FreeGameDev

Hello all,

I announced it a couple of days ago and now I'm finally ready with my new map, called Enyo. It supports DM, CTF, DTF and BB. The map has been tested and reviewed by some friends already, I feel it is in a finished state now. When you run into problems or find an issue, please let me know. All reviews and feedback are welcome.

EDIT 07/05/2013:
v2 released. Download link has been updated. As TheLastProject noticed, I slightly modified the team affinities. BB goals are a little higher now to exclude all possibilities of cheating through walls and to prevent buffing when you're standing on the lowest level right under the goal. There is still a problem with the affinity in gauntlet mode, but I believe this is a bug at the moment of writing and not a matter of configuration of the map as in this version it should be set up correctly. I created a bug ticket for this: http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/redeclipse/ticket/537. The volume of the particle sound at the pushers has been raised a little too.

EDIT 14/05/2013:
v3 released. Download link has been updated. More ambient lighting, sun entity emits a stronger light and added some more colored lighting here and there. Additional texture and new preview image.

EDIT 20/05/2013:
v3.1 released. I only changed a couple of lights to better suit the team colors at the bases.

EDIT 21/06/2013:
v4 released. I added gutters and drainpipes to make the transition from the rooftops to the walls look better. This makes it more difficult to get on top of the roofs as well (to make it harder to get the RL), but it is still possible from some places so movement isn't blocked too much. Upped brightness. 2 texture corrections.

EDIT 27/07/2013:
v5 released. Small but noticeable changes to geometry, textures, clipping and details. Texturecull.

EDIT 04/08/2013:
v5.1 released. Texture changes to some stairs (carpet) and weapon placement changes in center area.

EDIT 23/08/2013:
This map is in SVN now and has seen a couple of more changes since v5.1. The whole size of the map has been changed for better jetpack compatibility and there are some details added here and there. I remove the download link now and would like to ask to use the SVN version instead.

Screenshots:

Layout- For a team-based layout it's quite nice. I appreciate the ease of movement between bases and the walkways.
Nice job with the Deli-style hallways.

The relative size of map is also excellent, it feels sprawling while being easy to move around.

The arches feel kind of constricting in your vertical movement, though. Maybe decrease the amount?

Also, i'm not sure whether allowing people on top of the buildings is a good idea, but we will see.



Texturing- I appreciate the job you have done here; there are nice details, and the banners being used more is great.
But it feels meh. There isn't enough of a contrast between the flat gray and the red/blue to make it pop.

Here's how I see it; when people look at the Map Select screen, it's kind of a contest to grab the player's attention, and make them want to play the map with how cool it looks. When you spice up the visuals here, people will most likely click on it more, and experience the awesome layout.

Canals was excellent because it used a wide variety of textures in appropriate places to give the map a nice semi-industrial atmosphere. You've used only a couple gray industrials here.

So, to fix this, there are a wide variety of ways.
Make the lights brighter, more neon, and turn down the ambient. Along with the lamps, this would create a moody night scene.
Or spice up the geometry; use more pipes like you do in the ceiling, data screens, sparking wires, to give a better atmosphere. its up to you and your imagination



Lighting- Lights are a little sparse for the amount of light they emit; maybe put some on the bottom of the top of the arches?
They are placed well, in logical places, although some are a bit small on the walls.


Overall it's a quite nice close-fighting CTF map (not FFA/TDM) with an exceptional layout, and a nondescript theme that could use some spicing up. 7/10

Glad you liked it Ballistic, thanks for your honest feedback. But some things you mention are by design and won't be changed. I like the dark old semi-gothic look of the buildings. Using neon here would kill the theme and frankly I think we've seen quite a lot maps lately with neon and I want to do something different this time. It's like you would add neon lights in Bloodlust, they would be out of place too. Concerning the texturing, take a look at the texture set used in Deli, Ghost, Ubik, ... You'd be surprised how little different textures are actually used. I tried to bring in some new textures to make this map look different than others and the banners look very nice indeed

About the lighting, I already turned down the sun brightness (yes, there is a sun, so I can't make it too dark) and tried to make a contrast between darker and brighter areas. I experimented with a dark surrounding and no sun but wasn't too fond of it personally, sorry.

Don't worry about moving on top of the buildings, it's RE after all, movement is everything! This freedom to impulse anywhere you want to go makes the game so good

I've tried this map a bit, and navigation-wise, it is great. There are a lot of places you can jump up, and it really promotes impulse. At the moment, I just think the map is rather dark (though I seem to say that of most maps). However, it's a nice map which plays great. I love being allowed on the buildings for once, which is something practically every map refuses to let me do, which feels rather crappy to me.

Also, a small thing: the player can cheat in this map on gauntlet by touching the "roof" of the floor below the goal. May want to look into that (because even though gauntlet isn't officially supported by the map, I see no reason why it wouldn't work) :P

I really like this map, good work! it has a nice intricate compact layout that maintains very little constraint allowing you to move freely across the map utilising Red Eclipse's "parkour" nicely, the lighting, textures and atmosphere all seem fine to me, it would be nice to see a little more of the map in the preview(a view from above perhaps?), anyway I feel like this map will be played a lot and would very much like to see it included in the game, thanks!

Thank you for testing TLP and Rabidbutton. I noted your point for Gauntlet (forgot about the new mode but of course it works too ), this can be fixed easily enough by shifting the affinities a bit.

v2 released. Download link has been updated in the top post. As TheLastProject noticed, I slightly modified the team affinities. BB goals are a little higher now to exclude all possibilities of cheating through walls and to prevent buffing when you're standing on the lowest level right under the goal. There is still a problem with the affinity in gauntlet mode, but I believe this is a bug at the moment of writing and not a matter of configuration of the map as in this version it should be set up correctly. I created a bug ticket for this: http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/redeclipse/ticket/537. The volume of the particle sound at the pushers has been raised a little too.

Can't wait to try this, it looks cool.

Nice work, good layout and styling. Only critiques I have is that some parts seem a bit dim, and most of the map consists of varying shades of gray. IMO, perhaps you could use some additional lighting to give it some contrast - perhaps a sunlight entity? Otherwise it looks great to me.

John_III {l Wrote}:Nice work, good layout and styling. Only critiques I have is that some parts seem a bit dim, and most of the map consists of varying shades of gray. IMO, perhaps you could use some additional lighting to give it some contrast - perhaps a sunlight entity? Otherwise it looks great to me.

See? :3

v3 released. Download link has been updated. More ambient lighting, sun entity emits a stronger light and added some more colored lighting here and there. Additional texture and new preview image.

v4 released, download link updated in top post.

I added gutters and drainpipes to make the transition from the rooftops to the walls look better. This makes it more difficult to get on top of the roofs as well (to make it harder to get the RL), but it is still possible from some places so movement isn't blocked too much. Upped brightness. 2 texture corrections.

Map updated to v5.1, see upper post for changelog.

Ulukai,
It's looking good so far. There is just one gripe I have to tell you about. When I jump and fire the rocket or throw a grenade from the team roofs they follow a lower, different trajectory than from where I was when I fired them, resulting in misses. This might be because I am jumping up out of the map.
Cheers

Interesting, I didn't know about that... Well the geometry is placed at the top of the map because if I don't do that the buildings don't disappear in the fog when you look down. I just raised the size of the map and moved all geometry and entities back to the middle of the upscaled map which solves your problem. It allowed me to place a wider death material as well, which is nice.

The only problem I have now is that the waypoints haven't been moved along, they all float in the air where the geometry used to be Does anyone know whether it is possible to move those or change the relative place of them on the map? In the worst case I need to create new ones, but it's sich a tedious job and I'm not looking forward to it too much so if you have any idea..

EDIT: http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/redecl ... geset/5728 Thanks Quin!
Will upload fixed version to SVN soon.

EDIT 2: http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/redecl ... geset/5730 Changed in v5730.

Thanks Ulukai and Quin!
Cheers