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I got insperation for this map after looking at the pacman map. The idea is that overwatch is playing tetris, trying to kill the rebels who are on the blocks. rows do not clear when they are full, and if the rebels get to the top, then they can hack a consol (3 secs required) to win (this is so they don't win by a physics glich or something like that).

So this is kind of like zm_actualtetris from Zombie Master except on a smaller scale?

I like this idea. The GM spawns blocks in order to kill the rebels but this also allows the rebels to climb higher and higher until they reach the top.

This made me think of an interesting addition to OW. Currently I have only seen the overwatch view a map via a birds eye view, but is it possible to have him set on a different axis? where instead of moving around over the map he is adjacent to it, seeing everything from the side.

Like in a map where the rebels must reach the top of a skyscraper, the OW can see them from the front(or side), and not the top.

Not sure if that is possible considering the Gm's movement is locked to x and y, he cannot move on the z axis. The view can change through how the player places the gm entity but the Gm will not be able to move up and down.

You could try and set it up at a far enough back position maybe so they can see the whole map.

- Jason

Jgoodroad, on 08 February 2011 - 11:09 PM, said:

Yup. I thought about this too.

Generalvivi, on 08 February 2011 - 11:22 PM, said:

... just like a real game a of tetris! thats what I thought. and what happens when the gm touches a brush? does it stop him? does the game crash?

This sort of map would be hard, but not time consuming. I could certainly make this in a couple days if I get bored. I'm not sure it's balanced, though. What would happen if the blocks reach the top but the rebels are trapped? I'm thinking more along the lines of keeping the row clearing, but allowing rebels to crowbar apart individual squares if they want (but not allowing them to tunnel up, only left, right, and down).

The rebels should be able to destroy any tetris blocks they wish to.

The only technical difficulty here is that the GM movement is restricted to the XY plane regardless of the GM orientation.

The simplest solution would be to make movement relative the the GM "up" vector to remove the XY plane restriction, however it's not that simple. If the GM was pitched a full 90 degrees towards the ground, the up vector would always be parallel to the XY plane. However, that isn't the case. The GM is usually pitched 80 degrees to give a better depth view. Not to bore anyone with the math, but at 80 degrees the "Up" vector would not be parallel to the XY plane, and would result in the GM moving along the Z axis as he moved forward and backwards. Obviously that's no good.

To further complicate matters, if you wanted a GM view looking at rebels moving up a building, you WOULD want a perfectly perpendicular view point with no offset. In this case, moving along the up vector would work.

So the question is, how do you account for both situations. I suppose we could maybe add fields to the GM spawning entity to allow the mapper to specify the movement vectors.

In any case, yeah this is doable if there is enough reason to do so.

In addition to the above, making changes to the GM's view angle could reintroduce the very annoying view angle bug that's been insanely difficult to track down and eliminate.

In any event, we'd need to figure out if spending time and resources into developing this feature is more of a priority than working on others.

Let me know what you all think.


Edit: On a personal note, I like the idea, just not sure if it's really worth the effort right now when there are many other things we could be working on.

Edit #2: Namen and I have been discussing it a bit more, it might be worth an attempt, but I'd like to hear your feedback first.

well, I personally can wait for this to be implimented, however it's something you would want to add fairly soon, so as to have the largest effect, I would suggest working on it after the next update (when ever that may be)

I'd be happy with any sort of GM movement constraints. The best usefulness/coding difficulty ratio I can think of would be allowing teleports to work on the GM.

Another idea is to make it top on, with the blocks floating in toxic waste. But then comes the question, how does the overwatch kill the rebels?

Trainzack, on 13 February 2011 - 09:23 PM, said:

OR...

The GM could simply play from above and not see the rebels. This would give the rounds much more guess work and not spell certain death for the rebels as they're less likely crushed by tetris blocks.

WAXT, on 13 February 2011 - 10:09 PM, said:

That sounds like the best idea for this.