Hivemind

This map was inspired by a few things:

1. My undying love of Big Team Battle. Give me a huge map, some vehicles, and preferably some objective-based gameplay and I'm always happy.

2. My undying love of falcons, plasma launchers (a.k.a. blueberries) and rocket hogs, and the particular way these elements interact. But especially falcons.

3. Previous big team favorites such as Rat Race and Avalanche (you won't really see much of either here, but they were in my mind when I was figuring out how this map would work).

Hivemind currently has a budget of 8000 and a whole lot of objects, and has yet to be tested, but I am hopeful that it will be fun and perform well. More info on that front coming at a later date.

Screenies (note: some ceiling pieces were removed from the overhead angles)

 

Does indeed. I'm hopefully, fingers crossed going to be running 2 or more tests of it tomorrow night, some time after 9 PM Eastern. We have a regular testing/customs group (our threads are in the Customs Lobby each week) that is usually 8-10 guys, but towards the end of this week's game I want to pick up more players and try to run this with as many as we can get. If you'd like to be in and happen to be on at that time, I'd definitely appreciate having another player.

 

Thank you all! Anyone who is available for testing tomorrow (Tuesday) night, let me know here or PM me, and I'll send you an invite at that time. Again, probably a bit after 9 pm Eastern. Blacksoul and I3ush - you're on my list, thanks.

@ I3ush - I wanted a large part of the gameplay to be epic falcon battles as they fly around the towers, down under the bridges, etc. The safe zones are plenty large enough for the falcons to circle around outside the map as well, so long and tricky aerial battles are assured. But for ground-level troops, there are two plasma launchers, multiple plasma pistols for the EMP factor, rockets, a sniper, and of course the two rocket hogs as well - all of which are somewhat effective anti-aircraft weapons. Hopefully it will all balance out without any one element being too dominant. At the very least, falcon pilots should have to be extremely evasive to keep their bird airborne and not plummeting in a ball of flame to the sea below.

 

It's been smooth in single player but I'm sure a big team test will reveal the issues, if there are any. It's definitely a concern though. The initial build used 8800 in budget and hit the universal object limit as I was adding in the very last set of objective items (hills and spawns for Race - yes, there's race on this map, 'cause why not). Since then I've gone over the map three or four times with a fine-toothed comb, removing objects where I can or replacing small ones with a lesser number of big ones. Doing this I've managed to get the budget down to 8000, and I reduced my total object count by at least 30. I also have tried to avoid most known problem items (lights, glass, certain decoratives, etc.); I even replaced two grav lifts with simple jump-ups to ditch the particle effects. And much of the construction of the map was also intended to break up lines of sight, which is part of the reason there are large walls and ceilings everywhere (of course that's also so infantry stand a chance). ANYWAY (deep breath)... I'm hoping it goes well. I don't know if I hold out much hope for split screen, but for full screen I am hopeful.

 

If they are there to be seen, I hope someone sees them, even if it's that particular jackass.

Srslytho... I am really hoping that it won't be an issue. I know the map uses a lot of pieces (though I think making something this massive for just 8000 is an achievement!), but I did try to keep a lot of the map divided up - there's no place you can go except way, way overhead (and out of the safe zone) that lets you see the majority of the objects in the map all at once, especially with the ceilings in place. And I don't know this for sure, but I assume (or hope) that the simplified rendering they do on many objects at long distances means that if the map is enormous and spread out like this, it will be harder for it to cause framerate problems.

 

No disco in custom game mode, though I was seeing some in forge - I think even that might be mostly cleared up now that I reduced my object count (except perhaps in basic editing). The only question is if 14 more players and their antics will create disco that I wasn't seeing when flying around with just me and a friend on the map. There are actually a ton of respawn points, plus a larger than usual number of extraneous forge-only objects - like I set up Race, which used 8 initial spawns and 11 hills, and there are about 20 total kill zones and safe zones as well. So there are indeed quite a few objects on the map that won't render in custom games. But I've since come down pretty far from the object limit, I think. The map used about 800 more budget at that point than it does now, and that reduction was mostly achieved by deleting objects, or replacing multiple small ones with one large one.

 

Got in two games on this last night and was fairly pleased with the initial results. There are some changes that need to be made but nothing too substantial - raising the ceiling on the soft safe zones so falcons feel less constricted, and tightening up a few soft kill zones that were bigger than I meant them to be. Gotta remove (or re-locate) the spawn points in the center of the bridge too - that's just too much exposure off spawn, and the game isn't smart enough to only spawn you out there when falcons aren't flying around. Balance seemed pretty good even though one team kind of got pooped on, but I don't think that had anything to do with the map really - it was just poor team selection on our part (well, we really didn't select at all... it was totally random).

About that open bridge, I'd love to add a partial ceiling over just the mid-section to give people crossing that area some respite from falcon fire. But I'm really concerned about adding any more objects. That said, I didn't notice any framerate or disco last night with a full 16 players and rockets flying every which way, so maybe I'll try the simplest roof I can put over that area and test it again this weekend. Generally though, I do want that passage to be pretty exposed and dangerous. It's a backdoor route, and I anticipated that mostly vehicles would use it.