oa_koth2

As we were talking about game content creation and which old maps would be a nice remake in Paris we stumbled across good old Transfusion and it's Blood spirit. Back in those days we enjoyed deathmatch in a tower map. OA already has it's CTF bases maps which are inspired by Blood so why missing this one?

Astro had his own idea of it so I didn't go with any of his suggestions. A first unnoticed beta release was done in November. The maps structure and gameplay was too plain. I fear I was not creative enough to use all possibilities the layout gave me.

For next release a lot of changes go into this one:

• chaingun added, 1 railgun removed
• trims, ledges, lots of foilage and details
• possible to reach every level of the tower from the inside
• a ladder and glowing orbs
• 2nd rocket launcher, personal teleporter
• creating lots of new textures

Bots do fine 'cept finding their way out of the void. Map is damn cool in Elimination gametype (8).

New singleplayer campaign release

As Armageddon Man wrote a little background I just felt that OA's singleplayer experience is not an exciting one.

The new singleplayer.pk3 file replaces all tiers with theme matched compositions. Bots are easier and increase in challenging skills as you progress through the tiers. There is a 'tourney' boss fight at the end of each.

As the first editing is done a little testing would be appreciated. The final battle is still missing.

Happy fraggin'

Botskills anyone?

As part of planning a new singleplayer campaign I wrote a little script to get an overview of all the bots of OA. I parse just the main characterfile and not any item or weapon weights files they will look for when traveling through a map.

The most interesting values are listed in this table although I only used the botfiles I found in the SVN. Seems it's not uptodate as bots like assassin are missing. The machinegun as favourite weapon marks more than one weapon as highly skilled.

name	attack skill	aim skill	aim acc	fov	reaction time	alert.	fav Weapon
"Angelyss"	0.3	0.3	0.3	0.3	1.5	0.5	MACHINEGUN
"Arachna"	0.25	0.25	0.25	0.25	3.0	0.5	MACHINEGUN
"Ayumi"	0.25	0.25	0.25	0.25	3.0	0.5	MACHINEGUN
"Beret"	0.25	0.25	0.25	0.25	3.0	0.5	MACHINEGUN
"Dark"	0.3	0.3	0.3	0.3	1.5	0.5	MACHINEGUN
"Player"	0.25	0.25	0.25	0.25	3.0	0.5	MACHINEGUN
"Gargoyle"	0.250	0.250	0.250	0.250	2.00	0.900	BFG10K
"Grism"	0.250	0.250	0.250	0.250	2.00	0.900	BFG10K
"grunt"	0.250	0.250	0.250	0.250	2.00	0.900	BFG10K
"Jenna"	0.25	0.25	0.25	0.25	3.0	0.5	MACHINEGUN
"Kyonshi"	0.250	0.250	0.250	0.250	2.00	0.900	BFG10K
"liz"	0.3	0.3	0.3	0.3	2.5	0.5	MACHINEGUN
"Major"	0.25	0.25	0.25	0.25	2.0	0.95	RAILGUN
"Merman"	0.25	0.25	0.25	0.25	3.0	0.5	LIGHTNING
"Neko"	0.3	0.3	0.3	0.3	1.5	0.5	MACHINEGUN
"Penguin"	0.25	0.25	0.25	0.25	3.0	0.5	MACHINEGUN
"Rai"	0.3	0.3	0.3	0.3	1.5	0.5	MACHINEGUN
"Sarge"	0.250	0.250	0.250	0.250	2.00	0.900	BFG10K
"Sergei"	0.30	0..30	0.30	0.30	1.5	0.5	LIGHTNING
"Skelebot"	0.25	0.25	0.25	0.25	3.0	0.5	MACHINEGUN
"Sly"	0.3	0.3	0.3	0.3	1.5	0.5	MACHINEGUN
"Tanisha"	0.3	0.3	0.3	0.3	1.5	0.5	MACHINEGUN
"Tony"	0.25	0.25	0.25	0.25	3.0	0.5	MACHINEGUN
"Widowe"	0.25	0.25	0.25	0.25	3.0	0.5	MACHINEGUN

So what do we learn?

Most of the bots are pretty much the same without any individual character/skills. Most of 'em were created by just copy and paste. For now it doesn't matter which bot will be on what map as there is no difference. A few bots are harder but that's it.

I'm tinkering with a todo list to improve singleplayer further.

Reload and rewrite

I was able to show Astro the last progress of ctf_gate1 which I tested several times but stopped working on as nasty licence issues and bad treatment of talented artists occured. Seems he likes it but had his own oppinion about the pillars. Leaving me thinking about them on my way home. Anyway as I returned from my vacation Gerbil did a run through my last release of this map and gave me several good hints how improvements could be done. I appreatiate that and as leilol asked for an updated singleplayer file I suggested a while ago I knew that release of OA 0.81 will be soon.

Two hours later I fixed things Astro and Gerbil mentioned and retextured the whole map. I'm not so pleased with my outcome as I created everything regarding to the textures I was given and OA lacks versatile and themed textures again after the ban.

I want the map to be in 0.81 and I hope it will be more accepted then my last two ctf maps as it offers a different gameplay. Still I fear it's relies too much on jumping skills. The next one won't I promise. :)

I rearanged the OA singleplayer maps to be more themed in their tiers but there is still work to be done. A lot of finetuning and tourney maps should be part of that.

Texture issues, ctf_inyard updated and new mapmodel

Okay,
time to get some things done. I created a new mapobject helping me to illuminate in blender although I have no map to put it in yet. ;)
I guess Armageddonman does.

TRaKs textures are gone now and lei didn't put the rest of the new additions for OA 0.81 to SVN yet. It's a bit hard for me to use it now.

New fixes on ctf_inyard:
- nailgun and shotgun switched places (I hope it improves balance)
- banned textures replaced
- different lightning parameters for mapcompile.

Updated version will be in OA 0.81