ze_death_star_escape_v4_2

A few days ago one of the admins asked/polled ingame if we should add more escape maps. Here's a suggestion. I've played this one a lot on other servers.

ze_death_star_escape_v4_2

Info page: http://www.fpsbanana.com/maps/109132

Download: http://www.fpsbanana.com/maps/download/109132

Release: Final
Version: 4.2
Filesize: 18 mb
Players: 64
Gameplay: Trap, Running, Escape
Remake: No
VRAD: Full - Indoors
VVIS: Fast
Map Size: Large
Frames Per Second: 150+
Cubemaps compiled?: Yes
Map complete?: Yes

I normally don't like escape maps, but this one is really well made and well balanced. Humans spawn in several different places and follow separate paths for awhile, so when the zombies auto-spawn it doesn't mean a quick and dirty death for everyone. Escape paths converge and diverge with spots like the Cantina being 'gated,' where CTs collect and have to defend until they can proceed. This gating mechanism is automatic and happens at several points to slow down the zombies but not so much that they can't catch up even if they fail miserably.

A few things come to mind. Spawn points and do we really want the more escape maps for pple to complain about? If you wanna test it though Kyle I'm all for trying it out.

Knives that isn't the bigger issue. The map being 18mb with everyone dl it would be insane, not to mention the wait time to load such a map. I could be wrong but i honestly don't see such a thing coming to pass. I'll just let the others answer on the yes or no part, but again way to big of dl is gonna be the reason for "NO" i believe.

This is what fast download is for, and it only has to be done once. We're not on dialup modems anymore.

Why is the download size such an issue? Because anyone has to wait a more than a couple minutes? Not to be elitist, but the regular players already have all the maps in rotation, and will sit through any delay to get into a server that doesn't suck. It's the random adhd goobers from god-knows-where on teh internets that might get fed up and go somewhere else if there's a long wait for a map downdload. No great loss. These are usually the same random shitheads that show up once or twice to cause problems and never come back anyway.

This isn't so much about championing the cause of the map I picked as it is trying to figure out why good maps, which are rare, get rejected without even a tryout.
It meets all the requirements outlined here: Map Requirements 09, Maps MUST meet these requirements before being added.

Correction, You're not on Dial-up. Some players of the server are still on Dial-up.
I'll look into adding a ZombieEscape server but we haven't been able to support both servers in players in a long time. I would love to see it happen again but it's been a while.

Fair enough. But I'd bet a dollar it's not a lot. Besides, look at the filesize of zm_little_city, which has been in rotation for years.

That would be cool, but for now I'm more interested in breaking up the monotony of running the same 10 maps over and over and over. Yeah I know there's 30+ in rotation but nominators and the auto map voting tends to pick the most popular ones, which then get 1 spammed. I realize not much can be done about that if we want to continue having map 'voting' at all but I'd still like to see some new or at least different maps.

^ditto.

I don't remember the escape server havin too many people unless all the regulars+admins went into it, which kind of screwed over the regular sever.

Is there anyway we could have server settings auto switch for escape maps? that way you could just have one server with a great map rotation.

I actually didn't even think of the size, good point. But as far as maps go 18mb isn't that big.

on the subject of the map votes and changes. i think right now 5 maps need to be played before that map can be nominated again. maybe if that number was bumped up we wouldnt see the same maps over and over again. just a thought.