Alcazar Skyline

Yep it's me again...

Alcazar... "teh map with teh brokn bridg in teh sky" Without a doubt this map is most famous for the cloud platform. So, when it comes time to split this map, it's a no brainer which part to keep. But how to make it all work? There already is HoC-TOP, which turned into a frag-fest, no offense to its author and, fans?

First decision was to keep the base. You may have owned the cloud, but there's still a base the other team can defend against you. Secondly the lower entrance is still accessible. There I added the same base platform from upper level, except the ramp is replaced with a half-circle floor with the ammo station (from cloud platform).

Finally the lower deploy point was deemed pretty useless so I turned it into the necessary base Generator. There are possible issues with hiding under the lower platform, but honestly I got tired and just hope it doesn't break the gameplay. Afterall this is all about the cloud platform - if you don't use it, you WILL lose it.

It's a hefty 8mb, but it's worth it Oh one last thing... why Skyline? I honestly don't know. It sounds cool, and goes with my last map, so here it is - Alcazar Skyline!

http://members.shaw.ca/takwu/XMP/XMP-AlcazarSkyline.zip

Well the under platform hidding place is really quite useless. The idea is that if you hide, your team has a much harder time with the battle on cloud platform with one less teamate. And you can't shoot anyone from there anyway except another person under the other platform. And if you have arti, you will appear on radar soon enough.

BTW, like Frontline, I have not reimaged the radar background for this map either. It's a lot of work, and it won't be much different anyway.

Yes the "4 purple arti" was CrystalGarden2, by yours truely (hint: avatar <- ) CrystalGarden started with 2 purple arti, and one arti on each base, while the 2nd map had 4 purple arti and none at bases. Also CrystalGarden2 changed Stronghold Gen into a Deploy Point - with only 3 gens, one team tends to reg their first artis sooner than the other.

It's possible to convert Alcazar for Crystal gametype (the purple arti). But this gametype was intended to make battles last longer when there are a lot of players. Not sure how it works with less people.

Thanks for the complements crisis. I do wish we will have more fun with these maps when we only have 2 or 3 ppl on each team.

If anyone wants, feel free to make some screenies, highlighting the changes. I might make some later too

screenshots

Hey how did you get the Raptor down there without it blowing up? There is a KillZ (if you fall below certain altitude you die). So I suppose it does not kill cars?? Can you actually drive in the car, or would you die if you *get in the vehicle*? If you can get in, can you get out without dying?

At the time I didn't think of a good way to handle the issue, so I just left the map as is. The bottom of the space is just a little bit below the KillZ. If I raised the KillZ, you could be walking near the bottom of that rock and suddenly die because you walked below KillZ. Another way is to extend the bottom of the space, so you would be well below the KillZ, even standing on a car at the bottom.

I was thinking of a way to make it act more logical. The stock maps didn't use this feature, but later I found some other maps use a pressure volume. If you enter that volume you get "pressurized". Now I would also need to borrow a cloudy texture to mark the border of this pressure volume, so people know what caused their death.

The volume part is no problem, I can easily add one. But I couldn't find a suitable cloudy texture in the stock resources; which means I would need to embed it in the map.

In the end I thought this was not a huge issue. But if you can actually drive on the bottom, and travel between bases, it's a nasty exploit, albeit being a bit hard to pull off (getting Raptor down there without blow up).

So to summarize:
- can you drive around, get in, get out, without dying?
- should i lower bottom or add pressure volume, or both?
- if pressure volume, what texture should I use?

Yes, they are invisible, and I want to make it visible with a textured plane on top of the volume. Just I need a suitable texture.

Volumes are not the same as zones. They are brushes, and are much easier to work with than zones and portals.
http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/Legacy:Working_With_Volumes

And yeah that screenshot seems to be on low texture details. Things look much better in high details.

Ok guys, it sounds like a lot of HAX in order to exploit this... But still it is a possible problem with someone hiding an arti and both raptors under the base, in which case it will be rather difficult to get to the perpetrator (still possible tho...).

So the remaining question is, find me a suitable cloud or fog texture, preferrably stock, and I'll use that pressure volume to kill anyone and (hopefully) any vehicle that goes down there.

BTW I looked everywhere and never figured out how they made the clouds just under the cloud platforms in the middle. I don't see any brushes or sheets or actors (fuildsurface, particlesalamanders...) that could make that effect. If anyone can tell me please do. It seems like a suitable effect for the pressure volume.