I give up, you'll get that door back Options

[Mendasp]

Edit: The map has been released already, so don't bother replying here

As some of you may have noticed, I haven't been active in this community for a while... I'm the guy that maintains the "new" bast.

If you remember, the source to ns_bast was lost and I arranged a team to bring it back, the first version we released (included in NS 3.0 Beta 4) was faithful to the original and had minor balance tweaks. After that, everything went downhill, the Beta 5 version removed the revolving door and added a dirty 10 minute job full of crates between the Engine hive and the Marine Spawn. And the new Bast was considered by a lot of people as a piece of crap.

So, the next few versions introduced even more changes, and the more changes I made to the map, the worse it felt... so I'm here to ask you something... Do you want the old Bast back? It's perfectly possible... since I have the source files around. It could be included in the next release of NS, and if that fails somehow, I could release it as ns_bast_classic or something (for real this time ).

I know it wouldn't be playable in competitions, but it's not like the new one is ready for that, either.

I already know the answer, but I'm making the thread just to make sure...

This post has been edited by Mendasp: Feb 16 2007, 03:52 PM

[Thaldarin]

*no need for stupid pointless pictures* - Comprox

The NS Forums is losing it's sense humour - Thaldarin

This post has been edited by Thaldarin: Jan 26 2007, 12:06 AM

[SpaceJesus]

I can't believe you support that site, do you even know the history behind it ?

[/derail] lol yes that door was the pwn

[Femme_Fatale]

yay! ze door <3

[Mentar]

woot, bring back the door!

[Johnie]

I allready love bast.......
But the door would be so great!

[TerRaKanE]

yea the old layout of/around the marinebase and the door were cool
but keep the new refinery.

This post has been edited by TerRaKanE: Jan 25 2007, 08:00 PM

[DC_Darkling]

Fine with me. Bast doesn't feel like bast anymore.

And why perfectly balance? a handycap for a team on a map once in a while can be fun.

[ultranewb]

Wow, let's revert back to bad layouts 101 and have zero reliable exits from marine start for lifeforms. There should be firm rules about exits from hives and marine start to prevent such half-baked ideas from being re-invented.

Take off the rose-collored glasses - the door was always an awful ideal and original bast's layout was/is just wrong on so many different levels. Current bast is tollerable, but still quite unpopular because because of the repeated mistakes of the original.

We already have Shiva - which took a page from the bast book - and went hog wild with crap that just gets in the way of good gameplay. A zillion ladders, elevators, hives in water, cramped main routes, and ultra cramped hive exits don't make for fun gameplay. They just turn off players enough that the updated versions of the map don't ever get played even when the mapmaker makes tremendous improvements (which he did).

Apply this to bast - there isn't a single route from marine start to every hive that's not blocked by a slow door + stairs, or an elevator + ladder (one with another door). Go to Main Aft from marine start and you've 2 elevators to refinery hive and a door with steps to engine hive - zero flow, zero onos friendly paths - just map "features" that inhibit gameplay. Now - add a freakin rotating door in front of the only exit that leads to two hive locations and leads directly to every res node (minus 2) on the map?

This isn't single player. Gates are not a viable mechanism (or even a fun one) for this type of game.

[MasterPTG]

I think a different way to getting to main aft is needed. Either bring back the revolving door...or...make it an elevator...or something. I don't really care. I hate the ramps though. I also hate the door to go to engine. It just delays you getting there and it's really annoying.

Also...I think the res in main aft should be where the stairs are, and should maybe be replaced by a big f'ing ramp or something :x. It's just a big pain to try to kill skulks and fades in there. They have like 3 diff. exits. lol.

Everything else is good, except for perhaps the engine siege spots. Perhaps make them a bit more ...open? And less bile-bomb prone. The entire map (it seems) can be bile bombed from somewhere. What a pain in the #@%.

Everything else is cooool dude. You shouldn't be all freaked out about it. If you made the passageways a bit wider/streamlined, then I think the popularity would go up by a directly proportional amount. Do you have any idea what a pain in the #$%# it is to jp through those narrow canyons? At least for newbs..it's impossible. Also...one onos stomp..will stomp EVERYONE down a hallway, b/c the hallway is so narrow.

A) fix Main Aft entrance from marine spawn.
B) move Main Aft RT somewhere a closer to spawn.
C) move atmos RT a bit closer to spawn.
D) make hallways wider for ffs.
E) improve engine hive siege spots, and maybe even feedwater. Refinery...is just almost impossible to siege :x.
F) streamline map to make it more straight-forward to go to different sections (although all the vents going everywhere is very cool.

ogogogogogogo. GET it done. I want to play new version in 1 week. GO dude. GOGOGO.

[MrBen]

No do not bring back that travesty of a gimmick. Bast got significantly better with our changes, mendasp, why the hell would you revert back to that hunk of ish? Like you care about community pressure. If you do give me the source and I'll ensure that door stays in a seperate source file like some freak show at a circus because it's all it deserves.

Ultra, that was a brilliant post. Hah.

This post has been edited by MrBen: Jan 25 2007, 09:12 PM

[Mendasp]

I can still release a real ns_bast_classic, but I'm not making any more changes to the current bast, it cannot be improved (in the way we planned back then, at least) unless it's redone as a whole new map, or something that'd take roughly the same time. Level differences, water, slow doors, yes, they make the gameplay worse, but I didn't design the map, and if I take those away then there's the revolving door story all over again (specially with the hives). And the source is a ###### to edit.

Releasing the old bast would be just a recompile with a few generic bugfixes introduced in the new versions...

This post has been edited by Mendasp: Jan 25 2007, 09:22 PM

[surprise]

well, i myself for one dont need the old bast
im perfectly fine with the door in the *Secret Room* for nostalgia


but i im not a part of the majority of the ns-community, as i still look back to 12-person unmodded ns-only servers for example >_>

[zient]

The old bast was one of the better maps i thought.

[Merkaba]

The revolving door was great for its time, and added tons of fun & suspense on that one spot.


That was when NS was new and exciting. A few people have referred to the door as bad mapping, and mistakes made in the map...bear in mind that ns_bast was, pretty much, the very first NS map ever. Relic25 did an amazing job at the time and made an awesome map that unfortunately didn't stand the test of time as NSs gameplay got iterated and iterated. The map was brilliant, no matter what anyone says; it's a piece of NS history!

Oh, and there are surely ways to bypass that rotating door, such as simply adding a vent that circumnavigates it. There are nearly always solutions to problems.

If ns_bast_classic does get made, then I demand that someone brings ns_hera_classic up to scratch too

[StixNStonz]

About the old bast:

1. The door. It was freaking awesome to have some rines on one side, then to see the door start, then to see an onos come around. Just awesome. BUT... it was buggy as hell.

You could keep the concept, while fixing the bugs. The floor you could decide to keep or not keep; it was kinda laggy, which took away from the effect, but it sorta worked. A big issue was players dying from the walls. Maybe clip the walls just enough so that players never actualy touch them?

Or perhaps change it entirely, where the door is more like a C (from the top down), which moves around like that. I personally found the door fun, but its all a debate about fun/atmosphere/new gameplay mechanics vs balance/flow/overgimmicky.

2. The vents. Goddamnit, the vents! those vents that you reached from the MS elevator (or by jumping from the ladder... jumping well), were fun as hell. The only route for a marine to take to use those vents now are from the tram-feed intersection room, and they dont really even serve much of a purpose (cept ninja'ing Engine, but goddamn thats far). Maybe figure a way to bring back the 'fun vents' aspect, because Bast was one of the real pioneers of that.

I still absolutely love the vents of feed and tram. And whats really wrong with the Bridge route from Main Aft to Refinery? Its a perfect ninja route, since people barely take it, its long and tight, and you're even noticeable to the keen alien eye (lower junc).

Bast was and always will have some of the crazier NS elements (Refinery being a case in point). Dont let it die, but try to bring back some of the more fun aspects that it's lost over the years. Just try to keep them balanced

[Mendasp]

The map was brilliant, no matter what anyone says; it's a piece of NS history!

Of course, which is why I wanted to revert to the old version so I don't feel like I've raped a classic

If ns_bast_classic does get made, then I demand that someone brings ns_hera_classic up to scratch too

I was thinking that it'd be easy to do, but then I realized that my ns_bast_classic has a good start with the first version of the remake which is already inside the entity limits... heh. We're talking about the "huge" Hera, right?

[Swiftspear]

While I understand why the changes were made, honestly bast had alot of flavor that was basicly removed entirely in the remake versions. The vent into the upper side in marine start was something epic, and the massive elevator with vents spewing out of it. It made the map hell to finish as aliens but during the guts of the game those gimmicky things are what made the map fun.

If anything I say bring back the old map, accept that it will never be a competitively feasible map, and make changes and bug fixes that instead compliment and accentuate the current version rather than try to fix the things that make the map special, and individual, but at the same time take away it's ability to be competitively supported.

I can't imagine the amount of raping machina would need to be a competitive map, and frankly I wouldn't want to see it anyways. For NS sometimes the narrow mold of what a competitive map needs doesn't always fit the overall picture of what makes a map fun or not fun in pub play. The games are almost completely different anyways, when was the last time you saw a 2 hive marine lockdown in a match?

[Scythe]

BRING BACK BAST! <3

Nobody plays the current bast, really. The old bast oozed style and coolness. It has some of the most memorable locations in the whole game. Atmo! Ref! That big drillshaft with the electricity zapping all over the place!

As for people getting killed in the revolving door, it's a simple matter to learn not to position yourself on the edge. The door acts as a way of keeping marines grouped together. Enhancing teamwork. The original NS design docs said that there should be parts of the map that cause marines to take check of where they are relative to the rest of their team. Quad lift on ns_nothing, for example. Saying that door is a bad thing because it occasionally kills people is like saying that the pits of death in ns_nothing spawn are a bad thing since you can accidentally fall down them. Or that ANY elevation that could result in a marine dying if he fell off is a bad thing. Typical American thinking. The individual is absolved of any responsibility for his own wellbeing.

/me gently revolves.

--Scythe--

[BigD]

Remove feed water and engine hives (I mean the entities, not the rooms), put a wall through main aft from the rt to the revolving door area so that marines can't go directly to ref, and make the best combat map EVAR.