Hi Everyone,



DOWNLOAD @
http://home.iprimus.com.au/tomas82/ns/co_operationb1.zip


I'm announcing my 2nd ever NS map - co_operation (my first map was co_pipes1)
The main focus of this map is as the name suggests cooperation between players, mainly the marine team.
my main inspiration for this was that I wasn't satisfied with the amount of team work in combat maps, and a general lack things to accomplish throughout the round. It is a combat map, but i'm hoping that it'll play more like a classic map, however with all of the fun of leveling up.

The map consists of 11 main rooms, 9 of which require cooperation from the marines in order to progress to the next.

So the players will have 15 minutes (server var) to get through each of the 9 puzzles and destroy the hive (the CC is hidden so it cannot be destroyed, unless the aliens perform special activities - destroying 4 out of 8 circuit boards)

Each of the 9 "puzzle" rooms will require a different approach from the last, to keep things interesting. Puzzle descriptions below, but most puzzles for a seasoned NS player should be a piece of cake, I've also used green arrows as waypoints/hints to help guide.

1. Marine Spawn
The Marine team starts in a broken elevator, which due to an electrical fault has caused the blast doors to close the marines in. To exit marine spawn the players will need to boost each other up into the lift shaft and activate an override switch to open one of the blast doors and allow them to continue.

Section 1
2. The marines must continue through the cargo area and into a sewerage control station - the main door is malfunctioning and there are two switches which need to be pressed at the same time for it to open and continue.

3. marines will need to weld open a hydraulics controller to pass through.


4. steam (currently invisible lol) has filled the controllers for the main door, marines with resupply will have to climb the steep slopes and activate the switches.

Section 2
5. Manufacturing area - this door is jammed however the hydraulics can be destroyed by throwing a grenade into the hydraulics vent.

6. Overheating has caused the emergency door to stay locked, marines will need to open and activate the coolant vents.

7. omg another stuck door, a marine will need to place a mine on the wall so that a marine with a welder can stand on it to reach the weld point.

Section 3
8. Train ride marines must ride the train to exit point - the door won't open until the train is docked at the other end.

9. a jetpacker must fly over to activate the bridge and let others across

10. a jetpacker must fly to each individual switch and press the buttons.

After all that is finished, a door opens in marine spawn allow marines safe access to the hive which will most likely mean game over for the alien team.

Actually thats not everything - in a lot of the rooms there are two types of circuit boards which can't go unnoticed.
Type 1 - is a button which will turn on a laser beam to hurt the hive for 5 seconds - it can be activated over and over again until the the circuit is destroyed. (this forces aliens out of the hive)
Type 2 - this is a exposed circuit board, which if destroyed will bring the aliens 1 step closer to exposing the command chair - 4 out of 8 need to be destroyed to expose the command chair. marines can weld these shut to protect them. (this entices aliens to come out for a quick finish if they play well)

The aliens are locked out from all areas and only gain access as the marines do (so they can't destroy circuitry before marines get a chance to get to them)

some screenies below

Interesting concept. But how do the aliens fit into all this? It seems to me that it might be too easy to overtake the marines with them focusing on these tasks.

Hard to say until it gets played i guess, I did have a think about it though, as usually if a combat game lasts long enough , the aliens do eventually win as they are more powerful (8onos will almost always beat 8 HA or JP). So something of the things I'm thinking of doing are:-

-Keeping the 4 main areas all roughly the same distance from marine spawn, and keeping the 3 sub sections of each close together.

-Limiting the paths an onos can come from.

-Having the Command chair hidden - there is no need to defend marine start in other words. (but im thinking of having say a vent open up in all 4 areas which if 3 out of the 4 vents are destroyed by the aliens, a door would open so the CC can then be destroyed.)

-On completion of 3 subsections (which unlocks the next area with 3 new subsections) it could trigger a entity which hurts the hive for 1/3 or even 1/2 health - so that should take a few aliens players out of the game to heal the hive, otherwise marines might unlock the next area which would then kill the hive.

I'll just have to see how it turns out i guess

This concept might be better suited for a 'fun classic' kind of map, such as the Siege variants etc. With Combat, you'd really be putting a lot of pressure on marines to get certain upgrades... you specifically mentioned welders, grenades and resupply. What happens before marines get enough points for these? What if noone gets them?

Then they are stuck there forced to fight off more hordes of alien players until someone does indeed get enough points. Thats one way im hoping to encourage team play between the marine team. The marine players will need to divide themselves into roles

I'm hoping it won't be too hard on marines - I can always convert it into a siege style variant if need be - like giving he marines plenty of res, but then restricting their ability to build bar some key areas.

I was also thinking about have the marine players spawn closer and closer to the objectives. as they unlock one area they would spawn closer to the next to keep them from having to run around so much. I was going to do this with a trigger_teleport entity which would be placed under the original info_teamspawn entities so that when they spawn they drop into the trigger teleport and appear at the new location.
I guess I can still do this, but I've tried to keep the marine spawn in the middle of the map so each area is easily accessed - and also no to confuse by changing the spawn area.

Cool idea, but why didn't you name it "co_operation"?

nice idea, nice map looking good.. maybe make that 90° turn of the pipes in the last screen rounder
But I agree StixnStonez point: If you trap the marines in co (dont let them proceed without specific upgrades) the aliens could simply sit the game out if they want to play lame - I think we all know how lame people can get. It would work better if you would force the aliens to solve puzzles while letting the marines try to storm the hive.

LOL - radix good idea, spose I'll have to call it that when its in the beta stage

Really good point bertor, I'll have to figure out a way to get the aliens to come out and play - perhaps damaging the hive through triggers - forcing aliens to come out to kill marines so they can get points to gorge.
I haven't mastered rounder pipes just yet, but I think I'll go back through and replace them later once i get hte hang of it. Also my first priority is to get the map playable - if no one plays it then I've wasted my time heh.

EDIT: I can always spawn a few alien players in cages at marine spawn LOL for some free points to start with

Strange idea. The whole map sounds very limiting. I'm assuming there will be one path if you're attempting to control Marine's progress (you haven't drawn any directional arrows on your layout so it's hard to follow). It'd work better if the teamwork path opened up additional paths as opposed to opening up the main path. I can't see it being very fun having the mapper dictate to me that I need to stay in a room until someone levels up and spends their level on a mine.

On the other hand the Aliens are effectively gonna be forced to attack as a team or it will be too easy for Marines to pick them off. Then again once Aliens get a Lerk it'll be game over if the Marines haven't got past the mine ladder section, or the resupply section, or the welding section...

You could make it like this:
Marines have access to the hive, or some button to damage it.
-> Aliens try to block off that path to save their hive. If they manage to solve some puzzle, a door (or anything you can think of) closes and blocks the way for the marines.
By now they should have enough points for the next puzzle. Now it's their turn to solve their puzzle to open a new way to get access to the hive.
Aliens try to block off that path. Repeat until round ends.

However i prophesy a huge amount of work to get all those triggers work.

ahh taking turns at solving different puzzles (all while fighting) to open and close a door to the hive - excellent idea!

This is a CRAZY idea.

So crazy, it just might work!!!!

I agree with the trade-off system. Either that or do something similar to Assault on UT or Enemy Territory. Objectives are placed along the way and you fight to keep them under your control, although some are not reversible. Also, it depends on where you want the "objective line" to start. Is this a all Rine push (all non-reversibles)? Perhaps the starting objective is about midway so either side can start the push (everything is reversible)? So, as you complete the puzzles/objectives, you make progress until you eventually make it to "victory".

That's also gonna be hard. How are we going to deal with victory? Trigger hurting comes to mind as the primary means, but how much access do you give people? Can rines go back and weld their CC? Should aliens be able to gorge and heal it up? How does this come into play for reversible objectives?

This could be uber awesome, you just have to iron out your ideas and think of all the angles.

if you make it a combat map, you should make the puzzles solvable without any upgrades, since the aliens could just camp in their hive and wait for their victory (even if its boring^^)

actually sounds nice, reminds me of the idea of some germans in the www.lerk.de forums (did you stole it from there? xD)

But hey, great idea, i love it

Im interested in trying this map.


I run a special night each week called Saturday Night Live (SNL) and we have been looking for something like this. Basically SNL is just special modes created to entertain the players and not needed to specifically be a alien vs marine environment.

If you are still interested, what you can do is to deny the alien team access to the map all together and make it a race (eg 2 - 3 teams of marines who each have to achieve the same results to get to the end first).

I would be more then happy to give this a run through when you release it.

So, heres a wild idea to go with an equally wild map:

Have the alien spawn point not be immediately connected to the Hive. Put the alien spans in a room off to the side of the marines main path, that can be accessed without solving any puzzles requiring items. After the marines bypass the first item puzzle (welders or whatever), that opens a vent the aliens can use to reach the hive, but until then they dont have the option of hiding somewhere the marines can't get them.

If lerks become unbalancing, make the alien spawn vertical and add a trigger_push down so that you can't get out except by climbing (I think this still works?)

Wait...Radix? KYLE IS THAT YOU?

Anyways...I like this idea! The mapname should be co_operation...lol

Good idea, i had the same idea when i started work on co_customfactor, but stoped it after finding no viable way to get the aliens into MS, and keeping the marines moving - this is the thread i made for it:
http://www.customfactor.com/forum/index.php?topic=570.0

Just a quick update -

I've finished all of the brush work now - i did however only make 11 rooms instead of the 15 as otherwise marines would of not had enough time to solve all of rooms and get to the hive as well.

I'm just playing with a few triggers now, so hoping if all goes well i'll have this baby ready by the end of the week

What I've done to entice the aliens to come out of the hive-

I've placed buttons in certain rooms which triggers a laser that hurts the hive for 5 seconds - The marines can keep pressing this button over and over again, until aliens destroy the button.

There are also computer pipes which the aliens can chew on to which if 4 out of the 8 are destroyed the doors to command chair open making it vulnerable, which means aliens if skilled enough can finish the game before time is up. Marines however can weld these pipes closed.

Basically the game ends up being 11 mini combat maps all linked together

amkern - I'm hoping to put on that server your thread needs a login though.

Saeppel - British intelligence managed to get me the blueprints of your secret german map (I'm sure plenty of people have thought of something similar, just never made it - i know why now, cause its not that easy! )


WhiteKnight1 - I'll be happy to send you the source file so you can alter it to suit your race mode.

WhiteKnight & I are both admins on CustomFactor

awesome, I love playing on custom factor - people still use mics and teamwork, and they are there to play for fun, instead of the other aussie servers that constantly play veil/eclipse lol

I expect to have the beta version released tommorrow

Schkorpio you are completely mad!

Thank god, ns has a creative mapper for once. I love maps with more interactivity

Well its finished (everything if fully functional, but it is a beta for gameplay testing)



DOWNLOAD @
http://home.iprimus.com.au/tomas82/ns/co_operationb1.zip


Thanks to everyone for your input you're all credited in the text file that comes with the map.

i could say you could use a int the trim of r25 light a function ilusionary to make fx of the light and doesn't like the wall bring light but only the ligth spot in the texture

i have no idea what you just said lol

Ah carioca is back

Hmm lemme see here what he's trying to say...

I think he's telling you to use the same effect on the r25_droplight texture as you're using on the other lights in your map (y'know --> func_illusionary light effect)

I don't agree however, looks fine to me. I do have a suggestion for the lighting, something which will give it a huge boost in terms of teh sexahness: The use of light_spot for the bigger light textures. This will differentiate the dark areas from the bright (in light cone) areas. and overall make the lighting seem less flooded (bland?) like it currently is.

And perhaps just put a light_spot shining down on the models (cc, armory and the hive) To make them seem less... dark

bah, real people just use lit textures. for everything. =]

lights.rad ftw!!!!

So now I'm fictional!?

maybe he's just saying you're a legend </straw>

I'm having a problem getting this to work for other people. I've uploaded the map like all other custom maps, the .res file looks fine, and it downloads like normal for everybody. Although it seems nobody is able to get past the "verifying resources" when loading, and get dropped from the server. This only seems to be a problem when downloading off the server itself.

If I download the file manually off the site here, and install it like normal, then I can join the server just fine. Any clues?

bugger :S

I've had that problem on the custom factor server as well, i was assuming it was a one of their amx plugins but its hard to say. I've suggested to try deleting the minimap spr, as its its 0Kb this might be doing something strange - perhaps it can't verify a 0kb file - its an empty file i just put it in there to stop the "cannot find minimap" message comming up in the console.
Hmm come to think of it that must be it - let me fix the zip file

EDIT OK ITS GOOD TO GO NOW.

for everyone who has downloaded this map before this post - you don't need to re-download, just :-
delete ns\sprites\minimaps\co_operationb1.SPR
delete ns\maps\co_operationb1.RES


please let me know if this works

feel free to post me a dead fish so i can slap myself in the face with it.

I'm no mapper, but looking at the other co_ minimaps, they are all 321kb, and contain an actual minimap when you view the sprite. Not sure if you'll need to build one for your map or not, or if it needs to be a certain size, even if the game doesn't use it.

oh ok, i'll build one and update the file again - but it should work without it aswell (intructions above, you'll just get that annoying message "cant find minimap message" in the console

It appears to be working now. I don't see realistically how marines\aliens would solve these puzzles, all while fighting eachother.

My initial impression of the map:

I thought the essential goal of marines was to camp those two switches by the raised platforms until the hive does (since the aliens said it was doing damage to it).

- What do the small box weldables do that just shut closed?
- Why do those platforms have down arrows on them (it appears they're raised), if those switches don't do anything with them?


EDIT:

I just read the walkthrough, and if you're going to have the marines fighting aliens the entire time while trying to solve these puzzles, you will really need instructions in each area on what to do. Or at the very least, have some sort of graphic to indicate which upgrade will needed to be used, as marines won't sit around for 10 minutes to figure it out while fighting aliens the whole time.

Also in the readyroom you will probably want some sort of 'legend' to indicate that aliens should chew the circuit boards to eventually unlock the comm chair, and marines need to weld them shut and activate the circuits to hurt the hive. That wasn't clear to me at all until the aliens said it was hurting their hive, so I just kept hitting those two switches over and over again till it was dead, rather than progressing on the map.

Well the button that hurts the hive is there so that marines can lure the aliens out - since marines can't get to the hive until the very end - as a few people mentioned it would be a gameplay breaker if aliens just camp the hive until time is up :S and i'm sure people would.
So I placed a few of those buttons around the level to encourage conflicts.
The blue flashing lights that are connected to the buttons can be destroyed - about 50 skulk bites or 3750 damage, which takes about 15 seconds with 2 skulks biting it. Once that is destroyed the button stops working, and marines have to move on.
It will destroy the hive eventually if marines camp it, but they are in fairly vulnerable areas, so prevent too much camping.


The weldable flashing blue thingy in the small boxes have to be welded shut by marines - if 4 out of the 8 of these are destroyed the command chair is exposed in the cargo bay area of the map. This was my attempt at balance

Yeah sorry the down arrows are meant to be way points
Once you hit the switches that open the door in the resupply room you'll have another 2 main sections with 3 subsections each to get through aswell, its not a huge map, but it does take a bit of time to get through it all - testing it by myself it took me about 8 minutes just to walk through and activate all of the puzzles and then destroy the hive


EDIT : actually what I plan to have tips displayed on the marine and alien huds, instead of the location - not sure if this works in combat mode though, so instead of have Ventilation Access appear near the timer, it would say "Use The Resupply Upgrade", "Place a Mine on the Wall". There are a few more things i'd like to polish up, just wanted to see if the map would even "work" from a gameplay perspective, and then if people even like it.

A ready room play guide is a great idea
have you found the secret in there yet?



ROFL


are you hosting this on a private server? or is it a pub ?

Now its making sense, although it won't for any random player that's playing it. Only thing that I can think of to make it more enjoyable for the new player is to add a 'legend' to the readyroom indicating what each side needs to do.

Things like the 'cc will appear in cargo when 4 of 8 box circuits are destroyed' are vital to players understanding how the map works. At least layout the basic mechanics for players to understand, and let them figure out the smaller puzzles on their own, if that's preferable.

Main things that should be in the legend (in the RR likely), you would probably use a marine graphic, along with example switches\circuits below it. Vice versa for the alien side.



This would be helpful in addition to the RR legend as well.



Pub server, see signature for server information. This is not in rotation or anything, just gave it a whirl tonight with 2 other people to see how it plays. Interesting concept for a co_ map.

Just need a few people to test this map large scale now so that i can try to balance it as best as possible

I love the idea, just need to find a server with it on!

A few things scorpio, was a interesting read, I instantly thought hey this is my idea then I looked at the date and realized you started this long before I posted my idea which is exstreamly..well it is exsactly like this.

I love the different ways you have used to progress to each new section, I would of just used the semi same repeated air lock system over and over again,

A few suggestions the jet pack bridge then the jet pack to activate many switches lose the many switchs and just make two jet packers need to use two switches at the same time to drop a second bridge or open the door.

You could also use a armor lvl 4 and HA with resupplie through steam or radiation, and have to have someone weld him for the first few feet and most likely die to get the team home.

Also to save from marines haveing to run all the way through the map, have each section or every second section, have a 5 second weld some were along the way that open up a phase gate that opens up a door at MS to a linking phase gate.

Also i think this hsould have a lot of dead ends, well not dead ends fer say but things that look like and now we take this courner and use this elevator to go up to.. holy crap the elvators been trashed ok this isnt good that means w now need to take maintshaft and axsilary coridor to get to the next lvl.

grat though scorp

cool glad you like it

like you say, there are plenty of different ways to set up the puzzle bits, and they could even be left open so that there are multiple ways to do them

It would be great to make it really hard, by have dead ends and what not - i just don't think i'd ever finish a map of that scope though, not while i have a job in RL anyway lol.
Anothering i thought would be cool, and what i originally set out to do is that the doors and puzzles would be dymanic - so that aliens could reset the puzzles if the marines did a certain one but i just couldnt figure out a way to do it.


if anyone plays this map on aussie servers let me know - i still haven't played it with anyone :S

CustomFactor has it on our server

is this map still hosted on custom factor?

Its on the server, but was removed from the map cycle, because people don't know how to play coop combat...

I once played some beta. One major problem is that most of the co servers are running 50 min xmenu buildmenu nowadays. If aliens dominate early on, there's nothing the marines can do and since the cc is hidden, its a 50 min fight over nothing. I also joined mid game and absolutely no idea what I was supposed to do. I could just try to jp through 5 focus fades and cloaked onoses in the doorways to hit one random button that says beep, so there is no way to figure out anything complicated.

i played the beta version i like it but many players say that they can't f*** see anything

I think it must be a bit brither

schkorpio this map is AWESOME!

we play it on our server from time to time (to keep the fun, with not overplaying)

and i just can say the first round we played we needed 15 mins to get the start door opened xD

haha awesome sauce

which server ? i'd love to actually play it myself LOL

there you go http://www.nsbrowser.org/en/browser/server...8.10.144:27010/