ns2_combi - Farewell

Legend_Boss

hi everyone

I have (mostly) made my own NS2 map called "combi " because it contans some room from other maps. I do intend to name those rooms after the map taken from as a way to give credit but mostly my own. Surge, Biodome, red, Bunker and ready room are from other maps. Ready room is really big but best one in my opinion.

This is the first map for any game that I made and the first time doing anything like this. I have got the map at testplay state.

Link to steam of map is :
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=477816599

I was hoping people can check it out and tell me what you think as well as any improvements. I have been adding a few vents around the map, so the image attached isn't the latest. a few rooms are empty but otherise everything is fine for test play.

All constructive feedback welcomed

=============================================================================
Some of my thoughts thoiughts to the map layout:

As you can see from the mini map, the command chair (cc) at the top is a bit further away from the cc on the sides in compare to the cc at hte bottom of the map. Aliens will not start at the top location. This is similar to ns2_veil.

To compensate for the distance marines are slightly close to sewer where there are two resource towers (RT), they also have the RT at the top corner of the map.
War room is closer to aliens. It should not be possible to arc the RT between war room and sewer. Any other structures placed between the two room RT (inc hydra, crag shift etc) will possibly be arc, but will require scan which will cost the marine commander resources.

Because of the amount of RTs team will need to play aggressive to prevent one team getting a significant advantage of resource from the other. Harrasing each other team RT is essential to keep their resource low (same in any map).

Some rooms, such as Stairway and sewer, may be easier for marine to hold but once alien uses higher life forms it could be easier for them to take it back. Stairway can be a choking point for which ever team secures it.

Starting locations:
1. Marine at top = Alien at botton
2.Marine left side = Alien right side
3.Alien left side = Marine right side

Pelargir

Well, just good luck and hope that you gonna learn many things and stuff by making a map on NS2. Always thrilling to find out new mappers trying to fit the job.

deathshroud

we tested this in the scc, the game was missing its gamerules entity or for whatever reason as soon as someone jumped in the chair or hive they the would both disappear.

so we couldnt really test it only walk around


.a vent from spawn c to stairway would be useful
.change the floor texture in stairway from black to something else, black doesnt show up in the minimap.

Flaterectomy

A number of vents were too small for skulks and marines. Try to keep vents at least 48x96 units (the size of the wide vent entrance prop).

Legend_Boss

Thanks everyone for your support/feedback.

deathshroud wrote: »

we tested this in the scc, the game was missing its gamerules entity or for whatever reason as soon as someone jumped in the chair or hive they the would both disappear.

so we couldnt really test it only walk around

.a vent from spawn c to stairway would be useful
.change the floor texture in stairway from black to something else, black doesnt show up in the minimap.

Wooza mentioned the gamerules missing. I had it on before but must have got deleted at some point as it wasn't where i uploaded last. It has been added now. Hopefully that should prevent them from disappearing otherwise I don't know what is causing that.

I have added a vent as you suggested but connected it to corridor as well. May change it at a later time depending on how it plays out but I think it will work.

Flaterectomy wrote: »

A number of vents were too small for skulks and marines. Try to keep vents at least 48x96 units (the size of the wide vent entrance prop).

The vent I have just added are to those measurements. i have previously fly around the map as lerk and managed to use all the vents. I know some may be a bit small, but I will check the map again as the vent may have got resized.

I noticed some rooms are much bigger in-game than what I thought they will. I did start to do a lot of the rooms in perspective and by looking at them.

BeigeAlert

It definitely helps to drop down a few marine and onos entities to get a sense of scale. Once you've done that, you can fly the perspective camera down to their eye-height to get a feel for how big your rooms really are. It's amazing how a room can appear to shrink or grow simply by raising or lowering the camera. (Pro tip: 'F' and 'C' raise and lower the camera.)

Just don't forget to delete these entities when you're done! (Or at least set them to "explore only", so they don't appear in-game.)

deathshroud

its best to test vents with the fade since he is larger when crouched than a lerk skulk or marine

BeigeAlert

deathshroud wrote: »

its best to test vents with the fade since he is larger when crouched than a lerk skulk or marine

Exactly. Don't be afraid to do interesting things with your vents (like Repair vent on Tram! ) but they should always be a minimum of 48 high and 48 wide -- as big as the vent entrance/exit props.

Legend_Boss

Tested with fade and found the small vents. Increased the size of the vents so it should be fine now. I have also updated minimap screenshot.
Even though some of the rooms are bigger than what I intended, it should be fine.

DaanVanYperen

Pulled it through the SCC Profiler (sunday version, so a tad outdated). Gallery: http://imgur.com/a/cjLDR
Red is aliens, blue is marines.

It shows things like
All routes - shortest routes between all points of interest,
RT run times - runtime in seconds to all RTs from each node for both teams.
RT head start- which team will be able to reach RTs fastest and by how many seconds based on what techpoints they own,
Presence - what area they can cover effectively depending on the techpoints they own, and where battlefronts might end up.

I'll leave the theorycrafting up to you. For example, looks like the north TP has a lot better runtime to RTs compared to south. Here's summit for reference: http://imgur.com/a/Sf9Hr

deathshroud

DaanVanYperen wrote: »

Pulled it through the SCC Profiler (sunday version, so a tad outdated). Gallery: http://imgur.com/a/cjLDR
Red is aliens, blue is marines.

It shows things like
All routes - shortest routes between all points of interest,
RT run times - runtime in seconds to all RTs from each node for both teams.
RT head start- which team will be able to reach RTs fastest and by how many seconds based on what techpoints they own,
Presence - what area they can cover effectively depending on the techpoints they own, and where battlefronts might end up.

I'll leave the theorycrafting up to you. For example, looks like the north TP has a lot better runtime to RTs compared to south. Here's summit for reference: http://imgur.com/a/Sf9Hr

those are cool daan, hopefully next scc you can do one for hydra and forge

Legend_Boss

@DaanVanYperen‌ Thanks for those diagrams. I think that the general presence devision of the map is what i hoped for. It appears thatthe RT at the top of the map was not included in the profiler for whatever reason. and the path through stairway and spawn at botton of the map wasn't taken into account when calculating travel time.
With a top/botton start things seem fair. best way to know is actual gameplay. Is the profiler you use a private software or public one that I can use?

I am a bit concerned about a bug not allowing a commander. Thought it was the gamerules not being included but have similar problem when using bots except if i turn cheats on then its okay, but no damage is dealt. Does this sound like a know problem to anyone?

SamusDroid

You have to create a hmp to be a commander. If you don't have one then it will error in the console

AurOn2

just glancing at the layout, looks like you have alot of long hallways.
One or two long hallways in strategic locations is generally good
Too many long hallways is generally bad.

Legend_Boss

SamusDroid wrote: »

You have to create a hmp to be a commander. If you don't have one then it will error in the console

What do you mean by 'hmp'? I've not come across that term/reference before.

@AurOn2‌ If you base the glance only by the map overview it may appear there are a lot of long corridors, but I don't think its the case. There are obstructions/props and shelter to hide behind in corridors. however saying that I did redesign 'Spawn B' as that did seem like too long of a corridor (which is not needed there) going past a vital point.

DaanVanYperen

Legend_Boss wrote: »

@DaanVanYperen‌ Thanks for those diagrams. I think that the general presence devision of the map is what i hoped for. It appears thatthe RT at the top of the map was not included in the profiler for whatever reason. and the path through stairway and spawn at botton of the map wasn't taken into account when calculating travel time.

That's caused by me failing some of the manual steps XD; after loading the map tga file, have to manually plop down all the RTs/TPs, and draw new routes/walls to fix limitations working from an image. I just forgot the RT probably.

Is the profiler you use a private software or public one that I can use?

No public version yet. Planned a web version earlier this year but the performance needs some attention. Right now i'm just pondering if it's worth spending more time on

SamusDroid

You have to put your map in mapsrc and run builder or it won't work properly

troops

From our play or attempted play on sunday there did seem to be some hallways/rooms that would be hard to attack from both teams (long corridors leading in to rooms bunker being the big example of this. Stuff like this will come with testing and seeing it be played (First play of Kodiak it was one big hallway fun times)

We will be giving it another try sunday so make sure you have updated it with all you need(game rules was the problem last week) Also if you need help you can message me or Flaterectomy.

RedSword

Just to let you know that the 3 first screenshots are erroring (I see what looks like a hash; i.e. "19909C3004D7A4A3B5BEDE7FEFBB44C1524D9F4C").

Legend_Boss

@RedSword Thanks for letting me know. I've corrected them now. Some things has changed from what you see in the pictures

Legend_Boss

Hi all. I need some help with setting up the pathing in the new part of the map called garage. if you compare the two map image, it should be clear where i am on about. It's only accessible by vents.

I have pathing there, but that only works if it's connected to the main part of the map. Problem with this is that mac/drifter can go through the walls to get there. Tried to use collision geometry to spot the drifter going through but that didn't work. When I look at Nav_debug in the map, nothing is showing in that area.

I also added tunnel allowed material have tunnel build there. before a tunnel is dropped nav_debug shows there is no pathing for commander to drop stuff) - commander gets invalid pathing. once a tunnel is dropped, it enables some of the pathing around that tunnel for a commander to drop structure.

I have tried adding the pathing into commanderbuild group but that doesn't work, neither if i drop a prop there and include it in the commanderbuild group. Looking at the guide for group/layer. Adding something into the commanderbuild group should allow the commander to build off the pathing but i can't seem to get that to work.

Can someone please do the correct pathing for that room or tell me how to do it. I have attached a copy of the latest map version. I think the relevant layer group name is Chamber but known as garage in map

SamusDroid

I'll look at it later

BeigeAlert

There's not really any way to make pathing work through vents.
You'll have to compromise somehow. What about having some kind of a forcefield wall that allows macs, drifters, arcs, cysts, etc through, but blocks everyone else?

SamusDroid

Why connect it with vents? But what beige said could work

Legend_Boss

I don't want the pathing to work through the vents just in that room so commanders can build stuff there. So what's the point of the commander build group? Would have thought it's for something like what I am trying to do.

I have just thought of another possible way to get this working. I will create an invisible path from main part of the map to the room, similar to what Beige says, but will make the path very long. Reason for this is that i noticed if i had a drifter on one part of the map and order it to go the furthest point, if it's too far away the drifter won't go. Similar with cyst chains. And since the commander can't see/click on the long invisible path he shouldn't be able to select along that path to get them there - if this makes sense? Will test this out to see if it will work.

Samus, the map is still a WIP. This new room comes following watching game play. I may try out at a later date replacing the vents of the right side and bottom as entrances to that room, but I wanted to try out a different style.
The way it is now, that room is getting a little overlooked (not because of the pathing but because it's accessible by vents). This therefore makes it a good way to the bottom part of the map to sneak pass. Or even a room to defend to reach those part of the map.

As I have said, map is WIP and I don't experience freequent gameplay so it takes me a bit longer to figure out the best layout.

Legend_Boss

Couldn't get the long pathing route to work as i thought.

Still what is commanderbuild group used for? Is it currently broken which is why i can't get it to work how i intend or is it meant to be used for another purpose?

Flaterectomy

I use CommanderBuild in a couple of spots on Caged where I made floor props non-collidable and put down CollisionGeometry instead in order to keep players from bouncing up and down constantly on the height variations of the floor props. You can't build on CollisionGeometry, so I have additional geo in the same spot set to CommanderBuild.

UncleCrunch

@Flaterectomy : The commander can build on collision geometry.

Legend_Boss

UncleCrunch wrote: »

@Flaterectomy : The commander can build on collision geometry.

If that is the case, then what is commanderbuild group used for?

UncleCrunch

TBH i don't use it. And i never found it to be useful.
You can do close to anything you want by using :

• proper geometry
• props settings (walkable, collidable etc).
• Collision, NocommanderBuild, CommanderInvisible groups.

Legend_Boss

UncleCrunch wrote: »

TBH i don't use it. And i never found it to be useful.
You can do close to anything you want by using :

• proper geometry
• props settings (walkable, collidable etc).
• Collision, NocommanderBuild, CommanderInvisible groups.

@UncleCrunch any suggestions how i can get the pathing to work where part of the map is only connected by vents?
Alternativly, any idea how to block the path of a drifter/mac?

I tried to use death trigger but macs/drifter are not effected by that. Tried to placed a robotics factory and assign it to the world but it does not start fully built (yes i selected the option to make it start fully built), it remains in blueprint fully built.
They can also go through the collision geometry.