Review: `Teams&Rogues v1.0 (looks familiar to BM players)'

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Angeba
Posts: 88
Joined: Sun Feb 06, 2011 11:23 pm

Review: `Teams&Rogues v1.0 (looks familiar to BM players)'

Post by Angeba »

Name: Teams&Rogues v1.0 (looks familiar to BM players)
Filename: TR.map
Author: jyke -at- modeemi.cs.tut.fi
Date of creation: 1994 (I assume)
Found at: `xpilot-all-133-maps' archive from xpilot.org,
i.e. http://sourceforge.net/projects/xpilotg ... z/download
Size: 100 x 100 (medium)
Required server: 4.5.4+ or NG
Limited lives: 4
Shields: no
Teams: 8 teams in total. 4 teams of 4 players, each with one treasure and 3 targets.
Plus 4 single player (rogue) "teams" without treasures and targets.
Treasures: Ship-collision bounces. Destroying (cashing) kills team.
Targets: 3 per team (teams 2, 3, 4 and 5). Destroying kills team.
Bases: 20
Initial items: 1 afterburner, 1 autopilot
Extra items: Very few items randomly appear on the map. I guess no more than
about 2 extra items are on the whole map at once.
Objects on radar: Only team ships (no enemies) and missiles (if any) on radar.
Number of bullets: 6
ShotLife: 5 seconds
ShotSpeed: medium
ShotRate: slow/medium

Description:
A team-play map a la Bloods-Music, but with some interesting differences.
It seems that the Bloods Music map was taken and rotated by 180 degrees.
Then some walls have been modified and new ones were added.
And I agree to what is stated in the original map name, it looks somehow
familiar to a Bloods Music player, but on the other hand it feels completely
different.

The lack of enemies on the radar is a big difference, which changes the
game a lot. I like it, because it is a different challenge. I assume that
team communication (ball warnings) is even more important here.

Also the non-popable (bouncing) balls are an interesting variation.

It's very important to protect your team's targets, because all team members
will lose a life when the last target explodes.
Similarly, when your team's treasure is destroyed, all team members lose a
life.

If all these team responsibilities are not your cup of tea, then you may
prefer to join any of the single player "rogue" teams (6, 7, 8 and 9).
There you just have to hunt for any players.


Pros:
A nice treasure-team-play map with some interesting variations.

Cons:
- The team bases are probably not distributed/designed in a balanced way.
For example the ballrun between teams 3 and 5 is almost a straight line and
quite short.

- Gravity! Just noticed that this map uses a slight (0.025) upwards gravity.
Personally I think this map should use 0 gravity (Bloods-like). To change
that, all bases would need an attractor block below them ("$" in the map, or
the "smiley" in the map editor), so that they continue to face downwards.

- Not suitable for item fans (except when you increase item probabilities, but
I guess it would destroy playability for the ball players if they would face
missiles and mines all the time).


Caveats:
- "Head first" (frontal) collisions with walls kill (without shields). You
may like to increase `maxUnshieldedPlayerWallBounceAngle' from 120 to 180.
This will help especially lagged players and help doing quicker manouvers
involving bounces.
On the other hand it is a challenge to do precise manouvering with the
original setting and the map author may have intended that.


Things to improve:
- There are some artifacts in the walls, which may be the result of incorrect
transformation of the original blocks. Also some wall edges are just plain rectangular
blocks, where replacing them with diagonals would create a more smooth surface.
This would appeal more visually and help bouncing with ship and balls.
Any voices against such changes?


Other notes:
The option `playerwallbouncebrakefactor' is not set in the map file, i.e., it
uses the server dependend default value. See general map hints.
Attachments
Picture of the map.
Picture of the map.
TR.xp
The original map file (extension renamed from `map' to `xp', so that this board accepts the attachment).
(10.96 KiB) Downloaded 280 times
Angeba
Posts: 88
Joined: Sun Feb 06, 2011 11:23 pm

Re: Review: `Teams&Rogues v1.0 (looks familiar to BM players

Post by Angeba »

Attached is a modified version of the old
`Teams&Rogues v1.0 (looks familiar to BM players)' map. It works at least
on old (4.5.4) and NG servers.

main modifications:
- `gravity : 0' (from 0.025). Also added base attractors below each base,
so that they'll always face downwards, regardless of gravity setting.
- `maxunshieldedplayerwallbounceangle : 180' (from 120) to reduce wall crashes.
- `playerwallbouncebrakefactor : 0.5', was not specified originally.
- `wallBounceFuelDrainMult : 0', was not specified originally. Wall bounces
do not drain fuel now.
- artifacts (wrong/missing blocks) in walls corrected.
- some ugly corners and bumps on walls smoothed. Some still remain, did not want
to change the map too much at once, but could change more bumps later (on demand),
to create better/easier bounce possibilities.
- Set `maxRoundTime : 240', i.e. 4 minutes. So players who died quickly or are
waiting for the next round, do not have to wait "forever".
Attachments
teams-and-rogues_kat.xp
My modified version of the map.
(16.93 KiB) Downloaded 313 times
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