeks later, that's the best I could do to provide something useful to you in the immediate timeframe. At least I did center the node's base with the hole .
Anyway, obviously fitting the node's assets inside the 2-story outpost in a manner that will make sense will probably require stretching it in various axes and to different degrees, probably also reconsidering the traffic flow to and from the different floors. Hell, deciding to make the scaled up structure the center of the node area and have playerstarts in there could even prove more effective in the end. It'll take some playtesting to get everything right, but I'm confident it can produce something far better than the current "stuff wantonly sprinkled around" method's offerings.

Props on fixing the dragon's instigator-less droppings again, that one's been bugging me for years . Also on reducing its spammy AA rockets' distance (is their fire rate slowed down too?).

PS: Some OnslaughtSpecials2 wouldn't be bad for the map either. Does it even have location areas, come to think of it? Also getting rid of that downed heli's st.mesh n' tex would save the server and clients the loading of 2 files that offer pretty much nothing that any other stock wreckage couldn't accomplish. No idea how that found its way there and survived till now...

PPS: Hows about removing the 2 ions from the secondaries and having only one as the high middle node's big reward, spawning where the Ion Cannon is now instead? Okay, I'll stop now.

No fire rate changes on the Dragon. Omaha Beach didn't have any location volumes at all. Not even the zone locations were named properly. That will definitely change before the final release.

BTW, I found inspiration on CTF-Maul, where the tower originally appeared in. The basic idea is to lower the inside ground below the outside ground level. (I've attached an editor screenshot of what I came up with.)

I like it. The prime node will be easier to defend now.
Continue the good job, guys

PS: Did you remove mines at the other prime node? They make comeback impossible, and are really annoying.
Are there some possibilities to improve the access to that node?

I didn't remove any mine fields, only stray land mines whose only purpose was to cause frustration:

Oh sorry, i was speaking of the the spider mines

Ah, I didn't touch the vehicle and weapon loadout yet.

Yesterday we played the map, i'll only talk of gameplay modifications here.

1) The falcon. If it's controlled by an experimented player (even worse if he camps for it, what was the case), it's so overpowered. Trying to fight it on foot, one shot and you're dead. Fun.

Three solutions:
- increase the respawn time to 1 min. 30s are not enough. Campers need to be patient.
- The weapon lockers even don't have all Avril's. In a map based of vehicules power, it's unacceptable ! On foot you simply can do nothing.
- Remove it. Too fast and powered for that little map. A cicada or a banshee will do the job here.

2) The spider mines. They bring more frustration than pleasure to play.

3) The mino. Where you're losing or trying to comeback, fighting against falcon + mino + dragon + ion + hammerhead + etc.... is just impossible. Biotank?

Concerning the picture: You'll easily find who camped the falcon. I'm not criticize him, even if i think it's a bit unfair for his team (they couldn't use it). Anyway you see here the huge power of the falcon if you drive it well.

I'll go with increased respawn time for now - added another 15 seconds to the Falcon, Dragon and Mino respawn times.
Also for the next alpha I'm going to look at the lockers. I've integrated the CustomWeaponLocker feature to always fill up to initial+extra ammo into the Onslaught Specials NodeWeaponLocker so I can use both at the same time, if it makes sense. The next alpha will see the lockers upgraded to this new NodeWeaponLocker, but at the nodes they will act just like the CustomNodeLocker. At the cores I plan on team-locking them, though.

Current plan for locker weapon loadout: (please suggest improvements!)

• All lockers at all nodes contain Linkgun, AVRiL, Shock Rifle, Flak Cannon and Minigun, each with maximum ammo.
• Core lockers additionally provide Rocket Launcher and Sniper Rifle, also with maximum ammo.
• No Spider Mines anywhere yet, but maybe they could make could make sense somewhere. I could imagine making the Mine Layer available from a separate weapon base at certain nodes, possibly triggered, depending on which team controls this or another node.
• Another thought for triggered weapon bases involves recapturing the prime nodes. Those nodes are well-protected inside structures or under the ground. The high primaries are probably easier to recapture if you manage to attach them with tank shells. (Should be much easier fro mthe core than from where enemies usually come from.) The underground primaries are trickier in that they are far from the tunnel entrance and that tunnel opens away from the core.

Other changes include requilds of about all BSP structures:

• Tower bunkers. I've completely replaced the lower level with something similar to the flag bases on CTF-Maul. The middle level is always reachable via jumppad from the lower level. Teleporters only exist between the middle level and the top. The lower levels are spawn areas for core bases and high primaries. On top of the high prime towers there's an energy turret.
• Core bases. The upper level is no longer accessed via teleporters, but via jumppads - either the on in the tower bunker or the ones on either side inside the base. There are holes in the roof below the ramps to the energy turrets for that. The bunkers below the energy turrets are additional spawn areas now and contain lockers. In other words, each core has 4 spawn areas: the tower bunker, the two bunkers below the enery turrets and the small area right in front of the power core inside the base.
• High primaries. I've applied Pegasus' suggestions for rearranging the bunkers and turrets. There's one bunker with a minigun turret on the same side of the road as the tower, the area between those two is secured with barbed wire. The other side of the tower is also secured with barbed wire and a czech hedgehog. The beach-facing side of the outpost is secured by sand bags with minigun turrets, two bunkers and more barbed wire. Those two bunkers contain small spawn areas, in addition to the one inside the tower. At the edge of the cliff towards the beach there's another bunker with sandbags and a minigun turret inside. That one may be able to fire at the core base, but if you do that, someone in an energy turret will likely fire back at you and may have more success due to higher accuracy.
• Northern center/Mino node. The bunker roof is now accessible via jump pad instead of teleporter.
• Map boundaries. The playing area still has the same size as before, but the map no longer ends where it originally did. Instead of an invisible wall, there are now ForcedDirVolumes around the map and you can see well beyond them. Further out there are BlockingVolumes to prevent you from reaching the visible edge of the map. There are visual cues to tell you where the playing area ends. East and west sides have barbed wire on the hill and between the hill and the road, czech hedgehods and land mines on the beach. To the north there's a fence, to the south there's only open sea. If you ignore the warnings, you run into an invisible mine field. I do consider a more, well, "interactive" approach to keep players out of the ForcedDirVolume area, but I will have to upgrade my NetworkProjectileSpawner for that first.
• Hangar nodes. I replaced the static mesh hangars by BSP constructions. The tank hangars are pretty much the same as before, but the other two now have an additional Manta and a Double Damage inside the open container.
• I think I'll mirror one of the repair shops, probably the west one to move its node further away from the hangars. and maybe, just maybe, I'll turn the Bulldog into a usable vehicle. (It has been remade for Onslaught already, but might need further optimizations.)

I really don't know what to do with the Ion Cannon node. Generally the cannon is not team-locked or requires the node to be team-owned, but owning the node clearly is an advantage. I've heard reports about the Hammerhead being relatively useless (mostly due to the Falcon), and then there's Kentaro including it in the list of problems for successful comebacks. Any ideas?

Hey folks.

Wormbo wrote:[...]Also for the next alpha I'm going to look at the lockers. I've integrated the CustomWeaponLocker feature to always fill up to initial+extra ammo into the Onslaught Specials NodeWeaponLocker so I can use both at the same time, if it makes sense. The next alpha will see the lockers upgraded to this new NodeWeaponLocker, but at the nodes they will act just like the CustomNodeLocker. At the cores I plan on team-locking them, though.

Current plan for locker weapon loadout: (please suggest improvements!)

• All lockers at all nodes contain Linkgun, AVRiL, Shock Rifle, Flak Cannon and Minigun, each with maximum ammo.
• Core lockers additionally provide Rocket Launcher and Sniper Rifle, also with maximum ammo.
• No Spider Mines anywhere yet, but maybe they could make could make sense somewhere. I could imagine making the Mine Layer available from a separate weapon base at certain nodes, possibly triggered, depending on which team controls this or another node.
• Another thought for triggered weapon bases involves recapturing the prime nodes. Those nodes are well-protected inside structures or under the ground. The high primaries are probably easier to recapture if you manage to attach them with tank shells. (Should be much easier fro mthe core than from where enemies usually come from.) The underground primaries are trickier in that they are far from the tunnel entrance and that tunnel opens away from the core.

[...]

Regarding the lockers, I believe the weapon loadout most people have come to consider reasonable is one that's not lacking in any sort of useful tool, with the mines being the only exception that should be used sparingly. I'd be lying if I said the sentiment wasn't reflected in our internal considerations as well, but to be even more specific, here's one from a recent map edit hosted on CEONSS that embodies this "well-rounded" concept: For folks who won't bother with the code, this boils down to the following: Bio (40), Shock (40), Link (220), Mini (280), Flak (30), GrenLauncher (20), Rocket (40), AVRiL (20), LG (30). Obviously deviations depending on the mapper/editor's specific needs for the area are within reason, but the overall idea should be obvious: ppl have a need for and will come up with uses for most of these guns; don't artificially cripple their playstyle unless there's a specific reason for it. Examples of that would be, say, that the enviro calls for stealthier snipers so you go with CSRs instead of LGs or it's a map like Bridge and you wanna limit bio ammo to curb a previously diagnosed overuse. Pandemonium also does a similar thing by having weaps frequently run out of ammo and thereby forcing ppl to keep moving, but it goes too far IMO and when it returns to the roster in an edited form, it hopefully won't be as aggravating about that.
In terms of tying the lockers' availability to their proximal objective's owners, I can't honestly say that I see the reason or wisdom of that (do they consume any additional network resources, btw?), but I'd like to hear what others think of that proposition as well.

On to other issues now...
- Props on reworking the cores' living areas and transit system; it's one thing to describe a concept in text, but I'm eager to see how it all looks put together. Also, the idea to gain more space inside those 2-story tower bunkers by digging a bit deeper into the terrain does seem the most elegant manner to achieve that (short of stretching the st.mesh). I'd completely forgotten that that particular asset didn't come with a, umm, "bottom" too, so seeing you propose it some 2 weeks ago threw me for a loop at first; of course then I went and checked CTF-Maul for myself and tipped my hat to you .
- Another thing I just remembered is that some minor terrain adjustments were also necessary to accommodate the repositioned southern facing bunker and sandbagged mini turret, but I didn't include the terrain in the pasted text due to its stupid length. Perhaps I should've since I adjusted the terrain textures' size and orientation to something better looking too, but I'm not even sure the terrain actor is where that's stored, so meh, it's an easy thing to redo anyway. You've probably long since taken care of all that already, but just wanted to account for the omissions.
- OS2 NodeWeaponLocker, ForcedDirVolumes & NetworkProjectileSpawners: improving is good, but I'd just like to respectfully remind that stocking the map with additional custom code is best done with a costs/benefits mentality. That is to say here, don't underestimate the effectiveness of the lowly blocking volume in managing to stop someone trying to leave the map area - it might not be as polite, but it gets the job done.
- I've had a long, hard rethink on my previous suggestion to stick a deemer pickup on top of the beached ship and I gotta admit that, upon reconsideration, it's not a very wise idea. I tricked myself into considering the st.mesh's function to be that of a typical midsection landmark where it's customary and reasonable to plant rewards for exploring players since the ship was placed halfway between the two bases, but, because of the map's square shape and northern concentration of objectives, I see now that's a mistaken assessment; the role it actually fulfills is much needed cover for the proximal node. Considering the possible combinations of pickup grabber (only from a flyer/manta as there's no convenient jumppad nearby) vs node owning team, and given its proximity to the bases, one can quickly conclude it'll hurt gameplay more often than not, i.e. it's gonna be a very influential gift to the team already dominating the map with a ~5sec delivery time to the defenders' core. Long story short, a nice, small armour pickup might be as far as you'll want to go with that one. Sorry .
- Double damage amps for free in the hangar nodes might be a bit too generous as well; why not place 'em farther/higher and more towards the back of the garage nodes? There's some inexplicably barb wired (fenced?) spherical silos there, perhaps those areas could now serve some function instead?
- The map's already a mash of all sorts of custom vecs serving all kinds of tested roles. Are you sure the Bulldog will fit in, much less have the room it needs to move around and decently contribute? To my mind, the two avenues leading the mino from its spawn point to the garages is a hotbed for action that's mostly missing defensing options for the team unlucky enough to see the behemoth rolling towards 'em. The most useful vec there - and the best survival option for anyone not able to flee fast enough - will probly be the Aegis. Enemies pelting the mino from the roofs will be an interesting kind of opposition, but neither the goliaths, nor the badger and bender will realistically pose much of a threat to it. It's in the face of that reality that I find the solution of gifting damage amps to both teams a kind of sloppy fix. Not that any of this is your fault, mind; the concentration of so many objectives up there has always been an inherent flaw of this map and a stark contrast to plenty of wasted space at its south side; functionality taking a hit for thematic design there...
- I've toyed with this in my mind for awhile now and still have nothing better to suggest for the Ion Cannon node :/. What I do know though is, the Hammerhead is indeed useless in most situations and against most other vecs - that much I can tell you for certain. Its whole design approach has been balancing through extremes, as in no matter the outcome of any confrontation it's involved in, someone's gonna be left feeling pretty bitter and cheated out of a good fight in the end. Either it'll sneak up on some unsuspecting low armoured enemy and instakill 'em (barring that, try to fit in and run 'em over), or they'll switch to shock rifle and instantly nullify it as a threat, making its pilot wish they could safely abandon it and better fight on foot (a plan that fails 95% of the time). Like I've often said, bad design from the start and best to just replace 'em with cicadas when editing maps they're in.
- I was looking around with an eye on net optimizations the other day and I gotta admit that v2-beta3A seems pretty dreadful in that regard: there's only 6 volumeless (?!) AntiPortalActors inside the Ion Cannon node's walls which don't occlude anything at all and, save for the zone portals at the NE/NW garage nodes that actually do inhibit rendering beyond their walls, that's pretty much it. Switch to wireframe view and you can easily peer across the entire map's rendered assets in any direction (you can also try turning off fog if not sure whether tiny stuff still drawn in the distance is what you suspect 'em to be). Here's what the current OmahaBeach version renders:See what I mean?
- Assorted st.meshes have a shorter cull distance compared to the fog's end and pop in/out of view all the time; barbed wire placements are the most frequent culprit here.
- The Nirvana resources need axing; the pulley st.mesh & tex inside each garage can easily be myleveled, thus stopping the warning messages, and I think they might be responsible for the playtest log flood below as well: - Does the Dragon v3 propagate the instigator info now? I think last time I tried it, it still exhibited the old behaviour upon seat switching at mid-shot.
- I see some Badger tweaks have also recently been discussed in terms of fixing its exits and COM/mesh-centering (it's why avrils online often fly loops around 'em instead of hitting directly and they tumble in such a weird way when falling off cliffs). Perhaps this next OmahaBeach edit might be an opportune occasion to present tweaks to both those oft-used custom vecs (although, for me the badger's a way more important piece of custom content, if not a rare triumph of joint development in an open game community) and thereby solidify them in everyone's eyes as the next "official" step in their evolution.

Anyway, that's everything I got. Sorry for the long post after the long absence too, these days cycling back to threads like this can take me awhile. Keep up the great work, Worms!