Ladders have always been a questionable element in UT; bots have problems understanding them, and players who need to use them must place themselves at a considerable tactical disadvantage by being exposed for a lengthy amount of time (your opponent can exactly predict how you'll be moving) and not being able to aim really (you're facing a wall). On top of that, we've all seen the effects that latency has on the visual image of using a ladder; the char wobbles up and down as they ascend and trying to shoot them becomes a matter of luck (if you're not using blast radius weaponry like tank shells or combos).

IMO, there are much better established ways for players on foot to cover vertical distances, we all know them, and they are jumpers, teleporters and elevators where movement and experience (both for the user and those observing them) are much smoother, so why not try using those in Rail instead and eliminate ladders altogether? For short height distances, place jumpers and for the towers use teleporters. Problem solved.

Also, please distribute sniper rifles to ground level weapon lockers too; what you're trying to enforce by coercing ppl to take height detours in order to get one is not a rational map design policy but a hassle that favours shockers and flakkers. Make it fair for all playstyles plz.

If you wanna get up faster, use the shieldgun + jumping. There is an LG inside the bases if you don't want to go up high for the classic sniper.

Smoother ascension up ladders can be accomplished using old hax from UT, using invisible stairs. Dodgeramps are good too for going up. Shieldgun jumping is also good for going up.

I had to change the pathnodes because otherwise it takes forever to rebuild.

Lighting right now is very atmospheric and suits the level. To actually make sure no area is too dark, I'd have to completely redo it.

Added a small alley on both sides of the map.
Moved Primes a bit to be a little further away from the cores.

http://www.filefront.com/14636111/ONS-Rail-Beta6.rar

Don't take it personally, but I think it gets even worse.




Removing so much of the trail-stuff here looks bad and has no use in my opinion. It doesn't block any shoot from far away at all and just covers the attackers when they get even closer. Around the node you have a too open space. Those waggons behind each other on one place looks too artificial in my opinion. Spread them around the node, use some of the small ones and leave space between them, but don't leave it empty like this.



You have still not removed these superweapons. Removing only the Redeemer is not enough.


This is really bad:

You can attack the nodes right down from the roof. There was absolutely no necessity to take them out of the halls. The halls appear empty and useless now, while the nodes can be taken down by an enemy team that camps from the roofs quickly. What sense does it make to make it easy for the winning team to attack the nodes from camping-positions and giving the loosing team not even the chance of a comeback?!





Bad design is, when you have a light without having the matching lightsource for it. The shadows are colored differently.
Why is it so bad to have a darker place? It's not like you couldn't see there, maybe you should turn up the brightness of your screen a bit, or are you using a CRT and that's why it seems darker to you?

If you really want to make it brighter, then choose a different light-colour for the contre-jour-sunlight. In my opinion, there is no need for changing the light. Staying a bit more cloaked than in the sun is a tactical thing that you can use, nothing to be mad about.



About the paths:
I know that it takes long to rebuild the paths, but where is the problem? You do that only in the end of the mapping-phase, when all changes on the geometry has been done. There is also an option "rebuild only changed paths" to use if you just want to know if path connects correctly.
If you are too lazy to wait a while and surf on the Internet during the rebuild, then leave that pathing to me. Impatience is definitely something that shouldn't belong to mapping in general. It just reduces quality without an acceptable reason.

The playability is surprisinly better now, but the diagonal link setup is imo wrong. Use the classic Chainisles rectangular links, remove the middle node (it's absolutelly useless) and the superweapons except air strikes.

i totally agree. didn't think that it would be good that the primary nodes could be attacked from far away... but instead - it is very very playable as we saw like 20 minutes ago. not sure about ion painter... might be the only chance for a comeback once a team lost a primary node. maybe u should switch the places from ion painter and air strike! should do it imo.

and by the way: the different shadows - noticed it, but actually i don't care at all since it doesn't effect the gameplay =)
just for the aesthetes out there ^^

Destroyer, could you make these changes please? I have to delete it otherwise, and it would be a pity.

No no no! Please dont delete it :\

I think I'll care about this (my) baby then again. Won't be hard to handle and I can readd my bot-support.


Destroyer did a good job to balance it out, but Crusha is taking over again. :p

AND: remove the SSR