(V)JB/(V)CTF/ONS Heaven & Hell

[legacy-4TX4]

Originally posted by T-Shinzon
You'd have to be brilliant to pull it off successfully.

Nope, just very good.

First of all: Balancing the vertical advantage of Heaven or Hell, depending on certain factors.

Second: Balancing the asymmetry

Third: Appearance could be tricky. Especially you'll need custom skybox, etc.

Yes, balance would be important, but with some common sense and thorough beta testing it could certainly be pulled off. Also, learning and making use of the "unique" strengths and weaknesses of each base would be part of the fun, IMO. Whatever disbalance there is in the design could at least partially be compensated with tactics. Of course things like bot support should work equally well on both sides, but this needn't be more difficult than designing 2 separate, well-pathed maps.

Regarding the skybox etc.: maybe the structures in heaven might require some custom work (and things like the gates), but otherwise you could just use UT stock material, especially in the hell section. Indeed, this would probably be preferable to keep map size (in MBs) within reasonable limits. Even the skybox might just be a stock item, or maybe a fusion of two stock designs.

[T-Shinzon]

You'd have to be brilliant to pull it off successfully.

First of all: Balancing the vertical advantage of Heaven or Hell, depending on certain factors.

Second: Balancing the asymmetry

Third: Appearance could be tricky. Especially you'll need custom skybox, etc.

[legacy-4TX4]

Originally posted by DarKGamer
I know someone working on a heaven and hell map at the moment, but I think it's DM or CTF.

Cool. How closely do you think it resembles my setup?

Originally posted by Daspadger
ONS-Apocalypse has a similar theme.

Yeah, similar theme, but (afaik) completely different look & layout. Also I'd primarily want this to be a big JB/VCTF map, not an ONS map.

[Da Spadger]

ONS-Apocalypse has a similar theme.
Blue team = Good guys
Red team = Bad guys

[legacy-DarKGamer]

I know someone working on a heaven and hell map at the moment, but I think it's DM or CTF.

[legacy-4TX4]

Map idea. May or may not be original, but sure would be fun (if done right).

Configuration #1

Both heaven & hell are on islands floating in space, interconnected by various bridges, walkways, jump points, smaller floating islands etc., with a larger structure exactly in the middle. This is the neutral zone, aka Purgatory, which separarates the two themes. The bases themselves are fairly large, with lots of rooms, hallways, tunnels (hell) and so on. The two bases have completely different looks and layouts; basically they're two separate maps that happen to be connected. Heaven looks like a huge Greek/Roman temple among the clouds (alternatively it could be a cathedral of sorts), hell is a network of lava-filled caves. Both have gates with some appropriate text along the lines of "abandon all hope.../blesseth are ye who..." Needless to say, in JB the execution sequences are radically different as well; death by lava/impalement/U1 beasts in hell, death by lightning in heaven (for example).

Configuration #2

Same as #1, only now the two bases aren't floating in space, but are at the bottom (hell) & atop (heaven) a large mountain. The mountain stands in a lake of fire (lava), but high above the skies are blue with cute fluffy clouds. In and around the mountain is a "vast" network of tunnels, stairs, elevators, walkways, rooms etc. which connect the two bases. In the middle of the mountain there's, again, Purgatory. Below it everything is hell-themed, and above it heaven-themed. The action in this map is predominanty vertical, which is fairly unusual afaik.

This would be a pretty big map (it kinda has to be, due to its, ahem, epic theme), so it might be a good idea to include some vehicles as well (hence the "V"s in the header). Just a few though, and they wouldn't take you all the way to the flag/release switch. Also you'd have to exit your vehicle in Purgatory, move through some rooms and corridors, and pick up another vehicle on the other side.

Vehicles would probably work best in version #1, though driving vehicles up & down winding, narrow mountain roads could also be fun (it would certainly be challenging, with lots of opportunities for a nice ambush).

In ONS power cores would -obviously- be in the heaven & hell bases, with nodes on the floating smaller islands and Purgatory in version #1, and dotted around the mountain (and again one in Purgatory) in version #2. In version #1 some of the floating islands could only be reached with flying vehicles (i.e. Raptor etc.).