I haven't written a dev journal in a while, so now is as good a time as any to post an update. I've been working hard on my final year at University and while things are going really well there, unfortunately something had to give and my FF work has suffered a little. Anyway to redress this balance, I've spent the last week working on shutdown 2 again. I felt the map had become a little stale and the juxtaposition of styles had created an uneasy clash. The only part of the map I was really happy with was the flag room and the rest was just nice looking curves. I was OK with this at one point, but then something struck me: This is a map about power. It features a monolithic fortress in lockdown courtesy of some generators and lasers. It's 2007 and I'm presiding over some curves and very little in the way of a coherent theme etc.

Anyway, long story short, I've rebuilt a lot of it and tried to make a much more involved theme. It's now mainly heavy concrete & rusted metal and power conduits run the length of the base. Beefy helped me out with a cool power texture and I'm pretty sure we can pull off a nice effect. The idea is fairly simple: You can see the power conduits all through the base and, when the lasers are in operation, the power visibly surges through the conduits. When the lasers are disabled, the power flow becomes significantly slower and duller, making it obvious what's going on. I always wanted to do something like this, but I'm not sure why I left it the way it was. Perhaps I was just too afraid of messing with what was, when I started working on it, entirely someone else's map. I had originally intended to leave it pretty much entirely the way kerm had left it and just optimise the hell out of it. However I slowly worked my way through it tweaking bits here and there adding new content that kerm wasn't able to use back when he was working on the map until... I realised I had changed so much that I may as well go through with the wholesale changes.

The upshot of this is that I've had a lot of fun working on the map in the last week, whereas the other changes have been more of a chore. The top ramp is now housing the power conduits, some ducts and it has a nice ambience to it. The lift is probably my favourite change because instead of being curvy room looking outside, it has a more run down feel to it, like a service elevator or something. Since defenders can no longer hold up the lift, I added a few bits and pieces to the top lift area to give defenders a few opportunities to place dispensers etc. The lift is no longer a shoebox where it is impossible to dodge or do anything but catch grenades. It's not a huge change (I added maybe 50% width to the hallway and a small overhang to the side of the lift top) but just enough to add some new gameplay elements and give people something new to learn / play with. If stopping defenders from holding the lift proves to be too great an offensive advantage, then I'll have to redress the balance somehow. I'd say that it was a necessary evil in the TFC version and helped keep the score in check.

Shutdown2 had some great gameplay and well-paced scoring for TFC (usually in the 50-100 range in a 8v8 4/4 clan match) so I'm eager to retain this. The respawns house vertical conduits next to the ammo & health aaaaand I'm still adding more and more stuff. I don't have the time or energy to totally overhaul everything, but I'm trying to spend my time where it will have the greatest impact. As with all TF maps, one of the greatest challenges is adding all of those cool stuff without impacting on the gameplay (particularly movement flow). Thus far I've managed to keep it smooth, but it does always limit/shape the aesthetics to a certain degree.

Jesse made a load of displacements for me so that I could reduce the BSP face count by removing func_details I was using for curves and using displacements instead. This has helped a great deal. Expect some new Shutdown2 pictures soon. Unless I get kidnapped.

"Now go home and get your f**kin' shine box."