Thanks first of all for your feedback. I appreciate it.

For the recruit/sparring room, I get your criticism. It is a bit hard to keep track of what happens under the observation room with the door controls. My issue is that it needs to make sense lore-wise. It's a sparring room + shooting gallery for training. Thus it also has a locker room for changing. For gameplay this makes for a nice spawning area. I specifically made sure there's no direct link from the sparring room to the observation deck for security reasons. You don't want recruits running around near the brig. No promises about the door. But I will take a look and see what I can improve. I have no plans to change the shooting gallery.

The snow planet. Storm sounds, yes I agree. That's a good idea. I will look into it right away.


The big room that houses the controls for the turbo lasers is actually based directly on some of the cross section reference. I made it as accurate as possible within the constraints of the map. It's in fact too small. And yes the weapon controls should indeed be located there. The bridge is more for command and not for all the ship functions.
I didn't want to use ripped sounds. So I used the only sound that was suitable. The problem is... It's a sound from Half Life 2: Episode 2. So you have to have that game loaded into Gmod to hear the sound. Maybe in the future I will try and replace it with something else suitable.

So I won't change the size of the room, nor will I move the turbo laser controls. This situation now is the most accurate. BUT, I do agree with you that the room feels a bit, well, useless. The room is too much of a dead end and there's not enough interesting stuff there. So in the future I may address that by trying to make it more interesting and/or adding rooms with specific functions to make it a more desirable place to be. No promises, but one idea I had was to have a weapon systems power room where some stuff could be controlled or maybe turned on/off.

Hello Lord Trilobite,

Thanks ever so much for the reply and for considering some changes to the spar room and snow planet. I do wonder for my own interest where you saw documentation of a spar room in SD's please? I would like to find out more about this. I suppose my only criticism with the shooting gallery is that the range is a bit short.

RE the turbo laser room, I also wonder which cross section you saw that shows this type of room? I recently watched a video which instead showed a mechanical shaft under the turrets rather than a large room - but it claims it is modelling the Class 1. I am guessing you are referring to it's side armament as Heavy Turbo Lasers (Class I), but the reason I refer to them as Octuple barbette's (On the Class II) is because the model on the exterior models the OB's rather than HTL's and the picture on the computer screens next to the battery controls shows them too. Lore wise, this is crossing some wires between the class 1 and 2 I think and might need sorting out? If it is the class 2 as the Octuple barbette's suggest, then maybe the large room isn't lore friendly, but knowing SW, I also know that lore has been bastardised/chopped and changed so much.

Ah thanks for the info on the sound. I do have half life 2 somewhere!

Yes something else in there would be good, but I also struggle to come up with what exactly.

Thanks again

Pitchkins

There is no sparring room reference that I know of. The closest reference I think would be the building on Lothal in Rebels. I added the room to the map simply because it made sense that there would be one on the ship.

There is only the cross section for the Imperial 1 class. The cross section shows a giant room with a tonne of consoles and balconies not unlike what I've made. It is legends material though. The map is also mostly based on Imperial 2 class. But there is not enough reference to fill in everything on the whole ship. The ships will likely have similar interiors anyway. Most of the interior layout is based on the one cross section.
None of the in film reference is ever consistent anyway. This is probably roughly as accurate as I can make that area.

And you need Half Life 2: Episode 2 for the turret sound. Not Half Life 2.

Dear L T,

Rgr that, thanks for the reply and info.

A couple of last things I thought of room wise - on deck 7 as you come out of the turbo lift, to the right is a large hall like room. From what I have seen - this is rarely used and we tended to just block it off for server use and I have seen many others do the same, or just fill it out with cargo.... Could this room not be removed and perhaps the added space be added to the snow planet?

That planet is extremely useful for server stuff, because it is so easy to use it for events and training simulations without having to switch maps. So the more room there is down there - the better, perhaps if it was developed to be more interesting - that might be of more value than that particular room which feels a bit out of place too.

Dare I say it, but perhaps the same could be said for the hidden room - which is mostly empty. I understand this makes symmetrical sense and of course the buttons and your signature should remain - but is it's enormous size a good use of space, or could it be condensed with the space saved then used elsewhere? Food for thought anyway, I also realise that my (VERY) limited understanding of the technical aspects within level design may not apply here!

Cheers

Pitchkins

Thanks again for your thoughts.
The map is indeed near its limits. And removing some things can potentially free up things to make other areas bigger or more complex. But in this case, removing those rooms wouldn't help free up space for the things you mentioned.
The big empty room on Deck 7. Yes it's a bit out of place and very empty. Initially I planned to make that into some type of office space based on the known cross section reference. But I couldn't find a layout I liked so I left it empty. And I know a lot of servers use this space for all sorts of reasons. So if I removed it I would get a lot of angry comments about it probably. lol.
the same goes for the secret admin room. It's often used by servers to build all sorts of things. And scaling it down wouldn't help anything.

I agree that the planets re a bit simple right now. I kept them simple to help with the map limits. I might look into improving them. The problem with making them physically bigger is that there's literally barely any space around them. There might be SOME space to expand. But not much.

Dear Lord T,

(re-posted as I have tried to make this clearer) Every time I go back on the map it just gets better and better. I am not sure how you fit all of this extra stuff in! Thank you.

I noticed that the planets now have some sound effects which is great - Thanks for doing that.

How time flies, but when I first started this thread I mentioned about the recruit (or sparring) room which is used as a joining area. I posted this:

"In the "recruit joining room" I noticed the door is in the locker section which isn't visible from the security viewing room. I wonder if perhaps the door is best suited to being flush with the actual room, as in - not in the locker area, but instead in the doorway before that section? That would make it easier to keep an eye on any trouble makers and stop them waiting for a daft officer to let them out thinking that no one is in the that main room there."

I wonder if you had any further thoughts on this and if it could be implemented? I understand if not.

I would also like to present you with some other ideas that I thought of for your consideration - this is especially focused on the engineers, who in SWRP tend to get the short straw with not a lot do do and many a dead regiment. I will add now, that I understand this all takes a lot of work and having messed around with hammer editor myself and failing to do anything other than make a rubbish box house, I totally understand if any of these ideas are not considered. Its just all other units have much more to do so I thought about the following:
 

• In the engine Reactor Room, (RR from now on) there are switches to turn off the energy beams and a lever to turn of the actual engine. I wondered if perhaps this could actually turn off the ship lights, or make them all go green once they are all switched off? I saw on a new map similar idea and to stop it from being trolled too much, the buttons have to be pressed in a certain order. You could have it as a mini game sort of like the Death Star map - firing the laser required a bit of timing. This would give the ship a more realistic feeling and a point in turning them all off for say maintenance - or as a simulated bit of damage - with the requirement of a bit of skill to turn it back on. Most servers have binned engineers off entirely due to not really having much for them to do so this may just help with generating (no pun intended) more passive RP. So you could have three stages of lighting:
  
  1. Normal lighting - as it is when you joint he map normally with 100% of the lights on.
  2. Emergency lighting when power is out - this could be green lighting at 50% (for drills, reactor shutdown etc.)
  3. Battle stations lighting - this could be red and at 50%.
  
   
  
• RR- those energy beams; (I am assuming they are part of the shield generator) perhaps they could do with some kind of buzzing noise while switched on.
  
   
  
• RR - recently I played Banakins new venator map and he has a mini puzzle for turning back on the beams. It is simple (I say simple but I doubt it is simple to make!) and requires four pylons to be raised before the beams can be switched back on. Something like this would give engineers more to do too.
  
  
• RR - the main rotating engine part, perhaps the lever could do with an update and merely be changed into a switch? It seems a bit out of place imo. Also the noise, when switched off or on, I wonder about having another sound effect that sounds like it is winding down when switched off and for gearing up when switched back on? At the moment it just stops suddenly. A good example of this is on the map "rp_imperial_tatooine_smoke_v1". It has good wind down/start up sound in the bases engine room and the base goes red when the engines are off.
   
  
• RR - Maybe the walkways could have some railings? I know the Empire wasn't that concerned about safety! But it may stop a few "accidental" deaths.
  
  
• Now in the Engine Room (ER) that leads up to the turbo laser battery - near the button that vents steam (these sort of things are really good for the engineers!) there is what looks like another turbine tube which goes into the steam vents. Maybe this can be animated to spin to give this room a bit more movement?
  
  
• ER - Back to the steam vents, I noticed that if you go up the walkway and hit the other button - there are five pipes that can be disconnected and reconnected, maybe it would be good to create some linked up use for these by making the steam vent button only work if these are disconnected? These little things can help players have to communicate with each other, so that releasing excess steam becomes a two man job.
   
  
• ER - I noticed that one of the bits of flooring with the grating going over pipes has a red light underneath. This looks very cool. I wonder if perhaps the other grated flooring part near the steam vent button could have a bit of atmospheric lighting too.
   
  
• ER - There are the two blue glass tubes, maybe these could have energy beams running through them that can be switched on and off? (Again with a bit of sound to simulate them being on too?)
  
  
• ER - ok this one is for battle damage. Maybe it would be good if the Engineers had access to separate lighting fuse box and say, when an admin hits a button (that could be in staff room bit with all the other buttons) then it knocks out the lights of certain parts. This forces interaction - as in someone has to report this to the engineers and then the engineers have to sort the fuses out. In Banankins new ship, he has a gas leak system option too, again, maybe if an admin hits that button then a green gas can leak out and the engineers need to go to - I don't know, say four different areas of the engine room to press a button in a certain order to stop the leak. It would be good if an alarm would sound too if this happens and will only stop once fixed.
   
  
• Brig - I wonder if you have considered making the cell doors have a one way window so the guard can see into the cell - but the prisoner cannot see out? I also thought about the chances of having an interrogation room with a one way observation mirror.
  
  
• Now to the Bridge. The main alarm is in the room opposite the meeting room - this seems like a bit of an unnatural place for the button, perhaps it would be more practical to be situated on the bridge in one of the pits? This room could really be used as an alternative meeting room or the "Captains Cabin" perhaps.
  
  
• Bridge - The orders button is very cool. Some other order ideas I have:
  
  1. Order: All hands fall in for parade.
  2. Warning: Stand by - the ship is jumping to hyperspace!
  
  (Number 2 precludes the message you get when actually jumping)
  
  Thanks in advance and all the best for now.
  
  Cheers
  
  Pitch