Ok boys and girls, I've been noting all the good submissions and slowly progressing with the map in the last few weeks, however I depart for Australia (for a month) in 2 days and theres still so much left to do on Grave 2 that there's no way I'll be able to finish it in time.
Here are a couple of teaser screenshots to tide you over:
A quick Q&A, too:
Q: Why is everything yellow?
A: The time the map is set is late evening/sunset, similar to the map Summer. I thought the long shadows would give it away, but apparently not. If anyone has any better ideas, feel free to PM them to me.
Q: Whats new?
A: I've polished the gameplay a LOT, improved everything about the map and implemented a lot of fun visual effects. The balance of the gameplay is drastically improved, the high route (across the roof, inside and out) is much more accessible and viable.
Q: What are the r_speeds and performance like?
A: The way grave is laid out pretty much rules out a decent VIS, so r_speeds are always going to be higher than desired. Having said that, the map you see in the screenshots only is about 200 wpolys higher than the original Grave, because I've built it that much better. The target final r_speeds won't be higher than 4000k (which I concede is a lot, but its the best I can do with the Grave layout).
The epoly is astronomical due to sk89q's trees, but so far I haven't experienced any problems and my search for a definitive answer on what is too high an epoly value has turned up nothing. I guess we'll find out!
The textures for this map are massive. Appallingly huge. We'll have to see if this is a problem when it comes to beta.
All in all, I think people will like it when it comes to beta, there's going to be a lot of fun stuff to discover and some well honed strategies to try out.
Peace,
Dag
p.s. keep the submissions rolling in!
