TCOJ Testing lobby; Every tuesday @7pm EST

Hopefully it won't play like s**t. But we'll see.

 

By the way, Juanez, Drome is a pretty small map. It's only about 850 square units (Abandon is about 1200). I'm not sure dynamic spawning will work properly in 4v4, and due to the layout, I can't use MrGreen's idea of respawn zones in the center. If the lobby ends up being a big one, if it is possible to split it again, that would be neat. If we can't, then I'll probably do Ricochet or CTF instead, since static spawning should be fine.

 

How big is our lobby gtg to be? I just thought it was 4v4

 

Sometimes they get bigger than 4v4. But even 4v4 would be hard for Drome . . . though it may be worth trying because it would give me an idea on what to do with static zones to prevent bad spawns in slayer / KoTH / Extraction with 8 people.

 

Ya I guess so I'm just working a map myself its 11:00am now. I might be done around the test lobby at 7:00pm " at least try that it is to make it at 7"

 

I will go ahead and sign up again for next week with Drome. We didn't make it this time, but the lobby was big, so that's okay. I'll try to leave any feedback I have for the maps I played on as I get time throughout the day.

Also, without making more work for Juanez, now that the lobby seems pretty popular, are there thoughts on how to make the bigger lobbies work for testing the smaller maps? Drome is ideally 2v2 or 3v3 . . . 4v4 on it is a good test for spawning, but I'm not sure how to get it tested with smaller teams without disrupting the lobby (which is why I didn't say anything about testing it last night).

 

No, it's okay, Juanez. Everyone had big maps to test and the lobby was big . . . so I didn't want to disrupt anything. I remember trying to test Artifact when the lobbies were small, and it took 2 or 3 TCOJs before we could play a full 8-person FFA. So I didn't want to take away from peoples' opportunities to test their bigger maps. I was perfectly fine with how it went . . . otherwise I would have said something. So no need to apologize.

Also, I was there late anyway (I'll always be about a half hour or so late just due to when I get off work), and everything was rolling by the time I got there. If it's okay for me to ask if the lobby can be split for testing a small map, then I will do so in the future. But since everything was going well for the bigger maps last night, I just didn't want to interrupt. Not your fault . . . rather, it was my choice.

 

Feedback for Cascade and Surveyor:

I'm leaving it here because I unfortunately don't have much. Both of these games were too laggy for me to really tell anything. On Cascade, I died once without ever seeing my opponent or knowing what weapon killed me. It may have been my connection . . . I'm not sure others had the same uber-lag issues. It was especially frustrating on Cascade, as there are areas where you can fall to your death, and after a lag-skip, there I would be . . . falling. Not the map's fault, though.

I was especially disappointed on Surveyor, because I'd played that one initially and wanted to see how the changes improved it. But the only real comment I can generate out of that game was that the green area did not seem nearly as underutilized this time as it was for the first tests.

 

Spaceship Hangar:

Sorry, but I didn't find a thread for this one. I can only really provide two feedback items, though:

1. The framerate issues were excessive. It must have been dropping a third to half of the frames, especially when on the perimeter looking across the map. Where I would start is the flooring. While those buildings make for cool-looking floors, they are horrendous for framerate (I know . . . I've tried the same thing). I would replace them with either coliseum walls or station ramps that have been rotated to be flat. If you use corridors, you may end up with the same frame issues. I've not found corridors to work well if you have to use lots of them . . . even if you bury all the windows. I apologize in advance, but I would not want to play this map again unless the framerate can be significantly improved. It's just too frustrating.

2. The lifts shoot you waaaaaaaaaaaay too high. You're a sitting duck for the entire time. After trying them twice, and, despite the frame issues, getting 4-shot before landing, I did not use them again for the rest of the game.

 

I'm not sure exactly what you call excessive, personally I only felt a small framerate drop for 1-2s and didn't notice any other problem during the game. didn't see anything really significant in Forge either, but I had some worries. isn't it something about some versions of the 360 being less powerful than others?

most pieces look ugly for flooring, but I'll have a look.

those who tried the previous versions, would you say the staircases were better or lifts are an improvement? I felt lift gave a better flow (I still kept staircases for the CTF version). I guess I was lucky that there was never any one to kill me while I was in the air (in another hand that happened every time on Paladin)

btw, you only mean gravity lifts or mancannons too? I thought it would be good to put them both for the test.

 

Probably man cannons. I don't think grav lifts would have sent me that high . . . unless they were the heavy ones. On the flooring, if you use the underside of the station ramps, they don't look too bad at all.

 

mancannons sent you 3 floors higher, to the railgun bridge. lifts sent you 2 floors higher, to the concussion rifles bridges. they were small lifts and small mancannons.

I like how the grey floor contrasts with vertical elements.

I'm really not sure what to say about most maps.

on castle siege I just didn't find where to get extra ammo as an attacker.

after looking at cascade in forge, I really wonder what is the new structure that was added over the rocket launcher, that looks really weird. also, I think the forging could be polished a bit.

I was quite annoyed with paladin, there seemed to be few spawn points. most of the time I spawned in front of that rock on which you can climb and them jump on the central platform. after looking at the map in forge, I noticed there is a bridge on the left and a mancannon on the right to leave that room, but the angle of view you have when you spawn absolutely don't show them, and I didn't notice them during the game. also the grav lift was absolutely not an option, I got killed every time I used it.

 

There are railguns with fixed physics attached to those pillars on each side of the catapults. I thought about using ordnance, but that gametype already throws up a lot of waypoints; I didn't want to make it excessive. The attackers have six railguns, one on each pillar, and the defenders have six railguns scattered around various places - two on top of the walls, two on the stone ramps leading up to the walls, and two attached to walls at ground level. They also all respawn very fast and the max is set to 16 rather than 12, so ammo is theoretically plentiful. I'll see if I can make that any more visually apparent.

re: framerate - I think several of us found the framerate on your map to be pretty crippling, Fauch. The flooring may be the problem, or it might be a combination of that and the sheer number of objects in open view. I don't know what your budget is on that map but it seems likely to be high since it's multiple stories and all of these different structures. After the game oVR commented that the framerate was so bad he would have just ended the game early. I don't know if it's that bad, but I was definitely getting drops from certain places, and to the point that it was hard to shoot people. Anything you can do to clean that up would be a good move.

 

it sounds like many of you had much bigger framerate issues than me, I had no problem playing. that's quite annoying, that means I can make a map that will look fine to me, and will actually be unplayable for other people...

 

So how did people like the changes to cascade? Should I keep them, remove then, change them or anything else?

 

that's how it looks to me, and performances in matches were quite similar.


what about alienation? the erosion octogonal map with a massive central pit and a central base. is there any serious problem with it?