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Antlion Survival Maps need a new turnaround. (Warning WOT!!)

Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2009 10:11 am
by Player
I love antlion survival maps, but the problem is, why are they so short? One of them currently lasts about, what? 15 minutes? The longest we can get out of it is by not going into the dropship.


(Apologies for the maker of that Antlion Surival map with the "fake" dropship. No offence for you, it's nice but just short :D)

My idea of a good antlion surival map would be;


-The general base where you are be fairly big, enough so you could spam 20 jeeps side by side. in all directions but up and down.

-The antlions spawning not be in open plain sight, this is rather boring for people as you'll just grab a gun that shoots powerful enough and spawn camp them. Making it very boring, and thus should be in small caves that have trigger_hurts 99999 on players so you can't attempt spawn camping.

-The initial escape plan be more advanced, like; move from there to here, and from here to over there and you will be rescued. Sounds a bit plain, cause of common sense: "Why don't they just come to us?", again, common sense: Maybe it's a ground vehicle? We don't want Guards running into them. So nicely done bases would be good. Constantly failing shields and re-buildable walls would be good (picking up a wall and placing it where it should be)

-Detailed bases. You may think "Why does it need to be detailed?". Well, basically, the map looks uninteresting, and without detail, maps get boring, and gameplay does too. So spice up your entity creating a bit, create more buildings that have ammo stocks in them!

-Those pesky merchants! When you spawn, you should spawn in a vote room, and you should walk into two areas: One that if has most players on that side will win that option: Merchants or No merchants. If No merchants, then in it's spot will just be a shelf with weapons, but only limited to Sniper Rifle, Pistol, Shotgun, AR2, Grenades, and SMG's. RPG's for the Antlion Guards, I must remember.

-Those antlions spawn one at a time. Why not make three spawns for them, but make it every so often? Such as; after 5 minutes of constant antlion attack, players have 1 minute of break, and 1 minute after that of antlion harrassment. After that one minute, one or two guards come out. This way we don't get badly overwhelmed when it's just a few players, since we can get our shit together, make sure we have stuff ready, and then attack again.

-Whose stealin' mah health?! Those damn machines don't give me much armour or health! Well why not just make it so it heals 99999, and if it happens to run out (wtf?) then it should reset in .1 seconds. Same for the armour.

-Oh noes my base is dying!111s! I must buy more! There should be 5 turret spawners: You can only have 5 or 6 on the field at once. It takes a normal antlion 25 hits to kill (each hit counts for an antlion, so you're screwed if theres more than 1 hitting that turret), it takes a Worker 10 acid hits (if they do that, if not, 20), and antlion guards 2 hits.

-I can't snipe, wtf? What we need are sniper towers, and generally a bunker in the middle. Like the current Antlion Survival map, there's a useless bunker with no machine gun on the left side of the map, and a good sniping spot for which the antlions can also ambush you (has happened about 37 times so far. Epic spot when you get raped by those antlions)

-Hey wheres the objectivez? We need thumpers, ones that will take damage and automatically shut off for at least 2:30 minutes before they need re-activating. A small timer should appear above the button part. Around the thumper should be a couple of barricades that stop antlions just jumping in nilly willy. This way, it adds an interesting object, because it's like "Defend the Hill", and the Antlions are attacking it. On a server of 16 people, you could send 3 people to defend the thumper which should eventually start damaging Antlions by 2 HP every 10 seconds (Balancing), next to every thumper should be a grenade stock, pistol stock, and an ar2 stock. No SMG stock for a reason of SMG's for some reason being one of the most powerful weapons next to the RPG and AR2 (AR2 is rare anyway).

-Thumpers are losing power! Well to resolve this you're gonna need a power supply. Head over to that antlion infested place over there far from the base, pick up a power generator (car battery or the engine itself) and place it where the thumper needs it. Each supply should last 8 whole minutes before it needs replacing. It should turn red to indicate this.


I'll add more as I think of 'em.


The Responser's Conclusion

-Spawn camping, people will always do it, but we can do it EP1 style, make antlions jump over the hills and such as well as spawning from the sand, the random per of antlions should drop in every 10 seconds. Three should visit. One of those antlions must be a worker.

-Instead of using caves we can use the sand spawning system as the first response suggests, but it will need to have some kind of moving spawner, so they just don't spawn in one spot.


Quickie picture of suggested map design:
Image

Note: I said quickie. I'm not good with MS paint either. So shutup.
:o


By the way, that's not exactly a full-size map, it's a fairly big, but that's because of the player's vehicle.
Oh, and the vehicle that the players use is abandoned at the bridge because it won't fit through the breakable cave will it?

Escape vehicle is a truck, not a dropship, it's armoured and will shoot antlions on it's way so you know how it got there without being damaged logically.






The Good Responder's Suggestions
And btw. I don't really like those defence only maps, though antlion_attack is a great one. I'd really appreciate it if you had to get to another base or something. Maybe there could be a map series in which you first have to escape and later on decide to just wipe out the nest by placing a WTF-bomb in the cave with the comb things. Well, you guys know what I mean, haha... ;)

Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2009 10:29 am
by fug4life
Interesting ideas. Your the first to really complain about the map, I only hear compliments. Have you played on YAS? that server is running an improved script for the map (I hope DaMaN/W0rf0x will agree to include in mod). The map has come a long way in a postive direction from its original state.

I have no idea what the forthcoming oc_starshiptroopers will be like but it sounds and looks good.

As for your caves with a trigger 9000, I think its a bad idea, Antlions are mean't to spawn from the ground (sand which can produce a much more random spawn than then coming out of a cave/s 1 by 1). Maybe spawn them round a corner, but you'll never get rid of spawn camping as the campers will sit outside the cave and camp and so forth.

Choice of merchants is an interesting idea and would be nice to see in some maps, though I think merchants for a defence map suit better than respawning ammo. And certainly the system in Antlion_Attack should not be removed.

Well I guess were all different.

To cure frustration is to learn hammer and create your vision.

Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2009 10:35 am
by Player
I can map, but you don't wanna try anything of mine I gaurentee you.

Well it's nice, but I can't map for OC (I probably could) and I'd create a useless map. I learned hammer a few months ago, but I suck.



For the antlion's spawn, it will need to have some kind of moving spawner, so they just don't spawn in one spot, and this is some very nice balancing for the antlions in favor.











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I updated OP with a quickly done picture explaining how a map would look like. The excess areas would be in the skybox (the parts where you would have no point going to) unless the main mapper wants to waste entdata.

Apologies for the quickie, I just couldn't be arsed.

There should be a custom vehicle that a dropship comes in and drops, but a line across the screen should say "Sorry for the vehicle, we have no transport containers, you guys are gonna have to get to the base across the bridge before the antlions destroy the supports." (Which they already have)

The mapper should make different versions, but [b]ONLY[/b] for the vehicle.

This is because one server could have 8 people, and the other 16, and that would be a bit odd if the 16 slot server used the 8 slot vehicle. There's only supposed to be one vehicle!

Two/Three versions should be made: One map with 6 slots, the other 10, and the other 16. Mappers might wanna decompile then change shit around if they are using higher slot counts. I'm unsure whether we should use an AI driver or a player, AI would do it the correct way, a player might frak with everyone and not do anything.

If the vehicle suggestion is approved, then it should be non-gravity gun pushable, or the mapper who makes the map(s) disables the Gravity gun. People want to drive, and if someone else gets in that seat, they tend to ALWAYS punt the vehicle driver, hoping for something to happen.

For the broken bridge, there should be a small breakable tunnel (breakable wall brushes that eventually make a tunnel), and and half-way through the players will be revealed to an ammo room, a door will bang, bang, and then fly all the way, revealing 3 zombies, 10 zombies and 2 poisen zombies. For insanety throw in spammed headcrabs.

Other things: To avoid players going back to the main base if the mappers decides that they shouldn't go back there for reasons, then the vehicle with the players should trigger an event which makes brushes of rocks fall into the cliff, and renders the road back to the spawn useless. With each progress the spawn point changes. The map shouldn't use lives, because the server administrator must enforce lives if they want lives.


Now, reasons I suggest AI driver for the vehicle:
[u]Advantages[/u]

-Won't grief the vehicle
-Will stay at a certain speed and turn at certain speeds, and is capable of driving

[u]Disadvantages[/u]

-Slow speed maybe?
-Won't use boost if there will be
-AI Driver script could be manipulated to be fraked with or it might bug/glitch


Reasons I suggest player drivers for the vehicle:
[u]Advantages[/u]

-Won't stay at a constant speed, will speed up and ensure safety
-Good manouvering, will use sprint

[u]Disadvantages[/u]

-Will grief (someones going to) and will get everyone killed (to stop this, if no-one is inside the vehicle past a trigger point outside the base, antlions will stop attacking until more than 5 players are in the vehicle)
-Vehicle might get stuck on walls and stuff (it happens alot)



The vehicle should have a 2ndry seat for Player 2, which has a turret. It's a combine machine gun, but to be fair for the antlions each shot has the damage of a pistol shot. The rest just sit there in the vehicle.

Now, it can either be custom (which would look very outstanding, and attract people to play (seriously it would)) or it can be the Human APC. Oh noes baww's are heard D:

Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2009 11:40 am
by Neico
Player wrote:I can map, but you don't wanna try anything of mine I gaurentee you.

Well it's nice, but I can't map for OC (I probably could) and I'd create a useless map. I learned hammer a few months ago, but I suck.



For the antlion's spawn, it will need to have some kind of moving spawner, so they just don't spawn in one spot, and this is some very nice balancing for the antlions in favor.
l4d director ahoi

Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2009 11:41 am
by Player
Neico wrote:
Player wrote:I can map, but you don't wanna try anything of mine I gaurentee you.

Well it's nice, but I can't map for OC (I probably could) and I'd create a useless map. I learned hammer a few months ago, but I suck.



For the antlion's spawn, it will need to have some kind of moving spawner, so they just don't spawn in one spot, and this is some very nice balancing for the antlions in favor.
l4d director ahoi

Quite similar, but just an antlion spawner so they still spawn, but it just moves for every antlion spawned. So it would move from point A to B once Antlion 1 has spawned, and then it would spawn another, after 5 have spawned it will wait for one to die and spawn another 3. After eventually 30 antlions are killed they are greeted with an antlion guard.


RPG's are only available in Base 2. Balancing.

Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2009 12:35 pm
by Blues
Neico wrote:l4d director ahoi
Func_tracktrain or logic_relais and logic_case ahoi. Or something like that. With some entity knowledge, one could really create something like a really random spawning of the antlions.

And btw. I don't really like those defence only maps, though antlion_attack is a great one. I'd really appreciate it if you had to get to another base or something. Maybe there could be a map series in which you first have to escape and later on decide to just wipe out the nest by placing a WTF-bomb in the cave with the comb things. Well, you guys know what I mean, haha... ;)

Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2009 12:39 pm
by Player
I've just been stumped by one guy :D

That's actually a good suggestion.

Good suggestions go in OP.

Yeah it would be nice, you'd have to use a big bomb. Let's use a vehicle.

Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2009 12:57 pm
by Blues
Make it a giant rocket with wheels. The EP2 one, haha :lmao:

Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2009 1:02 pm
by Player
We're trying to get a picture of an APC-like vehicle that can transport everyone to the next objective, not a darn nuclear missile on wheels.

Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2009 1:06 pm
by Blues
But you said we need a big bomb.

Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2009 1:22 pm
by Player
Not that friggin' big. Maybe the size of the Jeep but nothing bigger.

Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2009 1:52 pm
by Blues
Oh, what a pity... :(

When we bomb, we go big.

Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2009 4:25 pm
by Player
Only to the size of a damn jeep. No more.

Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2009 10:34 pm
by destiny
how about the container of a dropship with seats on the roof?

Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2009 10:35 pm
by Vasili
destiny wrote:how about the container of a dropship with seats on the roof?
This is not garrysmod.