Tram Siege 4 ET released

(]UBC[ McNite) #21

Just had another look at the map cuz i wanted to see the tram engines… whoa how ugly. Something else that struck me: the blockyness of the terrain in some spots… leaves me speechless. Looks like my very first attempts to get something out of EasyGen :eek2: :eek2: :eek2:

(thore) #22

sure, it’s possible to tweak gameplay server side… but i always thought of it as a last
chance cure. i don’t think maps should rely on tweaking admins. a map should play well
with standard settings, so admins and leagues could fine tune the map to fit their
needs. it’s the server admins job to run the server, not to balance the game :wink:

okay now we slowly but surely go off topic :wink:

well i wouldn’t mind if one cannot plant mines in the river :smiley: but as you refer to the
whole map… you’re not going the right way. again mines are part of ET, removing them
is crippling the game. next step is altering the skyshader in a way supportfire isn’t
possible anymore? nope, you provide some cover for ppl to go if it rains smoke canisters.
in the same way you should provide alternative routes or/and make some critical areas
either impossible to mine (solid ground) or mines easy to get around or spot but please
do not prevent mines by stripping down the terrain shaders. you map for ET… make the
map play like any other ET map… make your map have mines :stuck_out_tongue:

(]UBC[ McNite) #23

removing them is crippling the game

having them throughout the terrain is crippling the map and gameplay :smiley:

If you think I m wrong you are cordially invited for a private maptest. I m pretty sure you ll hate mines after that one :bump:

Of course there will be areas that accept mines, and you can easily spot the areas and thus easily go around them. But as I said, 5 mines are enough to never let any allie with docs escape via the rope bridges, or to never let any axis use the rope bridges to reach the road fast.
Btw mapping for ET doesn’t mean I have to enable all the bs that came with the game :smiley: gameplay comes first imo.

(Ifurita) #24

you’re not going the right way. again mines are part of ET, removing them
is crippling the game. next step is altering the skyshader in a way supportfire isn’t
possible anymore?

Not true. In the case of RTCW conversions, a lot of them aren’t designed to take land mines into account. My coversion of Breakout won’t have mines enabled either because I think they will really bottle up certain routes, to the detriment of the game. So, given the choice between enabling mines or making more significant structural changes to the map to account for them, I’ll go with the no mines option

(Fenris) #25

Thore: Just my opinion of course but mines are part of ET, CovOps are too and can spot them, so while I don’t really see a need to tweak settings I was merely suggesting it is possible should one dislike the default settings. But I agree the conversion could have made use of non-mineable areas instead of relying on tweaking.
Anyway I still most object to the graphical quality, the gameplay works fine in RtCW provided people know the map (which they will after playing it a few times) so it should hopefully do here as well even if ET features add new functions and new dangers to check for, the graphics however is harder to get used to.
Me hopes for an “upgrade” with more feeling from the original map, maybe with the bit of new addition here and there. The map is a conversion after all, not every stone needs to be in the same place, the thing with constructible bridges could be a nice addition, I don’t know yet, but like I said before in another thread, it’s the details that counts, for example the RtCW–>ET Village conversion has a fantastic command map feeling, Rommel does too, this map should do as well. :slight_smile:

(thore) #26

heh, that’s what i’m talking about. this refers to ifurita aswell. et is mines, constructables
and escortable vehicles. when porting a map from rtcw to et imo one should pay attention
to et-essential gameplay issues too. everything else will make the map stay an rtcw map
and as i said somewhere else some weeks before, i don’t think et is intended to assimilate
other games. if porting a map it should still play as any other et map does. if this includes
minor or major changes within the brushwork to accomplish a certain et-conform gameplay…
well that’s the price of porting. rtcw is not et. leaving the maps with their rtcw look and feel
there is no need to port them. let’s go play rtcw again. i wanna play et… and et includes
mines, vehicles and constructables.

well, that’s just me though :wink:

@ fenris

yeah… a quick’n’dirty version sucks big time. but actually graphics are “only detail”. the
balancing should come first. a beautiful map won’t make you win the match… then if
the map plays well one can go and paint everything with beautiful colors. that doesn’t
make the last part less important of course… i pay a lot of attention to a beatifully styled
map… but spending hours with detail you’ll have to remove later on for balancing reasons
isn’t the smartest way to go :smiley:
that’s why i forgive the mapper a crappy looking beta map… as long as the final plays
well and looks great everything’s fine. the bad thing is a map that has none of both :smiley:

(G0-Gerbil) #27

let’s drop this map into the box labeled “not all rtcw maps will adapt to et gameplay”

Oh my god! Surely I’m not right for once?

Apart from the map being ugly (which of course was highly likely since map convertors are the laziest of the lazy), seems like everything we all said would happen before this map came out has happened.

Blimey, who’d have thought that mappers saying ‘this won’t work’ could be right? I’m shocked - are you shocked?

Anyway, the only good side to this is we are slowly but surely running out of RTCW maps to convert badly.
Anyone notice it’s GOTY maps that are still to be done, yet I actually think some of them would stand the best chance. I reckon Keep would translate reasonably well (curved corridors kill mg42s), minimal mines, and how about rocket? Granted it would need another way in to each of the final objectives (key room and console to prevent mg42 spam) but other than that they’d probably be fine and I really liked them.

Hah! Except of course if I want to play 'em I’ll fire up RTCW :slight_smile:

Long live Tram in ET - I’m glad we get the chance to say ‘I told you so’! And I hope in future people will listen when they get told why converting maps from a game with completely different dynamics is a really bad idea.

(neotic) #28

Actually, this map played very well last night, my second time playing it on a server. I’d say this is the best conversion yet. The map isn’t just a conversion, its got all that is needed to make it an ET map from constructibles and command posts and such. If we’re forced to see anymore conversions I hope they are at least of this quality or better. Airstrikes, panzers, etc don’t really unbalance the gameplay so I don’t think its a big issue.

(G0-Gerbil) #29

Each to their own.
You’ve obviously not come across the ‘FFE / mine / mg42’ lock that’s so self evident.
Bear in mind when ‘new’ maps come out it’s often not entirely clear how to play them, then once the routine sets in, the map dies.

Having said that, I do often forget there’s a certain breed of player that cares (or knows) nothing about objectives or strategy.
Anyone remember the old MG server? It’d be full of people just blocking corridors, doing nothing and then dying. In which time you could rush past them 3 or 4 times and dying. Was quite amusing to see maybe half a dozen of each team sitting on either side of an entrance too scared to risk their ‘life’ on an attack. Well, it was amusing for maybe the first 5 minutes, then you just have to ignore your team and take on the enemy single-handedly.

I’m going to download tram and play as defence until I’ve made every single allied player quit in disgust :smiley:

(G0-Gerbil) #30

BTW can people clarify which of the two versions they are playing - the straight RTCW conversion or the one with the usual ET distractions?
Makes it easier to comment on.

(]UBC[ McNite) #31

Blimey, who’d have thought that mappers saying ‘this won’t work’ could be right? I’m shocked - are you shocked?

I remember our discussion well, and I m so shocked as well that we just knew what we talked about :smiley:
And, yea I played it too a bit but as it seems I was the only axis who knew what to do (anyone remember the engy-attack right at the start of the map: get into tram plant a dyno so it explodes when it reaches the village station, raise the flag and erase the first tram full of allies with a nade? I took out 5 allies YEA :banana: that took the first tram)
allies indeed had a chance of winning this.
This map won’t be played with much fun as soon as ppl figure out how to defend it.

And in about 2 months we ll read a thread where we can state: blimey, how on earth could be possibly know tram indeed is no map for ET? :cool:

(G0-Gerbil) #32

Had a quick play around on the ET version and…

Well, with a good Axis team allies will probably never make it to the first spawn.

Imagine this for your first wave of Axis:
1 engy does as Mcnite says (although I must admit for sheer annoyance you can’t beat a panzer by hut firing into the trams as well!)
A couple of field ops spam the bridge build point and further down the slope.
The rest are meds / soldiers.

OK this leaves us with Allies having 1 route only of attack with no flag. Much death ensues.

By this time Axis have of course ‘captured’ the tram tower. With field ops, panzers and mg42s Allies will undoubtedly shift to snipers where they’ll be spawncamped for the remaining half an hour.

Actually I can see so many variants of spawncamping it’s rather amusing. Every now and then I do get the urge to slaughter wholesale unsuspecting people, and this looks like it’s the map for me.

While the ET version has the composts, I’m afraid making the bridges buildable was a serious flaw - they are yet another means of making Allies’ life harder (1 route until built, hard to build, easy to defend for Axis - especially since both build points are on the only route up meaning Axis don’t need to split defence).

As for the graphics, well… I dunno. There’s no excuse for boring inappropriate ugly tiled textures everywhere, and the terrain wasn’t even lightmapped which would have at least meant it was upgraded. I’m pretty sad about this overall because HeirPie was part of the team, and he does a lot for the community regarding the SS servers and stuff - I’d thought he’d want a better polished product than this.

Whatever my thoughts about the gameplay possibilities, I have to say I’d not expected the map to look quite this ugly. It would have taken so little work to match or actually improve upon the original with new textures - then at least I’d be ‘happy’ someone at least gave the old map a make-over (coming soon on cable TV - RTCW map make-over program!).

Overall while I think the map would never be good (or rather, will be crap), it’s still a missed opportunity :frowning:

(Ifurita) #33

BTW, did I mention that I’m porting Breakout??

I’m still waiting for the mortars/FFEs to camp the hell out of the top of the stairwell

(G0-Gerbil) #34

Didn’t you say you aqre removing the possibility of mines though or at least in part?
This was something they could have done in tram - had patches of rock showing through the know, or had a little stream etc.
It all helps.

(Ifurita) #35

Yep, mines won’t be enabled.

(]UBC[ McNite) #36

Well, for that very reason there will be almost no mines in The River for ET.
There were requests from the playtests to enable mines all over the grass. So I enabled mines in the last playtest, and surprise with only 5 mines you can block the entire isle/ front wall area and nobody was able to leave/reach it via the rope bridges. Also its plain impossible to get ouf the river when mines are enabled.
So no matter how much ppl will cry for mines “cuz its ET” they ll stay out of the map :bump:

(G0-Gerbil) #37

Bear in mind part of the problem with mines in tram is there’s no safe place to spot 'em. Once spotted they are basically XP for the taking with a nade / panzer / satchel whatever.
theriver should be big enough to rule out this problem, there’s plenty of vantage points and quite frankly the bridges aren’t the best route in anyway - not to mention any defence planting them is a sitting duck. With tram none of this is true. No spotting points, entirely safe and quick for defence to plant etc. etc.

(]UBC[ McNite) #38

Even with coverts possibly spotting them they take the speed out of the game and seriously reduce the lucky game factor for allies of escaping with the docs fast. As this is a main aspect of the original River I won’t trade it for the sake of mines and covert ops.

(]UBC[ McNite) #39

Had 2 rounds of Tram yesterday as Axis…
Riflenade rox on defense, absolutely deadly Allies never won and after 10 mins ppl from allies team started leaving the server cuz they had no chance. This resulted in real uneven teams and then allies had no chance at all due to XP difference.
This map won’t last long…

(Fenris) #40

Don’t forget the Depot map now, I loved that one too :slight_smile:

Both of them have equally poor graphics imho.

I don’t completely agree on your summary of the situation, or maybe I do but I see it from another point of view, anyway what I mean is that to take the (only afaik) Tram server today, that runs Tram continuosly, what you described is exactly what happens, the first 5 minutes, or 10, or even 20 sometimes if the teamwork is bad, and then there’s either a breakthrough, or the game ends, and the teams are swapped. Then it’s the same over again, total spamming with panzers, airstrikes and so on (no mines, this is RtCW but I don’t think they’d make that big change in the situation), and maybe the teams were unbalanced so axis will win quickly, or maybe the situation will repeat, still the server is usually full (32 players) and when teams gets too unbalanced a shuffle is
usually called for. And the players return, night after night.

Now I don’t know, maybe we are the same 30-something players with the odd new player now and then, and I can’t speak for everyone else but imo it’s fun, it’s part of the game, ok you get spammed sometimes, you get panzered quite a lot, but you know that when the teams switch the others will have the same situation in reverse so there’s usually quite fair play. And the heavy weapons are part of the game (except when low on players and players agree to leave them out), so I still believe the mines could be part too regardless of what everyone else feels :slight_smile:

That’s why you play stopwatch and don’t play only one side and if the players on the server does not even the teams automatically then you call for a shuffle every now and then :drink: