@viech: What changes are there?
The following stuff is still on my list or already done:
- The elevator will move much faster
- I will add a new path which is going to be independent of the current regions. It will connect long hall to unnamed hall and thus be a direct connection of the secondary entrances of both default bases.
- Both the lower and upper floor are too open which rewards camping. I will close the path from upper storage to unnamed hall and the path from lower storage to lower fork. lower fork, dome room and stairs entry might be redone in order to make the path to the stairs shorter.
- I already replaced a lot of textures, Beta 4 will only depend on a few exterior resources, if any
- Human players will be able to jump on all boxes, regardless of their FPS
Apart from that:
- I will change a few things in elevator shaft (there's a lot of leftover stuff, for example it doesn't make any sense that the ladder is at the side of the doors, it should rather be at the side of elevator room).
- The hole at the top of the elevator car will move to the middle of the car. This should lead to less humans being squished at the corner above the door and will make it harder for aliens to leave the car after attacking incoming humans.
- The stairs will be connected to ventilation room. I don't know what this is good for but they are already next to each other and if I'm lucky it will add some relevance to the stairs. It can probably be used to escape from rants.
- The unnamed hall will get some sort of vis-blocker in order to separate the alien default's front and side entrances even more.
>With enough players, the game turns into human-bias. Maybe its the ramp in the human default...
I really don't see a human biased map. The human default isn't as weak as on many default maps but it has significant security holes. Non-advanced maras and lisks can sneak-attack turrets by entering through the pipe shafts, advanced marauders can even zap buildings that are cluttered on the pipes above the default armory (I've seen a mara zap a DC, Node and Turret this way in a single attack without taking any damage).
The fact that a small number of players means alien-biased and a big number of players means human-biased looks like a tremulous-specific problem to me - especially on public servers, where the necessary teamplay among humans is more likely to happen when the map is cluttered with players. On the other hand, more players usually means more camprants. While I don't want to anticipate teamplay I'll try my best to make Parpax a worse map for campers.
Speaking balance in general, I like maps that are easy to learn but hard to master. While I agree that Parpax turned out more complex than I wanted it to be in the first place I think that I managed to do a good job on the second part. I built a lot of shortcuts and security holes that need some skill and knowledge of the map to exploit. Many players haven't learned them yet and as soon as they do it will affect balance, making it hard for me to foresee any bias. For example, few players know that humans can easily outpace camprants by flying on the pipes at alien default. When more players find out there will probably be less tyrants on defense and thus less draws.
>There needs to be another alternative pathway to human default with an exception of ele, vent, and the staircase. Currently it is faster for me to take the staircase as a marauder to get back to base rather than using the lift. And as for humans, it takes a long time both ways, which can be irritating for small games.
This is exactly what the new path should be.
(With a little training, (advanced) maras can also use the vents to go up!)
>A vent to the human base can't even fit dretches probably because you didn't expand the space as the vent leans downwards (boundryboxes do not rotate)
Uhm, I think I already fixed that. The last time I played (the bleeding edge version) even humans could crouch through there.
