It's alive!!! *muhahaha*
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I just wanted to make a simple, non-serious map without the claim of real ONS-qualities, so I produced an alternative SPAMBOX.
But different from SPAMBOX this map is different in a way (and also have 1-2 bugs, but nothing that could stop you from playing it. You just have to get used to it.

Try it at least. It's a Beta, feedback is welcomed AFTER it has been played.


And it doesn't work with bots, so it's an online-only map.


Here a screenshot:



So Hunt, now you know what you were working on. :p
And also thanks to Piglet and Pospi.

Wow, looks strange. nodes on the walls o.0

Congrats on your first attempt at an original map, Crusha! If this is any indication, we're in for some pretty imaginative creations.

Most obvious attraction here is the spherical gameplay and modified grav, but some other standard ONS visuals need fixing before ppl can feel like they're playing a legit map. Node discs/shields and the health of the red core are still working in the usual manner, so when a player builds a wall node, they look shifted sideways towards the true "up"; also, the red core's health appears below it. I guess those issues are to be expected when you mess with fundamental engine elements and sorting them out would probly require more custom scripting.

There's gameplay kinks to iron out too. Like you said, this is no bot-friendly map and red team's bots can't even observe the custom gravity and just fall straight down to the inner sphere when spawning. Players have a few problems to deal with too since the escher script somehow messes with double jumping and jump pads functionality. When players are at the apex of their first jump and go for the 2nd, the extra jump's animation plays, but they gain no extra air. The jump pads take a few tries before they'll push you towards the center too (first few efforts just bumped me slightly away). I think this happens cause players are moving towards the true "down" when they try, so in other maps that wouldn't work (I could be wrong on the reason, but it's an issue). I also managed to abuse the jumpers and custom gravity to put myself in orbit around the middle sphere for a few revs; not a bug or anything, just silly fun, but I'm putting it out there . First!

Another thing is, when trying to aim at an enemy on the middle sphere, your view can only go up to 90° - anything beyond that, you'll have to turn around before you can aim further. Shooting ppl upside-down aside, this map serves as (extreme) proof of how limiting this z-axis viewport limitation can be. Tweaking this would take even more scripting to allow players to rotate their aim past the perpendicular (like the spec camera does). Some animation probs might arise from this (no anims exist for chars aiming past straight up), but if it'd just allow an additional 10-20 degrees beyond 90°, things wouldn't look too broken. Without some aiming help here, all the twisting and turning would make matches look more like ballet than ONS :/.

Overall, this is pretty nifty first experiment, even though it surely isn't the only way to approach spherical grav gameplay. Alternatively, you could use only the outer sphere, but allow action to take place on its inner AND outer surface with nodes and cores on whatever side and use teleporters (or revolving sections) to transport players from one to the other. Using a colourful, spacey enviro (and maybe even making the sphere's texture glassy so ppl could see everything below/above) could make the map even trippier - not that it isn't already trippy! Still, what you're presenting here is very fresh and, provided that it manages to survive the rigorous beta testing to ensure everything's right, such an idea can easily work on its own, far from any usual spamfest cliche. There's no reason (humility maybe?) for you to be selling yourself short by sticking the word "spam" in your map's name, if you ask me. Anyway, once again, good job and keep up the hard work!

PS: Props for the stacked cores idea too, love that! I've been toying with a similar notion myself since even before this summer for a new map (with gameplay much different from this though) that I'd call HallsofInfinity... or some other dramatic name like that. Someday I hope I can present it here too.

After finishing up the serious review, I decided to get a little silly and spawn some goodies to test. Unfortunately, the verdict on vehicle use here is condemning: nothing can be driven above the big sphere's equator and once you spawn a vec (which, if you're blue, will fall straight across the map to red's doorstep) and get in, then get out again, you no longer follow the custom grav rules yourself until you die and respawn. Player characters drawn inside vehicles are also frozen in a screwed up stance (you can use taunt anims though!). Other than that, fun times:

Yeah, I tested it before and know about all the bugs you mentioned, but unfortunately I don't have the knowledge in UScript (and probably also not the right) to change that.

That idea with playing on the outer sphere came also from Rowland already right after we tested the map on Techcom (Foibos changed the map after 8 minutes then because it was just a chaos without a chance to hold the nodes long enough to achieve a victory).
I already have some ideas how to realize that (the most difficult part when building this was, that the editor crashes without a comment when I try to subtract a sphere with 512 faces.

The physics seem to work worse online than offline. Nothing that could prevent it from being played, but there are still some problems:
-Corpses are (different from offline) not affected by the gravity and fall straight downwards. I wanted to use the weightless corpses-mutator there as a workaround.
-The coordinates for the physic are updated too slow. Players remain visually a bit longer in their old "perpendicular" (<- noun), and seem to stumble towards the ground.
-Some projectiles have not the correct physic: Flak Chunks fly in a straight line like rockets, no matter where you shoot them.


But the rest works for the circumstances quite well. The mutator was surely not created for ONS (there are special weaponbases included, only the weaponlocker was not modified to fit the physics).

You can see a better map with such physics here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_72sFJ614Q
http://www.mapraider.com/maps/?fileid=3414

an idea that just rose up into my mind:

what about building like igloos / hemispheres around the nodes?! it would be alot easier to hold them... negative side effect is that the central mini-sphere would become more or less useless except that u will be able to shoot enemies who walk from hemisphere to hemisphere...

Anyway there is a nice concept... I was a little bit sick ('like on a boat during bad weather) after my firsts 5 mins tests
LOL

GO on, nice idea Krusha
Tow

Yesterday I downloaded it and played on it. The idea is very good, and it's cool to orbit around the central orb. I ghosted myself inside the orb, and there is a strange gravitational force lol. Though yeh, it's buggy. when I try to double jump it doesn't even show any animation. Um... was this the "new gameplay" what you said on Spiffingrad thread?

Well... could be good for more maps, I mean... PLANETS: not that small like the orb but not huge like Earth in reality XD joke. I mean not huge like a planet in the game "Spore" maybe the doubled size of the "outer orb"? And you could jump from planets to planets, solar system nodes on the planets, etc. lol I know these are kinda unmakable ideas, but first things first, bugs must be fixed.

PS: I don't mean that you only should make maps with the "new gameplay" I just said some "stupid" ideas XD.
off topic: I wanna make a DM map but with my knowledge of mapping I couldn't. Teach me (apologies if you don't want to, I mean... joke again...) Test me (-||-) (with exam(s))

Planets? Planets like this? Check the ONS-Galadriël-System with nice graphic and poor gameplay.

jancsi33 wrote:

off topic: I wanna make a DM map but with my knowledge of mapping I couldn't. Teach me (apologies if you don't want to, I mean... joke again...) Test me (-||-) (with exam(s))

Well, I can only help when there is a question to go on from. But maybe you should make another thread for that.


And don't worry about the planet, I will find a good size for it.