Raap

Do what you think is best, I'm just giving my thoughts!

Nope because that works akin to a terms of service update, the NEXT NEXT NEXT mentality takes over. Put it in the game and people read it, works all the time.

So I can't really help you much beyond this point, but here is an idea for you as this is what I personally do. Instead of designing a level game flow on paper as your first step, design a setting first, a theme and associated aesthetics. It could be a simple unplayable scene, but it can end up giving you a lot of ideas based on how you mess with a simple environment. It's how my last three notable levels evolved. Siege was just a castle initially as I toyed with the idea of how a man-made structure could be a level's centerpiece where the specific requirement was a large open outdoor space for airplanes. Hostile Water's icebergs started as just a test to get neat looking ice effects in W3D, none of the gameplay got added until after that. And my current project was literally born from taking an environment into the W3D engine, even now some of the gameplay components are not set in stone. You could say, Raap, maybe this is why u maps iz bad, but I return to you; My bad mapz are certainly quite unique in many good ways as well. It might not work for you but, you know, maybe it does!

WHY YOU SO RUDE MATE nobody deserves "credit" for that map, NOBODY. It made itself. ... as for your map, I mostly have to echo Pushwall's sentiments. You should expand the bases with at the very least a War Factory, and then add a second attack lane through the caves (single lane doesn't work with the current playerbase, see Siege). But the main issue comes from your backdrop design. Forests or trees are very taxing, and while you could do it, it would need to be set up in a way that players cannot reach it, so you can fake a forest with a lot of manual LoD reductions with each tree line. I would certainly only do that for just one side of the map while covering the rest in different ways, such as a snowy mountain. Edit: Big backdrops work! I'm not saying they cannot work, Dread Plateau even shows you how you can make a 360 backdrop work. Problem is the trees! And only the trees.

I can see a lot of ways for adding a weapon akin to the AA Gun mounted on top of an APC, it isn't that far out but it does need some work. But yes mostly my issue is with the game informing the player. Another way of doing it could be to more notably change the APC weapon firing audio, ammunition effects (tracer/audio), and impact sound effects. I think if all of these things were changed to appear very clearly as a threat to air units then in terms of statistical balance nothing has to really change - even if I personally think the APC needs to be less of a kill whore machine. I mentioned a top mounted AA Gun type weapon as it was the most simple example and accomplishes all those things. Back on the CT topic; CONSIDER just making it a high-threat hunter-seeker unit. Increasing the shifting radius helps, but it really just needs an armor boost to Soviet heavy weapons (excluding Tesla weaponry). Make it more resilient, it will also boost people's confidence when using it and not get so scared about blowing up in two seconds. Edit: By the way, is there something we can do, aesthetically, to make the Chrono Tank look like a tank? The exposed cabin with glass in the front literally screams "I blow up in one hit if you shoot me here". Maybe the glass needs to become non-transparent with no visible driver and gain a special glowy shader effect to make it look tougher, as well as some extra reinforced bars of steel across said 'windows'. It makes more sense lore-wise as well because Chrono Shifting is lethal to unprotected infantry, so if the driver is protected by an energy barrier of sorts it makes sense. Yes it does require fitting the concept of energy barriers into the game but again this is also not a far stretch for a game with teleporting units and deadly christmas trees.

Bullet-shooter highly identical to another bullet-shooter. My point is I could not differentiate the APC firing at me as a higher threat compared to anything else firing at me that looks and sounds nearly exactly the same. Changing the APC top gun more notably would solve several problems... But you'll have to deal with RAlism extremists!

You know on that note, I got really confused when an APC murdered my Yak (I didn't read that patch note). It is a standard M60 machine gun mounted on an armored transport, nothing about this either visually or through audio indicates this is dedicated AA. So, given that the APC already has significant role overlap with Rangers, and has a bad history of being pulled excessively when the Soviets lose factory and barracks access to kill farm on infantry, and given that adding a Mobile AA Gun vehicle to the roster just adds more unit bloat for the Allies... With all those things considered, would it not make sense to change the APC top weapon into a single-row AA Gun? Single row as in not 4 barrels but just two, while still using the relevant sound and flak effects. And because this is effectively AoE, it can retain the mine-sweeping niche role as well (although to be fair I think the Minelayer should be getting a mine clearing burst ability instead, but that's just my crazypersonthoughts).

It is harder to coordinate a teleporting unit compared to a unit you can follow. What might be needed, is a way to ping the map for fellow team members, like dropping a icon on it that indicates "go and attack here", or "go and defend this place". But in general the game needs a more involving map/minimap system. The Chrono Tank is a good 'first step' but if you ask me there needs to be more integrated into an actual map/minimap system as well, such as building status (replacing the current building status window), and having an actual terrain image 'minimap' instead of a blank radar would be substantially more useful to a lot of players. But yeah, that is GUI stuff, and literally only Romanov seems to really grasp those systems. Edit: As for unit balance, my initial thoughts on my very brief experience with the unit were, they suck at dealing with Tesla Tanks, which is good as this gives Tesla Tanks some much needed extra value. They also suck at dealing with buildings and this is also good as this gives the other Allied units plenty of value still. What it might need however, is a modest health or armor buff specifically intended to deal with Soviet heavy units, to make it great at handling those engagements properly. This would cement the role of the Chrono Tank as the designated high-threat hunter-seeker unit, something that the Allies didn't have yet (Soviet MiG would be the opposing equivalent there).

Two weeks huh? I got to make time to play the game more as I've barely had a chance to use it more than once myself!

If you see the enemy forces, or get a team report of enemy forces using the opposite side of the map on for example Pacific Threat, you can drop your current activity and traverse directly to that enemy group unless they are naval units hugging the map border. This is my problem with SG. You will ALWAYS see the enemy activities, and you will NEVER be able to directly engage them unless you either drive through their base or all the way back through yours. Adding air units to "remedy" the attacking portion will result in air units dominating everything people do, and naval units would not work because for naval gameplay to function you need a sizable body of water, which means you need to make the map big - which in turn means losing vehicle access is a death sentence. It is a circle, this cannot work. At least half the matches will end within 5 minutes because both teams race using a different lane and attempt to blow up the opposing base faster then the other team - specifically the War Factories. But one way that you could redeem it, at least in part, is by not making it a circle, but instead a figure 8 design; Two bases north and south with naval play, with a central segment comparable to a piece of cheese; Lots of submarine firing holes, but everything can traverse over it. Essentially very comparable to Pacific Threat but with the bases and lanes more directly facing each other. I'd personally make this center segment something industrial to set it apart from Pacific Threat. But then you get to my other point; So much changes go into this design that it won't be the same level anymore. That said if there is interest in such a figure 8 type of naval map then perhaps I could put it on my list after the desert map but please keep in mind that the desert map is a project far from completion due to technical issues with 3DS Max (which will affect any level project I work on including a new level). Maybe @ChopBam can find the time for something of this nature.

Difference with all those maps and Shallow Grave is that you can still attack the enemy. What do you do if you attack on lane A and the enemy uses lane B? You can see each other from across the map and end up having to make this constant awkward decision of driving back to defend or not, so it ends up with a lot of driving and not much fighting. Additionally, it is a War Factory dependent map. Losing it means you have to walk all the way around the puddle of water in the middle, which in a sense makes it comparable to having to play Siege without access to vehicles, but worse, as most of the map provides no infantry cover or passages (unless those were added). The map could work but it would have to have a scale reduction and a lot of more interesting terrain, essentially it needs to be remade from scratch and by the end of that process it would not look like SG any longer regardless. ? And I'd like to think the reasons for the Volcano removal were the fact that it was just a heightfield-type level with a few objects tossed onto it, and you know, the lack of an actual volcano. The hill with a darker patch of grass on top really did not count. Anyhow, it is up to Pushwall to decide what goes into the game. I personally just think there are more interesting things on the list!

That reminds me of this thing I had to cancel because of graphical inconsistencies in-game; https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7fULGRONJ7dbTg1VUl5UmdERTA Run it in W3D viewer and kill scene light for night time INTENDED appearance (in-game it is just an orange glow-plane unfortunately). Edit: My current and latest W3D Viewer also doesn't render it correctly.

I've never seen games with level specific version numbers (publicly visible). It also doesn't say anything. What can you know that is different in 1.0 versus 2.0? There could be zero changes for all you would know. The pop-up route to highlight key changes in an update is a certain way to highlight them to people who do not read forums. The highlights could use more approachable language to form them, so instead of the usual, borderline political tidy patch notes with precise information, the highlight lines would say "We fixed this map you didn't like!".

The pop-up thing is possible because we've had it happen recently. On first log-in the game would inform you of the help key binding. Taking this logic and making it a regular thing each update wouldn't be a far stretch. What might not be possible right now without code changes however is adding the basic formatting stuff I mentioned. But, I don't think it is that far out of a concept, as it is literally just several strings in a GUI box (two of which never need to be updated) instead of one string, and a new GUI graphic for the window background.

Most people do not care to share their opinion, or to get informed of changes. Usually this stems from two common reasons; They do not comprehend the English language sufficiently, or they come from a gaming background where changes rarely occur and they simply maintain that ideology. If you gave a player from Renegade (2001) a copy of APB his first instinct would be to take it as it is and expect nothing to change about it as this would be the correct assumption in his prior experience. But while the language issue cannot be addressed by anyone here, what CAN be done is create more awareness of development. One very simple thing that could be done (on paper), is to implement a weekly login welcome message IN-GAME that utilizes the unit help menu logic. Every week (or every time a new update is pushed) users, upon first-login, could get a "Recent Changes" pop-up that in quick summary lists important changes - similar to Pushwall's patch note bold changes in terms of what they highlight, and with less words. The closing line should, like the opening line, always be the same and read: For more information visit w3dhub.com. In-game pop ups are in your face, you cannot un-see them, you cannot miss them. Pretty much all modern games use them to tell players, "HEY YOU! THIS IS HAPPENING!". And because it'd be a weekly or update based thing, no one will get spammed with it. The only thing that would make this more lovely is if the help pop-up allowed a little bit of basic text formatting, even something as simple as dividing the pop-up into 3 separate string inputs positioned just slightly further apart (vertically), while allowing a single custom GUI graphic to act as a background image (so you can create some horizontal rows or basic/generic, non-specific artwork to make pop-up windows look more appealing). But yeah, sort of maybe off topic again? I don't know, i think it might be quite relevant for these two maps. Awareness of changes has always been a problem.

Maybe do an evening where you run simple waters and disliked waters side by side for a feedback session. As for the map rotation thing, I was merely interested in its potential, I never said it should be an APB thing.

More like Shallow Gameplay. It was the most one dimensional level of older APB iterations. If you thought Siege was repetitive now, then clearly your memory of SG is tainted by rose tinted glasses. SG was a circle, literally just a circle, two simple lanes that were always in perfect view of each other, making attacks visible while they were forming up in bases, and with simply no flanking opportunities what so ever. It would need a complete re-design, at which point it would be a different level.

Could probably handle it prior to a score screen by rigging your game to end on custom logic rather than stock building destruction logic. So you'd end up having your players do whatever would otherwise finish the game but send this info to a 'transitional controller', linger for a few seconds, then end the game as expected. Question is can information be sent to the server for this purpose?

Hold on - you think you could create level sequences based on victory conditions of a previous level? Say the Soviets win in level 1, therefore the server jumps to level 3, where as if the Allies win the server would have jumped to level 2. This way you could start thinking of series of thematically connected levels as a campaign sequence rather than individual levels. I'm not saying APB would make use of that, but it would certainly open up some interesting concepts.

He simply misspelled Raap. It happens a lot.

Yeah yeah sure, and next thing you do after you have the man get a microphone for "casual conversation", is ask if he could speak a few lines of text for no reason, absolutely no reason what so ever, nope. PS: Sorry @BattleLaf for murdering your voice a few times, actually, I think Pushwall has some words to say as well...

Right! I got a bit lost in the topic hijack there.

Ok, I'll let you experiment as you see fit, and I will withdraw from further input on this topic, as I'm simply not the right person for it, considering that my opinion is biased. Frankly, my design approach has had its foundation shaken in the light of recent conclusions so I need to reflect on that and deliver something the current playerbase actually enjoys before feeling confident in sharing my opinion again.

By making the naval buildings not directly face each other you create two attack possibilities; The "short and predictable route" and the "holy shit this is longer than the old HW route". Why not save a ton of time, use the existing islands but move them significantly closer to each other while essentially cutting the icebergs out completely minus the small drifting ones with no access on top unless you fly on to them (and then murder infantry with a cold winds DoT zone). This means no capturable objectives of any sort and infantry get delegated purely to LST/Chinook drop offs.

It was not feasible despite several designs having been considered for it. The long land route was simply too darn long, it would take vehicles several minutes to reach the other base, and infantry? Just nope. I had a rail cart system further into development and this would essentially break up a long underground gem-filled cavern into several cart-linked "platforms" where fighting could occur, while significantly cutting down the travel time from base to base due to those carts, the problem is W3D does not appreciate horizontal elevator movement over network play (it barely likes regular elevator movement). I had to can it over serious playability concerns - and yes, I was using all the collision mesh trickery in the world to make it function to begin with.