Extinction2 mod

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Originally Posted by onion pistol

Hm.........

A Halo 3 hornet would be fun as hell here, well, to me at least...lol

The only thing that concerns me here about size:

1) How can we keep it big enough for two military spaceships.
2) How can we make it big enough to hold heavy vehicles, yet small enough to easily traverse and allow cool fights.

Solve these problems, and we're good...on size.

...and yes, scarab crouches...but it has some issues. Only slight ones.

Edit: Anyone know of downflow? It was relatively small, and allowed infantry combat, but still ahd room for heavy vehicles...

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Reduce the combat area to a series of Canyons and Gorges instead of a large open plain, with winding trails between them. This would effectively reduce the nuisance from Longsword fighters and dropship strafing. Be sure to include cavernous rooms and depressions in the wall, not to mention trails along the walls of the Canyons for snipers and extra access. At certain points in the Canyons/Gorges would be teleporters into the specific ships. You could further enhance the dynamics of the map by including corridors in each ship to armories, bridges, brigs etc. I would love to help out, I've had several designs for wall structures festering in my mind for days. However I'm without any resources to produce them.

If you follow my advice your map COULD do well. Like Sniper Canyon Redux, only a little larger. I implore you to heed my advice.

While I will respect your wishes to censor myself, I suggest that you learn to except that not everyone here is theistic and that people are entitled to their own view of what is right and wrong. A few of my friends would have been just as offended by your comments as I'm sure you were of mine. Personally, I could give a shit. But as demonstrated by other people here, respect goes both ways and you should be just as observant of my beliefs as I am of yours. My recommendations? Next time, instead of demanding that I change my godless Atheist ways, kindly ask that I refrain from saying those words "because they offend you" or whatever.

Anyways....

Making the map bigger isn't the problem here. Making it bigger while making it play well is. Look at most of the maps in BF2. They support anywhere from 16 to 64 players and most of them play very well in all of those settings. However, the Battlefield Engine has some advantages and design features that Blam! does not. Battlefield 2 levels are designed with large scale combat in mind and include vehicles, weapons and engine optimizations for these scenarios. Blam! as implemented in Halo PC and CE, does not. Large vehicles like the scarab are generally laggy messes and have trouble handling debris on the floor of the map. Most servers have a hard time managing 16 player matches on these large maps which is bad because that is what these maps are designed for.

Flying Vehicles like the Pelican and the Longsword are generally poorly implemented due to limitations of the game engine and generally don't fit a very suitable combat role in Halo. There are very few realistic situations where a fighter bomber like the longsword is useful in Halo; All that the longsword is good for is stunts and the occasionally moment of non-combat fun. As soon as you have people fighting the longsword in banshees or jets, the longsword fails to be fun since it is such a difficult vehicle to fly in combat. Most people tend to treat the LS like some oversized banshee, which doesn't help.

Pelicans have issues too. Pelicans are only useful when you can get a large group of people to act as a team. Few people are willing to do that in a non-tournament/competition setting. Other then using it for stunts, most people just fly off and try to use the pelican like a banshee, which is , again, stupid. Even if you can get people to use the pelican, then what? You have now emptied your base of defenders and the other team can just waltz on in and capture your flag or whatever. Assuming 1 person is a pilot, 1 is a gunner/copilot (assuming he is in the front, the back gun is usually poorly implemented and doesn't have a whole lot of use anyway), you have just removed 1/4th of your team from active combat. That is without anybody in the seats. Now, throw 2 people into the pelican. While your pelican is flying around being a giant target, the enemy team is probably sending 6 people off to your base to overwelm your defenders and take the flag. Using the pelican is a risky tactic that most smart teams wouldn't try to use.

You need to think of everything in a tactical and strategic mindset. You need to think over every single possible strategy that a team will use. You also need to think like the average player. Most players are trying to be a one man army. Is a vehicle really worth it if it requires more than 2 people to be functional, especially if they are not working in tandem? It is already tough to find a competent gunner for a warthog on bloodgulch - trying to find someone competent and willing to be a gunner for something harder like a pelican is generally a nighmare. Same thing goes for other large "team moving" vehicles.

Now, regarding spaceships. While good for ambiance, it is absolutely silly to try and have a full on spaceship as a serious design element of a map. There is simply too much wasted space and not enough actual usefulness as a base. What will end up happening after a few rounds is that people will simply start camping outside the ships in jets or with sniper rifles and forcing them to stay inside, which is not fun for whichever team happens to be stuck in a base instead of fighting a battle.

So, my suggestion? Skip the spaceships entirely. Start small before trying to "fix" the large, broken map. If you don't understand the basics of level design and balancing then any map you make will be doomed to failure from the start. You can throw all the knickknacks and shiny bullshit you like into a map, but it isn't going to make people want to play it for any extended period of time. Besides that, people tend to not give much of a shit about maps that have had a few textures swapped. Why bother downloading an 100MB file that isn't being played much and is basically the same thing as another map that is already being played? Notice how no one plays any of the shitty Cocksnap "edits" that only serve to add more stupid bullshit into the map?

If you intend to learn how to properly make a video game level, I suggest you read through this.

Rawr, back to calculus and physics =P.

What are you saying man, the longsword is the best thing ever. One time I had the flag in extinction and tele'd up to those bars that go across the cliff gap to the left of the covenant base from the view of the human base.

Then I jumped onto a friendly longsword that was underneath and hopped in, that was loads of fun, and probably some of the only fun I ever had on that map :|

the only fun i had was continually bombing the poa hangar with longsword nukes, causing teammates, enemies, and vehicles, to fly around. until i got banned :B

I just like flying large flying vehicles around and picking people up and dropping them of. Im the taxi :P

Thats why I love the pelican and longsword.

For size maybe around the same as maps like Sidewinder or Infinity?

Someone should make a proper nuke with, blinding flash of light, mushroom cloud, and after it goes BOOM there should be some residual radiation.

But they would have to have some sort of load time.

I'll go ahead and ask if you have even considered my advice. If you haven't then I don't see your map becoming nothing more than an Extinction with a few things added/removed. Go ahead and redo the entire thing following what I and the fellow experienced gamers/developers have given you. Make a better Extinction by eliminating whats bad, give it better gameplay.

Please don't disappoint those who made the original, learn from our mistakes.

That sounds like a good idea.

A bunch of canyons and cliff paths, caverns and such for infantry and ground vehicle combat, and air space is no issue.

Maybe i should have less humongous vehicles and more smaller vehicles...

Banshees and such...

Quote:

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Reduce the combat area to a series of Canyons and Gorges instead of a large open plain, with winding trails between them. This would effectively reduce the nuisance from Longsword fighters and dropship strafing. Be sure to include cavernous rooms and depressions in the wall, not to mention trails along the walls of the Canyons for snipers and extra access. At certain points in the Canyons/Gorges would be teleporters into the specific ships. You could further enhance the dynamics of the map by including corridors in each ship to armories, bridges, brigs etc. I would love to help out, I've had several designs for wall structures festering in my mind for days. However I'm without any resources to produce them.

If you follow my advice your map COULD do well. Like Sniper Canyon Redux, only a little larger. I implore you to heed my advice.

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Quote:

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Making the map bigger isn't the problem here. Making it bigger while making it play well is. Look at most of the maps in BF2. They support anywhere from 16 to 64 players and most of them play very well in all of those settings. However, the Battlefield Engine has some advantages and design features that Blam! does not. Battlefield 2 levels are designed with large scale combat in mind and include vehicles, weapons and engine optimizations for these scenarios. Blam! as implemented in Halo PC and CE, does not. Large vehicles like the scarab are generally laggy messes and have trouble handling debris on the floor of the map. Most servers have a hard time managing 16 player matches on these large maps which is bad because that is what these maps are designed for.

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You are correct. Less humongous vehicles, more smaller and strategic vehicles, ones that blam actually supports. to go along with teekups idea.

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Flying Vehicles like the Pelican and the Longsword are generally poorly implemented due to limitations of the game engine and generally don't fit a very suitable combat role in Halo. There are very few realistic situations where a fighter bomber like the longsword is useful in Halo; All that the longsword is good for is stunts and the occasionally moment of non-combat fun. As soon as you have people fighting the longsword in banshees or jets, the longsword fails to be fun since it is such a difficult vehicle to fly in combat. Most people tend to treat the LS like some oversized banshee, which doesn't help.

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Indeed you are correct again. However, there are ways they can be made interesting in a map. Mainly the BSP itself seems to contribute to effectiveness.

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Pelicans have issues too. Pelicans are only useful when you can get a large group of people to act as a team. Few people are willing to do that in a non-tournament/competition setting. Other then using it for stunts, most people just fly off and try to use the pelican like a banshee, which is , again, stupid. Even if you can get people to use the pelican, then what? You have now emptied your base of defenders and the other team can just waltz on in and capture your flag or whatever. Assuming 1 person is a pilot, 1 is a gunner/copilot (assuming he is in the front, the back gun is usually poorly implemented and doesn't have a whole lot of use anyway), you have just removed 1/4th of your team from active combat. That is without anybody in the seats. Now, throw 2 people into the pelican. While your pelican is flying around being a giant target, the enemy team is probably sending 6 people off to your base to overwelm your defenders and take the flag. Using the pelican is a risky tactic that most smart teams wouldn't try to use.

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This is the most intelligent post about pelicans I have seen yet. Not much is to be said, I will heed your advice.

[quote]You need to think of everything in a tactical and strategic mindset. You need to think over every single possible strategy that a team will use. You also need to think like the average player. Most players are trying to be a one man army. Is a vehicle really worth it if it requires more than 2 people to be functional, especially if they are not working in tandem? It is already tough to find a competent gunner for a warthog on bloodgulch - trying to find someone competent and willing to be a gunner for something harder like a pelican is generally a nighmare. Same thing goes for other large "team moving" vehicles.[quote]

Thanks for the advice.

I'll talk to bobbysoon about these BSP changes and draw up some plans...i have some ideas, thanks to you guys.

Lets disregard all our past arguments, if you don't mind.