Invasion Mod on OA?

Invasion is a mod for Q3A inspired by the Alien movies. Two fractions (marines and aliens) fight against each other and try to accomplish a certain goal, which for the marines can be destroying all alien eggs or grabbing an egg and getting to a teleporter. As players can chose among various marine types (armor and weapons) and alien races (different abilities) it's interesting if cooperative play is possible. All human players can join one team and bots will fill the opposing one, but don't expect a clever AI behind it. It works and that's important. Especially the aliens respawn all together, which leads into an aggressive bunch of foes approaching into the crowd of egg searching marines who cannot respawn.

Olivier asked me after reading my HUNT post if there is an option to get Invasion running on Open Arena. Besides the missing textures, which will hopefully be only a matter of time, exact replacements of Q3A playermodels won't be created. Unlike HUNT in Invasion, playermodels are fixed to the chosen armor class or alien race and are hard coded into the game logic.

On Open Arena it runs actually with default models at least if you enable cg_forcemodel and only the missing textures are a problem. If you are really into getting it working just get the sourcecode from the Invasion website and change the playermodels yourself. You will just miss a few nice skins for Orbb, Klesk and others.

Comparing its coop qualities I enjoy the fast gameplay, a nice HUD, and great weapons (no Q3A guns are used). A real Alien feeling emerges when playing Xenomorph and running across the ceiling, being the death from above. Too bad the places where eggs have to be destroyed are always the same so provided maps, which are great, get pretty repetitive. Anyway for me it is entertaining and I would prefer it over HUNT "Save the Universe". On the other hand the latter offers tons of randomized stuff you can never predict and especially "Escape from Hell" is my favourite, when it comes to coop.

Olivier did you check Tremolous and an Invasion mod for it? Maybe you will get what you are looking for. I have not tried any of these yet but I remember I had good times playing AvP1+2 multiplayer a long time ago.

Pillars (part 1)

Pillars in general are nifty elements to place in maps as they may improve gameplay and create something recognizable. Players might dance around and they offer a certain amount of cover and finally pillars help to give a realistic to the map because blocks won't float in space as they rest on tessellated columns.

How pillars may be designed depends on the amount of faces they may require and the available textures. In general it's a good idea to have something that catches the eye on them so the boring rest of it is not recognized. Slight variations of each pillar is possible (e.g. texturewise) but not necessary. Pillars generate a feeling of everything belongs together.

It's good to think about how they will impact on the map: Is the pillar just an obstacle or can it be accessed? Is there an item at the top? How does the player reach it? Can VIS be blocked with it? Do my pillars connect two platforms? Do I have just for decoration reasons? Rooms with blank and plain walls are boring.

My current idea requires several pillars and I'm playing around with a concept I feel comfortable with.