My first thought when I saw the announcement was "Oh god, not another battle royale game", but having played it I think it's actually the best version of BR out there. Due to the smaller scale you get to the intense cat and mouse stuff a lot quicker than in most, and there are fewer instances of being sniped from a billion miles away by somebody you didn't even know existed.
I just hope it doesn't spell the end of traditional CS.
New plan: Massive CSGO Battle Royale map set in Venice, as part of a huge Mapcore collaboration. A shit load of us work on Venetian buildings for a month or so, and then slap them all together with a bunch of canals and bridges.
Profit.
It's not quite vertigo per-say, but I've yet to find a game that suggests "height" and general massive scale as well as Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II did. Of course if I go back now I'll probably find it pithy because games are so much bigger now, but at the time I was blown away by the verticality in some of the levels.
Oh yeah, I remember Vice City making me feel like I was playing a movie. The stylish editing of the cut scenes felt so new for video games.
This specific Shambler encounter shit me right up when I was 13:
The fully red wall is silly, and the ageing makes no sense, unless people keep going in and out through the window.
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DTTIEAIBTWTDIOIBIEIABAVTIMWAWD?
Valve's stock cliff textures aren't very good so my advice would be to make some of your own. If you're new to texture creation a good way to learn the basics is to download a few images from textures.com (go for the seamless ones if you're not comfortable editing them yourself) and use Yanzl's VMT editor to turn them in to CSGO materials.
Once you've got a couple cliff materials you like the look of you can use VMT editor again to make a blend material, then use the Paint Alpha tool to blend the two textures in hammer, which will really help reduce the repetitiveness.
You can begin to learn more about materials here, although the VDC isn't kept completely up to date so be wary of using the software they sometimes recommend, and if in doubt google.
I don't think what Shawn said there diminishes the effort that goes in to designing a good layout. It's more that an untested greybox is sooooo far removed from a finished, viable design that it doesn't necessarily matter if the brushes were thrown together before the contest start date.
@DMU222, what's the big wall with the crazy paving slabs supposed to be? If it's a cliff face I think you need to rethink your texture choice and sculpt the displacement a bit more.
When does a concept become a level? When you've thought about it for more than 16.3 hours? When you put a sketch down on paper? When you throw some brushes down in hammer to test timings? When you let other people play it, whatever state it happens to be in? When you settle on a theme? (rhetorical question, there is no right answer)
I have a bunch of vague blockouts going back years on my hard disk, but personally I wouldn't think twice about entering one in to a competition like this because none of the actual hard work and grind has been done yet, and more importantly I've not received any feedback from other players in order to make the many necessary changes before it becomes a viable shell.
I like the idea of splitting the prize fund across a few categories, which would also chime nicely with the idea of loose themes. i.e. a 15k pool could be split out thus: 5k for best Original defuse map, 5k for best original hostage map and 5k for best (authorised) remake of an old map. Obviously this rather heavily eats in to 2nd and 3rd place pots and potentially damages the marketing potential of a 15k pot.
Quote from blackdog13 minutes ago, blackdog said: Everyone can vote, have you voted?
Mine was towards fresh maps, saying that remakes or maps started could be admitted if we find a way, suggesting a different category.
I would favour a similar compromise which could be balanced in the scoring system. Brand new maps which document the WIP from day 1 would automatically get a 5 point advantage or something. Obvs judges will also be marking with common sense and looking for originality.
Quote from Plexium_10 hours ago, Plexium_ said: don't you think if a hostage map is really good enough to draw valve's attention it would also beat out other defuse maps in the competition?
No. That's the whole point. The overwhelming obsession with competitively viable de_ maps eclipses any chance a hostage map has of getting attention from the right people. As you say, "the defuse game mode is really what defines modern counter strike", so it doesn't need any help.
At the end of the day I probably won't have time to partake meaningfully in whatever competition gets run so I certainly don't want to dash anyone's dreams of making the 3000000th Dust2 clone, but as a player I think it would be nice to see some more quality cs_ maps out there.
My counter-point would be that if you think you can make a competitive map good enough to get adopted by the professionals then that's a reward in itself, so why not use a $15k prize pool to encourage some talented people to think outside the box?
Of course without knowing where the $15k comes from this might all be a moot point. Maybe the source of the prize pool thinks that they can only get a return on their investment with another 20 generic defuse maps.
Quote from FMPONE53 minutes ago, FMPONE said: This is something I would want to see after our next CS:GO contest. It would be fun to do in conjunction with some real update from CS:GO such as a re-evaluation of the money system when in CS game-mode.
It's great that you're on board with the idea in theory, but I think this is one of those occasions where Valve will be lead by the community. Until they see an influx of interest in HR (which is a real possibility if 5-10 good quality community maps emerge) they're unlikely to look twice at it.
Quote from FMPONE14 hours ago, FMPONE said: I'm really frustrated at the way Valve has treated hostage maps. It might some kind of political nervousness, but as a gamemode it's the _only_ alternative to bomb defusal, and Valve has done very little to indicate they even care about alternatives to bomb defusal. I don't think we've seen a major update on that gamemode in maybe 4 years. They should do more there.
Agreed. I would love it if Mapcore ran a hostage rescue map comp to try and (re)raise the profile of the game mode.
How come I can submit multiple times? ?
Edit In the interest of promoting further discussion, here are my thoughts on pre-existing maps:
I think they should be allowed, but there should be bonus points and possibly even a separate prize for mappers who provide good public documentary evidence of their progress from start to finish. This would also benefit the community in the form of content, and hopefully help some people with their portfolio skills.
I actually prefer the previous one, as it looks more riverbeddish. The new one has too much of a beach vibe.
Spoiler Alert: This survey is basically just about smartphone/tablet gaming.
Boring.
That is terribly sad news for the staff and fans, I can't say I'm too surprised though as the studio had a pretty limited design formula that largely relied on the success of other people's IP's, and a very spurious claim to be the saviour of "adventure" games.
