[+city] Parking Garage -- please help test new map before 2.3

[H-Hour]

With r29422 the +city RMA is available in skirmish mode and includes a Fighter UFO, a Firebird, and spawn points for aliens, humans and civilians. There are lots of little fixes and additions I want to make here and there (like adding cars!), but at this point there shouldn't be any show-stopping bugs. I say shouldn't, but it hasn't been extensively tested. I haven't even been able yet to compile and load just to test the new UMP file. But it should work.

I'm hoping people will now try out this map and give me some feedback. This is my first map for UFOAI so I need feedback on a wide range of things to make sure I'm getting things right. In addition to major bugs or bad functionality and performance, I'd like to ask especially for the following feedback:

1. Were you able to do things on the map that met your expectations? For instance, were you able to move where you thought you should (based on past experience with the UFOAI maps), or were you able to move somewhere that you think maybe you shouldn't? I want to make sure the player isn't frustrated by the map's design, and that it matches their expectations (with the exception of things that the engine can't handle, like jumping over railings, etc.).

2. How does the AI perform on this map? Will they shoot down from the balconies, will they find the stairs and change floors? Or do they sit up top too much? Should they spawn more spread out? Etc.

3. Did the map present you with interesting tactical problems to overcome? Were there enough locations for your men to take cover? Were you able to use your men fluidly, across the whole map, or do you find that there is too much of a bottleneck? When dealing with this last question, keep in mind also that in the future this will be one building amongst several, so much of it was designed to relate to other buildings. But it should still be an interesting map alone.

4. Does the map appear to be a convincing location? It's supposed to be a parking garage, in case that didn't come across. There will eventually be signs to make that clear and to fill out the "clutter" of an urban space. But does the architectural piece work?

Many thanks for any feedback you can give on this. I hope it will make it into 2.3 and so I would like it to be as well-balanced and fun to play as possible.

[Kildor]

One note about.
tiles contain dropships and ufos need to have proper names, because game use special mechanisms to define they.

[Mattn]

kildor is right - see the naming schema for the other rma themes and please also make sure that the ump file contains the needed names. last but not least you should also add the supported ufos and dropships to maps.ufo to be able to select the proper aircraft when starting the map in skirmish.

btw. removing the lightmap from the advertisement stages material will add some nice self-lumination effect to them.

[H-Hour]

For now I'd prefer not to make the name changes if that's alright, but will certainly do it before 2.3. Because I'm still finishing up the building, I don't want to start having duplicate files floating around. Eventually the building will be used as a tile for the scout, one for the fighter and one without any UFO (post-2.3 when more of the city comes in).

Does that work? It's my assumption that the definitions are used primarily for the Skirmish map selection screen, but it should still be playable without them on a temporary basis, correct?

[Mattn]

the selection is also done in the campaign - if there will be an ufo on geoscape that you shoot down it can of course only spawn the mission if the correct terrain, ufo, dropship and so on stuff is set (btw. for being used in teh campaign all three dropships must be added to the list - otherwise this will just error out)

[H-Hour]

If you want to start testing in campaign mode right away, I'll take care of this first. But I was hoping to spend some time tweaking it before moving towards the final implementation.

[Mattn]

that is not (yet) needed form my side - i was just explaining things

[H-Hour]

Little WIP shot on the sign texture I'm working on.

[Mattn]

very nice - if the glow stuff is in the material system that might be even looking cooler.

[H-Hour]

Would it be terrible if I rebuilt the herakles pod for my dropship tile? It is currently about 32 units too wide to fit along a street. I could rebuild it just a tiny bit thinner, I don't think anyone would notice... On the plus side, I'd build it in Radiant so it wouldn't need to be a model anymore.

[geever]

Would it be terrible if I rebuilt the herakles pod for my dropship tile? It is currently about 32 units too wide to fit along a street. I could rebuild it just a tiny bit thinner, I don't think anyone would notice... On the plus side, I'd build it in Radiant so it wouldn't need to be a model anymore.

I think Raptor is even bigger, but not sure. I vote for leaving it as a model. They should look the same on all maps.

-geever

[BTAxis]

That Raptor only barely fits on a dropship tile, and even then it looks too small to contain all the troops.

[H-Hour]

Yes, the Raptor will need to appear on a 2x3 section of tiles (although it could fit 2x2 if reduced by 128 units of length), but the heracles dropship is really close to fitting along a single street. The benefit of having it on a single street is that it can be placed at more locations throughout the +city RMA (as more buildings are built), so that the player won't always be spawning in the middle of a big street.

It was my understanding that all dropships and UFOs were slated to be rebuilt in Radiant so that they can benefit from proper lighting.

[BTAxis]

Really? That's news to me.

[H-Hour]

Well what do I know? I believe somewhere along the line I picked up that impression from mattn, but that could have been a misunderstanding on my part.