THANKS Krusher!
Improving the GV portion of the map was one of our fundemental design goals. We felt that some of the other maps only gave GV operations a marginal amount of thought and planning. We felt they had never been given the enviroments to be used to their fullest.
There were a couple of points that needed to be addressed (in our oppinion):
1. Textures. A lot of people don't likem, but textures with the right color scheme and detail content go a LONG way in helping make GV survivable. A ground texture with a lot of sharp detail (i.e. noise) is going to hide the gv dot a lot better. GV's on the smooth, blurred green texture just yell "EASY KILL SHOOT ME!!!". Especially for sand colored panzers.
2. GV only areas. We felt there was really a need in maps for areas that reserved mainly for GV action. Uless you have detailed forests and such for GV to hide in, separation is one way to ensure GV's can actually get some quality time against other GV's without being constantly at the mercy of aircraft with no cover to hide behind. (I've spent 80% of my time out in "Dune Sea" fighting GV's and having a BLAST! Especially the first day when plane warps were horrible.)
3. Slope control. What looks good from the air is death to GVs. A mere 30 deg slope that looks anemic from the air, stops a GV in its tracks. It can become excruciating to climb a modest hill. To keep GV's fun, we had to make an attempt to carefully control the ground slope in areas we knew the GV's would be operating.
4. Cover. We explored using two types of cover in this map (object cover, terrain cover) and ways to use them to their fullest. The canyon GV area uses object cover mostly (i.e. the bolders). The tricky part here is that there is a distance limit to the clutter. You might be surrounded by bolders and think you’re hidden but someone at a distance on a hill can see you plain. So here the trick was to keep the floor pretty flat and level so that a gv’s visual horizon is restricted and prolly the same as his clutter limit. Terrain cover is use out on the “Dune Sea”. Here you want small undulating hills flat enough that they can be climbed, but deep enough that they can hide a tank behind. You also want the scale of the hills to be small so you can have lots of them over a given distance instead of one big hill between you and the target. The other day I got down on this little low spot on the route enemy tanks were taking to our base. I sat with engine off waiting. I could here the engines of the enemy tanks mooving around on the other side of the hill. IT WAS SO SUSPENSFUL! I was sweating. The sound got close and closer. I was in the hatch watching all around me because I couldn’t tell exactly were theyed crest. Just as I saw the tip of one coming over the edge I jumped to my gun and nailed him point blank before he could even get his nose down over the other side of the crest. Two more Osti’s were right behind him and I nailed them too! That AP is sure mean at point blank range!
5. Tile roughness. Each tile has a hard coded roughness to it. You have to be careful that the texture around were you expect most of your gv action have the appropriate roughness so that GV’s can move and operate reasonably. I had to go back and completely reorder my textures to account for that.
6. Spawn distance. Everyone that thinks the spawn points are too close should try it from the gv point of view. A distance from the air that looks “right on top” might not look that way to the gv. It takes forever to get anywhere in a gv. It should take gv’s no longer to get to the fun than it does the fighters. Prolly should be less. While the bomber and fighter pilot can start a climb out to target on auto pilot and go whiz or grab a beer, the gv must steer white knuckle the whole way because if he hits the slightest pebble or twig his 10 ton battle tanks explodes!
THE PLACEMENT OF GV SPAWN POINTS RELATIVE TO THEIR TARGET SHOULD BE DECIDED AS A FUNCTION OF TIME TO TARGET INSTEAD OF DISTANCE TO TARGET. In my opinion. It depends on the kind of ground. If theres a big slope it needs to be close. If its flat, it can be farther. If the roughness provides good movement, farther, If its bumpy and slippery and hard to move, closer. Etc.
So if you haven’t guessed yet, I LUV gv action. I hope this map gave gv guys some fun play areas. I also hope future maps give some careful thought to the needs of gv’ers as well. A gv fans 15$ is just as green as a pilots and besides, WE USE UP LESS BANDWIDTH!
Regards,
Wab
