MVM birthday

tyler

aa
Sep 11, 2013
5,102
4,621
The screenshot is literally above the tank route. A tank would fit on the other side too but I'm not putting one there.
 
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tyler

aa
Sep 11, 2013
5,102
4,621
I disagree. I think done correctly (expert level waves) they create a panic that other bots can support. They are only boring in regular, easy waves.
 

Trotim

aa
Jul 14, 2009
1,195
1,045
Tanks also ensure the players have a certain total DPS and aren't just screwing around and constantly airblasting the bomb back etc
 

tyler

aa
Sep 11, 2013
5,102
4,621
download, pictures, and changelog for our tests of this today are all in the opening post

this is uploaded to the mvm server, and the bz2 can be added to a server and played straight away. sort of custom pop file included. it's based off an advanced coaltown pop file.

feedback welcome

will probably pass this off for detailing soon
 
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grazr

Old Man Mutant Ninja Turtle
aa
Mar 4, 2008
5,441
3,814
Why does the phrase "because fuck you, that's why" spring to mind.

That said, the shop in the middle of the map is a great idea. There's nothing more annoying and boring than rushing back to the spawn at the end of the map and then back to the front again between each wave.
 

tyler

aa
Sep 11, 2013
5,102
4,621
apparently i forgot to pack the pop file for a2a. sorry anyone reading this that wants to test this map that isn't me.

for a3 i'm reversing the water depth (bots are dumb as hell in water) and changing up the start of the map a bit, probably also making some areas harder to defend.

i have also gone through the population file line by line and made bots smarter, tougher, and spawn faster in general. either everyone i play with is too good for this game, or the advanced coaltown file i used is actually really easy. it's probably easier to tone down problem waves than figure out a decent balance immediately anyway

a3 probably out in a day or two

by the way my secret collaborator is rexy so look forward to that
 

tyler

aa
Sep 11, 2013
5,102
4,621
I released A3 and I'm gonna give it to Rexy now because I don't have time to do anything to it anymore
 

Turbo Lover

Fight me under Glasgow Central Station
aa
Feb 15, 2011
333
344
To begin, I'll say I really like the map layout itself, there's plenty of health and ammo and each area saw use, my two major gripes are that it's a little too open, particularly at the beginning and the central high ground where the team is typically supposed to defend from doesn't feel very defensible or powerful. (Granted I played as Scout, there were a fair number of bots getting behind us that really shouldn't have got there.)

Going into my lesser gripes with the layout, the single deathpit manages to find itself in the one spot on the map that really seems cramped, underneath a high ground that Snipers tend to stand on and opposite a high, protruding wall, although it's still quite possible to utilise it. The fact that there is only one pit on one side of the map means that for what I assume is 50% of the time, there isn't an opportunity to use it. Coaltown does something similair but makes up for it by including a second deathpit in the middle, which means that for about 75% of the time, there's an opportunity to reset the bomb.

Now onto your waves. I have to say your waves are considerably poorer than the map that houses them. I'll spare you the claims of it being too difficult, since I believe sorting out the following problem would help with that too. Your waves are very unfocussed, and I'd like to give an example. At the beginning of Wave 3 the Soldiers would all come in one continuous cluster until all 32 have spawned, which when we actually manage to kill them would usually happen around the time we've dealt with 3 of the 6 Giant Heavies, leaving the other 3 to plod about and soak up bullets and explosives unable to really do anything without the backing fire of the normal sized bots. Not to mention, it leads to what happened on Wave 4 with the Spies, 4 Spies spawning in is a reasonable amount, the problem was by the time we'd killed all 4 initial Spies it was time for the next round to spawn in, leading to us thinking you were spawning far too many Spies at once.

Look to Wave 1 of Decoy, 48 Scouts and 16 Pyros, definitely a very small and very easy wave, but the length of the wave is much longer than it would seem, all because of the timings between spawns. Or Wave 666, particularly towards the fourth quarter, we fight a large number of crit-boosted Bowmen, Soldiers, Demomen, Scouts, Pyros and Deflector Heavies, we're not left fighting Bowmen, Soldiers and Demomen all simultaneously and by the same token we don't get past the Bowmen then sit around twiddling our thumbs waiting for the Soldiers to spawn. It never feels like a cluster and it never feels desolate, there's the right number of bots in the map at all times. Now if you can achieve the correct balance in bot spawns, then it's my belief the cries of "Man these Soldiers are just crazy, there's so many, this wave is really hard" will be quite lessened.

Now that that tangent is out of the way, the problems in your waves after that major problem are mostly just tweaking and technical issues. Your giants need 'Attributes MiniBoss" so that their icon will show that they are Giants. For your Soldiers and Demomen you'll want to give them 'Attributes HoldFireUntilFullReload', before I had upgraded Explosive Resistance as Scout, trying to kill Direct Hit Soldiers was a bit of a nightmare because whenever I got close, it was an almost guaranteed hit, this means they have to fully reload before firing, creating a window of opportunity to kill them. On Wave 2 I don't believe your Tank Buster Soldiers use their Banner on spawn like they're supposed to, 'Attributes SpawnWithFullCharge' should fix that. Your bots can only wear one misc item at a time, so your Medic bots will only spawn with the Quadwrangler.

Finally, this is just a personal nitpick of mine but your actual .pop is terribly disorganised and inconsistent. You've got bits and pieces copied from Valve's .pop file saying you're spawning 10 Scouts and the WaveSpawn is actually spawning 25 Soldiers. Instead of copying out 15 lines to put into your TFBot, you can use a system like this in the beginning of your file and then it's just a matter of pasting 'Template T_TFBot_Scout_Winger' into your TFBot. Unnecessary bits like 'WaitBeforeStarting 0' and 'Skill Normal'. And your spacing is all over the place, sometimes you've left a line before opening a bracket and sometimes it's directly underneath, sometimes you've hit tab before you opened the bracket and sometimes you haven't. You're by far not the only one who ends up doing this, usually because Valve's .pop files have been used as a base and been heavily modified, but really it pays to go through and sort this stuff out at some point, where to leave lines between things, how much information you put in the comment above a WaveSpawn. It all adds up to make your file much more readable, just because Valve's .pop files are in disarray doesn't mean we need to copy their bad habits.
 
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Ælement

Comfortably mediocre
aa
Dec 21, 2010
1,481
1,616
One thing that was clear from the two waves i participated in is, that you are introducing far too many ranged bots too early.

The first wave would do fine with less tomislav heavies. Maybe with an other minigun tho, since the tomislav doesn't really give you any warning :c

In the second wave, there should be less liberators (or they should not come at once), the tank busters shouldn't be so ridiculously well aimed, and the soldiers should overall provide less explosive knock-back (it was excessive. Especially for a pyro who wanted to airblast them)

We never got to see if we could push the bots onto the inaccessible platform, but w/e. Gonna try that someday else :p
 
Oct 6, 2008
1,947
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where are you getting the Presents from?