The Battle of Midway Island

[Jefenry]

This is a map I've really been wanting to make ever since the Battle of Normandy came out last year. I've put it off, and eventually made an aircraft carrier out of 1.0 objects but it didn't seem right. So, I scrapped that and decided I would have to do it with Wings. It's not completely historically accurate, but the general idea is to capture the Midway island to make it easier to cap the enemy flag.
I've been working on and off on it since Christmas break, and this is what I've come up with. This map was mainly a project to push myself into hand coding that I haven't used much before. There are also around 90 world weapons, 3 death physics, 6 ships, 4 jump pads, 7 islands, and a hand full of palm trees.
Thanks to Optic Delusion for the skydome, Pacman87 for the Kamikaze plugin (when he gets done with it), and anyone else I've pestered about map making problems . Everything else was made by me (so you know who to blame for ugly ships ).
It's currently hosted at bzflag3.norang.ca:5189. The attached map is the most recent, if one of their admins wants to update.


There are still a few bugs I'm trying to work out, but they really couldn't be found without more people testing.

Bugs-
Sparky1 has had the distinction of having his computer freeze when he joins, and I have no idea what causes it and why.
A number of small bugs that hinder playability.

Comments and criticism welcome.

[Spazzy McGee]

It's a very nice map indeed. I especially like your palm trees. I also like the effect of a curved horizon that the skydome gives, makes you feel you're in the middle of the ocean.

I think it's pretty clear that we're going to see some more really 'ausom' maps from you, Jefenry.

[Bullet Catcher]

Linux clients getting stuck is likely another instance of the bug described at https://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.p ... tid=103248, which should be solved by compiling with the optimization options described in my comment there.

[Astroman]

Great map, I really like the World Weapons, they seem to add some realism to the map and its setting. Good job. :D

[Jefenry]

Spazzy McGee
That skydome really solved a lot of problems. I had a skybox set up at one point, but it wasn't as nice.
I like the palm trees too. You can climb up the trunk and the leaves are one way. I though it might be useful for GM camping.

Bullet Catcher
I've fixed the Linux problem by changing the way tanks get on the jump pads. Instead of trying to bump up onto them, they are in a shallow hole on the deck so tanks just fall into it. It should be updated soon after a little more testing.

Astroman
Those world weapons were bordering on cruel and unusual punishment. I don't plan on ever setting up a map diagonally again. It really complicates moving things, and getting the angle of the world weapons was painful.

Thanks for the comments.

[Quantum Tank]

That's a really awesome map Jefenry, just looking at it makes me appreciate the effort you put into it (especially with those world weapons ). Good job.

[Fusilier]

Great map, I loved the Normandy map and I like this one is even better. My only real complaint is that once one team gets the upper hand, it's possible for them to cap far too quickly, and when I've played on the team that isn't doing the capping, which is most times , I get around, I'd guess maybe 15 seconds until we get capped agiain, and this just keeps happening over and over and over. Theres no point spawning and chasing either, because you'll probably just be spawn killed and if the enemy who took the flag gets off of your ship it's almost impossible to catch them as long as they almost kinda sorta know what they're doing.

[Jefenry]

I've tried to reduce spawn camping by adding some world weapons on the aircraft carrier that go off when your flag is capped. If it's still a problem, I may do freeCtfSpawns. The next version will use the fairCTF plugin, so hopefully this will even things up.

I've also changed the location of the safety zone for team flags. They no longer go to the central island, but to the small islands with the palm tree. I think it will help slow down the capper.

It's amazing how fast you can get across the map by using the jump pads. Once the enemy gets away from you, you're pretty much doomed. Too bad there are no afterburners on the wings flag

[io]

for me this map is still: Work in Progress !!

I want maps that can be played, the map looks great, but now it's just the playability which disturbs me.

A few things:

Tank Speed is too high, you suicide way too much when spawn and drive forward.
Use the unused sides of the Map (Add an Iland or something like that)
Resize the Middle (Make it larger)
Add more small ilands
Add a border to the ships
Make Capture the Flag a bit harder (for the team that wants to cap)
Higher the flag drop limit in the sky
Add Super Flags to the unused side (when you have added the iland there)
Remove Cloaking and Stealth they are useless.

Well that's it for nw

Edit:

What would also be cool, if you change the area of fight to an harbor with more ground battle. (Like a harbor with those ships and the main fight is on ground)

[Joe-Schmoe]

I think, if players had to take a more circuitous route, we could cut down on the "insta-capping".

Like you would have to jump from ship to ship, and then the island, and then start jumping along the enemy ships, etc.

If you were to do this, you might have to move the ships closer together or make jump pads from one to another, because people will fall into the water a lot if you force them to jump. Or maybe the ships have gangways between them.

The cool part about this is, you could have the world weapons actually shoot at the other ships, and they might hit someone (le gasp!).

[Astroman]

After playing this map, I agree that camping could be a problem. (I have camped myself and it's fun for me, but for the other team...)

As to the unused space, maybe some islands would be nice.

I have to disagree with Marzipan, I like the way the battle is setup.

I do have one world weapon suggestion, how about bullets falling from the air as if you were being air-raided. Also I'm curious about the "Kamikaze" plugin you were talking about, what does it do?

[Jefenry]

I'm pretty sure CTF will never work very well without major adjustments to the map and I don't really want go through the hassle of moving 70+ world weapons to fit the new location. For now I'm experimenting with the koth plugin and making the center island capturable. If all else fails, I suppose it could just be a free for all with more powerful flags in the center. If that fails, well, I guess I'll save the property and hope a movie producer wants to use it. Some maps just aren't playable.

Astroman
The Kamikaze plugin is being made by pacman87, and it will allow you to explode into a SW. I think it will be a regular feature of my future maps, it just seems natural that when you self destruct, you should make a SW.

[Astroman]

So do you explode only if you die, or whenever you want to?

[Jefenry]

So do you explode only if you die, or whenever you want to?

Once the plugin is done, you'd type /k and after a 3 second countdown, you'd explode into a SW. Any other death will be normal.

[Joe-Schmoe]

Hmm...I think I like the KOTH idea better. Looking forward to it...

[javawizard2539]

I think it's a great map overall, and yes, it will be playable. Another suggestion for sometime in the future would be to put a bunch of WWs that branch out from the team base that shoot with genocide when the flag is capped, so you're going to have one mad team if you're sitting on there! This probably isn't practical as it serves no hinderance to wg. Oh well. It was a good thought.

Also, on the subject of ST and CL mentioned by Marzipan, I would recommend keeping at least CL. I think it helps with gameplay as it makes it hard to see you when you're on the enemy's ship, although it doesn't provide any protection against GM.

Another suggestion. People kept asking me to change this when I was on as admin. I guess it never gets through to them that just because I'm an admin doesn't mean I created the map. I would recommend doing the GM turn angle a little bit sharper (0.8?) and possibly extending the reload time to 8, or 0.7 if 8 is a bit too long.

Random question, what units does _reloadTime use? It seems to be longer than seconds, but that could be me imagining things.

[Astroman]

Hey, Jefenry, I had a thought:

Offset the timing on the world weapons, specifically the battleship guns.(I don't think the gunnery crews worked in unison )

also, maybe increase the radius on the sw

[TheOneAndOnly]

Hey Jeff,
Awesome map, i expecially like the idea of jumps on the aircraft carriers.
obviously Wings would pretty much be a 'must have'.
anyways, briliant work, keep it up.

[io]

ok... as i don't want this to die i will give a short summary of things that we thought of

Add more ships to the map, so that you at least need to go across 2 ships, to get to middle (and back).
Remove the King of the hill.
Add more ilands, so that if you fall off the ship you don't die that easy.
Change the name (As it isn't a battle of midway iland if there are more ilands)

I would suggest "Coconut Iland by Jefenry"

javawizard2539:
I think it's a great map overall, and yes, it will be playable.

If some1 takes the time and "fixes" the map yes.

Astroman:

I do have one world weapon suggestion, how about bullets falling from the air as if you were being air-raided. Also I'm curious about the "Kamikaze" plugin you were talking about, what does it do?

I like that idea (for optic) but ingame it would just decrease the playability to a minium (who would like to get hit by a random bullet comming from the sky Oo)

Well that's it for now

[Sparky1]

I thought of an interesting version of your map, only thing is that it depends on a feature that I'm not sure if BZFlag has. It regards the use of multiple team flags on each team. Can each of the team flags be distinguished by more than just what team it is on (for exampled labeled as r1*, r2*, r3*, b1*, etc), so that each individual team flag can activate particular worldweopons, and have each individual team flag spawn in particular locations?

What I have in mind is that each ship would get a team flag, capping a flag originating from a particular ship would result in SW world weapons detonated on that same ship and lasting for a significantly long time. This kind of arrangement would allow teams to "capture ships" so that the point would be to reduce the number of ships the enemy has available. After all the ships on a particular team is captured the game ends and resets. You could achieve that by specifying a maximum team score equal to the number of ships each team has, since each team currently has 3 ships the maximum score would be 3.

Another version using the multiple flag concept, although admittedly more far fetched, would be if one team captures an enemy ship, that ship now belongs to the team that captured it. In other words lets say that red captures a blue ship, blue team's flag would no longer spawn on that ship and red would have a new flag which spawns on the recently captured ship. Also blue team's tanks would no longer spawn on that ship, red team's tanks would now start to spawn on that ship. Blue team would of course be able to capture that ship back. This would continue until one of teams have all the ships. The possibility of this version would depend on if the ability to change where tanks and team flags respawn in the middle of the game is possible, besides the capability to identify each individual team flag on a particular team. It would have to be determined how to reset the game after all the ships have been captured in this arrangement. As an alternative, this procedure could be applied to islands instead of ships, so that the capturing of islands could occur endlessly without the need of a game reset.

If both concepts can be done, then there could be a combination, where the world weapon concept is applied to ships, and the second concept is applied to the islands.

Let me know what you think.

[Astroman]

Sparky, I like your idea, but as I know very little about the programing for bzflag, I can not say if it would work (if I had to hazard a guess, I would say no-go). Nice thought though...

[Jefenry]

I've been pretty busy with school work, so I haven't done much with this map. Maybe soon I can figure out what to do with it.

Astroman
I've read that the Iowa class battleships could fire all nine guns at once until after their refits in the 80s. I think it sounds cooler to have them all go off at once, but I'm using the new sounds. I'm not exactly sure how they sound with the old "screech."

Marzipan
I'm trying to figure out a way to spread the jumping out over the three ships I already have. I don't really want more than six ships, the massive list of world weapons is starting to get a little ridiculous. I'm thinking of having the incoming people land on one battleship and get the flag, then jump to the other battleship, and then jump to the aircraft carrier to take off back to the island.

Sparky1
That would definitely be a cool idea, but I'm pretty sure it couldn't be done. The only way I can think of would use 4 teams, and try to convince the players to be "allies." Like, Purple + Blue vs. Red + Green. But that would limit you to two ships per allied force, and people probably wouldn't get it.
Having multiple team flags in certain spots is no problem, but having them correspond to a certain ship is impossible. That's why there would need to be a different team per ship.

Thanks all for the comments.

[lol_u died]

Hello Jeff! its me lol_u died and I have a suggestion for the map you made the island battle thing. I think it'll be cool if you can allow the player to go inside a ship...since many people disliked the "King of Hill" game, I would suggest you to put it back to CTF if possible. And when it goes to CTF and when its possible to go inside the ship... i thought that the capping square can be "inside" the ship ....so there could be floors..like maybe you can add 2 or 3 floors...and the capping square can be on the bottom floor (dont forget to add flags in the floors )...and to give it a little of the historic feel...u can add holes to the side of the ships or anywhere where it can make it possible to shoot out the holes to hit the opponent....so like when you add the holes to the side of the ship...the player can grab a GM (guided missile) flag and can lock and shoot the target! and maybe you can make the ships move around the map in a circle pattern...please give thoughts to this idea and people please respond by saying what you think. greatly appreciate your time!

P.S (@Jefenry) It seems impossible for me to work on this idea for my school work has greatly makeing me sweat

[lol_u died]

Hello! I posted a reply on the above...im just wondering did this discussion die? heres what I posted and please read and rply of your ideas...Many Thanks.

Hello Jeff! its me lol_u died and I have a suggestion for the map you made the island battle thing. I think it'll be cool if you can allow the player to go inside a ship...since many people disliked the "King of Hill" game, I would suggest you to put it back to CTF if possible. And when it goes to CTF and when its possible to go inside the ship... i thought that the capping square can be "inside" the ship ....so there could be floors..like maybe you can add 2 or 3 floors...and the capping square can be on the bottom floor (dont forget to add flags in the floors )...and to give it a little of the historic feel...u can add holes to the side of the ships or anywhere where it can make it possible to shoot out the holes to hit the opponent....so like when you add the holes to the side of the ship...the player can grab a GM (guided missile) flag and can lock and shoot the target! and maybe you can make the ships move around the map in a circle pattern...please give thoughts to this idea and people please respond by saying what you think. greatly appreciate your time!

P.S (@Jefenry) It seems impossible for me to work on this idea for my school work has greatly making everything heavy on me.

[Jefenry]

lol_u died
Double posting is generally frowned upon, and even more when you just quote your original post. If I don't respond to someone, it usually means I'm thinking about it, fixing the map is making me feel ill, or I'm busy. I'm not a paid map maker

I think this map is complex enough, or at least for me. There will be no levels inside the ships, because I doubt I could do them properly. This is only my third 2.0 map, and I'm still trying to figure out the best way to do some things.

and maybe you can make the ships move around the map in a circle pattern

Moving things are for decoration only. You can't touch them or ricochet off of them. That's not to say I wont add some moving things in the future, but it's not really the top priority.

P.S (@Jefenry) It seems impossible for me to work on this idea for my school work has greatly making everything heavy on me.

This is the reason I haven't been doing much with it. And if you are planning to "work on this idea," take a look at the license at the top of the map file.