Water Sports 1.0

Laurent R.O. Stanevich
Learn Technologies Interactive

lairbob@learntech.com

This is the first map I've done that starts to take advantage of some of the newer properties of  Marathon 2.0, like water and placing objects vertically in space. I haven't seen any other maps yet that really start to play around with that kind of stuff, although I'm sure people are doing it. I'd appreciate hearing any comments you might have about the space, things like object placement, flow, etc.

LTI is a software design company with a few new products out--check out the web page for our upcoming product Qin (pronounced "Ching") at:
             http://pathfinder.com/twep/products/qin/
We put these maps together to kill each other in virtual space and stay sane. I've got some older Marathon 1.0 maps that we've designed and played around the office in the past few months, but 2.0 came out before I had a chance to clean them up and upload them for general distribution. This is the first map I've tried to post for general consumption.

This map is relatively straightforward once you get used to it. Any of the columns of water will draw you straight upwards if you're in "Run" mode (most everyone here uses the Caps Lock key to run, so the columns act like elevators). In the bottom area, running over the gray wedges in front of the columns will cause a stair to pop up for a second or so.
If you land in the ring of water at the base of the center column, there is one polygon that will transport you up to the second tier, but you have to stand still within it.
Most of the ammo and weapons require you to jump through them, out from one of the columns of water. The goodies (like invincibility and the flamethrower) all show up within the center column. All the ammo and weapons are set to pop up pretty regularly, so the kill rates should be pretty high.

The map should support network games like "Kill the Carrier" and "King of the Hill" pretty well--I've placed a ball within the center column, and the center column is also designated as the hill. It may not be totally successful with these, though: it's still kind of easy to hide if you've got the ball, and the only thing you can do to someone on the hill is punch them or shock them with the fusion pistol, since you're underwater. I've considered making the individual columns of water light up when someone's in them, and maybe making the ring around the base the hill rather than the actual center, but I haven't made these changes yet.
Honestly, I like playing this one "Every Man for Himself".

That's it. I hope you like this map--I've got a couple of others I may clean up and post if people like this one. Drop me some e-mail with any ideas or comments at the address above. (if this crashes your machine, feel free to tell me how and when, but I've never been able to systematically debug my maps that crash very well. If there's any map designers with clear ideas about what makes maps crash, I'd love to hear from you--I've got a couple really nice maps that I can't keep from crashing).


Thanks, Steve Israelson and Bungie.