[BETA] Tower Offense

[Ouija]

Tower Offense

Gametype: FFA/TDM
Custom assets: Moderate
Phase: Complete (Beta)
Bot support: None

Download (6MB):
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=L5ZVPGN0

A power plant on a lone tropical island. Something's gone wrong, the place is under security lockdown - and there's armed hostiles all over! Grab your rail, and stay alive.
Fight off your enemies inside and outside the facility, try not to fall off the floating platforms, bounce on the consecutive jump pads... and curse the bad weather.

Technical description:
This is something I doodled when I was stuck on integrated graphics. The map uses one of my "how the **** did he do that" tricks, the GPU-murdering rain. (32 planes per volume) All mapobjects were done using Maya, exported with ActorX for Unreal Engine and subject to some Notepad editing, textures were made with IrfanView and a little Photoshop here and there, and finally - shaders were slapped together in q3se, and tweaked in good ol' Notepad. Oh, and audio samples were made with Audacity. (although I never got to use them properly, I'm not sure if they're in the pk3)

License:
If you're making this map available for download somewhere, you may not change the contents of this RAR archive.
If you are adding this map to your server's map-pack, make sure to give credit in a VISIBLE place. (login message, etc.)

Before you play/implement:
This map is a BETA version. There are numerous small issues with it, such as a few misaligned models and patches. It also makes use of a rain effect, which WILL kill the performance on older hardware. Edit the toweroffense.shader file to remove some layers, or disable the rain effect altogether.
This map also makes use of a portal sky, using several mapobjects for the background. Enabling fastsky will NOT affect this map's performance.
I was too lazy to make doors, so the map's a bit slow even without rain.
Ambient sounds are implemented, but broken.
I will fix all those issues if enough people want me to, if not - enjoy what you got.

Credits:
Texture source images - cgtextures.com
Sound samples - freesound.org

Screenshots:
[lvlshot]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5485355/tower1.jpg[/lvlshot]
[lvlshot]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5485355/tower2.jpg[/lvlshot]
[lvlshot]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5485355/tower3.jpg[/lvlshot]
[lvlshot]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5485355/tower4.jpg[/lvlshot]
[lvlshot]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5485355/tower5.jpg[/lvlshot]
[lvlshot]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5485355/tower6.jpg[/lvlshot]
[lvlshot]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5485355/tower7.jpg[/lvlshot]
[lvlshot]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5485355/tower8.jpg[/lvlshot]
[lvlshot]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5485355/tower9.jpg[/lvlshot]
[lvlshot]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5485355/tower10.jpg[/lvlshot]
[lvlshot]http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5485355/tower11.jpg[/lvlshot]

[fKd]

great looking screenshots, checking it out now.

[Ouija]

I'm starving for some input here.

[Foo]

Minor stuff here:
http://imgur.com/a/mfwEv

Good use of stock textures and vertical gameplay. I was expecting the level to feel a lot more open with more of a 'space chamber' feel to it and some open sides to void space, but it feels quite cramped. Feels like it'd benefit from opening up some of the windows to give a feeling of more space, and expanding some of the other horizontal spaces around the map.

I know this is somewhat the opposite of the feel you were going for, but I think you can have areas that are tight and areas that feel open, and strike a good balance.

[dghost77]

For the visual quality, I am really impressed. It is jaw dropping just to be in the rain outside. Yes some area feel a little cramped to fight, but cannot say for sure since I've just run around in it. It's asking for more performance because of the rain, but I was expecting it, no surprise here. I liked the curves you gave to your jumppad, first time I've seen it being done like that, very good idea.

I have no missing textures on my side, Team Arena, CPMA and 3Wave CTF are the only mods installed @ the moment in my Q3 (with a couple of customs maps).

Really nice work so far and yes, you can say that I'm wondering how you did that rain shader, it is incredible.

[deqer]

I have no missing textures on my side,

It's still good practice to not rely on textures belonging to mods. Include those missing textures into your .pk3 and test your .pk3 on a fresh install of quake3.

[dghost77]

If those textures are from ID TA or a mods that won't let you copy it, swap your missing textures with customs one or free ones and replace it in your map (always respect the copyrights!). You cannot assume that a player will have the same mods as you have installed.

[Ouija]

"missing" textures:
ctf/pittedrust3stripesfix
base_floor/tilefloor6
base_floor/clangdark_ow3

They're all from a clean 1.32 install, nothing should be missing here. If I ever update this, I'll swap them out for my own.

[tehSandwich]

"missing" textures:
ctf/pittedrust3stripesfix
base_floor/tilefloor6
base_floor/clangdark_ow3

They're all from a clean 1.32 install, nothing should be missing here. If I ever update this, I'll swap them out for my own.

Actually, they are mapmedia.pk3 files. Just copy those files into your own pk3 file to really fix the problem.

[Ouija]

Oh snap, I forgot I had that installed, thought they're pak0. I'll do that in the next release then. Thanks for the heads up. (would be nice if Radiant grouped things by pk3 in the browser)

[Eraser]

I think mapmedia.pk3 comes with Radiant, and it's super annoying.

[Ouija]

Doesn't with 1.5, I threw it in for the textures/common and mapobjects. Didn't even know it contains textures.