Station 15 Final Release 1

[your face]

DAAAAAAARN!!!  i even uploaded it to our domain and my server and i was about to test it... 

[n.o.s.brain]

incase anyone couldnt get the pk3 to work, (leik meh, lol) i repacked it for ya so u wont hav ta reupload: http://imn2rc.com/base/map-station15-beta1.pk3
it took meh 5 mins to upload it.... 

[Taiyo.uk]

Good job, the iris doors are t3h pwn.

* Taiyo.uk bakes supertanker a cookie.

[TRaK]

Very nice. I want to know how to make some iris doors

Only significant bug I could find is that I get a sound not found error when the lift stops. Some hallways could use a little more detail and a couple texture cut-offs look a bit strage, but aside from that this map is really cool

[your face]

ya, elevator, and the florescent light ship... xD

but AWESOME map altogether!  if its all fixed and detailed more, to me, i think it would be a good map for trem 1.2. 

[HamStar]

http://thorn.soliter.org/HamStar/shot0108.jpg <- Bottom of the window
http://thorn.soliter.org/HamStar/shot0109.jpg <- Top of the window
http://thorn.soliter.org/HamStar/shot0110.jpg <- the area

Found it when I thought the windows looked a bit funny.

[your face]

oh, so it be the skybox like billsky!

[Supertanker]

Yeah, I noticed that after I released beta1. The problem is I caulked everything on the map and then retextured all the faces from the inside afterwards. I missed the windowframes in those two windows. That's going to be fixed for beta2

More screenshots! The central hallway ramp is dressed up a bit.

http://mercenariesguild.net/supertanker/station15/central_hall.jpg

And random scenery. These must be some TOUGH boxes.
http://mercenariesguild.net/supertanker/station15/blastdoor.jpg

I might make this door controlable...that would be a fun gameplay alternative, because I'm also adding a little warren of tunnels for small aliens and humans. (read: bigger than gamma_core's vents)

[Survivor]

A bug was encountered where the alien team was able to 'lock' one of the iris doors with a buildable. I don't know the exacts since I was on the human team but you should ask lesbroot or someone else from [hun] about the details.

[Supertanker]

Well, I guess this is what god made nobuild for-covering stubborn iris doors. I've locked a few doors myself...*whistles innocently*

It'll be another week or two before I finish the service tunnels and decide whether to toggle the blast door or not.

[Survivor]

Think you'd need to have a look on how it affects the flow. The iris door are a right bugger to the aliens since they must close completely before opening and are hard for the tyrs and goons to get through. I kinda like it although this does mean there's 2 very good nondestroyable, passable, barriers for the humans defence.

[Odin]

supertanker: The iris door does not actually consist of func_doors, right? If it does, try enabling crusher mode.

[ShadowNinjaDudeMan]

func revolving doors?

Either that or freakish trains.

[Supertanker]

Update!

Introducing the new, improved Blast Door!^Tm

It opens! It closes!
It makes a big clunk and sounds an alarm!
It squishes and squashes both humans and aliens alike!

YOU TOO can have this AMAZING Blast Door!^Tm for only 128 easy payments of 4096 credits! And if you call in the next 23.7 milliseconds, we'll give you a second Blast Door!^Tm FREE! If you don't like our Blast Door!^Tm, just return it within 30 days with our FULL MONEY BACK GUARENTEE! And keep the second Blast Door!^Tm FREE as our gift to you!

http://mercenariesguild.net/supertanker/station15/blast_door_open.jpg
http://mercenariesguild.net/supertanker/station15/blast_door_closing.jpg
http://mercenariesguild.net/supertanker/station15/blast_door_closed.jpg


Man, I have too much free time.
This is supposed to be a little advantage to the aliens, because it will force the humans to either come into their base from the 'furnace room' or to take the longer access tunnels (Which I'm still working on). And it just looks cool (Halo 1 Pillar of Autumn, anyone?)
It will be controlled from a central room in the access tunnels. It will probably have a short global alarm sound (That does NOT loop in case one of the triggers malfunctions, so players don't have to hear it the entire game) and a monitor to view it from the control area.

Oh hell, why don't I just call the map 'pulse 2' while I'm at it?
The only problem is I can't decide weather to make it toggleable (IE, once every 1 or 2 minutes either team can press a button to open/close it) or to have it be a timed event (A team presses the switch to make it close, it stays closed for 4 minutes and then opens, and cannot be toggled for another minute or two).

Would it be wise to put the door control room in the access tunnels because of the short, twisty nature of the tunnels? Or should I have two switches?

Survivor: Yes, I actually kind of had this in mind to make the base more 'rant-rush proof. I don't know exactly how it affects gameplay but I *can* speed them up a bit.

Odin: Crusher? What difference would it make? It just means that anything that gets in between them dies. And yes, they are func_door_rotatings.

[Odin]

Yea, it would destroy the structures inside the door.

[your face]

awesome!  i just found out how fun it is to hovel glitch this map (thanks to X-20's help...)!!  and when you're in space, you can see "SUPERTANKER" in huge, glowing letters.  pretty nice!  (ill post screenshots later)

[Supertanker]

Yeah, I was signing my map just for fun...I signed it in 2 other locations too, although they're not in beta1


Yay, let's confuse the hell out of everyone by having two rooms with big vents in them!

Vent room 1 ("Vent room")
http://mercenariesguild.net/supertanker/station15/ventroom.jpg

Vent room 2 ("Fan room", fan is in big-ass vent to the very left).
http://mercenariesguild.net/supertanker/station15/fanroom.jpg

So, anyone else have any suggestions from Beta1?

I've decided to put the control room for the blast door in the middle of the map, which is actually a little closer to the aliens than humans. So we'll see how Beta2 works with gameplay.

[TRaK]

One other minor glitch I noticed is that when you walk on the red pipes, it makes the metalsteps sound, which kind of sounds out of place and illogical on a pipe. Aside from that, fix the Iris doors and I'm a happy camper

[Taiyo.uk]

They're not metal pipes? 

[your face]

WOODEN PIPES FTW! xD

btw, supertanker, dont "fix" the hovel glitch.  it makes it more fun 

[X-20]

...how fun it is to HOVEL GLITCH HAX AIMHAX WALLHAX HAXHAX GRANGER HAX (thanks to X-20's help...)

lol your welcome :>

[tuple]

I realize you are making a lot of changes to the map, so take what I have to say with a grain of salt

In the released version, the alien base is pretty weak, and difficult to defend.  Not such a bad thing, but I've found no good places to move the alien base to.  Basically, if the humans cause a lot of damage, your chances at egg spamming or realistically rebuilding before they return is very small.  Basically, combined with the iris doors and the hallways leading up to them, which leave no/little room for cover while the doors open, it makes assaults nearly impossible, while the humans can just get s2 and take out almost half the alien base from one side.

Again, I'm nitpicking more than anything in that you seem to have made lots of changes.


Like the map though, its fun

[Supertanker]

Yeah, I realized that after I released the beta Knowing me, I'll probably re-design the alien base from scratch.

There's going to be lots of service tunnels, small rooms, niches, etc like the fan room and vent room. Lots of nice little areas for the aliens to build. Also, there's that (closeable) blast door that can be toggled every 4 minutes that forces humans to take the tunnels.
Speaking of the vent room, I finished the lower area of it (down below that pipe): http://mercenariesguild.net/supertanker/station15/lower_nexus.jpg
And the 'fan room' actually has a fan, now: http://mercenariesguild.net/supertanker/station15/fanroom2.jpg
Hmm...the upper vent room and the lower vent nexus are linked by a hole that large pipe goes through. Should I make the hole smaller (dretch sized) or maybe even seal it off to make a viable alien base location?


I might add a little trigger_push just for effect at the fan room.

[Supertanker]

Might as well re-do the human base while I'm at it.

Hmmm, I just learned that the textures I used for the map are only compatible with the non-commercial CC license. This would prevent the map from being redistributed easilly with Tremulous 1.2 or a map pack.

Should I re-texture my entire map (again) or should I just release under the NC license when I'm done and work on something else?
Also, what are good CC compatible texture packs for high-tech/sci-fi maps?

[Supertanker]

This is truely the Voodoo Map 

So I'm working on my map, happily detailing away. I cntrl-m all my detail brushes, compile, go to run trem....and it dies. WTF??!! I start it again, with the console this time, and I get a safe_malloc error.

Okay, fine, I thought. So I up the gridsize 1.5x, I set the lightgrid texture, I make sure I've detailed as much as I can. Then I save my map, and while it's saving I get: "Assertion failure: FaceTexDef_exportTokens: bad texDef"

Hmm, I've encountered that error before on a silly level I was working on and it seemed harmless. Okay, I'll just keep working on my map then.

I compile my map after adding lots of fun juicy detail. I notice in the BSP stage it says, "WARNING: Over 90 percent structural map detected. Compile time may be adversely affected."

WTF??

and then, in vis:

"MAX_MAP_VISIBILITY reached"

EVERY SINGLE FREAKING ONE OF MY BRUSHES HAS BEEN TURNED TO STRUCTURAL!
I don't even want to think about how I managed all that.

tl;dr

My map is fux0red and needs a month or two extra of work.

[TRaK]

Did you try looking at your .bak/autosave maps to see if you can retrieve your work? That saved me a couple times when I was working on Eden.

[Supertanker]

First thing I checked

I just went around my map and did a preliminary detailing...and guess what? It didn't save the changes to two of the rooms! WTF is going on?

[Supertanker]

http://mercenariesguild.net/supertanker/station15/owch.jpg
My map should get the "Most messed up map in Tremulous" award.
Need I say more? This is NOT supposed to happen. Usually only a few rooms should be visible at a time.

But, I did manage to get a semi-decent screenshot of my favorite decoration.
http://mercenariesguild.net/supertanker/station15/dockingbay1.jpg

The view from those three tall windows near the human base. Used to just be a big area of space. I'll have screenshots of my crappy fighter later.

[Supertanker]

Well, got the map back to near where it's supposed to be.

I'm going to start making a new alien base. Any suggestions? I have a room with doors roughly in the center at two ends, although I could move the room so that the doors are off-center. One is slightly more to the left than the other.

[E-Mxp]

http://mercenariesguild.net/supertanker/station15/dockingbay1.jpg

WOW!! Looks awesome!!!