User:Brandished/Notes

Experiments and excerpts

My collection of random knowledge and findings related to Source and Source level design.

Flagrun for TF2?

For those of you who may not remember or not have played a round on Flagrun, here's a recap. Flagrun was a 4 flag CTF style map with 4 flags both teams fought over. Unlike with standard CTF, the flags spawned in different locations around the map, and the flags do not return to the enemy base when captured, they stayed in your own base, unless they're dropped during transfer. From the TFC objectives:

War - Control the flags

Objective: Bring all four flags in the map
to the capture point in your base to win 
the round. Secured flags can be stolen from
the enemy base

Other Notes: When a flag carrier is killed,
the flag returns to the neutral flag room.

I've been able to partially recreate this map type using a mix of CTF and CP gameplay modes. What I created was basically a 3 CP map, with each capture point requiring a player to possess a flag in order to cap it.

Difficulties

The main problem I've run into is a "bug" that springs up in TF2 when there's more then one cap-able flag per team available in the map at a time, a single player can pickup an unlimited number of flags, but they can only drop one, the other flags they have picked up stay with them until the round is reset, even if they die. So if a player happens to pick up more then one flag, the round immediately becomes un-winnable. I have still to come up with a descent work-around for this

The second biggest problem I've run into is due to the gameplay splitting a team up into separate groups, the scout has a significant advantage over the other classes due to his increased speed. The flags no longer have any speed penalty settings, so workarounds must be used. There are two workarounds I know of, but both are a little rough, and can have some undesired effects. The first one I know of is to create significant choke points that require a team effort to be overcome, as with 2fort. Choke points, while forcing teamwork, can also tend to turn what was once fast paced game into an unending turtle-fest, especially as more players join the server. The other workaround is to parent a trigger_gravity onto the flag that cuts the flag carriers speed down significantly. The problem with this approach is that not only does it limit the classes speed, but their jump height, and distance as well, not to mention making it near impossible to leave a water way that lacks a ramp of some sort.

Lastly, a lack of a neutral flag color can create a bit of confusion, and their seems to be some bugs when a flag isn't successfully stolen from an enemy base and is recaptured by its owner, although this may be due to an improper entity setting.

Despite these set backs I've still come up with a basic working prototype, that demonstrates some of the gameplay fundamentals. For those interested, I've uploaded my current progress here: http://www.box.net/shared/zg9d93rc0g

June 27, 2008

Level editing with Blender

Blender can export to the ".map" format, interesting. The "map" format can be loaded into the old 3.4 version of Hammer and then saved into rmf, which can then be opened with the current version of Hammer (4.1). That's a an extra step where as XSI can export directly to vmf. It also doesn't seem to support texturing, only brushwork.

I know something similar could be done with 3DS_Max via the GLB plug-in, but with GLB, brush work could not be saved and re-edited within Max, only exported to a .map file. You were also limited to a somewhat small set of tools the plugin supported.

I wonder how it deals with non-convex geometry.

Non-Standard Flags for TF2

I recognize the face on the red flag, but who's on the blue one?

Although Valve may not have included a way to directly change the model for the "item_teamflag" entity to something other then the intelligence briefcase, it is possible to parent other entities to the "item_teamflag" entity as a rough work-around. When an entity is parented to the "item_teamflag" entity, when a player touches it in-game, it has the same effect as touching the "item_teamflag" itself. It does look a little weird when the "flag" is dropped, though.