Seige Map: Phoenix Castle

[zagibu]

Spreading spawn points in a circle would probably not work, because siege mode has a complicated spawn point assignment system. Contrary to popular belief, it does NOT statically assign spawn points 0-31 to defenders and 32-63 to attackers. Instead, it somehow calculates distances and uses the 32 closest spawnpoints to the flag (or spawnpoint 0, not sure) for defenders, and the rest for attackers.
You can verify this by opening brunwud castle in native. There are spawnpoints with numbers 50+ inside the castle, yet attackers never spawn there.

[Ronan]

I think if you knew there would be ALOT (like 200+) playing this map you could spread the spawn points in a full 360 around the keep making it viable to not just camp a single tiny cooridor for flag

This being something you could never rely on I would only add ladders from the roof tops around flag to aid in defenders getting down there

yeah Im revamping the entire map. Right now working on balancing the Defenders. Im working on upping the frame rate. Im not exactly sure whats causing it but i think its all the buildings and the rough elevation in some areas. I also notice (might just be a myth) where some places you have a crack, where u can see through a little, and the FPS seem to drop dramatically there. So a few less buildings, shrink of the town a bit and reconstructing the castle. itll be a bit harder for the Attackers to get to the flag now. Added another story to the main castle. ;) Ill post screen shots soon.

[Leiknir]

While your reworking it, you should remove all the useless back alleys (or atleast barrier them off) and move the "border" houses closer. Saves fps, fucks over leechers, and attackers wont get lost.

[Ronan]

While your reworking it, you should remove all the useless back alleys (or atleast barrier them off) and move the "border" houses closer. Saves fps, fucks over leechers, and attackers wont get lost.

haha, great idea. Ill do that. Ive seen a lot of useless areas. Plus the more i read, it seems that people prefer "simple" maps. Though I want my map unique i dont want it to be a clutter F***. All suggestions are welcome so keep em coming.

[Ronan]

Always like new siege maps, but without a download link I can't test it.

Have you had time to test and play around with it. Ive been building it, destroying it, and rebuilding it. For most of the map i cant get the FPS up 3x what it is currently for my computer besides one small area: Where the flag is, in the middle of the castle. Im starting to think its because of the "dungeon/underground entrance. I like the idea of being able to go under the castle to get into it and have 3 different models of tunnels. Some complicated and some simple and yet i still get low frame rates. Do u think it may because of elevation change? I really dont want to get rid of it but I think for the people with lower processing computers will have a tough time with frame rate if i dont. If u or anyone can give me ideas on how to keep the tunnel and raise my frame rate on here please please let me know.

[Wallace]

How big is the map in comparison to the space objects take up? Massively overinflated dimensions might be part of the problem

[Ronan]

How big is the map in comparison to the space objects take up? Massively overinflated dimensions might be part of the problem

Well before I had a lot of objects blending into one and another. way too many little things. Now I have a few "blown up" objects. but where it lags everything is normal size. Besides that besides "ramps" that i use for the floor the things that are larger are only like .3 larger. Give or take...

Its the "flag room" that lags. I believe its called "castle courtyard a"

And my map has shrunk quite a bit. I found a lot of unnecessary space. Ill post a screen shot of the remake, as far as ive gotten with it, here soon. Ill show u the lag area.

[Ronan]

these are the screen-shots of the soon to be remodeled Phoenix Castle...

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the castle
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underneath... what ive got started on the dungeon walk... used to be and will be again a lot longer
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the map...without out barriers showing. Ive taken a great chunk of the city out but that only helped the frame rate slightly. City swads seem to take up alot of FPS.
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what use to be the flag room, now its going to move up stairs, when I figure out how. Also this is the lag area. the dungeon runs right under it, going from one side of the castle to the other and will eventually go to a grave yard. It use to be a broken building/church/grave yard it went to.

[Ronan]

BEFORE REMODEL:

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looking over front wall, off to the side
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looking at back door (the only thing not changing much at all)
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city view
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flag room
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map

sadly i never took pictures of the dungeon. Thats because I wanted to keep it a secret. But it goes from one end of the castle to the other, to the church. Which u can see the church tower from anywhere on the map.

THIS IS THE MAP AS IT IS ON cRPG RIGHT NOW

[Leiknir]

Damn you, just reviewed the old version.
No idea if still relevant (short and without screenshots):

- The only real access to flag area trough a small corridor and that half open/barricaded door. Give me 4 competent shielders and a poleaxe spammer, and I hold that corridor until the attacking team GTXs or we run out of backup shields.
- Some visual errors in the dungeon
- Dungeons way too big
- The stairs in the dungeon, its hard to walk on them. Rescale them, they need a specific size to "work fluently"
- The trebuchets look nice, but make no sense inside a city. You dont bombard your own city, and cant hit troops in the steets
- The only viable strategy seems to be going up ladder, opening gate and just frontal charge trough the corridor to flag. Going all the way back to dungeon, just to walk all the way back just to start at the entrance of the corridor makes no sense.
- It's a nice city scene, but most of it is useless and will fuck over poor pc people hard. You should get rid of the "useless" alleys. (Yes, I know how much time that might have taken, but its a siege map, not a singleplayer "walk in the streets" scene :/ )
- Couldnt find the SeaRaider banner, thats an autodeny criterion!

[Cyclopsided]

Oh I played this, and yeah it needs heavy revamping from what it was on the siege server this night.
80% of the map is unused space full of objects that cause crazy lag. If you do get on top of the castle you will have unlimited sight lines of all said objects and it gets really really bad for lag.
The layout you say is getting modified for attacking and defending access, so I'll wait for that to critique again.

It was barely playable, and a bunch of people I know couldn't even join the server due to it dropping them from long loading times.
We lost a 5x instantly due to dropping from lag created by the map. It really is that bad.

[Ronan]

haha, thanks for the input guys. Yeah the lag is the #1 think Im trying to fix. The dungeon needs to be smaller true. The idea behind it is to get passed the 2 gates. Ill either get rid of it or make it a ton smaller. Alleys, most anyways will be gone. Just the ones i need. Leiknir, sorry man, but with all thats wrong with it I had to start fast. And all ur critique is good and still viable for me to work with.

Oh I played this, and yeah it needs heavy revamping from what it was on the siege server this night.
80% of the map is unused space full of objects that cause crazy lag. If you do get on top of the castle you will have unlimited sight lines of all said objects and it gets really really bad for lag.
The layout you say is getting modified for attacking and defending access, so I'll wait for that to critique again.

It was barely playable, and a bunch of people I know couldn't even join the server due to it dropping them from long loading times.
We lost a 5x instantly due to dropping from lag created by the map. It really is that bad.

Yeah im consolidating all the buildings. Though i still want to make it look like a city I need way less buildings. I dont want people dropping out.

And this only took so long because it was my first... I didnt know any tricks or have an idea about fps, too big/too small. I just knew i wanted something different. I know alot more now. Im think the lag area is due to all the stuff u can see from there now. I also noticed that trees took away more FPS than buildings...weird..

[Ronan]

Leiknir, if u want, i could send u the new map before i present it to the masses again so that u can get ur hands on testing and critiquing for me. Also I wouldnt mind u messing with it some to help it be accepted...

[zagibu]

I think the problem is that M&B uses no space partition whatsoever to cull objects. I'm actually not sure about it, but I have never noticed sudden FPS drops in a map when turning around corners or such, it's always either good or bad for the whole map.

What I like about Phoenix Castle is the clever integration of the courtyard prop into the castle defenses. I didn't have a chance to play it yet, so can't say much about balancing, but I know from experience that it's hard to balance a siege map and you can be happy if you get it right at the third revamp or so.

[Ronan]

Well Ive had to rethink a lot of this map. Ive kept the castle intact for the most part. Im still figuring it out though, trying to get stairs that lead into the flag room that dont look like crap. Ive deleted the entire town recently, played around with elevation, and am rebuilding the town more simply then the last. Still cant really see the castle when u start but no matter which way you go you run into it and eventually each route will be a way to get in to it, either by ladder, dungeon, or door. I had a lot of complicated stuff that made the lag unbearable for most. The map was too big, the alleys were indeed mostly pointless, and the dungeon was in itself too big and pointless. Thus everything is getting shrunk except the castle which is getting reorganized and added on to, so as to help Defenders. Attackers, you wont get lost anymore, either.

This is what I have so far and the FPS is two times better(at least) then the previous. I just want opinions on the gate area for now. Any extra ideas by what you already know about my previous map would be great, too. I want to make this what i set out to make it as. A great siege map that looks different from the others out there.

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I was thinking of putting a Defender spawn point(or two) on that entrance ramp. But than again it might be a bad idea, since theres no way to get in except by ladder or if someone opens the gate which would be bad of course. Im still mix and matching everything.