(Since there are some non-MOB folks testing the map, I'm going to start an alpha testing thread here in the open forum.)

The map is not ready for public testing yet (in case some are wondering) and is on a password protected test server in Chicago. It's still undergoing extensive internal testing and changes. All MOB members are welcome to test (see the MOB Regs forum for server info) and I have also sent server information to a few friends from past clans or people who are excellent at map design.

...

State of the map (v067):

- CNQ is implemented with 13 capture points and 2 bonus objectives (one at each end). The bonus objectives do not work yet. There are 10 spawn points per objective for each team (240 total TDM spawn points for CNQ). Right now the server is running in debug mode which means 8 sec capture times and no need for multiple players in order to test CNQ.

- TDM/BEL need a few more TDM spawn points (ones not used in CNQ) to spread players across the map into areas that aren't used during CNQ.

- HQ will probably be added to the map tonight along with an HQ server-side mod to change some things that are annoying about stock HQ (such as the long 45sec wave time).

- BAS might get implemented this coming weekend.

- About half of the vehicles are usable. I still need to finish (or obtain) collmap files for the rest of the vehicles.

- Some models are not solid. Again, there are collmap files that I need to create (or obtain) in order to keep players from walking through them.

- The bases are not solid... not sure why, but I'll probably address that later this week.

- AFAIK, there are no broken spawn points. Please post feedback if you find one that results in the player being stuck in terrain / models / walls or one where the player falls to the bottom skybox.

- There are still holes in the terrain. Please only report holes on the east side of the river for the time being. The german side (west half) is still a work-in-progress.

- TDM gamestate is 22500 bytes with a single player.

- The russian side of the map is about 90% done with gross features. There are two bunkers that still need to be detailed (creating the interior) in the russian spawn. Also, the 2nd floor of the barn and the russian spawn house need work. The russian tunnel also needs to be finished.

- The german side of the map is about 60% done with gross features. Numerous things still need to be fixed.

- I'm always on the lookout for reports of rocks / terrain where vehicles can get stuck on non-obvious things. (Mostly where the tank gets stuck in the terrain at an odd angle.) Please give loc info or e-mail me screenshots to scrapyardbob@mobclan.com, make sure that screenshots are taken from an angle that makes it apparent where you are on the map.

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More notes as I think of them.


- There are sections of the road which are textured in an "odd" texture. These sections of road are broken meshwork that needs to be ripped out and replaced. They have hidden potholes that cause vehicles to go screwy and can allow players to fall through. (I feel like PennDoT in the spring, patching potholes everywhere.)

If you find a section of road that is screwy, but is *not* textured with the marker texture, please report it. That means you've found a road section that I don't know is broken or have forgotten to fix.

- CNQ vehicle placement is pretty final on the Russian side of the map. The german vehicles still need to be moved into their final locations.

- I'm not too worried about obviously broken detail (like a line of fences that have not been connected). What I am interested in hearing about are the little things that may be overlooked. (Such as an alpha blend that doesn't look right from a certain angle or a model that looks funny or small gaps in buildings.) Usually, when I find something that I know I want to fix later, I break it in a big way so that it's glaringly obvious that it's broken.

Current CNQ locations (v067 and later)

#1 RUSSIAN HQ
#2 RUSSIAN AMMO DUMP
#3 SOUTHEAST RUSSIAN BASE
#4 HILL 17 RADIO SHACK
#5 SOUTHEAST BRIDGE
#6 SOUTH FOREST BUNKER
#7 SOUTH FOREST BRIDGE
#8 FARM RADIO SHACK
#9 HILL 75 BUNKER
#10 NORTH V2 LAUNCH SITE
#11 NORTHWEST GERMAN BASE
#12 WEST V2 LAUNCH SITE
#13 GERMAN AMMO DUMP

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Note: You may need to bump up your hunkmegs setting in order to play Tuchola Forest.

Current Vehicle Balance (Max of 48 entities for each gametype):

18 tanks (6 less for CNQ/CTF/HQ)
7 paks
5 mortars
12 jeeps (2 spawn, 2 at edge bases, 2 forward), 6 more for CNQ/CTF/HQ
6 trucks/HTs (3 trucks, 3 HTs - 1 in spawn, 2 forward)

German Tanks (BAS:9, BEL/TDM:9, CNQ:6, CTF:6, HQ:6)
- German tanks are in the spawn unless noted

(2) JAGD
- BEL/TDM/HQ moves one of these forward
- CNQ/CTF/HQ eliminates one of these tanks from the spawn area

(1) StugIII
- BEL/TDM moves this forward
- CNQ/CTF/HQ eliminates this tank from the spawn area

(3) PzIV
- BEL/TDM/HQ moves two of these forward to the flanks
- CNQ/CTF/HQ eliminates one of these tanks from the spawn area

(3) PzIII
- one at each german base

(6) Horches (jeeps), (9) in CNQ/CTF/HQ
- two in spawn, CNQ/CTF/HQ adds a 3rd
- one forward at West Farm Bunker
- one on north flank at the North Road Bunker
- one at G1
- one at G3
- CNQ/CTF/HQ adds one near the North Farm Bunker
- CNQ/CTF/HQ adds one near the South Bridge

(3) Halftracks
- One near G3
- One near G1
- One near G2

Russian Tanks (BAS:9, BEL/TDM:9, CNQ:6, CTF:6, HQ:6)
- Russian tanks are in the spawn, unless noted

(2) KV1s
- BEL/TDM/HQ moves one of these forward to the north side of the R2 Mortar Bunker
- CNQ/CTF/HQ eliminates one of these tanks from the spawn area

(1) Su152
- stock Russian heavy tank, could be swapped for another KV1
- BEL/TDM moves this tank forward to the NE Farm Bunker
- CNQ/CTF/HQ eliminates this tank

(2) T34_76s
- BEL/TDM/HQ moves one tank forward to the Russian's south flank
- CNQ/CTF/HQ eliminates one of these tanks from the spawn area

(1) Stock T34
- BEL/TDM/HQ moves this tank forward to the Russian's north flank

(3) BT7s
- one at each Russian base

(3) Gazaa trucks (ice cream trucks)
- one in spawn (middle), pointed at R2
- one at R3
- one at R2

(6) Jeeps (9 in CNQ/CTF/HQ)
- 2 in spawn (north and south end), CNQ/CTF/HQ adds another in middle of spawn
- one at R1
- one at Southeast Bridge
- one at South Forest Bunker
- one at Northeast Farm Bunker
- CTF/CNQ/HQ adds one at the South Radio Shack
- CTF/CNQ/HQ adds one near the North Bridge

Lookin' forward to seeing some reviews... !

wow bob u got some serious skill. and its all organized im really impressed,

is this going to be on UO or COD2?

CoD:UO using the After-Hourz vehicle pack. Basically, if you've played the Barbarossa and/or Smolensk maps you'll have the client-side files required to play Tuchola Forest 1945.

As for organization... it's easy to lose track of how many vehicles I have of the various types unless I'm very careful. I only have 64 total script_vehicle slots (mortars, paks, jeeps, trucks, halftracks and tanks) and I can only have ~48 active in a particular gametype. More then ~50 active vehicles and the CoD:UO server will start crashing during tank battles due to a "max vehicles" error.

I'm hoping that I don't have to trim back to 45 active vehicles...

(We broke my test server multiple times last week... oops! I think we've caught all the serious game-crashing errors. One bug was in the stock CoD:UO code. There's a deep down bug in CoD:UO TDM which can occur and cause the server to crash under certain circumstances.)


PS: If I count correctly, Barbarossa/BAS runs with 8 paks, 1 mortar, 3 HTs, 2 trucks, 7 russian tanks, 8 german tanks, 4 russian jeeps, and 4 german jeeps. That's only 37 vehicles. Smolensk runs BAS with 45 vehicles. But CNQ on Smolensk is 55 vehicles. When we got the max vehicle error, it was with a 54 vehicle setup on Tuchola Forest, so I'm really hopeful that 48 is low enough.

A second copy of v067 is up on the server now. Changes:

- fixed some collision maps

- the Panzer III and Panzer IV tanks are now useable

- fixed the tank scrape at the west edge of the farm area

Russians have 6 jeeps (1 each by R1 and R2, plus the 4 surrounding R3/spawns). Germs have 5 jeeps (probably forgot the 1 by G2?). Noob.










Oh, is this still pass only Bob?

So Barb/BAS is 40 vehicles. Thanks! My memory ain't what it used to be.

Alpha testing is password protected and invite-only. There are too many map glitches, non-solid models, etc and I don't feel like babysitting the server 24/7 to monitor for folks taking advantage of it. Plus, the map changes daily (or twice daily) resulting in a constant stream of updates.

Beta testing in another 2-4 weeks will be public. At that point all of the map glitches and models will be fixed and changes should be getting down to small detail cleanup work.

MAP IS AWESOME!!!

(grins at Silver) My number one Tuchola Forest fan!

Upcoming changes in v068

- Added a few dozen rocks in areas that didn't have rocks before. Cross your fingers and sacrifice a chicken and hope that these rocks don't cause the dreaded "winding vertices" error.

- Turning off CNQ debug. Capture times will now be 30 seconds instead of 8 seconds. I may even bump those capture times to 60 seconds (they go a lot faster if there are multiple players doing the capture). With the 8 second capture time on a 2v2 match, the defenders could not get in front of the advance in time. By the time they'd figure out where Silver and I were, we'd be 3 zones away capturing positions on the other side of the map. There were some very good battles even with 2v2. The big issue was not enough places to hide for infantry on the german side of the map.

- Spawn distance from vehicles or the next objective is an issue in CNQ. There's a trade-off between spawning the player closer to the next CNQ objective versus spawning them back closer to where the tanks are.

- Added a rock wall around the North V2 launch site area. Added in the trucks and barrels. Moved the hedgehogs around and moved the dragon's teeth around. Other than possible issues with trees being in the wrong spot, this area is basically done.

- One lag complaint is when entering the farm area for the first time. Due to the use of models in this area that aren't found elsewhere on the map, players will experience a brief lag while they load models and textures. I'm not sure how to fix this.

- The test server was a big laggy at times tonight. Not sure why and I didn't investigate.

- Added some trees to the German spawn area. This is a mixed blessing for the Germans.

Mmm, gotta love compile errors. I'm trying to figure out just how many "fake" trees I can add to my treelines to dress them up. (These are simple 8-pointed trees constructed out of 2x3 terrain mesh.) So I did a mass replication of around 1600 (13106 brushes) and ran smack into the MAX_MAP_DRAW_INDEXES error. I was at 7100 brushes prior to the mass replication.

Guess that's too many... there's quite a few things I can do to simplify that.

(later) Not bad, if I keep that number below 10678 brushes (approx 1300 fake trees) I can get a clean compile. But since I still have a lot of detail work to do, I need to keep that below 5000-8000 brushes to leave room for the other detail. Now I have an upper-end number to work with and I can use a simpler tree model / method.

...

FYI for Silver. Looks like I don't have a clean VCLOG which is probably why we're seeing the hitches as we enter into new areas of the map.


Notes for v067 (Wed evening) - This was never posted.

- Added HQ mode, server will now rotate between CNQ/BEL/HQ. Game lengths are all pretty short (<30 minutes). Only CNQ is longer due to being multi-round. The server is testing modifications to the HQ gametype (allowing additional CVars to control respawn wave time, max hold time, etc). Respawn waves are 20 seconds instead of the default 45 seconds, allowing for a more fluid HQ game.

- Compass range is broken in HQ, I'll have to fix that in the server-side mod. It's sticking at 1024u when it needs to be 3000-5000u.

- Points per rank on the test server is set to 5, so you will get arty pretty quick (at 20 points instead of 40 points).

- Added more terrain on the german side. At least you can now get to all 3 bases without needing wings.

- Fixed a lot of odds and ends such as messed up spawn points, broken textures.

- Started adding "fake" trees in the treelines to spice them up. The best example is in the southeast corner of the map, near the southeast bridge's pak45 gun. Here's to hoping that they don't cause a compile error.

...

Found the bug in HQ.GSC (and TDM.GSC) that was causing the compass values not to set properly. In both TDM.GSC and HQ.GSC, the SpawnPlayer() function does not properly set the client-side CVar for the compass range (cg_hudCompassMaxRange).

Kinda sad that I'm still finding errors in the 1.51 CoD:UO code, eh?


v068 is turning into an internal-only testing version. It won't make it to the server. (This is the version that I'm playing around with mass duplication of fake trees.)

Instead, I'll probably release v069 around lunchtime after it finishes compiling.

More changes coming in v069 (or later)

- The general idea behind anti-tank weapon spawns is that spawnpoints in the main team spawn areas will be on 10 second timers while weapon spots in forward battle areas will only be on 30 second timers. Ammo spawns in the bases will be on 15 sec timers. The faster respawn in the home territory allows spawning players to load up without excessive wait. The slower respawn in forward territory keeps infantry from holing up in a bunker with infinite ammo.

- That design guideline also applies to satchel spawns. Ten seconds on the two spawns in each home area and thirty seconds for forward locations.

- Adding two flamethrower spawns to the middle of the map. I know the young pyros get excited by all the lovely flames. I may add two more flamethrowers elsewhere.

- Experimenting with smoke grenade spawns and binoc spawns. Not even sure if they can be handed out via ammo spawns.

More v069 notes

- Cleaning up the treelines. Added the border foliage to make it more obvious where the borders of the map are. All of the short, white, spruce tree borders should be properly placed now.

- Started reworking the interior of the treelines. While I haven't started putting the fake trees back in, I'm starting to make room for them by making the core of the treelines narrower.

- Smoke grenade spawn definitely works. There won't be many of them and they'll be in out of the way places. Now you won't have to suicide to get more smoke grenades if you managed to evade an engagement. Plus, they'll be on a 60 sec respawn timer.

- Added a bit more detail to the V2 launch sites. I'm debating adding a rocket ammo spawn to the North V2 Site, but I'll decide that once I add in the North Road Bunker. Instead, I may put a smoke grenade spawn inside one of the truck beds.

- I'll be adding a foliage noise to the border foliage. If you get within 16u of a treeline wall, you'll make noise. (You almost have to be touching the wall to run afoul of this noisemaker.)

- Got a partial vclog finished. That lag / hitch that Silver was getting when he entered the middle farm area should now be less.

- Trying to patch some german potholes before I put v069 up on the server... maybe another hour or two.

v070

Removing some of the HQ radio spawns. Mostly the ones on the east and west ends of the map. This will keep the action in the middle of the map for HQ. (It's a marginal HQ map due to the size. Putting radios on the ends made it worse. But then, folks play HQ on maps like Rhine Valley... so I'll leave the gametype in.) I may also turn off any spawn points that are on the ends of the map for HQ. That will push players towards the middle as well.

HQ probably also needs more jeeps and light (fast) tanks rather then heavy / slow tanks.

South Forest area needs more rocks (and more trees... if I can find some).

Not sure if I'll leave the South Forest Bunker location in for CNQ. It's a very short distance from the two bridges, but it's also a logical capture point. I think I'll add some roadside trenches, some dragon's teeth and some hedgehogs to dress up the area.

I need to fix the mortar position on the North Pass. The side walls and foliage are a bit too tall. It's too difficult to see the target areas.

I'm hoping to get the german terrain finalized on Friday or Saturday. Then I can work on models and implementing base assault.

CNQ spawn positions need work. Some are too far from the action.

I look fwd to playing this map more then anyother... Inc Barb...

for HQ what about putting a point ing the glacier pass? force them to abandon tanks and move on foot?
for Bas what about increasing the speed of the kv1 to the level of the jager? I think that the H. Tanks will make for better game... maybe even out the speed of the kv1 to the jager panzer? like ^kv1 speed 25% and lower the jager about 25% (so therenot as slow and bt7 is still faster... slow tanks on large map make for long drives... (I <3 The jager!!)

I still think that the changing rain and fog values are SOOOOOOOOOOOO awesome...

for those that have not played there is a part of the map that is actualy beautiful... the trees and snow and stuff... I want to live in a place like that... seriously...

For HQ, I have the following points setup right now (going from memory):

- The (4) bridges
- The South Forest Bunker (at the T-intersection)
- The (3) bunkers in the Farm area
- The south trench and the east trench in the farm area
- The two radio shacks (the SE one somewhat values infantry)
- The bunker surrounded by dragon's teeth near R2 (might delete this one)

I could also add one up on the Glacier Pass in the westernmost ambush nook (near the North Bridge). And possibly a second one up on Glacier Pass in the middle nook between exits A and B.

I definitely need to adjust where you can spawn during HQ (limiting players to spawning in the middle third of the map). However, I need to rebalance the CNQ spawn points first. The CNQ spawn points are TDM spawn points, so they get used in HQ. Since CNQ has the most spawn points of any gametype, I want to see where they end up before I setup HQ-specific spawn points.

I may also revert the wave time to 30 sec. A lot of players don't understand the ebb and flow of HQ. Plus, I don't think the splash screen messages about the point totals are correct (they don't reflect what is in the config file).

Due to the large size of the map, I've set the initial spawn delay on the HQ radio to 60 seconds. This means that the question mark will appear on the compass for a full minute before the radio actually shows up and can be setup. That gives both teams time to start heading towards the new radio objective. (It was like that last night, but the testers never got past the first radio position without complaining about the size of the map. So we rolled the map into CNQ instead.)

So some of the complaints have to do with unfamiliarity of the map. Others are valid (such as having HQ radios towards the ends of the map rather then the middle). Some issues have to do with how I have the server configured (respawn wave time, point totals, etc).

Other game balance things for HQ:

I'm going to change the GSC file to change how points are awarded to the players. Right now, the default is that every player on the defending team (team in control of a radio) gets 3 points every wave. The attacking team players get 3 points once they destroy the radio.

I'm going to change this to 1 point every wave tick for the defenders and 4 points for the attacking team once they destroy the radio. It doesn't change the outcome of the match (which is based on the # of seconds that you hold the radio) but it will get rid of some of the player score imbalances. Attackers basically get 3 ticks to get to and destroy the radio before their personal scores will start to fall behind the defender scores.

For those curious, you can read the nitty gritty on the HQ server-side mod at:
http://www.iwnation.com/Forums/index.php?showtopic=21158

We'll have to see how fast the Jagd is compared to the KV1... (heavy tank races!)

Map length is the same as Barbarossa (spawn to spawn). It's the twisty / windy passages that make it seem larger.

There are a few spots where I may do large-scale demolition work next week:

- South road on the east side of the Southeast Bridge. I'm planning on eliminating that U-shaped piece of road and making it a shorter way around that treeline to attack Russian #1.

- The S-shaped piece of road near the Southwest Bridge. That was a very early bit of road before I knew what I was doing. As a result, the turns are too sharp (it was constrained by a bunker that is no longer there). Since I have to redo that bit of road anyway, I'll probably restructre the entire area just west of the Southwest Bridge.

...

Note: If you've been testing the map frequently, you should clean out old copies of the Tuchola Forest PK3s. (Silver ran into an issue last night due to having 99 custom pk3s in his UO folder. Clearing out the old PK3s fixed it.)

...

Not sure exactly what is going to change for v070. Most of last night's work was terrain detail (more rocks and stone walls). I doubt that I'll get CNQ re-balanced before the weekend. I'll probably try to get all vehicles working this evening (just the StugIII and Russian Truck are left).

Most of what I'm doing today is trying to get a clean final compile of v070. I need to find out how close I am to the limits of flare. Unfortunately, I won't have that answer until 3 or 4 hours after I start a compile.

Nice, v070f compiled cleanly.

Upcoming changes in v071 (and later):

- ALL vehicles should now be working (yay!). I finally got around to importing the collmaps that Slyk gave me and implementing them.

- Most decorative models should now be solid. Noteable exception is the tiger tank on the Glacier Pass, and maybe a few others (mostly ruined tanks).

- I'm still fighting with the destroyed pak40/pak45s. They don't block bullets or shells yet, even though I did the collmap properly (it blocks the player and vehicles...). I still have a few ideas.

- Starting to put in minefields for Silver. Now he'll have someplace to stash his stolen tanks. The first spot will be at the Southeast Bridge.

Tossing v071 up on the server in the next 15 minutes (assuming I don't find any glaring errors).

- Finished all of the terrain in the southwest corner... now I just have the northwest corner left (plus cleanup work wherever I missed a spot).

Note for Feezy, that crashed plane at the Southwest bridge is the HE111 model.

We had a rather full server tonight. There were 8 MOB/Regs players online at peak time and we spent around 3 hours testing out the map in HQ / BEL / CNQ. The upside is that we discovered a server lag issue that I need to address (too many TDM spawn points during HQ / BEL games). Even with the somewhat heavy load, we didn't manage to crash the server.

You will now die if you manage to get a vehicle underneath the map. I've added a minefield brush on the underside of the map that triggers if you fall through terrain. That eliminates land-sharking. Note: Ultimately, I do plan on a map with no holes... this is the catch-all method.

The StugIII is being difficult... it's refusing to work. All of the other vehicles are working fine.

The Russian stock heavy tank will be removed and replaced with another KV1. The SU175 is *SLOW* and the AHz vehicles simply outrun it (even the slow KV1). The stock T34 seems to fit in well, OTOH. I'll have to take another pass at balancing vehicles across the map.

I need to dream up more spots where I can stick spawn points and ammo boxes.

HQ doesn't work well with tanks. We had multiple SU175s spawned at the same time, even though there is only a single SU175 spawn point. So... I'll probably turn off tanks in HQ mode. The scoring adjustment worked well. It kept the player scores from spiraling out of control.

Here is the screenshot of the wierd thingy bob.

Reworked the HQ spawns... there are now only 29 spawns (instead of 280 due to using the CNQ's TDM spawns...). I'll need to add another few HQ/TDM spawns to the pool. None of the HQ spawns are on top of radio locations now. All of the HQ spawns are in the middle half of the map (nothing on the far ends). Most of them are close to jeeps or rocket ammo.

Overall, there are 60 spawns for TDM/BEL (an additional 31 spawns that are not used in HQ). The CNQ spawns are a separate issue and not used in the other gametypes anymore. BEL needs a more widespread set of spawn locations in order to give the allied prey a chance to evade and escape after spawning.

Basically, TDM spawns are used for BEL, CNQ, HQ and TDM gametypes. But I can limit them to a subset of the gametypes (such as making a spawn only work in CNQ or making it only work in BEL and TDM). So out of the 60 TDM spawns (not counting the CNQ-only spawns), 31 are used for BEL+TDM and 29 are use for all three gametypes.

Even as I write this... I just went back and whacked a few of the TDM spawns that aren't used in HQ... (about half a dozen). That should allow for enough spawn variety in TDM/BEL without the lag issues that we were experiencing tonight.


...

Thanks, Feezy. I went and marked that section of road with the "broken road" texture. I also found 2 other spots on the map tonight that were broken road meshes.

...

The company that I rent the server from is closing down the Chicago facility. I've opted to move to a New York City server. Once I know the new IP address, I'll post it in the private forum.

(Figures that they'd move me to another server, because I finally memorized the IP address, eh?)

v072 is up on the server

- Finished adjusting the HQ spawn points and the TDM/BEL spawn points

- Turned off vehicles in HQ.

- Changed the default CNQ starting objective. The old starting goals were the Russian Ammo Dump (for the germans) and the Southeast Russian Base (for the Russians). I've changed the starting objective to be two spots farther away. Now the Germans will be attempting to take the South Radio Shack at the start of the round while the Russians attempt to take the Southeast Bridge at the start.

Awsome job Scrapy, keep up the good work. I love the board!!!!!!!!!

playing CNQ there was my favorite, my computer just hated having to reload the map after 2 rounds of it to go to whatever the next game setting was. i don't suppose your gonna maybe make it a 24/7 something? or have it 24/7 CNQ one day then change it 24/7 the next?

During testing it's important that we play as many gametypes as possible. So we'll be running multiple gametype rotations throughout the testing phase. Part of my README for the server admins will be suggestions on what settings seem to work well for various gametypes on this map.

Maybe during beta testing I'll run a more limited map set.

BEL - is already mostly tweaked. But it's a blast to play and gives testers excuses to dive into all the nooks and crannies on the map. BEL also serves double-duty as testing for TDM (although I don't recommend that folks play TDM on a map of this size... but some folks might).

HQ - We'll have to see how this plays out over the next few days. I've eliminated the tanks and shortened the max-hold time by 2/3s. And I changed the spawn points to be in the middle half of the map (not on the ends). It should be a vastly better experience now.

CNQ - Still needs tweaked, mostly spawn point locations and jeep/tank locations. I'm curious whether folks think the 25 minute rounds are too long or too short. The server is setup with a 25 minute round limit and a 40 minute overall limit, best of 3 rounds format. (Unless the first two rounds run over 40 minutes, in which case CNQ will end in a tie.)

Personally, I find that back-to-back 25 minute rounds are about right. CNQ tends to be very brutal and intense fighting. Less then 25 minutes and you won't have time to push the objective back and forth more then twice.

If I can get the bonus objectives working, I think I'll set it so that the round ends if the bonus objective gets touched twice. (Making it worth 150 points or so with a 400 point limit.) The thing with the bonus objective is:

- The bonus objective does not appear on the player's compass. Meaning they have to search around a bit while looking for something that they're not sure what they're looking for.

- The bonus objective is an instant-click switch. So a suicidal attacker can run in and click the switch and get the bonus points. However, once clicked it can't be clicked again for another 5 minutes.

I'm tempted not to put in bonus objectives at all.... except that they offer a way to end the round early because one team or the other got pushed all the way back to their spawn.

A 24/7 CNQ server is probably a bit much. I think it will need to be split as CNQ/BAS to give players a more relaxing game inbetween the intense CNQ fighting.

...

I still haven't a clue where to put CTF flags. Anyone have ideas? One idea is at the German #2 and the Russian #2.

...

Other notes for upcoming releases:

- Added an ammo box up on Glacier Pass at the mortar.

- Added a small trench in the South Forest, with anti-tank ammo (30 sec respawn).

- Added a kar98k spawn in the german spawn area. This allows players who want to use the portable MG to pickup a backup weapon rather then having to scrounge for one.

- Added a mosin spawn in the russian spawn area. Same theory, give the portable MG folks a chance to pickup a rifle before they leave the spawn.

- Added lamps inside most bunkers.

- Added some portable MG brushes on top of the wooden defensive walls. There are still a lot of walls that need these brushes added (so that you can setup portable MGs on them).

- More rocks and bushes in various spots.

- All ruined tanks / vehicles should now have smoke effects (plumes of smoke rising from the wrecks).

- Moved trees and rocks around in the South Forest again. I'm trying to get "clumps" of trees / rocks with more open areas in between.

...

Specific Feedback Requests

a. What do you all think of the current CNQ points? Do they make sense? Are they too close/too far? Which ones are easy / hard to attack / defend?

b. Where do we need better landmarks? What spots are you constantly getting lost in?

c. Are the HQ radio positions in good or bad spots? Which ones are tough / easy?

d. Where have you been where you were stuck without a vehicle or felt like you spawned in the boonies?

e. Where do we need more soft (bushes / trees) and hard cover (rocks / walls)? Where do we have too much cover?

More upcoming changes (v074):

- Fixed the bonus objectives in CNQ. The instruction (hint text) on the bonus objectives should be a bit clearer.

- Added the 3 ammo dump shelters (2 in the german spawn, 1 in the russian spawn) to serve as objectives for CNQ. I still have to dress it up a bit, but the majority of the decorations are in place for the german ammo dump.

- Loosened up the capture radius on a few of the CNQ objectives

v074 is up on the server

HQ definitely plays better without tanks. Nowhere near as brutal. Mortars become extremely useful in an infantry-only map (as our opponents found out as I shelled them from a hidden nook). A jeep's MG becomes a key weapon for guarding the radio on a bridge (or the Halftrack).

We didn't really test CNQ tonight, other then running around and making abundant use of the ground cover. There's a new trench south of the South Forest Bunker which is a decent place to hole up and defending the South Forest Bunker objective in CNQ.

v075 is up on the server. This is a final lighting compile (so the trees and models will cast shadows). As a result, the ambiance should be very different from what you normally see (forested areas will have more shadows).

The big part of v075 is that the ruined bases are now solid and you can get down into the basements. I'm still working on making the shelves below solid (the horizontal pieces are solid by default, but the vertical pieces allow bullets/grenades through). I'm going to make the vertical pieces solid as well, but leave the very bottom (where the four poles are) as non-solid to weapon fire.

The best example of the solid shelf vertical bits is the Russian #2 base.

This is different then mp_foy or mp_uo_barbarossa. On those maps, the vertical sides of the shelves are non-solid and allow gunfire. This (to me) is counter-intuitive and should be fixed. If I can't see the stairs, you shouldn't be able to bounce a grenade off my chest or shoot me in the head. (Now you'll have to shoot my feet, or come around the side of the shelf.)

I've used a metal weapon clip texture for the sides of the shelves. The sparks from bullets will make it very obvious that you're hitting the sides of the shelves instead of the player hiding behind.

Current map rotation:



hq_large.cfg



cnq_large.cfg



bel_large.cfg



The gametype-specific config files are useful for changing tank spawn values, artillery intervals, etc. As you can see, points-per-rank changes according to gameype.

im not so sure to add all the smoke to the ruined tanks and stuff... the wrecks made it look old... like a past war, like they fought there once and its been awhile...

the cnq trail is good enough... it basic to follow... the only freaky part is the first bridge that you killed me and feezy at for a long time using the compus to navigate it gets a little weird but after a few rounds people will get the drift

are all the shelves in the bottom bullet proof? the middle shelf is normal but what about pulling all the shelves out and putting in an ammo crate?

I have yet to find a spawn that is really "out there" maybe one or 2 on the german side by the base and the Y shaped trail were the trees are floating???

my 2 cents on tanks and stuff...
the russian truck SUCKS... it sucks on barb, and every map out there! I know there is nothing that compares to the German Half track but maybe change them to a faster kv1 or su... personally I would love to see the truck armored with an anti aircraft gun on back, you dont have the time to do it.... maybe some reading this could??? or can tell me how to on a mac???

the rain ROX!
did you change the lighting to red or blue?
red is used at night... blue shines to far and is the brightest light...

I still feel empty at the village w/o the guns. I think BAS will be gun arena.

have you given any thought on mass arty?

also I was telling you about the sound from a certian MOD that rox, can that be added to the map? with out adding another pk file?

Pity that the (Russian?) BA10 doesn't work or I'd use that in place of the milk trucks.

(Personally, I like the milk trucks. They're definitely unexpected when they show up and a great way to get multiple allies to the front lines in a hurry. You just need to bail early.)

I vaguely remember you talking about sounds... but refresh my memory.

I like the idea of using red colored lights in the major bunkers instead of the kerosene lamps. Would kerosene lamps have been retrofitted with red filtered glass?

I may experiment with mass arty... and mass smoke... I think both could be server-side mods that are separate files (like the HQFix that lets us tweak HQ gameplay). Mass arty is probably as simple as changing the number of rounds dropped. I'll probably make it a CVar. I won't muck around with marching arty or arty that zeros in (it will still be random).

At the farm area:

- The two mortar positions are working very well. I wish the one on the Russian side of the river was closer, but there's no better place to put it.

- The tank scrape on the German side serves as a replacement for the pak gun that was there. I think it *mostly* meets that purpose. Not sure where else I could steal a vehicle / pak gun from to replace the pak gun that was there. That german tank scrape is very powerful (as Silver used it to great effect the other night).

- Russians are a bit screwed with the removal of their pak gun on the east side of the river. I'm not sure what I'm going to add in order to counter the german tank scrape.

One idea is to add a pine tree at the river crossing, allowing Russian tanks to come up the middle road into the east part of the farm fields without being target practice for a tank at the german's west farm tank scrape.

Another idea is to change things around at the North Bridge (east side) so that Russians can get a tank down into the east farm fields.

Or I could attempt to add a tank scrape on the Russian side of the farm area... somewhere...

...

I suspect that Russian armor will tend to run the flanks (north road or south road). Attempting to cross the farm area is going to be deadly (and would be even worse if I had left those two pak guns in).

rail roads used colored lamps and i dont see why they wouldnt have in war...

maybe the truck could be tweaked like up armored (higher defensive points or w/e) just to wasy to kill

there is a tank explosion sound that actually sounds real with the steel ripping apart. just alot better sound, makes killing tanks fun, i can send you the mod if you want

Tank explosions are a server-admin function. Similar to the non-stock sounds on the MOB's Base Assault server.

Trying to get the red cagelights working inside the bases. The model keeps going yellow on me, even though my light is pure red.

Base Assault *might* be working in v076. I seem to have figured out most issues regarding the bases. Only took 8 hours...

Germans will be at a disadvantage due to not being able to get to their G3 pak gun and the german tanks not being in the proper spots yet.


For the first week or so I plan on running bases at half-strength (compared to stock) so they'll go down a lot quicker then normal. Mostly I want to know whether bases are being destroyed properly, whether bombs work, whether rubble shows up in the right spots.

We'll experiment with a 2 minute bomb timer... see if that breaks the server (grin).

Well, the 2 minute bomb timer works... but is extremely confusing. The timer at the bottom of the screen goes around twice. So... looks like 60 sec max for bomb timers. Admins would need to use a longer plant timer if they want to lengthen the time to get to a base. (A 30 sec bomb plant might not be bad.)

Found a few errors with the bases (lights not vanishing, glowing through the ground). Also, the rain effect goes through the bunker into the basement during Base Assault.

Spawns inside of the bases don't seem to be working... I'll have to read the BAS.GSC file again and figure out why.

Forward defense is going to be the name of the game in Base Assault. Gotta keep the enemy on their side of the river or your team will spend all their time chasing bomb planting teams.

Upcoming v077 notes:

- Moved the R3 pak gun. Right now, it's exposed but I plan on putting it inside a defensive works at that intersection.

- Moved the Glacier Pass mortar. It won't reach R3, but it can at least cause havoc for the R3 pak gun and the defensive trench that will be around the R3 pak gun.

- Added the 6th mortar. It's along the SE road. This mortar can shell the Hill 17 Radio Shack along with shelling R1 (not sure if it reaches the R1 pak gun). Basically, this mortar is a reward for the Germans if they take and hold the SE road U-bend. (Russians should be preventing germans from getting past the Southeast Bridge...)

- Bleed through from the red lights in the bottom of the bunkers is driving me batty. I have yet to find a way to block that light from lighting up the surrounding snow from below.

can the brightness of the light be diffrent? or can the light be moved? like to a lower corner or wall??

bob, check: http://www.mobclan.com/forums/upload/index...ic=10325&st=180

Yeah, I'm experimenting with various intensities / locations of the light sources in the bunkers. Unfortunately, the Base Assault destruction thread doesn't allow lights to be hidden / deleted... so even though the model vanishes, you still get a red light source hanging above the open base.

You don't notice the problem in Foy because the lights closely match the sun color.

I'll look at the skybox again. Wonder if you see the effect on Foy?