FreeGameDev

To-Ru Octavus is a remote outpost located on the surface of a scorching desert planet.

Game modes:

• deathmatch
• defend-and-control
• capture
• gauntlet
• bomber

Recommended players: 12+
Also ideal for jetpack mutator

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Update (r268):
added a decorative support/beam to the square buildings
fixed some broken geometry
fixed door mapmodel position (gauntlet mode) to not go through the roof
fixed some geometry with dodgy lightmap on the sand

Update (r267):
added 'appleflap/danger' texture to outer perimeter to warn of death / out of bounds area
fixed some texture bugs
fixed some geometry bugs
roughened up some of the very flat areas on the outside area
rearranged some weapons and playerstarts
changed one of the helipads to a shelter/storage area
lowered the rocket spawn height
redone waypoints

Update (r257):
Changed the rooms with the fan in the floor to an outer platform with a railing
Added some small variation to outside of buildings
Some texture fixes
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The map is mostly finished, other than a few likely texture/blendmap bugs i've missed. Waypoints work pretty good, none of the bots seem to get stuck. Started this map in February and have been adding onto it since, it has gone through many layout/design changes; this probably being closest to the final version. Alot of the geometry was a pain in the butt to get how i wanted it to look (diagonal corridors connected to cylinders etc).

Some old screenshots in this thread: http://mappinghell.net/forum/index.php/topic,912.0.html

The weapon entities and possibly the defend-and-control bases haven't been given much thought, so those may be a bit unbalanced and need to be tweaked/moved around etc.

Also, as it only has team support for two bases (alpha/omega) i need to disable the multi mutator for this map, but not sure which config does that. Ideally, i tried to look for a large parabolic satellite dish to stick on one of the roofs (couldn't find a freely licensed one though), which is the only missing feature that i originally had in mind.

Any feedback would be great. I haven't had the chance to test this online with other players yet, although it seems like it's "playable" with offline bots to say the least.

Latest version (r268)

note: you may need svn to load this, i'm not 100% sure if it's using anything specific to svn, but that's where i've been editing/building the map

Indoor areas seems a bit large and barren (judging from the screen-shots) otherwise nice work!

Julius {l Wrote}:Indoor areas seems a bit large and barren (judging from the screen-shots) otherwise nice work!

Yeah. It does in some parts, although i had wanted the walls accessible for running on (curved surfaces are perfect for that). Although i just had an idea after you pointed that out, made one of the rooms appear less-barren by changing the floor, adding a pit with a railing:


(for comparison, the fifth image in the opening post is the room i've added the pit/water too)

The one above has water/death at the bottom, so it's like a cooling tank or something. If it feels right, i will add another to the omega base, but to mix it up, i'll add a fan/pusher that sucks the player in if they fall too far down, so it's the same room but looks different, to keep things balanced.

I'll update the map attachment later today after tweaking it a bit more.
Updated, maybe this is an improvement for one of the rooms?

Wow, nice work unixfreak! This could easily become one of my new favorite maps.

My thoughts:
- Indoor and outdoor nicely combined! I like the details you put in, both in the geometry and how you make the different rooms feel used. I'm running around and can feel that every area has its function. Well done with the computers and silos, they look great.
- Red and blue tiles look a little weird in combination witht he other textures, but I guess I can get used to them. Maybe there is a better choice for this though...
- The rest of the map is textured very nicely.
- It's a big map and because most of the buildings have the same color scheme it can be hard to tell where is Alpha and where is Omega. Maybe some more (v)color hints can clear this up?
- It's hard to close off your map when you use such an outdoor setting. The death material is a good solution (although it is unclear why you'd die when you step into the sand) but it's not very clear the first time that you shouldn't cross the borders. I quickly made a suggestion that could warn players better, but there might be better solutions than this.

- It's a big map and because most of the buildings have the same color scheme it can be hard to tell where is Alpha and where is Omega. Maybe some more (v)color hints can clear this up?

Not sure what to do at the moment, you are right though. The red/blue tiles on the inside are using vpalette, so it changes in grey in ffa. The problem i have at the moment is that the team colours clash horribly with the orange textures when used on the outside, it's not so bad inside because of the neutral grey metal panels. I'll try play around with it.

- It's hard to close off your map when you use such an outdoor setting. The death material is a good solution (although it is unclear why you'd die when you step into the sand) but it's not very clear the first time that you shouldn't cross the borders. I quickly made a suggestion that could warn players better, but there might be better solutions than this.

I tried to make it look like quicksand with the vscroll/noclip so it looks like you get swallowed. I think your idea will work well though. Thanks for suggesting that!

The other thing you can do is use alpha+noclip to simulate some sort of forcefield that vapourises you.

Still yet to decide on the outer death zone, quickly added a warning texture like Ulukai suggested (not done the lights though), i'll try play around with a gradient/alpha texture for an outer wall.

Just came to the conclusion that the conc2 texture (black/grey everywhere) doesn't really feel right, was just messing about and thought this seemed to fit better. Giving it a camouflage effect that fits into the environment more:

Variation 1:

Variation 2:


Thoughts on these textures?

To me the concrete textures don't look too hard out of place but it is true that they are used quite often in other maps as well.
It's hard to tell from the screenshots because they are rather small and taken from a great distance. I'd say the second does look better, the first looks like wood? What textures did you use?

Played this map in SVN, it's real nice but that rocket is nearly impossible to get to - is there some pusher I should be looking out for? It's just way too high between the cliffs to jump and impulse at it.

quintux_v {l Wrote}:Played this map in SVN, it's real nice but that rocket is nearly impossible to get to - is there some pusher I should be looking out for? It's just way too high between the cliffs to jump and impulse at it.

Use the plasma jump. Or the Shotgun jump. Simple as that.

quintux_v {l Wrote}:Played this map in SVN, it's real nice but that rocket is nearly impossible to get to - is there some pusher I should be looking out for? It's just way too high between the cliffs to jump and impulse at it.

There's no pusher for it. The weapons were only quickly placed (and are unbalanced at that). I'll have to fix that soon.

PS; didn't realize it was in svn

Ulukai {l Wrote}:To me the concrete textures don't look too hard out of place but it is true that they are used quite often in other maps as well.
It's hard to tell from the screenshots because they are rather small and taken from a great distance. I'd say the second does look better, the first looks like wood? What textures did you use?

I can't remember now, but they were the desaturated textures with some vcolour (i think it was named vertical paint or similar). I've changed it back though.



Updated the download/attachment in first post:

r267

• added 'appleflap/danger' texture to outer perimeter to warn of death / out of bounds area
• fixed some texture bugs
• fixed some geometry bugs
• roughened up some of the very flat areas on the outside area
• rearranged some weapons and playerstarts
• changed one of the helipads to a shelter/storage area
• lowered the rocket spawn height
• redone waypoints

unixfreak {l Wrote}:r267

• added 'appleflap/danger' texture to outer perimeter to warn of death / out of bounds area
• fixed some texture bugs
• fixed some geometry bugs
• roughened up some of the very flat areas on the outside area
• rearranged some weapons and playerstarts
• changed one of the helipads to a shelter/storage area
• lowered the rocket spawn height
• redone waypoints

Nice job!

r268
fixed a few bugs

• added a decorative support/beam to the square buildings
• fixed some broken geometry
• fixed door mapmodel position (gauntlet mode) to not go through the roof
• fixed some geometry with dodgy lightmap on the sand