Shared Map

[obsidian]

Things to avoid in CTF:

Too many high danger lava traps. You shouldn't be falling into stuff all the time when you're running with the flag. It's okay if they are off to the side and pose a danger of getting rocket bounced into them or something, but you really shouldn't be tripping into them all the time.

Teleporters in general. They don't really have a place in a CTF map. If you need to move people between locations, use jumppads. There are really few cases where teleporters actually work.

Too many high value power ups, since this changes the game from using team work to get the flag to camp for all the power ups and solo your way into the enemy base. Sometimes a single large powerup in the middle is nice, since both teams will fight for it, giving them the slight advantage.

[maz0r]

Remember that q3ctf is really fast paced. The route to MH a13n suggested there is way too slow and a bit defrag-like. This is okay for shortcuts but not for regular items. Too frustrating.
Also those ledges in the base should be only accessible by rj'ing or spawn? Kinda weird if you ask me. This ain't rocket arena
Also as dichtfux already mentioned, lava is not very popular in ctf. Also the flag will not return unless you'll put a trigger_remove_powerups there, if a fc dies in or above the lava.

Edit: Ok obsidian was faster with his (good!) reply, since I had to figure out this trigger's name.

[wattro]

nice, great comments - have we patched up to anything soon-to-be-playable so we can work through the comments?

[a13n]

@obsidian, mazor
Thank you for your comments.
hmm, I thought my 3rd idea(MH) was really cool.

ctfptmalpha4_a13n.pk3(200kb)

[Magnus]

Here is my latest version. I incorperated several things the rest of you came up with. I also made a few changes that were inspired by stuff you guys did.

Well anyway here it is.

ctfptmalpha4c

[wattro]

hey all... i am just curious if we are going about this the wrong way - it seems like people may each working on separate versions??? i generally wouldn't say anything, but... isn't that counter-intuitive to a pass the map?

what's the strategy here?

[obsidian]

Well, everyone at the moment is passing around ideas instead of the actual map. Which works. It's like brainstorming. Eventually, we'll have some consolidating and then an actual alpha for people to play-test.

Agreed, that we should keep doing this for too long. I'll upload my version for you guys to take a look through sometime towards the end of the week. Thursday or Friday, probably. Then we can start working on consolidation and have the beginning of an actual alpha.

[a13n]

@Magnus
Great.
The map is now more enjoyable to roam around.
My favoriate section is the one directional fog teleporter.

[dichtfux]

Eventually, we'll have some consolidating and then an actual alpha for people to play-test.

What about playtesting the map together on a server once the alpha is ready? We did that when me made the mcoa-mappack over at mapcenter, and it was great fun.

[obsidian]

Sure, but I don't have a game server, so I'll leave it up to you to decide how we're going to do that.

[dichtfux]

Np, I've got one. It's located in Germany though.

http://www.airrocket.net/quake3/

[maz0r]

I would also try to help with playtesting if the timing fits and you need some players. Germany is great though I'll ping you to death

[a13n]

That's great.
I'm ready to get up early these summer days. (ping:300 - 400)

[Magnus]

Thanks for the comments guys

Yea at this point I was under the impression that we were all just kind of making changes and then putting out another version with the new changes for the rest of the team to see and comment on. Kind of a way to inspire each other.

Also that server thing is not going to work for me. I totally timed out and had 100% packet loss. It couldn't even show me a ping time and I am running a 8000k connection. Seems like I should be getting at least no higher than a 100-200 ping with 0% packet loss.

I like that maz0r offered to help play test it. We only have 6 people on this PTM team and the map really needs 5v5 teams to feel right. Heck I even tried it with 6v6, 7v7 and up to 8v8 even felt great. We try play testing it with 3v3 and we will all be roaming around like lost idiots wondering where everybody else is.

Is there a reason why we shouldn't run a server on one of our systems and everone meet and play there? I haven't truly played in a long time so I don't know how people prefer to do stuff like this lately.

[maz0r]

Since Magnus already mentioned the same problem. Dichtfux, are your servers down atm? At least I could not connect to the ra3 server at all and neither could all seeing eye ping it.

Will take a look at the last alpha now

[dichtfux]

The quake servers are down atm because I installed en ET:QW Server yesterday and needed all RAM available for it (256MB for ONE server!). Should have mentioned that, sorry.

The Firewall blocks ICMP, therefore you can't ping. It can be fixed in 10 mins and will be ready when we need it, don't worry about that now.

EDIT: Stopped the ET:QW server and started the q3a servers. Please test again. Sorry for the inconvenience.

[obsidian]

I uploaded my current work in progress here

See the devlog.txt for details.

In particular, I reworked the central atrium to make it a little more interesting. Entrances are on all sides of the room preventing rail campers from being too effective. I added a third floor for some more vertical gameplay. I'm not sure about the scale of everything, it seems okay, but let me know. I have yet to really work on the subatrium and flags rooms but have a rough idea in my head of what they should have.

For the subatrium, I was thinking of splitting it into two rooms merged in the middle, vertical flow between top and middle floors in one half, vertical flow between middle and lower floors in the other.

In the flag room, the entrances should be placed so that no one defender should be able to keep an eye (and railgun) trained on all entrances at a time.

[maz0r]

Ok will also test your version obsidian and will check dichtfux' server again. Will report later, when i'm back from dinner.

Edit: Server works You'll also got an osp one? Or will we test with cpma? *brrr* bbl

[dichtfux]

Server works You'll also got an osp one? Or will we test with cpma? *brrr* bbl

Yeah, I've also got an OSP server ready. It's not running atm, but it's configured properly and I only need to executed 1 shellscript to start it. Possible anytime we need it. Same goes for vq3.

[maz0r]

You're such a scriptkiddie

[a13n]

@obsidian
It's immensely vertical.
The fun is there.

[dichtfux]

You're such a scriptkiddie

No. But I'm lazy.

But Obsidian is lazy, too. Otherwise he'd included a .bsp in the zipfile.

[a13n]

If so, wattro is also lazy.

[maz0r]

Maybe you should call your project lazy3ctf1 then?

[wattro]

i didn't include a BSP in order to keep filesize to a minimum, figuring the non-lazy people could just bsp it. =)

but yes, i am lazy.