New Map! VCTF-Subduction by Jonny

[Jonny]

Hey everyone, Merry Christmas - i hope you like your present!   

The maps called VCTF-Subduction-Beta1 - with any luck anni will be adding it to the server soon  . Its a lava themed map, so it should warm u up for Xmas, but dont worry 4 those of u who dont like lava, it doesnt killl u very fast. So i guess u have to play it to see what its like, but i hope every1 enjoys it anyhowz.

Ere's some pics:




As always im open to feedback, so fire away... 

[phage]

Mind putting it somewhere else for dl?

[Jonny]

Mind putting it somewhere else for dl?

Tried signing up with filefront, proved impossible so no link for now im afraid.

Unfortunatly the bases arnt totally balenced, as i forgot to assign the avril in the blue base  sorry! I'll get that fixed for beta2.

[Mr.Sunshine]

Hey, Jonny, I know its OT, but I've a question to "road kill":

How's the opening of the trapdoors (getting you under the base) managed?

When I push the button in front of them, they open only for less than a second, how to keep them open longer?

[Jonny]

The button is designed so you can only open it for another person, thus encouraging teamwork and please's and thankyou's  . It's meant so you can go to the enemy's base with a friend, ur friend lets u in, you go invisible (if you want to use your adrenaline) then you use the ion painter to blast away the enemy's defence. Hopefully you'll have this timed with another crew on a manta run if the teamwork is excellent. Atm the door can be jammed open if you go in the buttons collision radius and get out ur vehicle, so ill fix this for the nxt version by adding a blocking volume.

The rest of roadkill will remain generally the same, - i tried making another layout for the middle roads but i think it wouldn't have worked. The lazer turret will be replaced by minigun, avril defence positions on roof made, some jump pads to get players up the slanting roads, and some vehicles changed around. That's all the changes so far.

Anyhow, i'm not going to make any more maps, i feel every level i'm making people think it's sh*t, so i'll stop ruining everyones time by giving them bad maps to play on. For ut2007 i may just map for myself, as at least i like the maps i make! 

[shinobi]

No! Ur maps great. I always like to c new maps. And only playing binary, fatjimmys and basically in a never ending circul sux. It only takes a bit till ppl know how to play that new maps good and it will b fun for them. Btw: Nice emitter effects in Subduction. Also good work for Afghanistan-Beta3-TPW with the lights and new terrain layers it looks very nice now. Roadkill is a very nice map thats with great gameplay. Good work!!   

[Molgan[ApA]]

Have you tried this? No unreal in the adress. =)

http://mirrage.dynamized.com/

[Jonny]

Thanks alot shinobi, v nice of you to say that  - i hope you are right about subduction and it is just beacuse people don't know it. Maby now i will stick to making maps look nicer, so they are more enjoyable to play (as long as the authors r ok with that!)

As for Afghanistan, the only real thing i did was turn the static mesh bases into bsp (cos i personally dont like those lines of white pixels where there are cracks in the mesh), then added a few terrain layers and two sunlight actors instead of one:

A tip i can give you is to use two sunlight actors and put them so the light is slanting at an angle - like in life, autumn or evening light always looks nicer than cold, winter like light that comes straight down - which can make everything look flat. I used the technique of adding one main sunlight actor, with a brightness of at least 100 (and a warm colour) with the direction arrow slanting 45 degrees or so downwards. This leaves you with horrible black areas where the one sunlight actor hasnt reached, so i add another one facing in the opposite direction at the same angle, and this sunlight actor usually has a lower brightness of around 30, and a cool blu-ish colour, to contrast against the warmness of the main 'sun' light.

I used the above lighting method in blitz and aeolus and it works well. However in aeolus there were still some dark shadows under the trees which didn't look right, so i added a third sunlight actor facing straight downwards, and gave it a low brightness just to kill those pitch black shadows. Also, don't forget the importance of single lights to accentuate interesting areas or pickups.

Oh, and thanks for the link Molgan 

[shinobi]

Thx for the tip i will try it out soon. 

[Jonny]

hey all, merry xmas! Anyhow, after creating about 20 (!^^) usernames on filefront (there was an error) i've picked one of them and uploaded afew maps there - so you can now get subduction from: http://hosted.filefront.com/JonnyMapper

To Admins: Roadkill Beta4 is now available here. This is the latest version, and is ready to be uploaded to the server.

Edit: Annihilator has said he'll put up roadkill-beta4 with subduction-beta2 because it's easier. However i don't know when the next version of subduction will be ready, as i've been 2 busy to map l8ly - so i guess both will have to wait.

[Molgan[ApA]]

Took the lag by the horns and tried your maps online today, and Subduction is yet another quality map. Even thou Anakas was a pain in the ass as usual I had a lot of fun on this one. =)

Except for the missing Avril the weapon/vehicle loadout was good, terrain was without quirks and the game play was fast and furious. Have nothing to suggest for this one, very gj.

[Jonny]

Thanks alot Molg, means alot to hear that! Yeah that g'dam missing avril annoys me everytime i (don't) see it  ! I'll have to release a quick beta soon, just touch up lighting, terrain etc. One thing i did notice was the lightning camping on the snipingvolcano's, so iv replaced one of the lightning ammo's there with avril ammo. Also some online complaints about lack of vehicles, so added one more scorp.

Well thanks and hope every1'ns had a gd xmas day  - god i spent about 6 hours cooking 2day  !

[AnaKaS-]

Took the lag by the horns and tried your maps online today, and Subduction is yet another quality map. Even thou Molgan was a pain in the ass as usual I had a lot of fun on this one. =)

Except for the missing Avril the weapon/vehicle loadout was good, terrain was without quirks and the game play was fast and furious. Have nothing to suggest for this one, very gj.

Totally agree, very nice map. My new favourite vctf map \o/
Great job Jonny

[Jonny]

Cheerz Ana 

[Uffish]

Anyhow, i'm not going to make any more maps, i feel every level i'm making people think it's sh*t, so i'll stop ruining everyones time by giving them bad maps to play on. For ut2007 i may just map for myself, as at least i like the maps i make! 

Dude, please retract that statement. Your maps are great, and you're one of the finest assets of this community (I mean, we got our own mapper! How cool is that?). Blitz is one of the best maps on the server, and I personally enjoy Aeolous very much and IMO it is severely underplayed. Roadkill had some issues but it's getting better and better and it gets voted a lot (though it's not "new" anymore), which probably means it's good shit. I only played Subduction a few times but it seems like it can be a very good map (love the bridge thingy).
You're a skilled mapper with a good sense of aesthetics and some very innovative ideas (vehicle portals in Aeolous, teamplay on Roadkill, bridge effect on Subduction and the idea of constant bombing and trenching in Blitz). If you stopped mapping it'd be a shame and a loss for all of tPW.