My goal of this next week is to have a fully functional stage from my level capable of basic multiplayer playtesting. At this point I have plenty on my "to-do" list to accomplish this goal.
This last week saw vast changes and improvements made to the level. Frankly I got a little sick of working on the first stage and I felt the need to design the 2nd and 3rd stages of the level. Most of this last week was spent building the 2nd stage and troubleshooting some unforeseen technical limitations of the source engine. The biggest problem I was encountering was that my level was "crashing on load" meaning every single time I attempted to open it, the level crashed TF2. Apparently you are limited to 8 physical control points. The way my map is designed and in order to achieve ideal results I need 10 control points to govern the gameplay. After some creative testing and the help of other TF2 mappers I figured out how to use a single control point more than once allowing me to remain within the 8 control point limit.
The other major accomplishment of this week of work has been the succesful creation of game logic to allow for "powerplay situations". It has been my intent throughout development to give an advantage to whichever team reaches the middle control point first. The current system works like this...
The first team to push the payload over the middle control point will give them a powerplay advantage of x time. (3-8 minutes) This advantage will be directly applied to the cart. On large hills it will roll down automatically, become easier to push, or effected less when being pushed up a hill. Once time runs out and a team hasn't won a round the advantage will be given to other team and leveling the playing field.
Screenshots and a download link on tf2maps.net should be up sometime in this next week.
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