Unfitting maps ideas

by ultrasemen on 12/27/2012 14:26, 11 messages, last message: 12/28/2012 20:47, 1322 views, last view: 05/02/2024 06:54

Hi. As I download and play Sauerbraten maps from quadropolis, I feel like they are all pretty like each other. I mean, with all this quake/doom style, you know... Both sci-fi graphic style and also layout and everything, it is usually simple and opened and maps are played like each other.
That's not bad of course, but can we fantasize about something different? About what maps we can make that will be fun to play, but totally will not fit into Sauerbraten conception? What do you think?

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#1: ..

by ultrasemen on 12/27/2012 14:28

I think there are at least two general ways - making really huge maps (but not much detailed), and making complicated, multistorey maps with a lot of opportunities to go around the frontline and attack from the back.

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#2: ..

by ultrasemen on 12/27/2012 15:38

My idea about huge map.
Maximum-size maps are really huge, it takes long to run across. As I understand, weight and perfomance of the map depends only on "cubes" (and polygons) count on it, so if we make it low-detailed, with triangle sharp mountains and rare towns, it will work well.
Of course it will look ugly, but... that's not a bug - that's a feature! Like some incredible planet, emm, with sharp low-detailed mountains. And to make weapons other than rifle playable on it, we can make underground hallways and vent shafts leading to complicated bases up there (but wait, hallways are really breaking the grid and making map weight increase, so careful with it).
So snipers are needed to guard outside, and other people are rushing inside and playing like on normal maps, and then it's difficult to defend the building, but you get much good weapons from it. And just walking on terrain with rifle is easier, but it's harder to get ammo.
Another idea is to make teleports across the map, so you don't need to just run for hours, you can use them for long distance travels beetwen your team's bases.

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#3: Re: ..

by Papriko on 12/27/2012 16:10, refers to #2

The default times for matches are, depending on the game mode, 10 or 15 minutes.
The default amount of players in a match isn't that high either, unless you have such an anarchy server like vaQ'4 - Venice.

So really huge maps will lead to a rather little amount of conflicts, which means not much action.
Many people play just for the fast-paced action.

Please don't get me wrong, I like the idea to add some more unusual maps. Right now we've mostly got metalstuff, castles, other metalstuff, castle ruins and metalstuff ruins.
Something new would be really cool, I am just not sure if it'd work out.
On the other hand.... we could try it out and simply see what happens.

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#4: Re: ..

by ultrasemen on 12/27/2012 17:38, refers to #3

Isn't this match time customisable? I have a server that I run on my hosting. And I can find people on forums to play too, so for me the problem is more like "How much resources it will require from both client and server, compared to normal maps?".
Really, I'm ready to work. I can try at least. Maybe open second server for coop edit and work with map there. The problem is, with no automatic map download no one will enter and join when I will run this map (or any other custom) in normal gamemode. No one will bother to go and download map pack in his browser, then install it, then run the game again... Is it (downloader) even in plans? Everyone's too lazy - ok, then just unlock sendmap for admins and getmap for everyone in EVERY mode! I don't think just unlocking is difficult. So, what's the problem? Are developers just against custom maps or are there some technical troubles or big amount of coding? Not to offend anyone of course, game is cool, thank everyone who worked on it for so fast and funny gameplay, but I'm just saying what I really need to feel it much cooler (I want to see servers with custom maps in list, just come and play!).

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#5: ..

by ultrasemen on 12/27/2012 18:19

I'll think about global plan of the map. Definitely some kind of big river, splitting to few and joining to one again. Maybe big dam with enterable power station (too bad game doesn't have any kind of tesla gun! would fit perfectly. But it can also be "teleport center" with many teleport enters leading anywhere you want). Big empty desert with a, hmm, "overhanging" massive mountain which is so comfortable to camp on, with valuable rocket launcher shell somewhere in the desert. (I just saw it in one of my dreams, hard to describe). Multilevel scientific base with miniguns. City with many cloned multistorey buildings (hard to find your enemy, easy to camp in one of the rooms, plays like "rifle vs shotgun").
Of course main thing to care about is to make it low-poly (low-cube?), but still looking neat.

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#6: ..

by ultrasemen on 12/27/2012 19:12

Another idea: non-coded "zombie-mod".
You start inside the "base". Gamemode is normal teamplay, technically. All human players are in one team, and incredible amount of zombies is in other. Zombies are spawning outside, humans - inside. You have a lot of weapon pickups, armor, quads, etc - they have no pickups on their side, so they are attacking you with pistols. (yes, it's some kind of smart, fresh zombies, who were just like you minutes ago)
Doing this is trivial, I see only two possible problems: first is teams autobalance (as we want much more zombies than humans, it can transfer some zombies back to humans team on adding), second is big amount of traffic possible, I guess.

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#7: Re: ..

by suicizer01 on 12/27/2012 23:56, refers to #6

All maos have a similar gameplay because the core gameplay can be changed. Its just how it is and most official maps show off what works best with the core gameplay.

About the zombie rant, give me a break and go play something else.

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#8: ..

by Papriko on 12/28/2012 13:03

Auto-balancing can be turned off somehow.

I assume you wanna use bots for the zombies. Ever claimed admin and added 32 bots? Lags out many people.



I assume the send and get might be somehow unlocked too. It's probably just expanding a few if-statements, like turning "if gamemode = coop edit" into "if gamemode = coop edit or sender = admin"
And for the clients... not sure if they need to be modified at all. Servers can force clients to execute getmap. How do clients react when they receive such a message in non-edit modes?
Even if this doesn't work, then it'd be just a minor change too.

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#9: No!

by rabe on 12/28/2012 19:01

I think not.
Reasons will follow.
Maybe.

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#10: Re: ..

by suicizer01 on 12/28/2012 19:15, refers to #8

Even it would work any server which supports it should not appear on the master server as its not the original gameplay. This means it won't really pull off that great as sauerbraten itself, as it's a mod which has only 1 certain change. So a lot of spammed advertising would be necessary.

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#11: Re: ..

by ultrasemen on 12/28/2012 20:47, refers to #10

Do you talk about zombie mod or about getmap? About zombie mod I agree, at least until we can have different tabs/filter in server browser. And about huge map mod, and about other mods too. What about public getmap, I think every server should have it as there is almost no point in making maps now, so no map making => no creativity. Maybe there can be some rules about what maps are not original sauer and what are, but just playing the same maps for years is boring, no matter how awesome they are.

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