Lm Community Made Map

[BobTheJanitor]

Pumping + power works, if you wanted it to be a hydroelectric power plant. This would require the use of some water areas, and I don't like water areas too much. They tend to be crappy for both teams. Marines can't shoot under water, and aliens lose all their speed advantages. But lots of water-as-detail would be okay.

[Decimator]

Well, pretty much all power plants need coolant of some sort.  So what we could do is make it toxic coolant or somesuch, so we can have our pits of toxic goo and our pits of doom for the reactor.

[BobTheJanitor]

I don't want this to get too far out, it's starting to sound like a doom 2 map. Pits of toxic death! Beware the flying flaming skulls screaming as they chomp your head off! And anything in NS is going to have the theme of a location that was once occupied by humans in some way and has since been abandoned after the aliens infested it. They have to have been there for a while, given that they've had enough time to infest a large part of the locale and get one hive up already. So the point being that anything that's still there would have to have been there without human intervention for a while. Pits of toxic coolant usually don't tend to just sit in a room for no apparent reason. Actually, they tend to circulate around the thing that they are cooling, then off to somewhere to dump their heat, and then back to pull out more heat. There's not a lot of siitting in a puddle to speak of.

If the coolant system is broken and has spilled out, then one tends to wonder why the marines are there at all when they can just wait for the reactor to take out the aliens for them, as soon as the inevitable meltdown happens.  :p

And don't forget to think of things in NS future terms. How does everything work? NANITES. Would they even have a power plant cooled by coolant? Or would it use magical nanotech cooling of some crazy sort? For that matter, would they even have a power plant at all... hrmmm... Would they just have a lot of nano-goo around and use that for all their power needs? Plague pretty much has the market cornered on nanogel storage and pumping in thorstation, so I don't want to lean too much into that area.

While I'm randomly babbling, geothermal heat is an interestng way to get power. It lends itself quite well to long vents reaching deep into the depths, and the reason for having them there makes total sense. Just promise me no one will pull a half life and have a giant fan shaft with a trigger_push that makes you fly up to the ceiling. So silly!

[Decimator]

Hmm, Geothermal would also be a good reason to have water pipes and steam pipes going everywhere, as well as possible standing water from broken pipes.  Sounds like perfect hive conditions...

[-Lancer-]

we can also add many weldable areas to this concept. Because of geo-thermic activity there must be consoles that the maries had implemented to cause small earthquakes in specific places so that they can expand their base. But since the base was infested, this equiment is now offline.

Bada bing. we got a new weldable console that can cause an entire wall to shatter revealing a hive!

Comments?

[BobTheJanitor]

Makes an interesting idea as a one shot weldable, but I think we'd be leaning more towards the built up, metallic looking base as opposed to the rocky cave type base. (because it makes me think of mineshaft and then I get nightmares) And big metal walls shattering doesn't make sense, so much.

[Uranium - 235]

And by the way, uranium: the pit of doom isn't actually a pit of doom.  There's simply a walkway (a catwalk, really) going out to a platform in the middle of a shaft of sorts (it actually looks like the inside of a reactor or something).  I didn't just throw the "pit of dewm" in for kicks - it simply made for a cool, unique room.

I know what constitutes a pit of doom (The water on co_daimos is a pit of doom, for example, because you fall in and die, and can't get out), and my point still stands: You have to consider if that pit would be there for any plausible reason.

Say we follow the power plant idea (which seems to be the most popular one). An easy way to make a pit of doom without having a stupid bottomless pit would be to make a short drop into arcing power conduits. Now, would you have that type of POD around the trasnsformers, or on either side of a hallway just outside the crew quarters? (Answer is the transformers: No one would put a deadly hazard right outside the sleeping area).


I'm not saying that 'YOU PUT A POD THERE, YOU LOSE!'. You WILL have to sacrafice design for balance at some point. But before you randomly put crushing walls and lava flows for 'balance', design the map like it should LOOK, not PLAY, first. PODs in stupid places can come later, if need be.

[Uranium - 235]

Hmm, Geothermal would also be a good reason to have water pipes and steam pipes going everywhere, as well as possible standing water from broken pipes.  Sounds like perfect hive conditions...

This is what I was complaining about earlier ("I want a biodome!" "I want a pit of doom!" "I want space toilets!")

We're getting into a convoluted theme. The first idea was power station. Then it was suggested to make it a hydroelectric power station. Which means you're mixing a power station with lots of water (FYI a hydroelectric power station is the most boring place on earth. It's got only two main rooms: A huge turbine room, and a control room. Weeee...). Now we're doing geothermal power station so we can mix lava, power, AND water themes? What next, put a shipyard on it too? And a battleship? Keep in mind we have limits, and water tends to UNBELIEVABLY RAPE R_SPEEDS.

I'm just up for a basic, functioning, power station. A very 'sterile' feel around the marine areas (blue/white lighting does wonders for this, combined with steel colors), and due to the nature of reactors, you have LOTS of good places to plop alien hives and such.

And one VERY IMPORTANT thing that I hate: If per chance we did make this a hydroelectric powerstation, then any 'theme' water you use would HAVE to be lethal. Why? Because it's just STUPID that the Kharra would be magically contained within a tiny building, when there's an entire world full of potential life right outside the doors. The thing with the current official NS maps is that they're in space, or on hostile terrain, meaning they have to remain inside. A hydroelectric power station with clean, fresh water just makes no sense.

[BobTheJanitor]

Another reason why I like geothermal better. Heat can be transferred with no problems, and no worries about water flowing in and out. The rest of the world could be a barren burning desert waste. Or a fridgid icy waste. Or a vast airless waste. A planet with heat a mile or two below the surface doesn't have to look any particular way up top. So you have a few heat vents, some control areas, a small crew area, a docking area for supplies and crew rotations to be handled through, gives us enough to work with.

Edit: I want space toilets!!!!!  :p

[Uranium - 235]

Yes, we WILL have space toilets, no matter what (Some op was complaining that maps don't have toilets, so we have to have l33t futuristic spaestoilets.

[Dubbilex]

Yes, we WILL have space toilets, no matter what (Some op was complaining that maps don't have toilets, so we have to have l33t futuristic spaestoilets.

*pumps fist in air*


yesssssssssss

[BobTheJanitor]

Bump for great justice. What's anyone working on? Or is yon mapping project going the way of the dodo?

[Dubbilex]

Actually, I intalled AvP2 today to get some inspirado - I took several shots to get ideas for architecture, style, etc.

I WAS gonna work on it tonight, but Salem's lot came on TNT and I got a wee bit sidetracked.  But rest assured - tomorrow I think I'll have more to show and all that.



And now the quintessential question - what have YOU been working on, olobobnub?

[BobTheJanitor]

LAYOUTS!!!! TONS AND TONS OF (two) LAYOUTS.

Yeah... I'm gonna get started on that section of mine reallllllll soon now. Like tomorrow. Yes sir. Really!

Remind me again what texture sets we're using?

[Uranium - 235]

Ooooo can't wait to see em bob. So what, we're following that geothermal idea or what?

[Decimator]

I only had to modify the hive slightly to make it fit a geothermal theme, so I haven't needed to start over.

[Dubbilex]

LAYOUTS!!!! TONS AND TONS OF (two) LAYOUTS.

Yeah... I'm gonna get started on that section of mine reallllllll soon now. Like tomorrow. Yes sir. Really!

Remind me again what texture sets we're using?

I've been using the V_wad and a lot of the NOS and TECK texture sets.  Basically anything that wasn't added in the ns2.wad for 3.0 (because they're so incredibly overused in every new combat and otherwise map).

The only exception to my old-school theme is the wall_lab (think Eclipse and veil) texture set.  This set doesn't mesh very well at ALL with any of the others, so I would advise against using it.


*edit* Some screens perhaps, Deci?

[That Annoying Kid]

As soon as the map is in testing and has most of the design done I can start thinking up storylines etc


Do we want a paragraph for the map .txt, and a longer story or what?


I like the whole geothermal concept, but I still think a big room with some aesthetic skulk cover [infestation you can walk thru that covers a skulk] would be cool for battles, like possibly make it a seige spot or something along that lines. does anyone like this idea?

[BobTheJanitor]

The big infestation textures with holes in them would be nice visual cover. Stretched across corners or somesuch. I wouldn't want to put it flat across a floor or anything, that would come out rather fake looking. But otherwise, I've though of using it in that way before.

[Uranium - 235]

Infestation can give very neat effects depending on how you use it - example, look at ns_desolate - Infestation under the surface of the water can make the water look a hell of a lot more interesting, and give an 'infestation' feel to textures that normally aren't for infestation.

As for you Bob, answer me on IRC, dammit!