I agree with suggestion 2. What this map really needs though is balanced initial spawns.

In the current version I went down to having only 2 initial spawns. The one opposed to RA and the one at MH tele. Not sure if I'm gonna keep that though, needs testing.

I went down to having only 2 initial spawns.

"Dumbing down" seems to be recurring theme in your maps.

clueless?

no, you?

Not sure if I'm gonna keep that though, needs testing.

Still. Where do these ideas even come from? Every map maker in the past could have gone the easy way and make only two initial spawns. Do you think they weren't aware of potential imbalance?

they probably should have (aero)

what's wrong with having only 2 initial spawns?

1. Why do we want to play new maps at all? Because we want something new. New situations, new moves, new strategies to figure out. If you reduce number of initial spawns then there is significally less new things to learn and invent.

2. Random spawns - initial and later - are imo the nature of quake. These are the moments when it's hard to make a decision because you need to take into account multiple possibilities. You can learn all spawn combinations but with considerable amount of initial spawns mistakes are more likely to happen.

3. Quake needs some randomness because this adds excitement for players and viewers. Take an example of the most popular 1v1 sport in the world - table tennis. ITTF introduced 11 point games instead of 21 to increase randomness and possibility of crazy comebacks.

4. This doesn't fix any imbalance issues (unless previous spawns are totally broken). Spawns aren't symmetrical so loser can always find a reason to blame them.

5-100. All the same arguments you could put out against making all spawns predictable

yes imbalanced random start spawns is one of the best features quake has!

Maps already have initial spawns. That means the devs don't want complete randomness, therefore the proper way to do it is not to have imbalanced starts at all. Nonetheless, they don't want to remove that element completely from the game, since all maps have more than two initial spawn points.

The 100% randomness alternative is not inherently bad, but it's a different choice altogether. What's wrong is being at the middle, which consists of trying to have balanced diversity but with an unlucky start.


Imbalanced starts on QL are because of one spawn point that should be removed (always a bad start) or a bad combination (the spawn itself isn't bad at all times but is if the opponent spawns at a certain spawn point).
1.- dm6's YA. The way to solve this is not to remove the spawn point itself (can still happen in the next 10 minutes) but to remove it from the possible starting (first) spawn points, like most of them are already on that map.
2.- ztn's YA with upper RL. Ztn first spawns are kind of balanced because most points cannot happen as first spawns, for example the two that are at the railgun or grenade launcher, and also because there aren't silly combinations.....unless the said one (lightning gun is debatable though).

Another third example is aerowalk's YA, but that's a weird one since I think it could use not only removing that first spawn possibility but also tweaking it entirely so there aren't weird starting combinations, like rail with shotgun. On the other hand, personally I would like the map to play more Q3-like, which means not forcing a player to respawn (after 0.00) at the weaker side of the map like 20 times in a row.

ye you dont have to lecture me, i've had enough 25-2 starts in tdm against 4kings and their superior "early lead" strategy

agreed with fau here
sooner or later the player depending on his specific spawn will have a template of what to do and if they dont do it they will obviously be put at a disadvantage,which will lead to the same starts over and over again..this is dumbing down at its best.
quake should be about deciding what to do yourself not having a given set of circumstances.

if you were to choose, what would you prefer between two almost balanced starting spawns (i'm talking about only starting ones) and different couples that are unbalanced?

My thinking exactly. At the moment Im trying to find a way to have 4 balanced ones. Unfortunately the initial spawn system is a major fuckup.

Imo there is no such thing as totally unbalanced initial spawns unless eg. one guy spawns on lg and the other right next to him and gets killed instantly. Still perhaps kiling him was actually a mistake in terms of long term strategy and control because you are left with 50 hp and he spawns somewhere on the map.

Getting less items isn't objectively disadvantageous because you usually can use this time to get more weapons or take good position or deal some damage.

On the other hand two "balanced" spawns can be unbalanced for players with various styles. I can imagine k1llsen prefering a spawn where he gets 100 armour less and a rail.

I am lg heavy player, but please Remove LG ammo at all! I saw 3 lg ammo box... leave just LG gun as ammo! or atleast leave 1 box max..

well, if you leave the lg ammo, please remove the one at high ra and keep the one at ya.

Agreed and done.

I have no suggestions for the map right now, but I'd love some VODs from the Cure cup the other day. Does anyone have those?

http://www.twitch.tv/targetquake_tv/videos?kind=past_broadcasts

Oh, not only you were faster, you were also better !

Thanks!

http://www.twitch.tv/targetquake_tv

Thanks anyway! :)

OK here is one idea.

I like it that you can rail the mh from far and you can do dmg on red. BUT I don't like it too much on the ya. So you are on the run and can't even take ya without beeing railed from 3 long ranges! So I would remove that little gap towards the ya, but not towards the MH.

I'd also like to see the boxes near the ya a bit different so you can go up faster. Maybe thats possible.

Besides that I agree with mementos stuff and also removing the lg ammo. Allthough I would not make a small entrence to the ra. Its good like it is. But I like the idea near ya.

There is a small bug (which I already told you cityy) at the shards near mh. (middle level) where you can jump on the lamp.

You might also considering moving ONE BOX inside the ra-small-room towards the fence so you can RJ out a bit easier (not with the wall)

Near shotgun there are are some very small steps towards the ya. I would fill them (at least with an invisible wall) --> Unnecessary clipping rocket stuff

There is this thing above the green armor, where you can RJ up. Removal optional. It saved my win against fazz ;D

These are only suggestions which might be good to consider and think about, but I like the map so far besides the already discussed spawns.

Cheers

Small update, this is the current state of things:
http://cityyz.de/spawnvis/cure.html

I'll be testing 5 initial spawns tonight or tomorrow (the 3 spawns at the 25 hp bubble near red as well as the 2 spawns at the 50hp staircase)

I'm still rooting for your map to break through the incredibly thick barrier and make it into all the mappools!

is it intended that if you kill someone at red that you have a 1/3 chance of getting a spawnfrag? or in other words, why are there 2 spawns (I assume they are right next to each other) near red?

I think that a choke point between ra and ya would improve deffensive options for player out of control. yeah there's lots of armor on the map, but it's still veeeery easy to get to that yellow when you're stacked diminishing chances for methodic comeback.

no. dont overdo it with the choke-points. its why silence failed

Overdoing chokepoints? Five sith of the map is wide as a ra3 map.

can you rephrase, hard to understand what u mean. put in context etc :)

The map is mostly open, the only choke points are the lower corridors between the ra and mega room. Adding choke points between ra and ya is not "overdoing" chokepoints at all.

are you talking abt silence or cure?

Obviously Cure.

Only suggestion: More strogg themed maps. Quake was never supposed to look like a rustic holiday resort.
Aside from that , keep up the good work.

:D

Maybe one day again. I already made edge and left behind; fuse is also using the strogg textures!

How's Fuse coming along? :D

Still debating about item placement at this point. Spawns up next. :)

Could you do another q2 map remake (that id already has the rights of)?

That way I could spawn servers with the 3 CV map options being from kwaktwo

It's not really up to me to decide. For the edge I was asked by SyncError to create the total conversion as a collaborative project with him.

Unrelated from that, I don't even really have the time for anything else at the moment.

I wonder what the status with ztn's old maps is. It'd be great to see some more of his Q2 and Q3 maps converted. ztn's probably long forgotten about Quake at this point though.

I suppose id was in contact with him when they created (or whatever they did) Bloodrun for Quake Live. As far as I know they couldn't just do whatever they wanted with the old maps due to copyright and so on, so I'm guessing ztn has heard of Quake in the last few years :)

I personally don't agree with some statements about reducing the lg ammo boxes. The lg can already be ridiculously hard to acquire and having to go back for it time and again seems ridiculous.
That's just my 2 cents on that.

That's a very good point.

The question I ask myself is whether it is the in control player or the our of control player taking more benefits from the ammo.
I think it might not be bad to remove one of the boxes and force the in control player to go out of position for that LG now and then when the YA box is taken.
The way I see it, out of control player wont easily get his hands on LG anyway or take a lot of LG fights with stack disadvantage which is why I think he would not profit much from 2 ammo boxes in comparison to the in control player.

Just my thoughts though, if you are willing to discuss this, I would appreciate it.

Initial spawns should be working like this now: http://cityyz.de/spawnvis/cure_initial.html (hover a spawn point to see what other spawns are within the range of possibilities for player 2)

I tested ingame and it seemed fine.

Those spawns seem pretty fair, although I do have a few thoughts;

Are the spawns on the MH side of the map deliberately placed further away from MH than the spawns on the RA side are placed from the RA? A spawn near RA can give you the armor, RL and rail, where the spawn near MH will effectively only give you MH and LG.

I haven't tried it so obviously I don't know how it works, I'm just curious :)

this might be the case, but the lg is very usefull on cure, so the disadvantage (if there is one) is only minimal. I'd rather spawn on mh with a shaft than on the other seide with rail and rocket and red. The mh-spawner after that has two choices to get a rocket anyway, so to me it should be fair regarding the weapons

aren't the first spawns (completly) random? I don't know the code, but to me it seems that any combination of two spawns (firstspawns) are possible (e.g. ya and gl spawn on tox, allthough they are close to each other). If thats the case, you can spawn right next to your opponent (like its possible on dm6) and these first spawns would be bad.

No, I will explain later.

just make sure, you can't spawn right next to your opponent, and the spawns are fine

Yes, that's how it is with those spawns.

Initial spawns work like this:
1) player 1 spawn gets chosen randomly
2) the game looks at the spawns left and excludes the half of them that's nearest to player 1 spawn location
3) it chooses player 2 spawn randomly out of the remaining ones

that the player 1 gets a random spawn explains why I almost never get some spawns since i mostly connect on server with 1 player on it. Since not all possibilities are possible for both sides. So if im player 2 all the time I might get an advantage in spawns over time and a big number of games....
I CALL BUG ;D

These First Spawn locations are great one is for RA the other for Mega unless your an idiot and run to YA.