Altitude2 Map Pack

[VAN1SH1NG]

I am working on a set of maps that change the way Altitude is played. This is as close as we will probably ever get to an Altitude 2, so that is what I'm calling this map pack.

The still relatively new feature to set spawn points midgame opens up a ton of potential for new gameplay. Being able to remove gravity helps too.

Altitude2 Map Pack uses the following settings:

• Camera View Scale: 140% (subject to change slightly, but 140 seems like it will work well) - see much farther, better ability to coordinate with teammates
• New Spawn System: In most maps you will spawn where you die or at least close to the current objective (ball, etc). This allows for much larger maps.
• No Gravity: Altitude2 ball maps remove gravity from the ball. This allows the entire map to be equally utilized instead of action gravitating to the bottom. Some maps are likely to at least experiment with fully removing gravity. The main issue with removing gravity completely right now is that if you come to a stop it is difficult to gain momentum. Having rev or using miranda helps considerably though.

New maps are required since all current maps are based on set spawn areas and having gravity. Here are the different types of maps being created:

• Football - Much larger than current football map, wide goals that require you try to fake out any goalie(s) present. Turrets guard the goal area forcing you to shoot longer shots. I will likely create a second, smaller 4v4 football map for ladder to help keep the server alive when not enough for 6v6 ball. Respawn occurs where you die or in front of your team's goal after a goal is scored.
• Hockey - Similar to the new football but different map dimensions and of course the goal is moved out some. I'm expecting to make this map vertical just to further change things up. Gravity is also completely removed while football is likely to have gravity except on the ball.
• Ball - Similar to current ball except much larger maps. Most likely you will respawn in certain areas of the map depending on the current location of the ball. For example, if the ball is on the other teams side you will spawn near middle. If the ball is on your side of the map you will spawn closer to the goal you defend. Another big change is 360 degree goals (more specifically probably 4 goals backed up against each other to allow scoring from any side). There will be obstacles around the goals to make it more difficult to score from a distance. The goal is to make this play as a hybrid of regular Altitude Ball and GravBall from Infantry (old game Sony used to run).
• Race - Mario Kart like race maps. I'm not sure if there will be multiple laps yet as that will take a little more work to implement. Probably simple Start to Finish maps initially although laps may be added later.
• Zone Control - Large teams battle for control of a map. You get points over time for the number of zones you control. Unlike the other game types, Zone Control may require a lot of new code to support. Because of this there is a good chance no Zone Control maps will be available when the Altitude2 Map Pack servers launch.

Feel free to post ideas for other game types that should be relatively easy to implement.

Here is a preview of the current Altitude2 version of Football followed by the original Football map for size comparison:





For those of you who tested the new football map several months ago...

The graphics have changed and the goal area works differently. Instead of trying to completely prevent attackers from entering the goal area of the other team, the new turret setup deters you from entering but does not instantly kill you. There is also a triangular object blocking the middle of the goal. This is needed to help keep goalie(s) from being easily killed. The goal size has increased some to compensate for this. All planes are allowed in pub servers. Restrictions may be added if this is ever added to ladder. It will play better with limited planes and other rules, but restrictions tend to be difficult to implement in pubs.

To clarify Altitude2 Map Pack is certainly not meant to be an upgrade or replacement of the current Ball mode. The new ball mode just offers an alternative style of gameplay.

[VAN1SH1NG]

Reserved.....

[Brutal]

This sounds like it could be very successful and help the Altitude community. Thanks Van for all of your work you've been putting out.

[_lemon_]

Awesome >>>>>>>>>>>

[JWhatever]

Originally Posted by VAN1SH1NG

No Gravity: Altitude2 ball maps remove gravity from the ball. This allows the entire map to be equally utilized instead of action gravitating to the bottom. Some maps are likely to at least experiment with fully removing gravity. The main issue with removing gravity completely right now is that if you come to a stop it is difficult to gain momentum. Having rev or using miranda helps considerably though.

Losing all momentum in zero gravity makes you stall. Rubber hull makes stall recovery really easy. All of the lights can fairly easily regain momentum in zero grav, only the heavies struggle.

Having zero grav on makes rubber hull and rev a lot better options than what they currently are to the point that running one of them might become a must have for a heavy.

-J

[Aki1024]

How do you lack enough lift when you have zero weight? Are you flying though a liquid to cause extreme drag to make up for the lack of weight? Without gravity, is the angle of attack of interest relative to your traveling direction?

[VAN1SH1NG]

The problem is the flight mechanics are left exactly the same with gravity off. Honestly it could probably be fixed well enough by making afterburner consume energy at a much slower rate when the gravity is disabled.. 1/3 of what it is now might be a good starting point. You just don't have enough energy to get you moving in the right direction.

[SirriuS]

This sounds awesome. Can't way to try it. Are you building any coop maps too?
Thank you for everything

[Mango777]

Originally Posted by VAN1SH1NG

The problem is the flight mechanics are left exactly the same with gravity off. Honestly it could probably be fixed well enough by making afterburner consume energy at a much slower rate when the gravity is disabled.. 1/3 of what it is now might be a good starting point. You just don't have enough energy to get you moving in the right direction.

That's what rev is for. With the new patch, I believe that rev may become slightly overused in zero gravity servers, because that is the only quick way to get out of stall. *I believe*. Stall in zero gravity is annoying to get out of, because afterburner needs to be combined with gravity for optimum stall recovery. But I think the flight mechanics should be kept the way they are, it is the players who need to adapt to the zero-grav playstyle. It will be like starting all over again! =D

Oh, by the way, I think your football grass should be a bit greener, it looks like someone poured some weak vinegar on it.

[Oyster]

I was messing around in a zero grav server the other day - was having a ton of fun reving around with domber, hurling my dombs like regular missiles lol.

tbd was interesting because if you release the bomb while flying, the bomb keeps sailing that direction at the same speed allowing you to bomb from essentially any direction or distance. Conversely, if you are barely moving at all and release the bomb, it will kind of just hang there for a long time until some kind of hidden timer goes off and detonates it.

[Mango777]

Originally Posted by Oyster

I was messing around in a zero grav server the other day - was having a ton of fun reving around with domber, hurling my dombs like regular missiles lol.

tbd was interesting because if you release the bomb while flying, the bomb keeps sailing that direction at the same speed allowing you to bomb from essentially any direction or distance. Conversely, if you are barely moving at all and release the bomb, it will kind of just hang there for a long time until some kind of hidden timer goes off and detonates it.

Yeah, this bomb mechanic is what I was thinking of when I tried to make zero-grav bowling.

[biell]

How do you expect the testCameraViewScale and testGravityMode to get set?

I added some commands to my server, so these types of settings could be made on a per map basis. If this is what you are expecting, then it might be good to standardize on a methodology for Alti2.0 servers. This is what I implemnted on my server;

/mapScaleCamera <#> - Set testCameraViewScale for the current map to #, store that value, and set it from now on when the mapLoading hook is run for this map. # is between 40 and 300.

/mapScalePlane <#> - Set testPlaneScale for the current map to #, store that value, and set it from now on when mapLoading hook is run for this map. I require this number to be between 40 and 300, but I don't actually know the valid range, I just set the same as for the Camera.

/mapSetGravity <0|1|2|3> - Set testGravityMode for the current map to #, store that value, and set it from now on when mapLoading hook is run for this map.

/map/ForceTeam <left|right|none> - This is for coop, force players to the left team, the right team, or disable with "none". This keeps people from having to use a "/switch" command, and also helps out with SirriuS's new tbd_coop_hive, where he wants TBD COOP, but with roaming bots as an added difficulty (but not human players).

I am not set on my names, but it might be good to come up with a standard for making these settings on Alti2.0 servers, kinda like "/switch" is a de-facto standard in coop. Do people need to make these settings with server integration, or are there ways to force these settings in the map? I have been working under the assumption that these settings need server support too. That is why I made it easilly configurable on my server, so the people testing their new maps could easilly set the defaults for their map dynamically, without having to contact me, or restart software.

[VAN1SH1NG]

Originally Posted by SirriuS

This sounds awesome. Can't way to try it. Are you building any coop maps too?
Thank you for everything

I have never really cared much for coop personally. I also have far too much else I am working on for Altitude to try to add coop maps to my workload. However, if there are any server features that would be helpful for coop I might be able to code them into my servers. As I don't really play coop I'd have to be told exactly what is needed from someone who plays it.

Originally Posted by biell

How do you expect the testCameraViewScale and testGravityMode to get set?

Altitude2 maps will be powered by the same code running my ladder servers. I will publish the instructions to run the code for Altitude2 maps after making sure everything is stable.

It will set the settings based on map name, race starting with 'race_', football = 'football', hockey = 'hockey', zone control starting with 'zone_', and ball I'm not sure about yet.

[sunshineduck]

proper nomenclature for an altitude sequel has and always will be alti2de

[Mango777]

Originally Posted by VAN1SH1NG

It will set the settings based on map name, race starting with 'race_', football = 'football', hockey = 'hockey', zone control starting with 'zone_', and ball I'm not sure about yet.

Maybe race starts with 'r_', zone control start with 'c_' for control, and for ball start with 'z_' for plain 'ol zero grav ball.

[Aki1024]

Originally Posted by Mango777

Maybe race starts with 'r_', zone control start with 'c_' for control, and for ball start with 'z_' for plain 'ol zero grav ball.

Would a player who hasn't played this game before know what those abbreviations would mean? Not a chance. race is a good map type name.

[VAN1SH1NG]

Update:
Probably won't be ready until August as I've asked Nikon to potentially create some map graphics for the new ball mode. He is not going to be able to start working on this for a couple weeks.

I'd also like to see what changes come in the next Altitude patch before wasting time on work when things might change. In addition to a couple fixes, I've asked if it is possible for a command to disable primary and/or secondary weapons. For large maps to work well it needs to be easier to stay alive, and in some cases like football, remove ranged weapons. In addition I'm hopeful that this will make the new maps more newb friendly. It is hard to get started in Altitude when you die every couple seconds starting out. In the new ball maps it is more about positional play and passing the ball around rather than killing.

It is possible Football releases in July, but I'm not sure if I want to launch a single map early. It seems more interesting to have a big release.

Zone Control likely will not happen at all as I really am having trouble figuring out a way to make it work. I think Altitude is missing some features needed for this and don't want to ask for anything else. Might try to get Dodgeball working again at launch as a replacement.

Other non-race, non-ball modes are certainly possible after launch.. like maybe a form of CTF.

[angryirishman0]

Just a quick question about the 'respawning where you die' mechanic. How is this going to be handled exactly? I'm just envisioning some ugly scenarios where someone dies from being slammed into a wall and they respawn all set to fly straight into that wall again :-/

[VAN1SH1NG]

That is taken care of easily in football and hockey as my code changes the spawn angle based on x coordinate of point of death.

However, I had not really thought about that for race maps since I haven't coded that yet. Might make race quite a bit more work than I was thinking.

The only thing I can think of at the moment is to make it so the course is almost entirely left to right. Then there would be many predetermined, safe spawn points. The closest spawn point would then be determined by x coordinate like football & hockey. This would require spawn point data to be stored for every map used, but it would probably be easy enough. Future modes with spawn where you die would probably also have to have predetermined safe spawn points unless they are open maps like football.

[VAN1SH1NG]

Internet was down for a few hours today, so I took a break from working on planeball.com to create the hockey map.

It will likely work much the same as the new football map except it is sized around the same as a current ball map (for faster gameplay compared to football). There is also a face off at center after each goal unlike football where the team giving up the goal starts with possession. Otherwise you spawn near point of death. Goals are far smaller than on football, but still considerably larger than normal.

With the new features that have been added I'm not real sure the best settings for hockey and football. The best gameplay would likely be biplane only with primary fire disabled, but plane restrictions tend to greatly confuse new players for some reason. Also if no loopy it prevents brand new players who haven't unlocked biplane from being able to play at all.

We will have to experiment to see what works best. There might be two different server options, one allowing all planes and one with restrictions. For ball map names I think I'll use a scheme like ball_0mapname, or ball_0g_mapname.

Screenshot of hockey map:

[biell]

I know you said in a post that you did't want to ask for anything else from the developers, but I did think of a way to make football and hockey work well (at least I think it would work well).

How do you think the game would play if weapons were completely disabled and plane hulls had the property of a bouncy (or very low impact) wall. Planes could not fly through each other. You would still need to be able to catch the ball, but otherwise plane hulls are wall polygon hulls and treated the same.

The only player which would die alot under this method would probably be the goalie, I think if we could override spawn times and set them to 0 or 1 second, then this wouldn't be a problem.

This may not be possible without undue effort, it all depends on how things are already coded in the game engine.

What do you think?

[VAN1SH1NG]

I believe at some point early on in development they experimented with planes that collided with each other and it did not work well. Lag would be the biggest issue. Certainly would be something I'd be interested in trying, but I wouldn't want to bug them with anything that probably wouldn't work anyway due to technical reasons.

There are a couple additional changes I will likely need to make this work very well. I won't ask anything else of the devs though until this is running and hopefully becomes a popular mode.

The main additional feature needed is a dribble timer. Basically every 2 seconds of carrying the ball it drops in front of you. You can easily pick it back up but it also allows a chance for opposing planes to swoop in and steal it if you do not protect it well. This reduces the need for killing.