One of the things which bothers me about a community for a game having established gameplay, is that anything which deviates from the norm is unbalanced. Rather than coming up with different strategies for different environments..
xtcmenJoin Date: 2004-04-20Member: 28040Members, Squad Five Blue
Semi-reviving this thread to add my two cents.
Jambi's success was really a surprise to me. What started out as a time-saving and efficient project to create a map pooling together different mappers as a resource turned into, to say the least, a success gameplay-wise. None of us had any idea how it would be played. As a competitive NS player for many years, I was lucky to get my hands on it mid development andredesign entire regions of the map (with lots of help from @Braw) in order to get Jambi to the level it is today.
Another huge factor to Jambi's success was the competitive community. Many passionate players reached out and provided feedback. With all the feedback we received, we were able to turn Jambi into a playable, competitive map. A huge milestone was Jambi was played at the NS2 world championship and was streamed in the finals.
Thank you all for continuing to support Jambi. I spent countless of hours creating it, and I am happy that it was not for nothing. I am not an artist by any means. I was never good at drawing, or creating anything visually appealing. Yet, Jambi is the only piece of "art" I ever created, that had any meaning.
Jambi's success was really a surprise to me. What started out as a time-saving and efficient project to create a map pooling together different mappers as a resource turned into, to say the least, a success gameplay-wise. None of us had any idea how it would be played. As a competitive NS player for many years, I was lucky to get my hands on it mid development andredesign entire regions of the map (with lots of help from @Braw) in order to get Jambi to the level it is today.
Another huge factor to Jambi's success was the competitive community. Many passionate players reached out and provided feedback. With all the feedback we received, we were able to turn Jambi into a playable, competitive map. A huge milestone was Jambi was played at the NS2 world championship and was streamed in the finals.
Thank you all for continuing to support Jambi. I spent countless of hours creating it, and I am happy that it was not for nothing. I am not an artist by any means. I was never good at drawing, or creating anything visually appealing. Yet, Jambi is the only piece of "art" I ever created, that had any meaning.
Well, i just want to leave my comments for derelict
The main issue for ne is - why i'll never vote it, is the fps dropping problem of some roomes like the fps sucking tree..
Yeah. I'm working on developing a low lights version of the map which will be shipped with one of the next patches. The most recent patch has some rudimentary baseline work done, and raised my FPS in most areas by 10 to 20 on my 970. Pretty sweet. Regardless, I'll continue to smash it out without losing any of that graphical fidelity.
Well, i just want to leave my comments for derelict
The main issue for ne is - why i'll never vote it, is the fps dropping problem of some roomes like the fps sucking tree..
Yeah. I'm working on developing a low lights version of the map which will be shipped with one of the next patches. The most recent patch has some rudimentary baseline work done, and raised my FPS in most areas by 10 to 20 on my 970. Pretty sweet. Regardless, I'll continue to smash it out without losing any of that graphical fidelity.
Well, i just want to leave my comments for derelict
The main issue for ne is - why i'll never vote it, is the fps dropping problem of some roomes like the fps sucking tree..
Yeah. I'm working on developing a low lights version of the map which will be shipped with one of the next patches. The most recent patch has some rudimentary baseline work done, and raised my FPS in most areas by 10 to 20 on my 970. Pretty sweet. Regardless, I'll continue to smash it out without losing any of that graphical fidelity.
Zavaro, and unsung hero of maps.
I don't know about unsung, but I'm definitely out there trying to make everyone's NS2 map-experience as smooth as humanly possible.
ZavaroTucson, ArizonaJoin Date: 2005-02-14Member: 41174Members, Super Administrators, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Silver, Subnautica Playtester, NS2 Community Developer, Pistachionauts
edited May 2016
I get paid in your happiness, scrubs. Also, work is boring. I'll check out the tree. What room is it? We are leading this off topic, however. Post here, @Handschuuh, and we'll get this sorted.
I recently released a graybox of a remake of the original Mineshaft, now called Mineshaft2. Check it out, guys. Seems to play alright so far.
LokiJoin Date: 2012-07-07Member: 153973Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Squad Five Gold, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow, Subnautica Playtester, NS2 Community Developer, Pistachionauts
well looking at both nursery and turbines (the rooms with a big dead tree) I have localised a possible cause for the fps drops.
BUT
the cause of the drops is very specific as to a certain route you enter the room / certain direction you are looking, there is a potential dirty fix for both rooms though
I think it was turbine.. the big glowing tree on top of the stairs... when I was standing as marine where the powernode can be built and i check FPS... its ultralow there are other places as well... if you want i can check out where the problems lie
I think the tree is unneeded anyway plus it does not make any sense for a tree to be there. Also I remember that there was no tree in the first build. WHy got it added? For LOS reasons?
I think the tree is unneeded anyway plus it does not make any sense for a tree to be there. Also I remember that there was no tree in the first build. WHy got it added? For LOS reasons?
Makes the room a lot worse for Marines. Originally when it was added it was a lot bigger. I think we can still shrink it further.
LokiJoin Date: 2012-07-07Member: 153973Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Squad Five Gold, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Shadow, Subnautica Playtester, NS2 Community Developer, Pistachionauts
edited May 2016
I have commited some fixes that will ship with b300 that removes some of certain spikes in the drawcalls in nursery and turbines. So hopefully people will not notice a sudden drop in FPS, the hope is there is an overall net gain of fps in those rooms
Heat xfer and geothermal have now got better occlusion geo, so people should get a bit more fps there also
I just wanted to share my input about all things custom map related and map balance related. If you don't already know, @Rusty and myself have created a few custom maps, done a lot of dmd versions of the vanilla maps, and revived some NS1 maps.
DMD versions of Vanilla maps
Our intentions of these maps are to give variety to the maps we already know and love. Playing ns2_veil, ns2_refinery, etc. can get kinda boring after awhile. So we wanted to spice things up a bit. We have tried moving entities, changing start locations, adding rooms, and using the Classic Entities Mod (buttons, weldables, breakables, elevators), which has been fun but as many of you know, that mod still needs work (example: non-player entities like whips can move through doors).
NS1 Maps
The ns1 map you are thinking of that has the elevators, buttons, and weldables is ns2_dmd_origin, a remaster of ns_origin. We have received a lot of positive feedback about this map, even making many of the veterans emotional because it brings back so much nostalgia of the good-ol-days in NS1. The map is functional and server ready, but visually it's still very retro looking. The visual portion (props, cinematics, lighting) takes much more time than the layout. We are gradually making additions to the map, but it is functional and we highly recommend playing a few matches. We have a few other NS1 maps in production, but they are on the back burner as we have way too much on our plate right now.
If you don't already know, maps like veil, caged and eclipse were originally NS1 maps. Notice that they only have 4 tech points? (1 marine start and 3 hive locations)
Custom Maps
We have released a lot of custom maps over the years. We get the same feedback every time: "this is a great idea", "it's not balanced", "this map sucks", "i love this map", "this needs to be here", "that needs to be there". Everybody wants to be a critic. Fair enough. Many people have valid input because they want to see the custom map become a fun and balanced map that everyone wants to play. But you get a lot of haters too. They tend to complain about the map, but they don't contribute any valid input. One thing people don't realize is that most custom maps are created by one or two people who have limited time to work on maps. You have to understand that a map takes hundreds of hours start-to-finish. The official NS2 maps are beautiful because many people worked on them for over 1000 hours. Try to appreciate that there are still people out there in the NS2 community that want to keep the game alive, and they are doing it through new content.
All new maps, custom or official
Keep in mind when a new map is released, only a handful of people know the map. So what tends to happen is you get a lot of players that are very skilled and very concerned about their Elo or hive score but they are getting killed left and right because they don't know the map. So either they take the time to learn the new map and take a small hit on their score, .. or they say "this map sucks" and go back to their cozy map rotation of veil-summit-tram-mineshaft.
Congrats to @Flaterectomy for getting Caged into the official NS2 map roster.
Let's keep NS2 alive by encouraging new content and giving lots of useful feedback.
The official NS2 maps are beautiful because many people worked on them for over 1000 hours.
This is untrue. Look at Kodiak, Derelict and Caged for example. Loki Built both Kodiak and Derelict on his own, and he did them super fast (in comparison to usual cam creation times.) And Flaterectomy built Caged solo, over about 3 years... the only reason i'm correcting you here is because I believe that saying "official NS2 maps are beautiful because many people worked on them for over 1000 hours." drastically undervalues the time and effort put into certain official maps, by certain mappers and its important to remember the time and dedication they did put into them.
Other than that I agree with pretty much everything you said.
Comments
Overbalancing, overnorming = boredoom
Jambi's success was really a surprise to me. What started out as a time-saving and efficient project to create a map pooling together different mappers as a resource turned into, to say the least, a success gameplay-wise. None of us had any idea how it would be played. As a competitive NS player for many years, I was lucky to get my hands on it mid development andredesign entire regions of the map (with lots of help from @Braw) in order to get Jambi to the level it is today.
Another huge factor to Jambi's success was the competitive community. Many passionate players reached out and provided feedback. With all the feedback we received, we were able to turn Jambi into a playable, competitive map. A huge milestone was Jambi was played at the NS2 world championship and was streamed in the finals.
Thank you all for continuing to support Jambi. I spent countless of hours creating it, and I am happy that it was not for nothing. I am not an artist by any means. I was never good at drawing, or creating anything visually appealing. Yet, Jambi is the only piece of "art" I ever created, that had any meaning.
best map ns2 imo
The main issue for ne is - why i'll never vote it, is the fps dropping problem of some roomes like the fps sucking tree..
Yeah. I'm working on developing a low lights version of the map which will be shipped with one of the next patches. The most recent patch has some rudimentary baseline work done, and raised my FPS in most areas by 10 to 20 on my 970. Pretty sweet. Regardless, I'll continue to smash it out without losing any of that graphical fidelity.
Zavaro, and unsung hero of maps.
I don't know about unsung, but I'm definitely out there trying to make everyone's NS2 map-experience as smooth as humanly possible.
I don't think he's getting paid. By method of elimination it must be the other two. Both. Don't question how.
I recently released a graybox of a remake of the original Mineshaft, now called Mineshaft2. Check it out, guys. Seems to play alright so far.
BUT
the cause of the drops is very specific as to a certain route you enter the room / certain direction you are looking, there is a potential dirty fix for both rooms though
Makes the room a lot worse for Marines. Originally when it was added it was a lot bigger. I think we can still shrink it further.
Heat xfer and geothermal have now got better occlusion geo, so people should get a bit more fps there also
Hi guys,
I just wanted to share my input about all things custom map related and map balance related. If you don't already know, @Rusty and myself have created a few custom maps, done a lot of dmd versions of the vanilla maps, and revived some NS1 maps.
DMD versions of Vanilla maps
Our intentions of these maps are to give variety to the maps we already know and love. Playing ns2_veil, ns2_refinery, etc. can get kinda boring after awhile. So we wanted to spice things up a bit. We have tried moving entities, changing start locations, adding rooms, and using the Classic Entities Mod (buttons, weldables, breakables, elevators), which has been fun but as many of you know, that mod still needs work (example: non-player entities like whips can move through doors).
NS1 Maps
The ns1 map you are thinking of that has the elevators, buttons, and weldables is ns2_dmd_origin, a remaster of ns_origin. We have received a lot of positive feedback about this map, even making many of the veterans emotional because it brings back so much nostalgia of the good-ol-days in NS1. The map is functional and server ready, but visually it's still very retro looking. The visual portion (props, cinematics, lighting) takes much more time than the layout. We are gradually making additions to the map, but it is functional and we highly recommend playing a few matches. We have a few other NS1 maps in production, but they are on the back burner as we have way too much on our plate right now.
If you don't already know, maps like veil, caged and eclipse were originally NS1 maps. Notice that they only have 4 tech points? (1 marine start and 3 hive locations)
Custom Maps
We have released a lot of custom maps over the years. We get the same feedback every time: "this is a great idea", "it's not balanced", "this map sucks", "i love this map", "this needs to be here", "that needs to be there". Everybody wants to be a critic. Fair enough. Many people have valid input because they want to see the custom map become a fun and balanced map that everyone wants to play. But you get a lot of haters too. They tend to complain about the map, but they don't contribute any valid input. One thing people don't realize is that most custom maps are created by one or two people who have limited time to work on maps. You have to understand that a map takes hundreds of hours start-to-finish. The official NS2 maps are beautiful because many people worked on them for over 1000 hours. Try to appreciate that there are still people out there in the NS2 community that want to keep the game alive, and they are doing it through new content.
All new maps, custom or official
Keep in mind when a new map is released, only a handful of people know the map. So what tends to happen is you get a lot of players that are very skilled and very concerned about their Elo or hive score but they are getting killed left and right because they don't know the map. So either they take the time to learn the new map and take a small hit on their score, .. or they say "this map sucks" and go back to their cozy map rotation of veil-summit-tram-mineshaft.
Congrats to @Flaterectomy for getting Caged into the official NS2 map roster.
Let's keep NS2 alive by encouraging new content and giving lots of useful feedback.
This is untrue. Look at Kodiak, Derelict and Caged for example. Loki Built both Kodiak and Derelict on his own, and he did them super fast (in comparison to usual cam creation times.) And Flaterectomy built Caged solo, over about 3 years... the only reason i'm correcting you here is because I believe that saying "official NS2 maps are beautiful because many people worked on them for over 1000 hours." drastically undervalues the time and effort put into certain official maps, by certain mappers and its important to remember the time and dedication they did put into them.
Other than that I agree with pretty much everything you said.
Damn...
now i miss rockdown.. T.T