work in progress CNC Boardwalk

[Kunus]

Learning from mistakes and problems of my previous map (Isle of War) I decided to make a fully symmetrical map in a standard U shape.

The idea is to recreate a concept from Westwood's cancelled Renegade 2 of a map taking place on a boardwalk with the ferris wheel being the central point of it . It will be a   dark, atmospheric map set during a foggy night, with countless lights of the boardwalk attractions lighting up the routes; inspired by the final scenes of "1941" movie.

I have  the initial routes roughly mapped out. Note that most of the assets are currently just  placeholders. It's non-flying, with basic and advanced base defenses.

Short vehicle route - goes under the bridge leading to the boardwalk. Very short, Starts by going down from a ramp.

Long vehicle route - goes all the way around the boardwalk and under part of it. Ferris wheel obstructs the view of the enemy base for the artillery units.

Infantry only routes - short route connecting the back entrances to the bases goes through the long middle road leading to the boardwalk (all of which is inf only). The boardwalk can also be accessed by stairs, two sets on each side. There's also an infantry 'tunnel' under the boardwalk.

View from the end of the boardwalk:

View from the beach, Nod side:

The infantry route, back of the base:

Ramp at the entrance to the base:

View from the long vehicle route:

Since Renegade 2 was supposed to be set in RA universe, harvs collect ore instead of tiberium lol:

View from the GDI base:

The map will of course be filled with props to allow for cover during battles (cars on the road and parking lot; trees on inf route; rocks, towels, umbrellas and guard huts on the beach etc.) The boardwalk will be heavily lit and filled with attraction booths, vending machines, food stands and so on. The ferris wheel will be the central point, visible from almost every spot of the map and additionally will be obstructing view of the tallest enemy buildings as seen from the vehicle routes.

Edited September 19, 2022 by Kunus

[Kunus]

Small update time. I've decided to wall off the bases a bit more since arty had too much of an advantage. I've also added balcony/catwalk on the sides of the buildings giving an overview inside each base as well as rocks, cars and dunes for cover in the field. With main route layout mostly done I'm going to focus on visual stuff next as the map still looks like an og Renegade map (though I still have to figure out why custom models keep glitching out after importing them to the SDK).

Overview of the map:

Middle infantry route leading to the boardwalk:

Stairs allowing access to the boardwalk + entrance to the tunnel under it (bonus: view of Kirovs in the distance approaching the city):

GDI base entrance:

View from the end of the pier (it's the only inf spot outside the range of base defences where rocket soldiers can damage the ref and obelisk/AGT so controlling the pier is essential):

Nod base entrance:

[Kunus]

Fixed the glitched custom assets and improved the scenery a little bit. The map is getting ready for testing with bots. After I'll get the harvester timing right I will upload the map in the download section for further testing. I'm contemplating adding some tech buildings to the map, like silo on each side of the field, or maybe comm center at the end of the pier. I also wish the ferris wheel would rotate, allowing infantry to enter it and get a view of enemy base, but until I find out how this could be done it remains static.

City in the background got a bit more distressed look. Also the searchlights like in "1941":

View of the underneath of the boardwalk (impossible to shoot between the beams to the other side due to the blocking volumes, can take a peak though):

A bit more going on on the boardwalk (the slides are fully working including the ladders):

Outer field route, passage under the pier:

Short route going under bridge:

GDI base entrance:

GDI infantry route entrance, seen from the catwalk in the base:

Middle infantry route:

Incoming invasion:

Current overview of the map:

[Xtractor]

I Hope to try this  ..looks  Special

[Kunus]

The map is finally playable. The short infantry route gets very intense at the beginning of the game, but even with one side getting advantage it's still easy to defend from inf rushes, thanks to the Obi/AGT, catwalks in the base and some other spots that give the view on the inf entrances. To direct some infantry away from the this area I also added a Comm Center at the end of a pier (which is inf only). Controlling the boardwalk gives a lot of control when the teams move into the field with tanks. There are two vehicle routes - short, intense one going on a ramp and under a bridge; and a long one going around the entire boardwalk and underneath the pier. Choosing the long route allows to be outside the range of base defenses.

I uploaded the map to check out/test:

 

[Silv]

First of all this looks great and I absolutely love the different scenery from the usual RenX maps.

Some semi-random feedback:

• Nod base is a bit too dark for my taste, makes it hard to see buildings.
• When standing on the walkway next to HoN and looking at the windows some of the windows show black and white checker patterns (i.e. black in lower left and upper right corner, white in upper left and lower right). I get that that's supposed to show windows with the curtains half closed but it feels like there's some texture that's not scaled correctly.
• It's easy to get into the barracks through the infantry path with only minimal AGT hits. Same for PP. All buildings except AGT can be hit from infantry path without being targeted by AGT.
• It's also easy to cover the bit of infantry path between the buildings with arti/mrls. Combined with the above that makes spamming the infantry path pretty much mandatory.
• GDI PP has a bit of terrain sticking through the floor near the reactor core.
• It's easy to shoot AGT and ref from way out on the beach with an arti but you can hit a problem where the arti range is actually too short to do damage. That just feels a bit wrong when it happens.
• I'm not sure guard towers on the GDI base are really great compared to Nod's turrets. Those guard towers cover a vehicle path so they are likely less effective than turrets.
• The degree to which the long path allows easy shooting of base defenses makes me wonder if this isn't going to be a constant fight for the long path. Actual playtesting is going to be interesting.
• Music on the ferris wheel, while absolutely fun at first, very quickly gets stale due to short loop.

 

[Kunus]

Thank you for the feedback . I changed the lightning a bit, so it should not be as dark (and as blue) as before. I also changed the infantry path a bit, it's impossible to just shoot at enemy Ref straight from your base + it's more of a U shape now. The range of Obi/Agt got increased and reaches to all parts of the base. Fixed the PP ground. The AGT also was moved a bit so maybe it will be better now in reference to artillery fire. The music loop is actually ~2 minutes, or at least should be lol. It's kinda annoying, true, but plays only when near the wheel, maybe I'll tone it down a bit later.

As for which path will be fought for it's hard to tell, definitely needs some playtesting with more than few players

The updated version is already uploaded:

 

 

[Silv]

Thanks for the update.

Didn't even realize that you could actually shoot the other side's ref from the center inf path, that bus does improve things there. It also helpfully stops the inf path from becoming a straight sniper alley.

The busses do a good job of making rushes take longer and be easier to spot from the central area which should make them less of a dominant tactic. And they preserve access to the central road from the inf path which could otherwise be effectively suppressed from the enemy inf path. On the other hand they may also help rushes a little. A rush is frequently stuff like rocket solders and the longer they are in line of sight of defenders the easier it is to take them down as building oriented classes are typically not great against infantry so having to go only about 1/3 of the way through clear enemy terrain helps them. On the whole I think they're a good improvement.

A few other misc things:

• Rocket attacks from near the control center are difficult. There's only a very small area (feels like just a few pixels) where the rocket will actually connect and it's hard to spot buildings due to the fog.
• From near the CC I managed to damage Nod ref and obi with Gunner but couldn't damage GDI ref, agt and guard tower with rocket soldier even though I did get targetting info with them.
• The inf path is a single mine wide. That means it's gonna be heaven for miners. I see a 30 mine budget, assuming the usual 3 per doorway that's 24 mines needed for buildings on the Nod side and 24/27 (depending on mining pattern of barracks) on the GDI side. Both sides can thus pretty easily spend 6 mines on the inf path and it's possible to spread them well enough apart in the narrow section that disarming them with a single emp grenade will be difficult if it's possible at all. Expect good teams to lock down the inf path hard to the point where it's pretty much impossible to get through.
• I still believe inf path is going to be absolutely brutal if lost control of. There is simply no base defense at all that's going to intercede because the obi and agt both have vital lines of sight blocked to the point that I can attack every single building in the GDI base (didn't try on Nod side) including the agt without getting shot at by an automated defense. Which also means that if people get the idea of immediately buying rockets and doing an early inf path rush and the opposing team isn't prepared for that they can probably take out one or maybe even two buildings.
• If I may offer a suggestion, consider a guard tower covering a small part of the inf path or the first entrance. That both discourages early rushes and provides an early stepping stone goal for teams.

[Kunus]

Your posts are very helpful. The inf path definitely needed something to slow it down. The guard tower was too big and it was possible to rocket it from behind the buses so I improvised and used the veh_ceiling_gun as a makeshift Sentry Gun and put it at the end of the routes. The have less health than normal base defences but are harder to hit. I still left two spots on each side that are obscured from base defences sight but both have their drawbacks:

• First by the buses on the enemy side, allows the view to the Ref, but is in the line for snipers on the middle long road as well as directly visible from the wall emplacement reachable from stairs behind PP.
• Second behind sand/boxes cover. Allows to shoot at PP, AGT/Obi and Ref but the spot is visible from the same wall as before, from the catwalk, and directly from HoN/Bar.

I also heavily optimized the ferris wheel because some people complained about lags. It now looks a bit worse but the game is smooth. Turns out ~4000 individual light meshes is a bad idea lol. The fences on the whole boardwalk were lowered so it's now easier to shot at things but it's still high enough to prevent jumping down (unless you climb the slides near short route first). It's also not possible to target refs/agt/obi from the pier anymore. Finally I added simple minimap (which works well only half of the time, but at least it correctly shows the player's position).

 

[Silv]

I like how the effect of all those base defenses combined is that at match start you really only have your half and the central area where you can semi safely move around in. Then you kill a turret or the sentry and new paths open up. On the other side it becomes a narrative of ever increasing vulnerability.

Now that the pier is nerfed I wonder if the CC is enough to draw action there. The CC is very exposed, even compared to things like silo on field. Now I don't know the exact range of a sniper but if it's long enough you could very comfortably snipe at the CC from the walls of your own base. It just feels like a suicide run for me to capture it, especially without the usual trick of driving or parachuting in.