Something to bear in mind...

[mrtwosheds]

And possibly a 4000 mile walk... game over.

[Red Devil]

"Just Shoot Me" or  "Pick Me Up"

If you use slow stock ships, it'd take forever...

[Scav-Avenger]

Big maps with fast ships are a blast!

I drive around Mega Mountain and other big maps like that about 70..90 and can get across them in about 15..20 seconds.  Now imagine a DM map the size of Mega Mountain with ships (and bots) that fast and weapons adjusted accordingly.

F-U-N.

G66 ramjets and rush if combined with game.cheat bztnt, you will speed around the map like a misguided shadower with 10x the exhaust output. 

[Avatar]

Well... there are big maps and there are BIG maps...  as always it's best not to go crazy...

Like I said, they need to be done with creativity and, I think, provide for levels of progress as the players campaign across the map.  This makes for a much different game than levels like River or Canyons, the difference being that the distance becomes part of the challenge.

There's room in BZ for many levels of games between straight DM and full-out RTS...  and I love that.

-Av-

[technoid]

Sounds like a potential mod to me, heh... "Battlezone2: Turbo"... everything is the same, except the maps are doubled in size (and maybe 3x, but not any bigger?) and all action is sped up 2 times as well, i.e. 2x speed on ships, constructors, pilot walking, flying, etc.  Of course, we'll have to see how that will run networked on the Internet (due to lag and normal internet interruptions, etc).  Might work fine on a LAN though.  Just an idea. 

The first huge BZ2 map I ever saw was Ometiklon's 'Big Ass' map (I believe that was the name), which I think was a BZ1 map conversion(?).

[Red Devil]

We played with fast scouts (and fast, aggressive bots) in a DM a few years ago and it was smooth even then.

[TheJamsh]

Big maps can be made much more interesting when certain artifacts are powered by .dll to do strange things. You can even make non-dll powered items that are fun, like the GH express ways, strange magnetic fields in some areas, collapsing cliffs etc etc.

If enough effort is put into a map it can be great fun to play. I always liked TimeVirus' maps because it just felt like hes put a lot of time into it, even if the majority of them were first created in winter, the textures, sky detail etc were really good.

I made a map using winter, and now im making another free-hand. Free-hand is FREAKING hard work, and its not long before you run out of ideas as to what to create next. i also find my free-hand maps are fairly flat, with not many craters, bowls and hills. Okay so my current one is designed to be fairly flat, but still.

I also like creating objects for maps, caves, paths and tunnels etc, along with special 'holding areas'. My first finished map currently known as 'Outposts' is a strat/mpi/IA map and its fairly large, but its very playable. I actually find it really fun. Heres an image of the overview of it. I think you'll really enjoy it once released.



The key to a good map is taking youre time and making sure any changes look good from all angles. "Success is as easy as hard-work"

[Scav-Avenger]

Big maps can be made much more interesting when certain artifacts are powered by .dll to do strange things. You can even make non-dll powered items that are fun, like the GH express ways, strange magnetic fields in some areas, collapsing cliffs etc etc.

Teleportation a la FE! Perfect to take short cuts round huge maps...
Or equip pilots with suicide devices, should shorten the distance to walk back to base. (recall mine to recall to recycler might work...)

[AHadley]

The only recall mine at the moment is DLL based, and DLL takes a lot of work.

I love the secrets on Outposts, the whole area is incredible!

[Nielk1]

Somebody say Recall Mine?

[AHadley]

Yup, that's it. One of the most awesome weapons I've ever seen.

[ScarleTomato]

...and DLL takes a lot of work.

I gotta say I'm gonna have to disagree with you there, i just modified my first DLL for that adjustable viewrange and it wasn't really that bad. Just takes a little patience.

Especially if you can just cut and paste in the already working code such as FE's or nielk's teleporters.

[Nielk1]

I gotta say I'm gonna have to disagree with you there, i just modified my first DLL for that adjustable viewrange and it wasn't really that bad. Just takes a little patience.

DLL is a lot of work, it just depends on what you do. You simply saved an additional Ivar into a variable, then in the execute loop acted on the Ivar with a conditional branch.

The recall mine is amazingly complex in the code and that is not counting the various features. First I must track every time recall mine is made, this is done my checking all new items for special ODF line. Then I must read all the information into the area for storage. This area is dynamically sized, and may contain data of dynamic size, making saving and loading it so that it is usable at all in MP very difficult. Finally I must be able to find the owner of the mine. I still have to try a new function that should provide the owner, but GSH said when he added that to the DLL it might not act as expected. ATM I use proximity checks.

When you make a DLL that has to share data across the net with something other than Ivars and Svars you hit the most confusing and baffling coding of your life. That being said, if you simply insert new variables inside the spans that already exist, the code automatically sends those over the net as an array.

[ScarleTomato]

sure i'll agree with you that the creation of the code from scratch can be long, grueling ordeal that will take a lot of work. I'm definitly not trying to belittle the work you put into it, but i thought we were talking about just adding recall mines atm. Even the description in your youtube video says it's a class easily added into any existing dll.

[Nielk1]

I'm definitly not trying to belittle the work you put into it,

Oh, didn't mean to make you think I thought that!

Yes, the recall mine is a seperate CPP file that simply must be made a template for the main DLL. If you do that, and change some private variables to protected (I think it was protected, it has been a bit) so that the template can use them, it works.

It is a wonderful system OM showed me. Literally add some text to the class declaration and change "private" to "protected". Works wonders!