. To be honest, this is the sort of thing mods are made for. Games like Garry's Mod and Obsidian Conflict would not exist without ridiculous minigames and yours sounds pretty damn fun.
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#61
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Barnacle
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Posted 08 December 2010 - 04:04 PM
Nice! A minigame . To be honest, this is the sort of thing mods are made for. Games like Garry's Mod and Obsidian Conflict would not exist without ridiculous minigames and yours sounds pretty damn fun.
. To be honest, this is the sort of thing mods are made for. Games like Garry's Mod and Obsidian Conflict would not exist without ridiculous minigames and yours sounds pretty damn fun.
#62
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Posted 08 December 2010 - 04:10 PM
Auxor, on 08 December 2010 - 04:04 PM, said:
Nice! A minigame . To be honest, this is the sort of thing mods are made for. Games like Garry's Mod and Obsidian Conflict would not exist without ridiculous minigames and yours sounds pretty damn fun.
. To be honest, this is the sort of thing mods are made for. Games like Garry's Mod and Obsidian Conflict would not exist without ridiculous minigames and yours sounds pretty damn fun.Honestly it's going to require some tweaking. I am -probably- going out of town tomorrow and will have to submit my map this evening so I won't be able to tweak the mini game very much, but I have done a little bit of testing with it and made changes to improve the level of fun. It gets pretty crazy in the last 60 seconds with the GM launching mines at you from every which way, and you trying to get rid of them before they can kill you.
I also forgot to mention that the minigame does not actually stop the normal objective play. As it activates on only one alive player if you try to play the map solo you'll get teleported, but it does not actually interrupt any of the logic for the normal play so you can just noclip back and play the map as normal. Just figured I'd point that out for people that end up checking out the map by themselves at some point.
#63
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CC Contributor for OW
Posted 08 December 2010 - 11:35 PM
Here's the last screenshots I'll be putting up. Obviously the doors never got textured. Have yet to find any textures I like for them.
This is the companion cube for the map.
This is the companion cube for the map.
#65
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Posted 09 December 2010 - 02:04 AM
Those faces on the cubes are awesome!
#67
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Posted 11 December 2010 - 08:01 AM
Say what you like but personally, i think these faces are better.
#68
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Posted 21 January 2011 - 12:06 AM
So here's the feedback from the contest. I'm gonna go through and highlight some things and comment on the (I'll limit myself to commenting on an item like Textures or lack of detail props once), further feedback afterwards would be appreciated.
{G} = I like the idea of this map - having to collect items from around the map to take them to a specific location - but the layout is too simple, the OW can't do anything to stop the Rebels, and the inclusion of Antlions seems really random and out of place.
//This I don't really understand. I personally felt like the GM had a number of options as to when and where to spawn his units. In the three halls leading to the big rooms I felt like the GM had the option of constantly assaulting the players as they run through, holding antlions back and sending them in while the players waited on the objective, swarming later as the players ran through the area, or just bringing them from the rear during a different objective.
//This was in part because in the process of messing around as I do I stumbled upon the EnableGMControl input for NPCs and I felt it would bring something unique to the map. I'm not sure why they feel out of place, I felt that I added a sufficient back story as to why they were there. It may not make sense in terms of the Half Life universe, but I don't know anything (nor do I care for that matter) about Half Life canon.
{Z} = Make each part of the map unique instead of simply copying each section. It would really help to improve replayability.
{G} = A more open feel to the play due to back tracking and randomised locations was enjoyable though lost a bit of it's appeal in that respect from the overly large, empty rooms and fairly long walks. Large, fast moving, melee units encouraged Rebels to stay on their toes and work close with each other which was amplified by the escort objective.
//I tend to agree with this, but I like the longer stuff to lengthen the map and provide more strategy options. I'm hoping that by adding more detail (something I am admittedly pretty bad at) it will alleviate some of this feeling.
{Z} = While the custom textures with bumpmaps were certainly nice, the choice of textures weren't too fitting to the environment. More detail would be required to justify the extremely large rooms. Adjustments to the cube to make it not so close to the player carrying it would also be nice to avoid the cube going through your face due to lag.
//Totally agree. I'm glad you caught the bump maps though. I had originally wanted to use Portal textures as they are perfect for the map, but was unable to use them in the contest. This left me floundering about trying to find textures as I really dislike HL2 textures. I honestly have a terrible eye for this sort of thing, and it's something I really need help with. It's not on my mind when I play a map, I rarely even notice. I don't even notice this stuff as I'm walking about in real life. Aesthetics are just not something I'm wired for, though I've been trying to change that. As far I'm concerned dev textures are fine on maps if they are fun to play xD.
//I personally had mixed feelings about this. I kind of liked that it obscured the player view while carrying the cube, and in early versions you were able to just crowbar the cube as a crude alternative. So you had the option of carrying the cube and having vision obscured, but having better control, or you could crowbar the cube about which was difficult to control, but left you able to see more. At some point I fubared something and made people unable to crowbar the cube around. Really not sure what I'll do about this. I could make the cube, and subsequently all the spots for the cube, smaller. Will just have to kick around ideas and see what the end result is. If you have any further suggestions about it I'd love to hear them.
{G} = Lots of antlions and such are cool and a lab setting is refreshing. Slighty confusing as what to do at first. Too much areas that doesn't contain much (long corridors and empty spaces).
{Z} =
//Do you have any suggestions to improve this? I was kind of torn. On the one hand, yes it is kind of confusing during the first playthrough. On the other hand I really want it to be a "search for which room it is" deal. Adding an indicator for which room it is takes away from that, and I was worried that adding an indicator to each room would be more confusing than a lack of indicators.
{G} = really crazy and hectic, the map was setup in a sandbox fashion which didn't have any great direction to help guide people. Lots of random events / random locations.
{Z} = lighting pass over the whole map, try and define your areas a bit more. Replace the cheap looking data cube things. The data cubes needed to be smaller so players could see where they were going. Don't let so many boss enemies be spawned in rapid succession.
//Originally I only allowed one guard to be spawned, but it was brought to my attention that with more people it would be way to easy with just one guard. I may just force a cooldown on them both when one is triggered. I wasn't able to test with more than 3 or 4 people so balance beyond that player amount was sketchy at best. Honestly adding a linked cooldown of some type was probably something I should have thought of. I tried my best to guess as to the balance with a full server, but that was all I could really do was guess. Hopefully going forward I'll be able to get more adequate testing done and have the map overall be more balanced.
{G} = So labs is a cool map and has potential. But it is again way too easy for the overwatch. When i played as overwatch, I just had to ask myself in which room i want to kill the rebels. Should I kill them with hundreds of antlions or should I just surround them with the many metrocops in the first room? Nevertheless, there a lot of cool ideas in the map: the minigame, the antlions, the cube. When we played as a rebel team, our team splitted up. I did some good teamplay with my mate for the first objective to reduce the time to find the lab worker. But when we came back rest of our team was dead. So there are some nice strategies but no enough possibilities with the environment.
{Z} = I think there is only one major issue: the balance! The overwatch can really play with rebels. Minor issues: fix the spawn doors at the manufacturing area, fix the 10-room-objective (you can see the cube on the minimap as rebel), make the map smaller but with more props/obstacles.
{G} = I am not sure what to make of labs. I remember playing it by myself I said this map sucked but when I played it with a group of friends I discovered the hidden beauty of the map. The more I played it the more I realized I loved controlling antlions in the area of that connects the three labs. THAT WAS SO AWESOME. I also appreciate the NPC and the communication aspect of that, very innovative. Overall I wished the map looked more in line with the half life 2 universe and actually looked like a combine labatory then anything else.
//Awesome to hear! I'm glad you appreciated that. I really wanted to do a custom voice over instead of text, but none of my friends wanted to step up and I suffer (as most people seem to) from thinking my own voice sounds stupid lol.
{Z} = Fix the visuals to match the half life 2 setting, only suggestion at the moment. although I do like the faces on the cube.
//Not ever going to happen if I have a say in the matter. I don't like the Half Life textures, and the map was never intended to be in the Half Life universe.
{G} = One of the best maps in the mappack...I like the custom textures, music, and the new units for the OW( rollermines, antlions and antlion guard). I like the minigame, but it is too OP, when I can release 2 antlion guards..
{Z} = Suggestions to improve the level? ...Nothing can change, maybe more players in the minigame( something a voting what can we playing)
//It's really cool to hear that people enjoyed the mini game. Credit goes to Kilrageous for mentioning the idea of a mini game to solve the problem of 1v1 in an OW map while we were talking one day. This was actually something I mentioned to my friends that could become a problem. Specifically that people could enjoy the mini game more than the actual map. If anything for this map, I don't think I'd allow more people into the mini game. I've already setup a vote system for another map I'm working on, but just don't feel it has a place in this map. It's there to mainly to alleviate the fact that balance is so difficult for 1v1. What I may just do is expand the mini game and turn it into it's own map. I'd also like to mention that due to a last minute change and a mistake on my part the mini game is much easier than I intended. I don't see it noted anywhere, but the cooldowns never get reduced properly due to failing to disable a logic_relay.
{G} = This brought new light to the game with a couple really nice features. At the begining of the map if there is only one resistance present you will enter a fun minigame with rollermines. But with the map itself you could see very well wich seems small but alot of the othermaps were pitchblack. Layout wise it was great it kept you going in a new direction (out of a possible 3) and also made your team have to decide stay together or split up and find the labworker/cube. Its Farly well balanced seeing has the first time we played it we lost almost every time, but when we came back we started to win alot more frequently. Very Few glitches with movment in the last section of the map concering spawn points.
{Z} = Fix some of the movment bugs, and maybe have the lights in the machien room turn on when the machien starts.
{G} = A fun map. The minigame idea is a good one.
{Z} = Make the door openable in the "last cube room".
//Could you elaborate more on what exactly you mean by this? The big door that goes into the last area, or the doors that come out of the spawns? Unfortunately I never encountered the reported bug with the doors to the spawns during testing, but at this point I believe I have fixed that problem.
{G} = This map had a really fun and unique mini game feature for when there were only two players. It gives you something enjoyable to do if you are waiting around for more people. The layout was interesting (swastika much?) and presented you with some different choices in strategy for both sides. The custom textures were nice, but seemed out of place in some places. I really liked the bump maps. There were some problems with moving units on the second level in the last area, this hurt the balance a little bit, but overall it was pretty well balanced. The custom sounds, as well as the background ambience were pretty nice.
//I did not notice this at all until somebody else pointed it out. To add a little more comedy to this fact, I made a basic layout for another map I'm working on and it was quickly pointed out to me that I once again inadvertently created an almost swastika.
{Z} = Find some textures that fit the lab setting a little better, and fix the units moving on the second floor.
So just want to say first off thanks for all the good feedback, and looking forward to hearing any follow up comments. I'm open to pretty much any suggestions that are not related to making the map fit into the Half Life world. I've never played Half Life, and have no intentions of doing so. As a result I don't really care that much about the Half Life canon and none of my maps will be based (intentionally) in the Half Life world.
If somebody wants to offer their services in helping to texture the map I'm certainly open to that, adding detail as well. I was initially wanting to make this map a collaboration with somebody else working on the texture and detail aspects as I recognize I suck at this, but it just did not work out. I've been trying to develop an eye for this sort of thing, but my brain just does not work that way. The way the texturing pretty much went was I found the texture I used in some of the hallways, found it to be acceptable, and just tried to add on to the sort of "blue" theme of that.
As far as bug fixes go I believe I've already fixed the problems with moving units on the second level by duplicating the platforms and making them nodraw. This should hopefully allow the GM to be able to see through these with no problem, but give the nodes something to fall onto. I also believe I've fixed the glitchy doors by changing the doors to be a toggle, and having the trigger_multiple there extend out into the hallways with an output to close to the doors OnEndTouchAll. I'll definitely be looking into the cube showing up in the ten rooms on the minimap, I'm pretty sure I can easily fix this problem.
As far as the sort of "what do I do for the first objective" for first time players I'm really not sure what to do. I don't like the idea of putting an indicator for the players to know which room it is, as it's intended to be something that presents the players with options. Do we split up? Do we stick together, but take longer? So then do I put an indicator in each room? I worry that it would end up being more confusing with players thinking they have to go to each room. I was hoping that the game text I used that said "find the lab worker in one of the three labs" in conjunction with the three possible paths from the first objective indicator would be enough.
So again, thanks for the feedback and I look forward to getting more and getting the map completed
{G} = I like the idea of this map - having to collect items from around the map to take them to a specific location - but the layout is too simple, the OW can't do anything to stop the Rebels, and the inclusion of Antlions seems really random and out of place.
//This I don't really understand. I personally felt like the GM had a number of options as to when and where to spawn his units. In the three halls leading to the big rooms I felt like the GM had the option of constantly assaulting the players as they run through, holding antlions back and sending them in while the players waited on the objective, swarming later as the players ran through the area, or just bringing them from the rear during a different objective.
//This was in part because in the process of messing around as I do I stumbled upon the EnableGMControl input for NPCs and I felt it would bring something unique to the map. I'm not sure why they feel out of place, I felt that I added a sufficient back story as to why they were there. It may not make sense in terms of the Half Life universe, but I don't know anything (nor do I care for that matter) about Half Life canon.
{Z} = Make each part of the map unique instead of simply copying each section. It would really help to improve replayability.
{G} = A more open feel to the play due to back tracking and randomised locations was enjoyable though lost a bit of it's appeal in that respect from the overly large, empty rooms and fairly long walks. Large, fast moving, melee units encouraged Rebels to stay on their toes and work close with each other which was amplified by the escort objective.
//I tend to agree with this, but I like the longer stuff to lengthen the map and provide more strategy options. I'm hoping that by adding more detail (something I am admittedly pretty bad at) it will alleviate some of this feeling.
{Z} = While the custom textures with bumpmaps were certainly nice, the choice of textures weren't too fitting to the environment. More detail would be required to justify the extremely large rooms. Adjustments to the cube to make it not so close to the player carrying it would also be nice to avoid the cube going through your face due to lag.
//Totally agree. I'm glad you caught the bump maps though
. I had originally wanted to use Portal textures as they are perfect for the map, but was unable to use them in the contest. This left me floundering about trying to find textures as I really dislike HL2 textures. I honestly have a terrible eye for this sort of thing, and it's something I really need help with. It's not on my mind when I play a map, I rarely even notice. I don't even notice this stuff as I'm walking about in real life. Aesthetics are just not something I'm wired for, though I've been trying to change that. As far I'm concerned dev textures are fine on maps if they are fun to play xD.//I personally had mixed feelings about this. I kind of liked that it obscured the player view while carrying the cube, and in early versions you were able to just crowbar the cube as a crude alternative. So you had the option of carrying the cube and having vision obscured, but having better control, or you could crowbar the cube about which was difficult to control, but left you able to see more. At some point I fubared something and made people unable to crowbar the cube around. Really not sure what I'll do about this. I could make the cube, and subsequently all the spots for the cube, smaller. Will just have to kick around ideas and see what the end result is. If you have any further suggestions about it I'd love to hear them.
{G} = Lots of antlions and such are cool and a lab setting is refreshing. Slighty confusing as what to do at first. Too much areas that doesn't contain much (long corridors and empty spaces).
{Z} =
//Do you have any suggestions to improve this? I was kind of torn. On the one hand, yes it is kind of confusing during the first playthrough. On the other hand I really want it to be a "search for which room it is" deal. Adding an indicator for which room it is takes away from that, and I was worried that adding an indicator to each room would be more confusing than a lack of indicators.
{G} = really crazy and hectic, the map was setup in a sandbox fashion which didn't have any great direction to help guide people. Lots of random events / random locations.
{Z} = lighting pass over the whole map, try and define your areas a bit more. Replace the cheap looking data cube things. The data cubes needed to be smaller so players could see where they were going. Don't let so many boss enemies be spawned in rapid succession.
//Originally I only allowed one guard to be spawned, but it was brought to my attention that with more people it would be way to easy with just one guard. I may just force a cooldown on them both when one is triggered. I wasn't able to test with more than 3 or 4 people so balance beyond that player amount was sketchy at best. Honestly adding a linked cooldown of some type was probably something I should have thought of. I tried my best to guess as to the balance with a full server, but that was all I could really do was guess. Hopefully going forward I'll be able to get more adequate testing done and have the map overall be more balanced.
{G} = So labs is a cool map and has potential. But it is again way too easy for the overwatch. When i played as overwatch, I just had to ask myself in which room i want to kill the rebels. Should I kill them with hundreds of antlions or should I just surround them with the many metrocops in the first room? Nevertheless, there a lot of cool ideas in the map: the minigame, the antlions, the cube. When we played as a rebel team, our team splitted up. I did some good teamplay with my mate for the first objective to reduce the time to find the lab worker. But when we came back rest of our team was dead. So there are some nice strategies but no enough possibilities with the environment.
{Z} = I think there is only one major issue: the balance! The overwatch can really play with rebels. Minor issues: fix the spawn doors at the manufacturing area, fix the 10-room-objective (you can see the cube on the minimap as rebel), make the map smaller but with more props/obstacles.
{G} = I am not sure what to make of labs. I remember playing it by myself I said this map sucked but when I played it with a group of friends I discovered the hidden beauty of the map. The more I played it the more I realized I loved controlling antlions in the area of that connects the three labs. THAT WAS SO AWESOME. I also appreciate the NPC and the communication aspect of that, very innovative. Overall I wished the map looked more in line with the half life 2 universe and actually looked like a combine labatory then anything else.
//Awesome to hear! I'm glad you appreciated that. I really wanted to do a custom voice over instead of text, but none of my friends wanted to step up and I suffer (as most people seem to) from thinking my own voice sounds stupid lol.
{Z} = Fix the visuals to match the half life 2 setting, only suggestion at the moment. although I do like the faces on the cube.
//Not ever going to happen if I have a say in the matter. I don't like the Half Life textures, and the map was never intended to be in the Half Life universe.
{G} = One of the best maps in the mappack...I like the custom textures, music, and the new units for the OW( rollermines, antlions and antlion guard). I like the minigame, but it is too OP, when I can release 2 antlion guards..
{Z} = Suggestions to improve the level? ...Nothing can change, maybe more players in the minigame( something a voting what can we playing)
//It's really cool to hear that people enjoyed the mini game. Credit goes to Kilrageous for mentioning the idea of a mini game to solve the problem of 1v1 in an OW map while we were talking one day. This was actually something I mentioned to my friends that could become a problem. Specifically that people could enjoy the mini game more than the actual map. If anything for this map, I don't think I'd allow more people into the mini game. I've already setup a vote system for another map I'm working on, but just don't feel it has a place in this map. It's there to mainly to alleviate the fact that balance is so difficult for 1v1. What I may just do is expand the mini game and turn it into it's own map. I'd also like to mention that due to a last minute change and a mistake on my part the mini game is much easier than I intended. I don't see it noted anywhere, but the cooldowns never get reduced properly due to failing to disable a logic_relay.
{G} = This brought new light to the game with a couple really nice features. At the begining of the map if there is only one resistance present you will enter a fun minigame with rollermines. But with the map itself you could see very well wich seems small but alot of the othermaps were pitchblack. Layout wise it was great it kept you going in a new direction (out of a possible 3) and also made your team have to decide stay together or split up and find the labworker/cube. Its Farly well balanced seeing has the first time we played it we lost almost every time, but when we came back we started to win alot more frequently. Very Few glitches with movment in the last section of the map concering spawn points.
{Z} = Fix some of the movment bugs, and maybe have the lights in the machien room turn on when the machien starts.
{G} = A fun map. The minigame idea is a good one.
{Z} = Make the door openable in the "last cube room".
//Could you elaborate more on what exactly you mean by this? The big door that goes into the last area, or the doors that come out of the spawns? Unfortunately I never encountered the reported bug with the doors to the spawns during testing, but at this point I believe I have fixed that problem.
{G} = This map had a really fun and unique mini game feature for when there were only two players. It gives you something enjoyable to do if you are waiting around for more people. The layout was interesting (swastika much?) and presented you with some different choices in strategy for both sides. The custom textures were nice, but seemed out of place in some places. I really liked the bump maps. There were some problems with moving units on the second level in the last area, this hurt the balance a little bit, but overall it was pretty well balanced. The custom sounds, as well as the background ambience were pretty nice.
//I did not notice this at all until somebody else pointed it out. To add a little more comedy to this fact, I made a basic layout for another map I'm working on and it was quickly pointed out to me that I once again inadvertently created an almost swastika.
{Z} = Find some textures that fit the lab setting a little better, and fix the units moving on the second floor.
So just want to say first off thanks for all the good feedback, and looking forward to hearing any follow up comments. I'm open to pretty much any suggestions that are not related to making the map fit into the Half Life world. I've never played Half Life, and have no intentions of doing so. As a result I don't really care that much about the Half Life canon and none of my maps will be based (intentionally) in the Half Life world.
If somebody wants to offer their services in helping to texture the map I'm certainly open to that, adding detail as well. I was initially wanting to make this map a collaboration with somebody else working on the texture and detail aspects as I recognize I suck at this, but it just did not work out. I've been trying to develop an eye for this sort of thing, but my brain just does not work that way. The way the texturing pretty much went was I found the texture I used in some of the hallways, found it to be acceptable, and just tried to add on to the sort of "blue" theme of that.
As far as bug fixes go I believe I've already fixed the problems with moving units on the second level by duplicating the platforms and making them nodraw. This should hopefully allow the GM to be able to see through these with no problem, but give the nodes something to fall onto. I also believe I've fixed the glitchy doors by changing the doors to be a toggle, and having the trigger_multiple there extend out into the hallways with an output to close to the doors OnEndTouchAll. I'll definitely be looking into the cube showing up in the ten rooms on the minimap, I'm pretty sure I can easily fix this problem.
As far as the sort of "what do I do for the first objective" for first time players I'm really not sure what to do. I don't like the idea of putting an indicator for the players to know which room it is, as it's intended to be something that presents the players with options. Do we split up? Do we stick together, but take longer? So then do I put an indicator in each room? I worry that it would end up being more confusing with players thinking they have to go to each room. I was hoping that the game text I used that said "find the lab worker in one of the three labs" in conjunction with the three possible paths from the first objective indicator would be enough.
So again, thanks for the feedback and I look forward to getting more and getting the map completed
#69
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CC Contributor for OW
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Posted 21 January 2011 - 12:18 AM
No offense Brad, but they are right. On the technical side, the map was very good, but on the fun factor and replayability, it was a bit boring 
#70
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CC Contributor for OW
Posted 23 March 2011 - 09:32 AM
Here's what will probably be the last update to labs. Due to a schedule that has become more demanding upon my time I am unable to do keep up with the requirements Andy has for releasing my map in the actual Overwatch build.
When I playtested this myself all of the bugs were resolved. Have not actually had the time or ability to playtest with other people though. Everything should be included that you need to play the map via pakrat. If you find any problems within 24-48 hours from this post feel free to post here and I'll take a look and see what I can do to fix them when I have time. If it's any time after that I probably won't be checking the thread so send an email to braddollarmaps@gmail.com and I will see what I can do.
If you are struck by a desire to actually complete the map, send me an email at the aforementioned address and we can discuss it further. While I have no plan to do any more work on the map, I'll probably keep the vmf, and custom assets around for a while.
http://dl.dropbox.co...owc_labs_b1.bsp
When I playtested this myself all of the bugs were resolved. Have not actually had the time or ability to playtest with other people though. Everything should be included that you need to play the map via pakrat. If you find any problems within 24-48 hours from this post feel free to post here and I'll take a look and see what I can do to fix them when I have time. If it's any time after that I probably won't be checking the thread so send an email to braddollarmaps@gmail.com and I will see what I can do.
If you are struck by a desire to actually complete the map, send me an email at the aforementioned address and we can discuss it further. While I have no plan to do any more work on the map, I'll probably keep the vmf, and custom assets around for a while.
http://dl.dropbox.co...owc_labs_b1.bsp
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