Ambush is a small map that starts out quick. The CT's start off in two Army trucks that are blockaded in the street. Terrors start out in their compound, which overlooks the ambush spot, or in a mosque across the street. The Army trucks are trapped inbetween a debris blockade and a burning fuel tanker that's been destroyed by a carbomb. The action starts out fast because some CT's and T's can see each other, but if you duck you're out of their sights ... so pull the trigger quick or fall back.
I've spent a lot of time tweeking the navigation mesh so that bot's run pretty smoothly on the map. With my 3ghz 512mb ram 128mb radeon 9800 system I can load up 15 bots for 8 on 8 matches and it's pretty damn fun. More then that though and the bots start taxing my system to much and the fps start to get out of hand.
I've labeled all the area's of the navigation mesh so that you can use the radio to give out locations and if you play with bots they will give you locations as well. Most of the area names are pretty fitting. The closest match I could get for the mosque was 'Inside' which I'm not really happy with. I've got Apartments, Market, Upstairs, Downstairs, Porch, Balconey, Alley, CTSpawn, Truck (the destroyed fuel tanker), Atrium, Inside, Outside, Middle, Stairs, Dumpster and Tunnel ... I think that's all.
I've got de_ambush up and running on a linux server (woo hoo!) It has some regular players and I've gotten some really good feedback from people. I'd love it if the mapper folks around here went and played some rounds :wink:
server: dingolicous
ip: 69.93.55.6:27015
the server is set up for fast download and runs very nicely. I've also got a map called cs_darkride that's alternating with de_ambush in the rotation. cs_darkride is still under construction but I wanted to make sure some of the stuff I was trying to do would work in a CS:S multiplayer map without getting really stupid.
Posted by uberDingo on
Mon Jan 31st 2005 at 4:05pm
[Author]
Thanks for the comments Reno.
Yeah.. so streching the textures over .25 is bad, eh. It does make them look a less sharp. I was trying to avoid the repeating pattern thing and thought streching them may be a good way to do it (on buildings and such).
As far as the big open space... it's supposed to be the inside of a mosque and they've got those wide open spaces where they all put their rugs down on, face east and do the whole bowing down with the head to the floor bit hehe... but yeah, it does look empty and boring. I wasn't sure what to put in there as I've never been in a mosque. I'll have to figure something out.
I was thinking about putting in a skybox with a large arabic looking tower off in the distance
Looks pretty good for a first effort, though there are still a fair few tell tale signs that this is from a new mapper. Most obvious is the sparse area shown in the first screenshot, which may have an interesting ceiling hole but is otherwise very devoid of not only detail, but cover. Get something in there for players to hide behind - pillars, clutter, statues, planters, monuments, fountains, whatever you feel fits the setting provided it looks the part and keeps the gameplay interesting. The exterior area looks far more interesting from a gameplay perspective, and the second shot in particular makes it looks quite frenetic and atmospheric. Problems here? Well the crate nearest the camera is much too large for the texture used on it which makes it looks rather horrible. Now I mention it, it seems you have overly stretched textures left right an centre - 0.25 should be your default texture scale for most purposes. Besides that, you may want to try playing around with 3D skyboxes, as it lets you suggest a far greater sense of scale to the map than actually exists, and you seem to have ample opportunity to show one off with your exterior regions.
All these comments were based on the screenshots by the way, as I'm currently away from my own computer so can't test it in game.
Posted by Yak_Fighter on
Fri Jan 28th 2005 at 3:10pm
Well a prefab is just a group of entities and brushes that are usable in any map and are designed to save the mapper time. I can build a truck and then I can use it in almost any theme, setting, or mod without having to rebuild it again and again. They were usually more complex brush-built things like vehicles that were used by mappers to give their maps more detail. The HL1 prefab has been more or less replaced by the usage of prop models, but they still have their uses. There are some complex entity prefabs included with hammer now if you want to take a look at how Valve utilizes them.
Posted by uberDingo on
Fri Jan 28th 2005 at 2:35pm
[Author]
Yak,
Quick newb question... So a prefab is just something built out of brushes? About the texture on the truck.. yeah that green metal is the best I could find. I've got a Canon Digital Rebel and I've been thinking about playing around with trying to make some custom textures, but I've never done that before. I've got experiance making repeating textures for use on webpages and such using the blend and rubberstamp tool in photoshop, Im guessing it's sorta the same process for making textures.
BioPulse,
I definately hear ya there. I've been play testing it with bots, which I know doesnt give you a real sense for balance, so human playtesting is something I'd really like to get done. Unfortunately I don't have access to a machine anymore with a fat outbound internet connection to set a server up on :sad:
I knew that creating an ambush scenario map was going to bring up the concern of balance so I tried to stay aware of the issue while creating the map. I currently have all the CTs spawning in the cabs of the trucks (4 spawns, 2 in each cab) or in the beds of the trucks (12 spawns). The T's start off either in their compound (8 spawns), on the roof of their compound (4 spawns), in the mosque across the street (2 spawns) or on the ground at the enterence to their compound (2 spawns). The intersting thing is that while it seems that the Terrors have the upper hand because of their positioning, unless they coordinate that with good teamwork the CT's win more bot-vs-bot battles because they start out together and tend to move in groups together, engaging and overpowering the more scattered Ts. I might still play with repositioning spawn points if I get some input.
Posted by Junkyard God on
Fri Jan 28th 2005 at 12:37pm
it looks ok but does it play good as the map is supposed to be supper balanced and fair for both teams,
if it's not fair then it's not good i'm afraid, you'll need alot of play testing on it soon and then adjust so it's more balanced (if it's not balanced ofcourse ^^ )
