Stone Monolith

What's the ideal teleporter in a first person shooter?

A plain tube with a fancy texture applied to it?

The usual doorframe floating in the middle of the room?

Some scifi device that looks suspicious?

This is a draft. Two 'magical' monoliths which spawn a portal in between. A few red glowing runes would be nice.

Blender md3 exporter still is not as good as it could be regarding to two materials on one model.

oa_koth2 beta 3

download beta 3 release: http://cosmo.spaceboyz.net/openarena/oa_koth2_b3.pk3 (save target as ...)

Guys at OA forums gave me valuable hints. So here are my changes.

• candleholder models added. Updated my blender to latest version and discovered that the md3 exporter doesn't work anymore. Had to google for a different one which is not as good as the former exporter. :(
• BFG floats now and is reachable by rocketjumps and a harder to reach jumppad. I'm aware that there's now a 3rd way to reach the top floor from mid section of the map by a well executed rocketjump.
• BFG and Quad are now 'disconnected'
• green bobbing orb on top floor
• sound added to the orbs
• fixed 'squishing' respawn point
• replaced medkit with battlesuit so BFG usage is less dominating
• fixed problem of bots staying in front of closed door by adding donotenter brushes to the door sides.
• prevent bots from falling into abyss by adding donotenter brushes
• cobwebs. unsure to leave them in for final release. maybe a different shader would make them look better. need to discuss this.
• diamond blue shader problem solved
• reduced texture usage
• sky clipping. no more quad-proxy-mine-jumping out of the map. ;)
• tweaking compilation parameters: darker and moodier in certain spots.
• double domination gametype dropped

Most time went into mapmodel creation and texture painting. Less time was spend on testing as I state it mostly balanced now.

Give it a try. If I don't get more hints I'm releasing it as final with double domination support.

HUNT mod on OA

A wish for cooperative gametypes was stated on oa-forums so I remembered good old HUNT for Q3A.

This mod offers two new gametypes that bring coop experience and serious weapon changes. You shouldn't play this alone as it gets way harder then. One gametype is named Save The Universe which is played in normal FFA/TDM/CTF maps that come with Open Arena. The mission is collecting a certain amount of artifacts that are symbolized by the quad powerup.

The second coop gametype is called Escape From Hell and takes place in long, randomized maps where the goal is simply reaching the exit.

Of course both types of play are not easy as players are not alone in the maps and monsters of various sizes and skills try to stop them. That's where cooperative play comes in. There is a certain amount of lives players share for every map and respawn is only possible if at there is at least one player alive and there are enough lives left.

The mod runs out of the box except the default monster models which are set to Quake 3 player models (klesk, tankjr) and have to be changed. This can be done by HUNT options menu or via console. A small config could do this for you. This config is included in a small additional xoa_textures.pk3 file I created to solve a texture missing problem as one of the randomized maps that comes with HUNT uses Q3A textures.

A playable mod with all required files is downloaded when you connect to the running HUNT server if you enable automatic downloading on your client. If you connect a second time sometimes you get disconnected quickly without entering the game. This happens when connecting from standard Open Arena and can be fixed by launching the mod first (via mod menu) and making sure the right monster models are set (eg. '/exec autoexec.cfg' if you already have xoa_textures.pk3 in your HUNT folder) and then connect to the server.

To have a little coop challenge this server creates a HIGHSCORE of each map played. So the fastest missions and the highest scores appear in these tables. I'm curious who will appear there over time. :)

oa_koth2 beta 2 released

My time went into texture editing. After adding leaves to cover the boring walls it's time for some playtesting as much has changed since beta 1.

Download: http://cosmo.spaceboyz.net/openarena/oa_koth2_b2.pk3 (Save target as ...)

Things to come:

• better lighting outdoors
• candleholder mapmodels
• more wall decoration
• more wrackage

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).