New Kick @$$ ctf Map

[{RA}SKYFURNACE]

http://www.utunlimited.net/reviews.p...=viewrev&id=63

{RA}SKYFURNACE

[Gui]

A Face with a kicker system to speed up the game... That reminds me something...

[HortonsWho]

Tried it last night--- it was --OK--

But "fun" is in the frag of the fragger....

[Idle Idol]

The Review Says....
Magnus has put in an ingenious wall/structure to seperate the two bases

<cough> warlord <cough>

--Idle, still looks like a nice fun map

[Gui]

Yep: that reminded this one too...

[Nimda]

Hmm... Would be funny if the enamy team could "untrip" the trip behind the flag so the flag carrier goes flying into the wall. Would actually then give people a REASON to stay at an empty enemy flag stand. LOL

[Unicorn]

I'm glad you think it's good, {RA}SKYFURNACE, but you can't satisfy everyone when you are making a map. The thing with Facelike maps is that either you love them or you hate them, so I thought about it.

I wanted the layout Faceish but not entirely so I put a wall in the middle. and instead of running upwards to the middle you run downwards. And since I like gadgets and special features on a map, I added some kickers. On big kicker that is a great shortcut but will hurt you, like 50 healthpoints.

Anyways... the question I asked myself was: Is it the camping spots and the sniper rifle that makes people hate CTF-Face? Well probably I thought, so I didn't include the sniper rifle. At least people doesn't hate my map now, what I've heard so far at least.

I havn't played Warlord. Maybe I should have, but I havn't so this design isn't stolen from Warlord, only inspired by CTF-Face. I gather it's like music these days. Everyone steals from oneanother, and some without even knowing it.

But I beg you... Please tell me what you dislike about the map, so I can make maps better in the future.

[Gui]

Originally posted by Unicorn
But I beg you... Please tell me what you dislike about the map, so I can make maps better in the future.

Your lighting sux ass and your kicker system kills half of the gameplay IMO (the returning home phase...): check out CTF-HallOfGiants and you'll see that the various kickers/tubelift features allow players to travel only half of the map, leaving the entire other half to be traveled... A lot of things can happen during this time

Also, on a Face-like map, sniper rifles are not really an issue as long as the opposite base is out of range (CTF-HallOfGiants again...)

But it's just IMO

[Unicorn]

OK, at least you are honest Gui. hehe. I appreciate that. I admit that the kicker takes you too far. I'm currently working on a bigger version of this map for aprox. 16-24 players. Then the kicker will not take you all the way, only half.

And for the lighting bit... Well I've heard that the lighting is very well done as well, so this differs probably from player to player. I'm not happy about coloured lighting since it will make players wonder "Is he blue? Or is he red?" I have used many small lights with small radius. And some big ones for ambience. Maybe it's too dark... But then again you are in the middle of space, without any sun nearby so...
When you are saying the lightin sux... Then in what way does it suck? Too dark? Not enough coloured lights?(I hate coloured lights), etc. If you are gonna criticise at least make it creative.

And another thing is... In space noone can hear you frag, LOL. Well OK I really should have used ambient sounds. I don't know why I skipped that part.

I am no fan of Hall of Giants. That map sux! (and NO im not going to be creative about my criticism here, lol.)

I liked the map, but the players on my server ask me to remove it, so I did.

Oz
BTW I hate halls of giants too,

[Gui]

HallOfGiants was just an example

The problem is when you say "I hate coloured lights"... Visuals representation work when there's enough contrasts to make the shapes visible the ones from the others: this can be done with the colors of the texs but aswell with the colors of the lights which will increase the colors of the texs...

Another mistake is to consider that sun light is white: in fact, it's pale yellow (only some neon lights are perfectly white, this is why you look like a cadaver under this sort of lighting ) and this changes following the period of the day...

Here are the two reasons which have brought all artists from all time periods to "cheat" when doing their job: look carefully at ancient "classical" paintings and you'll notice quickly that they're all you want except "realistic"... Hyperrealism happened only during the 60's and was a response to abstract art which was also a response to cinema and photography from the beginning of the century: these last fields allowed to create an exact representation of reality and pissed off litterally the artists whose it was supposed to be the job until this period (but, in fact, it wasn't the case: something which was difficult to understand for someone who wasn't an artist, and it's still the case btw); suddenly a simple camera could do the same thing in a matter of seconds and it's the main reason behind the fact that artists began to produce things which allowed the spectator to feel an emotion but that a camera couldn't produce (this is why it was "abstract"): then, their successors choose to do the exact same thing than a camera but without a camera, what is called "hypperrealism" 'cause the result was more than real (amazing, but true), just to prove that a simple instrument is not better than a human being...

Artists play on colors and brightness to make the various details of their compositions more or less obvious varying with the importance they want to give to them: the goal is to depict the "feeling" of the subject instead of its exact appearance (the job of a camera), and that is a huge difference... This rules the world of arts since several thousands years and what you think or like will never change anything to that

As for mapping: this works in the exact same way than any other visual representation and the use of colored lighting will greatly contribute to the overall feeling of your level... On the other hand, I understand you don't want to use this trick 'cause it's often overused or in a wrong way, resulting in a "Alice in Wonderland" feeling: to get a proper lighting, you can set the saturation of your lights between 192 - 222, varying with the case... Like this, the amount of color will be too much subtle to be really distracting but in the same time you'll keep the touch which will enhance the architecture and the atmosphere...

I've taken the freedom to re-work your map during an hour or so, just to see and the result seems pretty interesting, at least for me: just tell me if you're interested by giving it a look and I'll send it to you on the e-mail adress of your choice

[{RA}SKYFURNACE]

Gui,

im not sure whats up with the file you attached, but it no worky on my machine. but im on a Mac right now. And yes we can DL and expand zip files.

{RA}SKYFURNACE

[Gui]

Well, this attachment was supposed to be too big to be attached, this is why I wrote that I'll send it to him if he wished so...

Weird...

Anyway, the SGTech1.utx package is missing in this .zip: maybe it's the reason why you can't open it... But if you have the previous version, this should work anyway: dunno, really... Does anyone else had the same troubles?

Unicorn, if you have downloaded this, I just wanted you know I've renamed the file CTF-FaceOffCTF_G to avoid you erase your own file by mistake: I always do this when I re-work a map from another author and before re-sending it to him/her On another hand, please consider this lighting as an example: this is not exactly what I'd have done if I had built this level for myself...

[Idle Idol]

unicorn: i wasn't implying you stole the idea...how you can steal the idea of a wall i don't know. Was poking more fun at the reviewer than you, the concept of face+wall has been done a ton of times...no offense, and I thought it was funny that he called it "ingenious" it's a good idea, but adding a wall wasn't exactly revolutionary =)

--Idle, "is it so much to ask for a wall between my flag and my enemys flag?"

[Unicorn]

Yay, now we're talking. This puts you in much higher regard to me Gui. This is much more constructive than "The lighting sux like a donkeys behind". I am VERY glad that you took the time to take a look at the map. And I would very much like to see what you have done with the lighting. Your words were... inspiring.

And no the attachment doesn't work. My original map zipped, without the SGTech.utx, was about 450 kb. The attachment is 200 kb. I don't think new lighting makes so much difference in the size of the map.

My email is obi1kenobi@spray.se . Spray has a filelimit of 2mb. Please send me your modification Gui.

Hehe. I know you are a nice lad Idle Idol. No offence taken at all.

Again thanx.