sc_egypt2

[simbl]

About:
sc_egypt2 is the sequel to sc_egypt, which was released by me back in 2006. Took me only 12 years and 3 tries to finish it (I have the source files for several different versions of sc_egypt2 on my hard drive, which I started over the years and never finished). Like the first map, I tried to give sc_egypt2 a good balance between combat, puzzle solving, jump 'n run and hidden traps - many, many deadly hidden traps.

Story:
Kel'Rana has been defeated in your first egyptian adventure (sc_egypt), but his troops, now without leadership by their overlord still roam the country. There's an especially nasty Stone Golem which needs to be gone.

Objectives:
- Kill 'em all.
- Make it out alive.

Hints:
You can find many useful secrets and other goodies, so always keep an eye open:
- 4 shortcuts
- 6 secrets
- 1 secret mini boss with powerful loot
- 1 super secret bikini babe

Useless map facts:
solids: 4441
faces: 25906
point Entities: 1156
solid Entities: 467
unique textures: 225
texture memory: 20997120 bytes (20.50 MB)
maxed out engine limits: Just about any. Serisously, I couldn't even place a single additional brush in the map and I had to pull off any trick I know to make it work.

Good luck and have fun! Guess I'll see ya in 12 years for part three! :P

Download: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Uo...Bu0Refzj5HAPqR



















//edit: If someone has a better imagehost, please tell me. I think the one I used will delete the pictures after a few weeks.

[Hezus]

Wow 12 years. Got to give this a try later! Screenshots look very promising.

A good img host is imgur!

[spy-warrior]

Good maps

http://scmapdb.com/map:egypt-2

[nico]

Looks absolutely beautiful! My only critique are a bit too few enemies/combat.

[Lt.JC]

I just played this with a friend and yeah I would say we both liked it so here are my thoughts on it.

It's not Black Mesa themed so that's already a big plus point for me, I've just seen too much of it over the years. Architecture is nice overall and the egyptian theme is something you don't see that often I mean...last time was like in Serious Sam or UT2004. Textures are nice looking and I guess most of them are still from the old wad? Also nice use of those static meshes, they pretty much blend in there. My friend just managed to get stuck between that water well thing once. You know the one on the wall where the machinegun is on the roof. And those floaty cube things, I guess it would have been better to make them non solid if possible because in rare cases they can even smash enemies. I have seen a soldier getting smashed by them in the first area and later one of the baby gargs was also killed.

Gameplay is decent I would say, I don't think there really need to be more enemies because that would just be spamming. Some of those respawning enemies already seemed pretty random (like some snipers) We just cleared everything out and all of a sudden another sniper hit me. Or later in that cave area with the big double doors, all the soldiers respawning out of nowhere is kinda weird and you could get some cheap shots on most of them through the double doors anyway. Also when you start the map you are instantly charged by voltigores and they can even kinda overrun the spawn area if you are not careful. I guess it's not that much of a problem because these creatures are pretty slow and clunky but still I would advise against spawn camping enemies in general.

Having shortcuts in a big map is always a good solution and this map got just the right amount. But one thing that could be confusing is which portal leads where. I mean if you know or seen what just opened you know where to go but later in the map when there is like 3 portals or something then you stand there and think "which one is the most recent now?". Maybe you could close the ones you won't be needing anymore or something? I don't know.

The few puzzles and traps in the map are fine as they are I guess, not too hard to get through but still punishing if you are careless. These things are always hard to balance out because some people just "don't get it" so it would be frustrating for them while others would say "Well that was easy" so yeah...just leave it as it is so it doesn't interfere too much with the flow of the map and to prevent frustration.

The secrets were a nice bonus just like in the first sc_egypt. I don't know how many there are but we found about 6 secrets I think, including the "nice job" one if you know what I mean
Just too bad we found out too late how to get the machinegun but I guess for the final battle it was still extremely useful
Maybe there could be a secret counter at the end which tells you how many of them you found.

All in all I would say this is a good old classic walkthrough map with an interesting theme and I don't see why you should not play it. It's fun, it has a unique setting, it's not too frustrating and you can get to the action pretty quick.

[simbl]

Hey, thanks for the feedback!

The smashing cubes were built on purpose. I think players getting smashed by doors, elevators or anything that moves is kinda hilarious in Sven Co-op. But that's down to personal taste I guess.

I thought about closing the portals as well but then I decides to leave them open, because sime weapons are only available at particular parts of the map (for example the sniper rifle, the double Uzi secret, the Deagle secret or the gluon gun secret). And if I close those portals, players wouldn't be able to get those any more if they wanted them.

For the snipers, they don't actually respawn, all the snipers you encounter are standing in the map from the beginning. The only spawning enemies are the soldiers in the cave you mentioned and the crocodiles at the beginning. I chose to let the soldiers respawn two times to re-populate a previously cleared area. Kinda to pat out the lenght of the map a bit but like you said, it's hard to balance, just like traps or puzzles.

If you found 6 secrets, I think you found all of them. There are 6 in total, it's also mentioned in the MOTD.

[AdamR]

Very pleased to see this released! I really liked the first Egypt map you did.

Rather enjoyed it too. Very much enjoyed the magic floating cubes smashing us up.


--

Technical notes:



You should lay out your map distribution files slightly differently. Due to SteamPipe, which allows us to split our files into "svencoop", "svencoop_addon", and "svencoop_download", server ops especially like to keep the base content in "svencoop" as clean as possible, so we often opt to install custom content in "svencoop_addon". You should therefore ideally not include "Sven Co-op" and "svencoop" folders in your archive. (Instead have the WAD and other folders like "maps" in the root of the archive file.)

Most recent advice on map distribution



I'm also pretty sure you haven't maxed out engine limits yet. Are you using our SC specific map compilers and not standard GoldSrc ones? (You can find these in our SDK Steam tool.)

• solids: 4441 -- Probably irrelevant, will be much different when compiled.
• faces: 25906 -- This can be up to 65535 as of SC 5.17, but was 32767 before faces started disappearing.
• point Entities: 1156 -- This can be up to 8192 though 8000 would be safer leaving room for game entities.
• solid Entities: 467 -- This can be up to 4096 (or was that 8192 too).
• unique textures: 225 -- This can be up to 2048
• texture memory: 20997120 bytes (20.50 MB) -- Not sure, but I've had no problems with nearly 64 MiB so far.

Very +1 for optimising your map anyway though!

The primary limit we reach these days is the 32767 clip node limit, but if you use compiler option `-nohull2` you can exclude the large hull size from your map. This will of course mean you must have no Gargantuas or large pushables in your maps. (Some other NPCs may use this too, not sure.) You can save roughly 25% of your map's clip nodes with this though!

[Lt.JC]

Hey, thanks for the feedback!

The smashing cubes were built on purpose. I think players getting smashed by doors, elevators or anything that moves is kinda hilarious in Sven Co-op. But that's down to personal taste I guess.

I thought about closing the portals as well but then I decides to leave them open, because sime weapons are only available at particular parts of the map (for example the sniper rifle, the double Uzi secret, the Deagle secret or the gluon gun secret). And if I close those portals, players wouldn't be able to get those any more if they wanted them.

For the snipers, they don't actually respawn, all the snipers you encounter are standing in the map from the beginning. The only spawning enemies are the soldiers in the cave you mentioned and the crocodiles at the beginning. I chose to let the soldiers respawn two times to re-populate a previously cleared area. Kinda to pat out the lenght of the map a bit but like you said, it's hard to balance, just like traps or puzzles.

If you found 6 secrets, I think you found all of them. There are 6 in total, it's also mentioned in the MOTD.

Oh okay, then probably there was a sniper hiding after we killed the others and came back when the coast was clear or something

However I just wanted to say I don't have anything against respawning enemies I just think it needs to be done in a good way , so as long as they don't appear out of thin air it's okay. Like Xen enemies could teleport in with a sound and a graphical effect, they do that all the time in Half-Life. Now the soldiers on the other hand are a bit more complicated because you could basically also teleport them but in their case it wouldn't make that much sense so the only other way would be to let them rappel into the level from somewhere or coming out of "black doors" or something.

The map Sandstone for example has enemy grunts coming out of doors all the time so that was a good solution but ofcourse it only works if the map gives you the possibility to do so.

And the shortcut portals, I kinda thought that this could be the reason.

[Hezus]

Just gave it a playthrough and must say that the map looks fantastic! Really like that style!

Gameplay seemed pretty solid from my perspective, although there are some points I'd like to give feedback on:

- Put the weapons and ammo at the start into the CFG. It's a bit of a useless tasks to gather it all again every time.
- The jumping puzzle part felt a bit out of place. It feels more like some generic training map and the part wasn't even that challenging. Like it is now, I'd probably take it out of the map, since it's just a wierd intermission. Or if you want to keep it, try making it part of the whole map and embed it into the environment.
- I love how everthing is 'sand-themed'. Alas, that makes certain enemies (like the HW or the female assassins) stand out. Please consider also retexturing them to fit the environment.
- The fire pots on the floor give you damage and also damage the grunts. Realistic, maybe, but it seems kinda silly.
- I got stuck into certain parts of the map, especially around rubble or wall ornaments sticking out. Consider making those non-solid (also good for clipnode limit!)
- Some of the monsters got stuck in the water at the start. Might want to use monsterclip around the edges there, so they don't jump in.
- The snipers in the area with the female assassins could snipe me through the model on top of the center building. So unfair :sad:
- Consider making Schnappi a bit smaller (just scale the model down a bit) so he really is a small crocodile. I totaly expected the Schnappi song to play after I killed that little bastard. Add it to the map!
- Some of the hitboxes on the garg replacements are wierd. RPG's go straight through them sometimes.
- Snipers are a bit overused in the map, imho.
- The horse and camel models could really use a higher definition model. Now they just look redicilous.

It's a solid map and quite fun to play! I did expect some more from the final boss fight, tho. Now it's just a high-health garg with some extra monsters and we've seen that so many times already. Some interesting sequence or puzzle could spice it up.

[AdamR]

About the jumping parts: We found that the rollers often got stuck anyway, turning them into just a static platform. It looked like they were causing no damage to the invincible crocodiles obstructing them. To solve this you'd either have to:

1) Lower the water level so the crocodiles never reach the rollers, or
2) Make the crocodiles vulnerable but have them appear by a squadmaker, so any crushed will respawn

I too got stuck in a few areas such as Hezus described. (Had to no-clip out.) Some clip brushes needed.

+1 for RPG hit-boxes on the garg replacements, our rockets went through them a lot too unless we aimed really high up.

Hah yeah the red horse model too.

--

All this criticism aside though I too enjoyed the map a lot. I agree the styling is epic, and it's a nice fun map. (I could easily list more things I like about it than found problems with.)

[simbl]

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I think I'll work on a version 1.1 in a few days. Unfortunately I have no experience in modeling, so I can't change the hitboxes on the Garg models or the polycount on the horse or camel. If someone is willing to do this, be my guest.

I'll consider most of your feedback for the update. But some things really come down to personal taste, like the damage of fire pods.

[AdamR]

I know for sure we have a few talented model artists on the team that may be able to help, not sure how they are time wise -- DGF, Mr.Mazur, Rusty, Slartibarty, and The303 to name a few.

[simbl]

I'm planning to make a v1.1 with all the issues fixed and if one of them finds the time to update one of those models, I can always release a v1.2 or something.

To be honest I don't want to pour too much time into this map now because I'm really sick of the Egypt texture set and I've already got some ideas for the map I'll be working on for the next 12 years. :P

[Hezus]

I'm planning to make a v1.1 with all the issues fixed and if one of them finds the time to update one of those models, I can always release a v1.2 or something.

To be honest I don't want to pour too much time into this map now because I'm really sick of the Egypt texture set and I've already got some ideas for the map I'll be working on for the next 12 years. :P

I'm sure that's going to be fun to play in 2030!

I wonder if Half-Life 3 will be out by then.

[GarompaEstomper]

I kind of touched the hitboxes to fix the garg models. I don't know which one you were talking about so I made both. Problem is... hitboxes seemed to be overall fine. Specially the horse, which I didn't touch or include in the attachment since the hitboxes are fine...

If the rockets are still going through, including the horse, then the models are not the problem!

[AdamR]

What could be happening is the hitboxes from the default model are used. That is definitely the case with players, with is why players with tiny models die just as easily.

[simbl]

Hey Garompa,

thanks for your effort on this! I will check and test the models later! For the camel and the horse, the hitboxes really don't matter that much, because they're just standig around static for decoration anyway. I think Hezus mentioned the rather low polycount for those, not the hitboxes

Also, yesterday I started fixing the various bugs everyone mentioned. Right now, I'm having some issues with the Schnappi theme song, but I think we can expect v1.1 within the next few days.

[cold_blood3d_killa]

//edit: If someone has a better imagehost, please tell me. I think the one I used will delete the pictures after a few weeks.

Feel free to link directly to the images on the mapdb page: http://scmapdb.com/map:egypt-2

Excited to try this. Egypt was always a favorite.