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Post by iw5000 on Mar 8, 2016 19:05:31 GMT -5
My review.
The tldr version is going to go like this, . . . . I think they mostly suck. I paid for this? I guess i did. Score another victory for Treyarch and Activision.
If you want more of my opinion, read on.
My thoughts on the four maps. Gauntlet, Rise, Splash and Skyjacked. Reviewed mostly from a TDM viewpoint.
1. Skyjacked - This might have been fun if it were like four years ago, but i've reached the point where i don't see any value in 'reimagined' maps. Is that the term Treyarch uses these days? A swap of words, since they can't publicly announce this one . . "We're lazy and don't have the imagination to come up with anything good, so we are going to give you the same retread old map with just some new graphics, one or two new additions, and then call it 'reimagined'" . Oh yeah, then they add a dash of "Fan favorite" to the bio, making us think of all us CoD fans were just screaming for a remake of that old ship map. Don't get me wrong, the old BO2 map 'Hijacked' was a solid map. Yes, very solid . . .the first 300 times i played it. Now? Doing it again for the 301st time and beyond, it's not so fun. Especially when i had to pay EXTRA money for it.
2. Rise - 'Rise' answers one perplexing question i had after playing CoD Ghosts. Where are the map makers who made 'fan favorite' maps like 'Siege' going to go after they get fired for putting that monstrosity into the rotation back then? Yeah, we all remember Siege. Entire games where the TDM score limit was failed to be reached. Run times of 20+ seconds or more looking for anyone to shoot. Big map, with to many places to hide and most of it unused. Well, the good times are back. 'Rise' isn't quite to the same idiocy level as 'Siege', but it sure feels like it's getting close playing 6v6. Especially when both teams have a bunch of snipers. Run, run and run some more, just hoping to find someone. Again, i paid money for this shit?
3. Splash - The DLC's 'Splash' is next, brought to you by the guys who couldn't think up any good ideas, so they went back to the same old DLC idea . . . . let's do a FUNHOUSE! That's never been done before. Well, i guess not that much as long as you ignore all the other theme parks done like in every DLC put out to date *(MW2-Carnival, etc..) Anyways, this doesn't feel as big as 'Rise', but it has the same campy feel though. Let's put 2nd floor ledges and tunnels in, so every d-bag camper can park their asses there just waiting for someone to walk by. That will make good map making!!!
4. Gauntlet - I'm not really sure how i feel about this one. It looks pretty cool, but again, lots of corridors, rooms, hallways, long routes, . . . = lots of looking for people. Maybe i am being impatient, but it also feels a bit to big and plays slow.
Overall? Right now i will give it a D, file it under mostly sucks. I just don't see anything original or new being done. Maybe my expectations are a bit to high, but i just kind of thought since we are on a new console . . . we might get something different. Unusual. BO2 had some really cool DLC maps, so why not this game? Seriously, some of those past DLC maps were great. Remember 'Cove', 'Grind', and 'Dig'. Maps that played fast and forced action into the middle! I'm not feeling any of that with these new maps. Not at all. Right now, none of them would even make my top 50 list.
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Slick
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Post by Slick on Mar 8, 2016 19:26:58 GMT -5
When the dlc is sold right when the game is being bought or shipped, mediocre dlc is the result. Color me surprised dlc content is slowly becoming less interesting.
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Post by confuzzled on Mar 8, 2016 21:52:26 GMT -5
There is nothing wrong with the DLC. Maps are fine and zombies is good. You just have COD burnout. This is the best call of duty in years and I'm enjoying it some but not as much as I would have in the past. Just basically burned out. We've all played like how many different COD maps for days and days of playing time...a hundred and fifty? 200 maps?....how much more variety do you expect?
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Post by UrbaneVirtuoso on Mar 8, 2016 22:11:21 GMT -5
I'm surprised you haven't mentioned the glitchfests in Splash. Looking back, I feel they wasted the chance to have actual water slides.
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bravo2zero
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Post by bravo2zero on Mar 9, 2016 6:36:54 GMT -5
For Splash, when I'm running in the rubber ring river bit, I feel like you should be able to g-slide further in the water. But like the OP, Skyjacked apart, these maps take a bit too long to find targets in FFA and TDM. Maybe they were designed more for objective modes.
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Post by Pope Leo VII on Mar 9, 2016 9:31:17 GMT -5
No way I can justify handing over more moolah to these lame brains when the connection is completely broken.
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mannon
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Post by mannon on Mar 9, 2016 9:39:02 GMT -5
Why would you slide further in water? If anything water should slow you down. Ever try to run through water? Even just a little bit really slows you down and makes a massive amount of noise... except in CoD where it does neither. If we were talking about just a wet surface then sure, that would mebbe let you slide further.
For me it breaks down like this:
1 Skyjacked - I never played enough BO2 to burn out on this. Personally I'm really enjoying it, on the other hand the only thing I ever do on this map is load up a shotgun and my ripper and stick to the tunnels and buildings. Going outside is suicidal.
2. Rise - I'm split on this. It can be a long run to find action. On the other hand the spawns don't get flanked so much and it's less chaotic. You can camp some, though there aren't any really good places for it either because you're not secure or there's just not enough traffic. The whole map feels pretty empty in 6v6.
3. Splash - I've come to rather enjoy this one, but that's mainly because I make my own objective in TDM and enjoy fighting for it. Basically I load up an LMG, prox, trophy, hive and to camp that little sniper room in the middle. If I'm doing it solo it's a bit of a slog, but you can get many "free" kills from people rushing it. Against a smart team you'll never actually get to use it for hitting the middle area, you'll just spend all your time fighting over it, but that can be okay too.
4. Gauntlet - I sorta hate this one. It's got cool stuff, but it's kinda got the worst of all worlds. It's big as hell with long ass runs to find action, but it's also flanky as hell and chaotic. In TDM anyway, you're gonna get plenty of spawn flips and get killed from every direction. It's getting slowly better the more I learn the map, but that doesn't fix the long run to find anything. At least it's easy to tell where you are when you spawn due to the starkly different areas.
Overall I feel like the vanilla maps are mostly better, but I guess I'm glad to have some extra variety. *shrug* At least the new maps aren't all variants on having a cliff on 1 or more edges of the map formula.
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Post by lustindarkness on Mar 9, 2016 10:21:42 GMT -5
In my opinion the only one that does not work is Skyjacked, the smaller fast movement of this game completely breaks the inadequate spawning system.
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Post by illram on Mar 9, 2016 14:03:53 GMT -5
I don't understand why they took out so much wall running from the new maps. Only skyjacked really has a legit wall run "route" and it's fairly obvious and not really very sneaky. Maybe I just am not used to the new ones but it seems like there are very few avenues for actually useful wall runs in Splash, Gauntlet, or Rise. It's almost like they picked these up from the dust bin of a prior game (which they probably did...)
I'm fairly ambivalent about them, mostly it is nice to just have some variety for those of us who play this game a lot (me).
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bravo2zero
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Post by bravo2zero on Mar 9, 2016 14:08:25 GMT -5
Why would you slide further in water? If anything water should slow you down. Ever try to run through water? Even just a little bit really slows you down and makes a massive amount of noise... except in CoD where it does neither. If we were talking about just a wet surface then sure, that would mebbe let you slide further. It's not deep enough to slow you down, its ankle deep at best. There's even a downhill slide section were you would expect to slide further but no. Running through water with no sound is just rubbish, even with DS you should make some noise.
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mannon
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Post by mannon on Mar 9, 2016 15:22:50 GMT -5
Maybe the downhill part would let you slide further if the water were moving fast enough to push you and you laid down enough to gain some buoyancy, but the water's not all that fast moving or deep. I feel like it would just slow down your slide a bit less than the rest of the places. Even ankle deep trying to slide through water would slow you down big time having to push it all out of the way. Running through it would work better since you'd raise your feet out of it each stride. It would still absorb and waste some energy, though. The flow could also affect your balance, but we assume everyone to have perfect balance at all times in CoD since it's a shooter rather than sim.
Still... there should at least be splashing sounds. I feel like water should make a huge amount of noise when you're sprinting through it, but actually muffle noise if you move through it slowly.
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Post by noscreenname on Mar 9, 2016 21:03:56 GMT -5
Multilayer maps are no better or worse than the base maps. Just more variety.
Der esindrache is worth the $12.50 in itself though.
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Post by iw5000 on Mar 10, 2016 10:59:54 GMT -5
There is nothing wrong with the DLC. Maps are fine and zombies is good. You just have COD burnout. This is the best call of duty in years and I'm enjoying it some but not as much as I would have in the past. Just basically burned out. We've all played like how many different COD maps for days and days of playing time...a hundred and fifty? 200 maps?....how much more variety do you expect? There's no burnout going on with my review. I've probably played maybe 1 day a week, 2 at best the past month. I'm fine. And my review had nothing to do with the game itself. I agree with you, it's a MUCH better game than AW (which I quit playing), and it's a bit better than CoD Ghosts. So the game is solid. My review is strictly looking at just the DLC maps, on what I am seeing. As far as what more I am looking for? No retreads. And yes, I know that is asking for to much. Moving on, how about innovation? For example, we have this new feature called wall running, how about some innovative maps that use this feature in a new & unique way? Here's something else. Treyarch had maps that were dynamic in BO2. With this game? That stuff is gone. So on that front, the maps have regressed in terms of innovation. And before you or someone says dynamic maps make the game laggier, well how can it be worse than now? I've seen, no joking here, 20x more 'Connection Interrupted' now with this DLC patch than I saw over the first four months combined of this game. Dropping from games all the time. Not the end of the world, but it is annoying. I just feel like the designers put these DLC maps into one of the 'auto-design' programs, that kind of build a map for you. Like one of those auto video programs, that will sort, edit, and merge all your clips for you. Plug and play, with no original thought. Just add the usual themes (amusement park, burned out town, etc..) and everything is good to go!!! Seriously, is there even one unique or memorable thing about any of these maps? :-(
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Post by GodMars on Mar 10, 2016 11:49:03 GMT -5
iw5000 says BO3 is a bit better than Ghosts, then lists the problems with BO3 that logically keep it from being better than Ghosts.
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mannon
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Post by mannon on Mar 10, 2016 12:02:38 GMT -5
I'd be okay with retreads if they retreaded some of the better MW2 maps. Of course 3Arc won't retread IW maps, so that's not happening anyway. I can't recall any BO1 maps I'd really love to see in BO3. I wasn't a fan of most of them.
I agree that the wallrun possibilities in these new maps seem pretty limited. Splash barely has anywhere you even can walrun and pretty much nowhere it actually helps you except maybe attacking that window to the camper room in the middle.
Gauntlet mebbe has a couple, though in most places it doesn't really benefit you.
Rise has a few more. There actually are some useful wallrun routes, though mostly just flank routes and there are alternatives to wallrunning available on those routes.
So yeah I guess Skyjacked is the only one with any wallrun only routes.
I think they need to find a happy medium. The vanilla maps have a lot of wallrun accessible stuff. Some of it is painfully obvious, and a bit contrived, especially the ones with death drops under you as you wallrun. But they also have a lot of less obvious stuff if you pay attention or watch some youtube videos. It's not a free flowing as Titanfall routes, but there are maps you can traverse pretty much the entire thing without touching the ground. (I'm looking at you Evac.) Of course the fact is that most people don't. I think that's partly map design, because while it's possible to wallrun quite a bit some of those jumps have to be extremely precise to avoid getting hung up on things, and in lots of places the vertical strip for you run on is fairly narrow and often bordered below by a kill brush. Then on top of that the wallrunning mechanics are finicky. Turn too far away from the wall and fall off, or too much towards the wall and you won't grab it in the first place. If you aren't actually moving parallel to the wall you won't grab it either. If you run into anything or anyone you'll stop and fall. If you do look far enough to either side you may have to shift your control to strafe to keep moving on the wall or fall off. Anyway, it's challenging, and trying to do that all while getting shot at and returning fire in a game where you die almost instantly is tough. The maps could be far more conducive to the new movement and some of the vanilla maps made a good first effort at it, but the first DLC definitely feels like they are backing away from it.
By contrast Respawn's DLC maps were mostly improvements over the vanilla maps with regards to movement and verticality. Yeah so it's a different game and kinda not fair to keep comparing it... but it's inevitable.
I know that publishing their own maps and not allowing community made maps has paid off boatloads of money in DLC, but I also feel like it is killing map design for CoD. All the developers are running out of ideas and basically slapping new paint on old layouts or retreading old ideas with a few extra gimmicks. Is this really sustainable? Granted Respawn isn't letting the community make maps either, but theirs seem far more fresh so far. We'll see if they can maintain it as they make more games in the franchise, however.
To bring it back to CoD, I'm kinda glad I didn't get the season pass. If the other DLC's are more of this I probably won't bother to get the last one or two. And the season pass only saves money if you buy all four. At least this way I can wait and see.
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mannon
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Post by mannon on Mar 10, 2016 12:04:21 GMT -5
He listed problems with BO3, but he has previously listed many problems with Ghosts. As to which game's problems are bigger and makes the other one the better game that's entirely a judgement call not inconsistent with anything he's said.
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Post by GodMars on Mar 10, 2016 12:13:13 GMT -5
He listed problems with BO3, but he has previously listed many problems with Ghosts. As to which game's problems are bigger and makes the other one the better game that's entirely a judgement call not inconsistent with anything he's said. The horrid, last-gen netcode is a major issue with BO3 that is impossible to ignore when compared to how good it was in Ghosts. This is a significant part of the multiplayer experience.
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mannon
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Post by mannon on Mar 10, 2016 12:38:59 GMT -5
I wouldn't know. BO3 has been mostly okay for me with a few disconnects here and there and the occasional laggy player glitching around. Ghosts I only tried on a free weekend on PC and the FPS lag spikes made it unplayable, or rather made it not fun to play even in games where I was doing rather well. So I skipped the game entirely and didn't bother.
Everyone's mileage varies.
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bradman
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Post by bradman on Mar 10, 2016 12:46:01 GMT -5
My problem with the DLC is it's non- deletable.By the third or fourth pack matchmaking will be a shitshow.
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Post by illram on Mar 10, 2016 12:49:17 GMT -5
If they release the map editor they could really revive this game on PC. They killed the map making community (literally they shut down and deleted the official forums dedicated to map making overnight, thousands of posts gone) right before MW2 came out because they wanted a captive audience for custom content and I still haven't forgiven them for that.
Also stop buying season passes morons.
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Post by lustindarkness on Mar 10, 2016 12:49:44 GMT -5
I don't remember ever been as excited or addicted about playing Ghosts (but I did learn how to outcamp the campers on that game). So, with nothing to quantify, just on feel, for me BO3 is way more betterer and awesomer than Ghosts.
Back on topic: the DLC map design could have been better, yes. And the wallrunning I just wish it was more useful instead of just gimmicky.
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Post by iw5000 on Mar 10, 2016 13:33:32 GMT -5
iw5000 says BO3 is a bit better than Ghosts, then lists the problems with BO3 that logically keep it from being better than Ghosts. Not following you. I'm talking about the DLC. As far as whether BO3 is better than Ghosts, I just tossed out a quick comment up there that I felt BO3 was a bit better. Just an opinion there, not even sure it's a very well thought one as I put about ten seconds of thought into it while typing my post. I played Ghosts all year long, and did clan wars with it. It was fun, i had a good time, but even fun games can have things you don't like about them.
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Post by iw5000 on Mar 10, 2016 13:40:27 GMT -5
I wouldn't know. BO3 has been mostly okay for me with a few disconnects here and there and the occasional laggy player glitching around. Ghosts I only tried on a free weekend on PC and the FPS lag spikes made it unplayable, or rather made it not fun to play even in games where I was doing rather well. So I skipped the game entirely and didn't bother. Everyone's mileage varies. Agree. Once I get past a year or so, everything blurs. Time heals wounds? But for the most part, I think CoD Ghosts ran pretty well in terms of lagging and shit. What I do remember about Ghosts was that on many of the maps, they felt big. And they played slow & campy. Then again, some of the maps were pretty cool. Stonehaven? That felt a bit different in design. Kind of reminded me of another similar past map, MW2's 'Wasteland'. There was a different, unique map. As far as BO3, it's hard to say for this reason. I'm still not sure what is/was causing a lot of the group/party function problems that plagued this game the first few months. Was it Treyarch's fault? Or was it XB1's fault? I have no clue. Setting aside that and some other quibbling issues, the game plays fairly well i think. Recently, the game disconnect thing has been annoying, but I'm so beaten down by issues over the years, I'm kind of numb to it all right now.
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Post by iw5000 on Mar 10, 2016 13:48:02 GMT -5
If they release the map editor they could really revive this game on PC. They killed the map making community (literally they shut down and deleted the official forums dedicated to map making overnight, thousands of posts gone) right before MW2 came out because they wanted a captive audience for custom content and I still haven't forgiven them for that. Also stop buying season passes wacky guys. I Foxtroted up and bought what i think was the $100 digital version of BO3 2hen it came out. I was just lazy. I saw it pop up on the XB1 menu system, so i just clicked and got it. It included the DLC maps. They got me :-( Map editor would be awesome. I don't have much expertise on map editor programing mechanics, i just know i like to use these programs. I thought i read something before, that CoD map making might not be good for the community, as the maps are to detailed. Like Halo's map editor works so well, because it works off of mostly flat surfaces, simply shapes, and base level objects. CoD maps have all kind of smaller detailed things going on. Maybe that's an issue? I do know when i used to play 'The Golf Game', it had one of the most fascinating and creative map editors i have ever seen. But one of the biggest problems with it was lag. IF you started making your golf courses to woodsy, with to many objects, especially with shadow rendering going on with the greens/fairways, the game would slowly get a bit chunky and not play very smooth. People wouldn't play your maps. Halo map making never had to worry about this. Perhaps this is a fear with CoD maps, people going nuts and to much crap out there, tarnishing the game? I don't know. Personally, i would rather learn by own mistakes and make maps. Not have it withheld. The Golf Game does this well. The gaming designers openly embrace the community maps and include them in tournament rotations. Map editing/making IS part of the game, and the community makes stuff that makes the Treyarch people look like amateurs.
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mannon
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Post by mannon on Mar 10, 2016 17:15:12 GMT -5
We're looking at basically two very different beasts here in terms of map making. Map making in Halo is done in game, with a prebuilt but empty map that you fill with various prefabs. It's a bit like building emblems, only 3D and instead of a blank background you have a landscape. It's limited, but with some creativity people can make some pretty cool stuff... or just use it to make 50 foot tall penises.
For CoD I do believe what we had in the past was an external program to build and compile maps. I imagine it was based on the Quake tools, but maybe it was custom built like Hammer was for Source engine. I never got into the community while it existed. For that you have ultimate freedom, even the ability to use custom textures and brushes, but it's the kind of thing that would probably never work on console. It would be nice to have once again on PC, though. And they could take the popular maps, vet them, and publish them on console. Of course to do that you'd also need an infrastructure for distributing them and finding games with people so you'd pretty much need to release a dedicated server and have a built in server browser... but that's so 90's, nobody does that anymore. ;3 Or I guess you could do whatever CS:GO does, if it's different. I know they have community built maps, in fact I think Valve rarely builds their own maps for CS anymore.
I'd be down for either version of map builder for CoD, though... or even both. Hell BO3 could even make it make sense given some of the maps already take place within simulations. (Or maybe all the multiplayer is supposed to be simulations... I dunno.) For that matter even if it wasn't a simulation you could always do an in game map editor with the understanding that what you're building is a training course. You'd then have a built in excuse for the lack of diversity and for oddly shaped, but useful prefabs. You wouldn't have to worry about whether or not the maps seemed like various locations in the real world, they'd all just be different training courses. I don't think they ever give us a standalone map editor, but maybe a Halo style prefab map editor would work well in CoD. And they could steal ideas from the community again. heh
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Post by illram on Mar 10, 2016 23:33:43 GMT -5
If they release the map editor they could really revive this game on PC. They killed the map making community (literally they shut down and deleted the official forums dedicated to map making overnight, thousands of posts gone) right before MW2 came out because they wanted a captive audience for custom content and I still haven't forgiven them for that. Also stop buying season passes wacky guys. I Foxtroted up and bought what i think was the $100 digital version of BO3 2hen it came out. I was just lazy. I saw it pop up on the XB1 menu system, so i just clicked and got it. It included the DLC maps. They got me :-( Map editor would be awesome. I don't have much expertise on map editor programing mechanics, i just know i like to use these programs. I thought i read something before, that CoD map making might not be good for the community, as the maps are to detailed. Like Halo's map editor works so well, because it works off of mostly flat surfaces, simply shapes, and base level objects. CoD maps have all kind of smaller detailed things going on. Maybe that's an issue? I do know when i used to play 'The Golf Game', it had one of the most fascinating and creative map editors i have ever seen. But one of the biggest problems with it was lag. IF you started making your golf courses to woodsy, with to many objects, especially with shadow rendering going on with the greens/fairways, the game would slowly get a bit chunky and not play very smooth. People wouldn't play your maps. Halo map making never had to worry about this. Perhaps this is a fear with CoD maps, people going nuts and to much crap out there, tarnishing the game? I don't know. Personally, i would rather learn by own mistakes and make maps. Not have it withheld. The Golf Game does this well. The gaming designers openly embrace the community maps and include them in tournament rotations. Map editing/making IS part of the game, and the community makes stuff that makes the Treyarch people look like amateurs. The map editor for COD4 was (is?) called "Radiant." It is a sort of complex tool that takes some getting used to and there were bugs and random issues, but if you wanted to just make a giant box with some other geometry inside of it that looked very simple, you could do something simple like that with minimal time spent learning the basics. Actually the most complicated part of it was compiling the map and doing the "little" things necessary to make it look like a "real map," such as creating a loading screen, or making a minimap in the corner that was see-through rather than totally opaque, breakable glass, properly plotting the path of the attack helicopter (that was not AI controlled, the map makers plotted the apache path for each map) realistic looking water, smoke effects, little stuff like that. The "Little stuff" no one thinks of like that was actually really complicated and time consuming, but not necessary. If you just made a basic, run of the mill map with no extras, the only time consuming part was really playtesting, and playtesting was fun. But since it was the actual editor the devs used you could make a very detailed "realistic" map with it, if you felt so inclined. It just depended how much time you wanted to put into it. As mannon pointed out it was not the Halo type deal where it is very user friendly but also rather limited in the final product's detail. There were some real high quality custom maps made by the community and there was also a map competition held by IW, and they said they'd port the winning map to the Xbox and PS3 but they never did. If I had to guess, I would guess that they are going to release something Halo-ish similar to what mannon alluded to, so they can put it on the consoles as well, as this would still allow them to monopolize the "real" custom map market. I would actually be fine with this as a good map is fundamentally about good geometry, and the textures and additional artistic "fluff" (like rubble, bullet decals, contoured walls and floors, dirt transparencies, fog, weather, water, god rays, smoke, and exploding cars and on and on...) that stuff is not necessarily needed for a fun map, even though it does add to the immersion. But I remember the old Quake and Doom days when the servers were full of custom, very basic maps that were not a lot more than white walls and black floors, basically, and they were fun because they were just well designed areas to play in, not because they looked super real or whatever.
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Post by mannon on Mar 11, 2016 8:58:36 GMT -5
Ahh yes the olden days of map design, when nearly every FPS developer released the mapping tools to the community. I did quite a bit of tinkering back in the HL1 and TFC days. I didn't really touch HL2 or anything more modern, though. Back then creating a good multiplayer map could land you a job. I loved the more fully developed ones best, but yeah there were certainly plenty of basic looking maps that were super fun.
Unfortunately DLC mostly killed that, at least for most developers who's names don't start with V and can count to 3.
I'd take the Forgeworld style map editing in a heartbeat. I think it could work for CoD, you just need a good premise for it. I'm afraid the publisher might think it would conflict with their desire to sell DLC to as many people as possible, but I think that would be really easy to fix by offering additions and expansions to it tied to the DLC. Each map based on it would need a base map to put your prefabs in so you offer more of those with each DLC and a few extra prefabs too and vioala, now all the people playing and building custom maps have a reason to want the DLC too.
tl;dr Halo is better suited to community mapmaking with prefabs because the engine was designed to support more dynamic content. Where the Quake engines were designed for corridors and rooms with very little dynamic content to offload processing from run time to compile time so they could push the environments graphically.
The challenge may be more technical, however. CoD is based on a heavily modified Quake3 engine, Halo is not. That ID engines put a lot of reliance on building a precalculated structure for the map. In the editor you setup all the geometry, ect, but then you still have to compile the map into it's final form. The compilation process simplifies and removes unnecessary geometry and then chops up all the playable spaces and connects them. It precalculates which nodes are visible from which other nodes, ect. This is used fur culling chunks of the map from rendering without having to do a costly calculation to determine what is actually visible. It's all precalculated based on where you are. If you don't run vis everything in your map renders all the time and your framerate goes to shit.
For this to really work the base maps would have to have very simple geometry that runs fast to make lots of room for all the extra polygons that will be rendered. I also kinda doubt they would be one large open area for you to place prefabs in at will. I think they'd probably want to break up vis with a few separate areas and some kind of vis blocking geometry between. (Think how many times you've seen Z shaped hallways or a big wall directly in front of or behind the entrance to a building or room. That's a vis blocker separating the interior space from having to be rendered by players outside. Good map makers make them look pretty natural, but they really aren't hard to spot.) They could make the maps a bit more open if they managed to build some way for prefab pieces to at least cull objects and players from being rendered that they obscured. These days real time occlusion culling isn't uncommon at all, I just doubt they ever bothered with it for CoD since the engine they based it on has had precalculated occlusion culling that works pretty well and they never have made the maps particularly dynamic. Still, it should be totally doable and if the base maps are kept pretty efficient it won't matter if prefabs can only cull entities. Granted, these kinds of maps will never be as efficient or pretty as a fully compiled map.
They'd have to do something for lighting as well. Almost all the lighting, (or rather, shadowing) in quake engine games is prerendered. Having a few dynamic shadows here and there isn't a problem, but when the bulk of your map's geometry comes from prefabs placed in engine then you either have a shit ton of dynamic shadows, extremely simplistic lighting, no shadows cast by them at all, or you have to do a lighting pass on the map somehow. Personally I think the best option might be to actually have a simple, but effective lighting pass done when you finish a map. It wouldn't have to have lots of radiosity and other cool stuff, just something that could prerender all your static shadows and lights to keep the number of dynamic lights and shadows down.
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PSIII
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Post by PSIII on Mar 11, 2016 11:36:31 GMT -5
If they release the map editor they could really revive this game on PC. They killed the map making community (literally they shut down and deleted the official forums dedicated to map making overnight, thousands of posts gone) right before MW2 came out because they wanted a captive audience for custom content and I still haven't forgiven them for that. Also stop buying season passes wacky guys. The thing to blame for that though was none other than the Xbox contract.
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Post by illram on Mar 11, 2016 11:41:11 GMT -5
Call of Duty maps use things called "portals" to save rendering time rather than visual occlusion with actual in game walls or geometry. A "portal" is basically an invisible wall or layer (called a "brush" in the editor) that you sort of put everywhere on your map--in all the windows, at corners outside, in all the doorways, wherever, and it is used to tell the game to only render whatever is visible to the player through the other side of the portal. They were sort of a pain to do properly actually. However, if you made a simple map and didn't portal anything, the game still ran fine. So, a simplistic editor with uncomplicated brushes and geometry could probably work on modern console hardware. You could still just have the game compile it and organize it when you are done, it would just have to be more user friendly if it were on the console. Giant walls at the end of hallways or random objects blocking your view in COD are only there for purely visual sightlines purposes, i.e. the map makers did not want you to be able to shoot that far. A Halo type map maker would be a challenge though, you are right, it would entail some significant tinkering time and would probably be more investment than I would normally assume any COD developer would put into any of these games. Just giving us Radiant on PC would, I suppose, accomplish their primary objective which is keeping console serfs hooked to their morphine DLC drip. If they release the map editor they could really revive this game on PC. They killed the map making community (literally they shut down and deleted the official forums dedicated to map making overnight, thousands of posts gone) right before MW2 came out because they wanted a captive audience for custom content and I still haven't forgiven them for that. Also stop buying season passes wacky guys. The thing to blame for that though was none other than the Xbox contract. What do you mean? Map making continues for COD4 to this day, what they did instead was completely wipe an entire forum (years) of discussion and tutorials and knowledge on how to do maps. Was there some Microsoft agreement to eliminate official support for mapmaking on PC (but still let the mapmaking continue?)
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mannon
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Post by mannon on Mar 11, 2016 13:13:22 GMT -5
Looks like portals are similar to, but more advanced than hint brushes, but it's still just helping the compiler figure out how to break up and link all the nodes for a precompiled vis. The game still doens't have realtime occulsion culling.
I maintain that various vis blockers are generally worked in to work for both the gameplay and performance. They don't have to block an interior space from exterior viewing if they want people to be able to see and shoot inside, but if they don't then it cuts into both the interior and exterior polygon budgets. If it's desired for gameplay then polygons and details are budgeted accordingly, if it's not then a vis blocker is used and both areas benefit visually while also probably improving gameplay as well.
Any map maker should always be aware of rendering budgets unless they are deliberately making an overly simplistic map. For a triple A title, that's not really an option, though. They're always pushing to make things look better and one way or another that winds up costing more polygons and more textres, ect...
I don't see them releasing Radiant. I wish they would, I even think it could be a great business decision. I just doubt they'll bother. They are too entrenched in the current system with monopolizing content for the games.
Maybe a halo style editor... but there are definitely some technical challenges to making that work well so it would be a pretty big investment. I certainly wouldn't expect to see it as a DLC. It would only come if they could sell it as a major feature of a release title like the in game playback was for Black Ops.
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