Hi,

I've been designing a new map which currently is full of leaks and due for a rebuild now that I have the general layout and comments from people. It's intended for a 4on4 map which makes use of Q3 style ramps in the central area where most of the fights will happen. By shoving a wedge shape next to a trigger_push, you actually get to launch yourself in to the air and retain 100% air control allowing you to make some sweet air manouvres to gain some serious speed. The rocket launcher resides in a seperate small arena in which the only way in is to either spawn there, or enter via a teleporter room, rather similar to the way in which you can generally find someone guarding the RL on DM3. Of course, should someone get in to that room, they can either come out back in to the main tele room or take the alternate way out which lands them in the central arena allowing for some RL stealing hit and run play.

On top of all this, one of the ideas that came up for positioning of the Pent was to actually have it at the bottom of the lava (may have to become slime for this idea to work) and putting a BioSuit in the map.

Just wondered what peoples thoughts are on providing the biosuit as another powerup in 4on4 games. It would in my mind be quite sweet to be defending a biosuit that overlooks the quad, so that the team looking to take back control of the RL would end up having to hold the items and time them so their strongest player makes a run for the BioSuit, Pent and then pops up to grab the Quad before attacking the RL area of the map.

It's fairly easy to get the RL and YA combination, but the RA is currently on the other side of the map.

The maps in really early alpha stage at the moment and I'm going to do a new build without leaks now that I've had the easy to learn map layout approved - I can go to work on making something that looks nice. The real question is still what you lot think about adding the BioSuit in to the mix to gain the nasty combo of Pent+Quad for regaining control of the RL, to ultimately take the fight all the way back to the RA so your team is all armoured/rox'd up to just rape and pillage in the center area.

I'll show the map when it's not quite so buggy and the item placement is correct

- Steve

Some nifty gameplay changes regarding biosuit (which is very timed to discuss right now, before this map is finished) would be to make it protect 100% against the environment (slime, lava, crushers, maybe not void though). Another addition could be to make it be an infinite armor, either stack up on the current armor or set it to RA.
Discuss!

Sounds a little like the battle suit in Quake 3, which was pretty cool.


As it stands now, the biosuit is worthless. Might as well make something out of it.

Might as well make it genuine for QW as well. Some completely random examples from the top of my head of what it could do:
* Absorb 100% of environmental damage, 50% of player damage. Does not apply to void. (this one would be what snafu is looking for in his map)
* Increase the running speed.
* Nullify quad damage, but still keeping the kickback.
* Ability to see enemy ring.
* Ability to see enemy health status and/or weapons.
* etc etc etc

I had planned to implement a batsuit (hehe) a la Q3 for jawnmode, great minds think alike? :>

Just think, a player with a 75% protection powerup (CPM batsuit, VQ3 one is a bit lame) vs a player with Quad in a fight...

i hope you're not thinking the biosuit should do all those things at once molgrum

how about a Radar powerup that shows enemy players on a minimap for 30 seconds?

Make players who wear a biosuit jump two times higher, be able to doublejump and if they start bunnyhopping in midair let them fly until they stop!


To get back what this topic was about before that stupid hijack:
I think that could lead to interesting gameplay.

this is a very nice idea..

After reading a couple of posts, ive seen some wicked ideas.. I cant say i like them very much. but some are valid. lets take this easy:

Map related:
1. This "new" powerup will not be used on existing maps (or it will? cmt ones maybe?)
2. since new maps must be made, map designers can design the maps thinking about the new powerup and draw specific areas to take advantage of it - like snafu suggested (ex: a new map could have a under-lava corridor which leads to pent. This means suicide for a non-poweruped player.

Powerup Related:
ihmo, the powerup should:
-Protect against environment
-50% protection against all agression (like the resistance rune in ctf) OR
- OR regeneration rune (which boosts health to 150 and armor to 100 slowly during 1min or somthin)
- and thats about it for powerup related imo
-respawn time? 5min <
-duration of strenght?


some advice to snafu (imo):
- forget the q3-ramps. I like much more the idea of wind tunnels. ramps dont belong to quake's architecture imo
- launch test versions of the map before final release. Like Vio did with vdm3 - turned out great! community's feedback is all

I've been remaking my map after the tests and here's the results of testing the biosuit:

The pent is located under lava in a crawl space between two rooms:

With 200/100 -- You can make it but you sacrifice most of your armour/health doing so
With 150/100 -- You can make it with about 2-10 health remaining
With Biosuit/100 -- You generally end up getting there in one piece with 50 health remaining

I've found that the effects of the biosuit are complete protection against slime and lava does about 25 damage at the same rate as slime would rather than burning you to hell almost instantly.

The biosuit is fairly close to the pent, so it makes sense for that item to be guarded. For a player to reach the pent with RA or YA, they'd have to make an impressive run without getting in to fights and even then, they'd have to sacrifice most of the benefits of the armour.

If the player is then going to spend his time running back to collect RA while protected by Pent, I'm not sure his team mates will be too happy with that sort of greedy play and quite frankly, waste of pent.

It's all shaping up nicely - I hope you guys like lava

- Steve

I don't think the biosuit needs to actually be tweaked in the slightest. It offers enough protection as it is and you can spend a good while swimming in the lava without dying. Long enough to make a decision about how you're going to act at least. It simply removes the panic of being in lava.

NONE of us panic when we fall in to slime pits and have to swim out. With lava though, you do.


Powerup Related:
-Protect against environment
The biosuit protects enough as it is. If you get crushed, well - it's a ton of metal crushing you.

-50% protection against all agression (like the resistance rune in ctf)
OR regeneration rune (which boosts health to 150 and armor to 100 slowly during 1min or somthin)
I think that's a little too much, it's adding something to regular quake games that wasn't already there. Really, mappers should be making use of things that already exist to explore gameplay ideas to the fullest.


some advice to snafu (imo):
- forget the q3-ramps. I like much more the idea of wind tunnels. ramps dont belong to quake's architecture imo
I'll consider releasing the first test with 2 versions. One with ramps and one without

- Steve

I wonder if the guys who did GenArena ever did a model for the Light Amp goggles from Doom?

A "battle hud" would be sweet - but it's too much of a change to QW?

Unless we're all suddenly thinking of re-designing QW for the new school of players that find their way to us from CPM/Q4 etc, then I think we should really leave as much as possible in tact and just make clever use of what we have.

The player who gets pent and discharges an entire enemy team underwater is being smart, he's not getting a powerup that makes him god. He still has to think. Many times I've had pent and a player has been seen running away from me, spamming rockets which simply slow me down.

Also, if the biosuit acted like Q3's battle suit and protected against splash damage then errr... suddenly you've made the biosuit able to protect against QW's holiest weapon - The Rocket Launcher. !!?

- Steve

No need to make a HUD out of it, if it's gonna be something everyone can use then you could for example make "shownick" on an enemy print their health/armor/weapon. Not sure how the visible ring would be achieved for just one player though, I don't think it's possible.

Edit: The scanner idea and nullifying quad damage would not affect single player (if that's what you're worrying about). Protection against environment/players would not affect it noticeable.

That's not quite what I meant

An item (goggles) that gives you more information on your screen = battle hud

i agree on leaving the biosuit as it is and work on maps from there

Ah my bad, but more specifically what did you have in mind?

having quad in slime? so you would have to swim there

i foresee great camping spots take this in consideration when designing such slime/lava corridors

Haven't worked on this for a while. Suppose I'll finish it one day. i.e Add the winding RA corridor back in and complete the damn map

Wahwahweewah! Release a beta first for us kenya maniacs to try

You might want to have a look at e2m7, that map has a similar principle (Biosuit used to access RA).

The problem with the implementation in that map is that the slime does so little damage that even without biosuit, you can often just dive down into the slime, grab RA and then escape. In fact in the shallow slime you lose zero health (only armour) if you have RA.

How's about a beta release? :-D