Ooks, I would never run mountainhamlet as a part of a regular map cycle. It's an awesome map but it is also an almost guaranteed server crash.
In fact, any map that uses squads of grunts is problematic in multiplayer and should be avoided (IMO). There are so many old favorites for HLDM that the composition of your mapcycle really resolves to: 1. what maps are the right size for the number of players your server can support, IE: Merlin is awesome but just plain too huge for the typical 4 or 5 players on HLDM these days (I don't think it supports bots very well either). 2. lots of old favorite maps are quite painfully shy of weapons/ammo/health/armor/jumppack ... players end up crawling around with only a pistol, starving for something to shoot (or one player gets to the key weapon and totally dominates the map until everyone leaves). Most older maps need tuneups these days to make them move faster and make play much more dynamic and fun. 3. a lot of old maps have specific design problems, perhaps too focused on tau or gluon, perhaps areas that are just plain kill zones that are inescapable and need a warp or two to give players a way of getting up and out. Some great maps like Gotham have so few spawn points that one player can literally kill everyone round robin before they can move after respawning. Gotham also has a bad problem with such a severe roomtype setting that sounds get muted so you're virtually deaf. I also found the low-gravity on Gotham combined with the totally black skybox to be quite naughty and abusive ... yes a favorite map for tau whores that float invisibly up out of sight zapping anything that moves ... not favorite for virtually any other player. Even incredible maps like Mist have stick points that a well placed warp can fix ... I personally dislike falling off the edge of maps and dying all the time and would rather provide a set of warp zones instead. All of these things can be fixed but it takes a great deal of time to do what is needed to make maps really worth playing. I literally have 8 or 10 different map cycles that I change on the fly to suit the selection of players that are currently on. When I choose a fun selection, they all stay and play for several hours ... If I choose poorly the server will clear out almost immediately. New players especially have little patience on a map where they can't find any weapons or anyone to shoot at. Your map cycle is equivalent to bait in a competition fishing event ... the right bait will give you a collection of "experts" that visit every day (the fishermen) and it will bring a regular flow of new players to your server (the fish) which will hopefully become regulars. Give one player frags and he will be happy. Give all players frags and you will have a server. qUiCkSiLvEr ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ook" To: <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, May 20, 2006 11:11 PM Subject: [hlds] Old favorite maps - what are yours?
I'm collecting a list of old favorite maps HLDM and OP4 maps. Would some kind souls like to post the maps they remember as being old favorites? My current list looks like this (some of these are my favorites, not necessarily "old favorites" - but then that is what old favorites are ) ): q2dm1 3highlakes aliendm aztec_sacrifice badtaste_snowfall bash bazooka3 beach3 cameltosis chapel cliff thehill canyon dabo dam donkeykong2 dontfall drive_in farmland2 farmland killbox mcdonalds metal morgoth mountain plateau mountainhamlet tomb vacant_town voodoo_lounge
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