map - WIP - Aggressive Heights

EDIT:
Release Candidate 1, released 01.01.2016. See post #34 for details.

EDIT:
Beta 5, released 17.12.2015. See post #31 for details.

EDIT:
Beta 4, released 08.12.2015. See post #28 for details.

EDIT:
Beta 3, released 24.11.2015. See post #24 for details.

EDIT:
Beta 2, released 13.11.2015. See post #16 for details and link.

Hi
Here is the map I've been working on - a reworking of one of my old Q3A maps.

Info:
This map is not finished - it is a Work In Progress (WIP).
link removed
Test: -bsp, -vis, -light low

What I'm looking for are comments/suggestions on:
- item usage and placement.
- game modes.

Layout:
The layout is pretty much 100% complete, I don't expect to make any changes there - only the "details" (trim) needs more work.

Textures:
I know there are missing textures (holes/hall of mirrors), I'll fix those later. I like the textures I've chosen, but if you don't, then feel free to suggest different choices.

Lighting:
Simply hasn't been done yet - I've only added in basic light points so that the map is playable.

Items:
The items currently in the map are those from the original Q3A release - which is why I'd mostly like to hear comments/suggestions here.

Thanks in advance for any and all feedback

You have to put the files into a folder called "maps" and zip that folder to make it work properly in game.

Was jumping a bit around and I think the map is scaled quite small overall (bumping into ceilings with the head). Also it could use more weapons. It lacks Machine Gun, Crylink and Hagar.

I hopped around a bit as well. For me personally, I felt it was way too small and constricted. Certain items like Mega health could really only be accessible with the blaster. Also a lack ammo, weapons and shards. I know its still a WIP. Just a few things that came to mind when I played it.

It lacks Machine Gun, Crylink and Hagar.

This is no way a bad thing at all

edit:

Running around it is not enough, you need to get the feeling of your jump lengths and turns to familiarize yourself with the map, get familiar with spots where you shouldn't jump and where you should. I sort of like this difficulty of moving around, it reminds us why this game has aircontrol. Found couple nice tricks already. I definitely like that it doesn't have a weapon in every corner and that is has no crylink at all, there's not enough duel/dm maps without a crylink in it. You shouldn't worry about the balance of the item placement as much as you should worry about useless areas and jump pads, yup there's way too many jump pads. And like Splat said, some areas could be designed with Blaster in mind. Everyone spawns with the blaster and knows how to use it, no need to make jump pads for the minority of people who don't know how to switch weapons. I'd go as far as say the map doesn't need jump pads at all.

edit2: Overall scale could be increased, but the head bumping element could stay imo. It gives the map it's signature feel. Best maps come from the unexpected and wicked, hardly never from the overly adjusted and balanced.

It lacks Machine Gun, Crylink and Hagar.

This is no way a bad thing at all

I just wanted to point out that these weapons exist, because Quake has less weapons.
Therefore if you just convert a Quake map the entities do not always result in the same placement.
For example straight converted maps have Shotgun spawns, cause Machine Gun is the spawn weapon in Quake unlike in Xonotic.

Crylink would be probably OP if the map stays small and all it's cramped corridors.

It has interesting feeling to it, found few quite nice jumptricks, it's also very vertical, which is nice (there aren't many maps which make use of height that much). Overall I don't have much problem with height when running around, but would have to play to get better view (cramped spaces may cause problems with running away)

I would place nex somewhere else, otherwise it's pretty straighforward mega, nex, warpzone, armor, which may cause game to stay too much in one place, it's all in same "room".

As for looks it's bit dark, which probably adds to the "claustrophopic" feeling - but as you said lightning is yet to be done. Also I love my rocks not square , just make "wavy" patch meshes and clip them square, it adds more natural look to map.

Made a short video clip:

Map feels crowded

Firstly, thanks for the feedback everyone...

@Mirio, yes it is missing weapons - but which should I add and where to place them? Should the other weapons be moved around (or removed)?

@SPLAT, lack of ammo, weapons and shards? Does the map need more ammo for a duel map? Or for other game modes?

@Smilecythe, thanks for the short video. I'm impressed at how fast you worked out some cool jumps that I didn't know about
Your comment about not needing any jumppads is interesting - I'm not used to the players having a "rocketjump-weapon" as a base weapon. I might remove some of the jumppads, but not all.

@Proraide, where would you suggest the nex be placed?

@Beagle, crowded?

Regarding the comments that the map feels "small", this has very much surprised me, but after watching Smilecythe video, I can see why some might think that.
I didn't want to make any real layout changes, but I am now considering doing just that, but nothing major...

Has anyone been able to play a duel game in the map? If so, how did that "feel"?

Thanks

I would place nex somewhere else, otherwise it's pretty straighforward mega, nex, warpzone, armor, which may cause game to stay too much in one place, it's all in same "room".

It's not really that constructive to analyze a map by observing how unevenly the items are scattered around the map, or how fast you can chain the items by running in it by yourself. I know a lot of maps that have one dominating room with rest of the map being pretty much just traps and places for the down players to lick their wounds. I would love to see how this current placement of items works out in evenly matched duels.

Small request: could you make the area behind both warpzones much larger? If the space inside the warpzone is big enough, they'll be nice and smooth to travel through at any ping.
Maybe at grid size 8, take it back 1, that should give it a nice amount of room.

Something like this (click for full size image):

The rock formations (wall and floor) around the bottom/nex area are a bit hard to read, probably because the walls and floors have the same texture. The water is kind of hard to see as well when you have reflections turned on. And when you got the water reflections on, the water itself turns transparent which reveals the same rock texture (as walls) below. You could try some threshold lights around the floors or some other lightsources that would make the floor pop out on it's own or just a different texture, anything to differentiate the floor texture.

You have several structures like these in the map, which I think should be player clipped. If you remember what surfing was like in counter-strike series, well... That's possible in Xonotic too, albeit little wonkier in comparison. If you don't know what surfing is, simple explanation is that it's basically walking sideways on slopes like these and gaining speed if your mouse angle is right.

Also, I spotted 2 or 3 machinegun ammo packs in the map, but the map doesn't have a machinegun. It could use a machinegun and I doubt more weapons are needed after that. I don't think the map needs more rocket/cell ammo either, after all it's pretty easy to keep yourself well armed in Xonotic.

Since the layout is based on Q3 keep in mind some simple things about Xonotic.

- Reach of the laser jump (spawn weapon rocket jump) is pretty high and deal a very little damage, which means no height is too high in Xonotic pretty much.
- You can't pick 25/50 armors if your armor is at 100 in competitive ruleset.
- At the moment, there's only two ammo types that are essential. Rockets, which are used by Mortar, Hagar and Devastator. Cells(?) which are used by Vortex, Electro and Crylink.
- Picking up a weapon gives you ammo too and if you have other weapons that belong in same ammo category, they get usable ammo as well.
- You receive splash damage through floors, unlike in QL and some Q3 mods, the advantage usually goes to the guy who's below.
- You can guide and detonate rockets in air, which makes hitting people with rocket in air pretty easy both directly or by splash. This usually also gives advantage to the player who's below.
- Machinegun will be changed to Arc later on in Xonotic, which is a gun similar to Lightning gun in Quake.

You have several structures like these in the map, which I think should be player clipped. If you remember what surfing was like in counter-strike series, well... That's possible in Xonotic too, albeit little wonkier in comparison. If you don't know what surfing is, simple explanation is that it's basically walking sideways on slopes like these and gaining speed if your mouse angle is right.

In the picture you posted left part seems to be usable to get to "you can stand here" place, so I would argue it's part of map mechanics.

In the picture you posted left part seems to be usable to get to "you can stand here" place, so I would argue it's part of map mechanics.

It's a very small and sloped platform, you need to have a quite good balance to not fall of from it and only way to get there is either via laser jump or surfing through those things around the wall. In some occasion it might be an useful camp/ambush/wtf spot yes, but not likely intentional so I thought I'd point it out along with the surfing thing.

Ever played a map (in any game) where there's a huge building and on top of the building there's this flag mast where you can stand on? Or something similar like a tip of some huge pyramid? Basically a place where it's hard to go, easy to fall off meanwhile you're vulnerable to shots from multiple directions and it's pretty pointless to go there in the first place. That spot feels kind of like that.

I've decided to rework the lower "water" section. I'm thinking about removing all ramps out of the water, forcing players to splash-jump (for Xonotic I'm now calling "rocket"-jumps splash-jumps, as it can be done with more than just rockets).

@proraide, the reworking of the lower section will result in both the Nex and Megahealth being moved around.

@Mario, I'll increase the warpzone trigger size as requested.

@Smilecythe,
- I'm going to use a second "rock" texture in the lower section and smooth out the edges a little.
- I'll clip those slops, but that small "ledge" I'll leave alone, if players want to "camp" there, that's find by me (it wasn't intentional, but I already knew is was possible)
- A machinegun is going to be added.
- 3 jumppads will most likely be removed.

I'll start on the changes this coming week and *if* I get enough time, I'll release a new WIP next weekend.

map - WIP - Aggressive Heights

Beta 2

Download removed
Test: -bsp, -vis, -light medium
File renamed to: mvxdm03

What I'm looking for are comments/suggestions on:
- item usage and placement.
- game modes.

Layout:
- The details/trim still needs to be removed/updated.
- Entire "bottom" section redone.
- The rock walls in the water pit will be made more "organic" later.
- 3 jumppads & 1 teleporter removed.
- Warpzones have NOT been increased in size - will be done later.

Textures:
I know there are missing textures (holes/hall of mirrors), I'll fix those later.

Lighting:
Simply hasn't been done yet - I've only added in basic light points so that the map is playable.

Items:
- Nex is now where the MegaHealth was.
- MegaHealth moved to a new ledge on the other side of the pit. It is quite easy to double splash-jump back up the hole from the MH, should I make it harder?
- Uzi added in at the original location of the Mortar.
- Mortar moved to new location, to promote another path.

Thanks in advance for any and all feedback

It looks very nice. I put mvxdm03 on BuddyFriendGuy servers in case you wanna find people to test the game play.

These two things are a bit harder (not impossible, but harder) for beginners:

1. Mega shield
2. Leaving the well area below the mega shield.

Nice work, map is starting to look great.

Another small request: Even though it's in beta, could you please include the source .map file?
It would help others find things like those short warpzones easier, and serves as a good backup should anything happen to your current system.

Here's all the routes I could think of to mega health (without using laser);



Also, something that kind of keeps ticking me off:

@BuddyFriendGuy, thanks for hosting the map - I hope "someone" enjoys it ... if I get the time on Sunday, I'll try to log on. Regarding it being hard to get out of the water area, well I haven't started on the rock work yet, so I might build in some "rock stairs" to help.

@Mario, okay. Larger Warpzone + .map file next time

@Smilecythe, the first jump (from the upper stairs) is how I wanted the players to reach the MH (besides splash-jumps), but those other jumps - I tip my hat to you sir!
Oh and the head bumping thing, yeah I already noticed that and it bugs me as well - I already made 1 "fix" there, but it obviously wasn't enough...

Crit time!

@Smilecythe, the first jump (from the upper stairs) is how I wanted the players to reach the MH (besides splash-jumps)

- To be honest, I don't like the ledge you made to the top entrance, feels like it just complicates the geometry there pointlessly. Because while it's cool that you can ramp jump on top of it, it's very easy to do and if you come from any other direction you can do just as easily laser jump over it. Imo it would be better if you just made it a simple hole on the floor to the MH.



- I also think the very top floor (where electro is) lacks any purpose, it feels like that entire floor is just an obstacle that you need to maneuver over to get to 100a from above. I think the flow of the map would improve significantly if you removed these areas with little value.


And following with the mockup above:

(sorry if my three dimensional estimates are unclear lol)

- Vortex corner here feels a little off too. Could do without this piece:



- Additionally, instead of creating a new corridor from bottom waters to somewhere and further complicating the layout, I think you could just add a teleporter somewhere there. This would be a good exit location for the teleporter for example:

@Smilecythe, thank you very much for your constructive feedback.

1. The upper "ledge" at the MH hole is staying (for now), but I have made a minor change there as a compromise.

2. The upper level is also staying, I do find your idea interesting, but I don't want to simplify that section.

3. I'll remove the small wall before the Nex, as you suggested, so that that idea can be tested.

4. I'm not planning on adding any new corridors to the lower pit section, so I'll leave that spot as a spawn spot.

Cheers

Beta 3
Download: mvxdm03

Changes
+ Larger WarpZone
+ Reworked a lot of the stone walls in the lower section (still needs more work)
+ Shifted the small WarpZone hallway more towards the middle of the lower pit
+ Small layout change to the upper most platform (also added ammo and health to the area)
+ Added a small lip to the MH hole, which makes it a lot harder to splash-jump back up, also added armor shards and ammo to the platform at the MH hole.
+ Also lowered the rim to the hole, making it now possible to simply jump into the hole or up onto the platform.

If anyone gives this a go, I'd really like to hear some comments about the weapons selected and their locations - thx.

Nice work, and thanks for including the source!

The warpzones are much better, but I feel if they were at least 3 (maybe 4) times deeper, I'd be able to bunnyhop through them with 200 ping without getting stopped and delayed.
Same would apply for lower pings, but a bit less noticeable.

May I suggest including your beta version number into the filename? I had beta 2 and beta 3 sharing the same name, and I wonder whether players' clients know to download the new version.