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DOX TRIBES MAP PACK V1.1
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This zip contains 9 'client-side' maps, with all new buildings/shapes and textures & the extra volume files associated with them.
All of them are designed with clan competition style play in mind.


Maps included in this zip.
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ArcticWolf
CanyonCrusade_deluxe
DusktoDawn
FleetCommand
IceDagger
JaggedClaw
MidnightMayhem_deluxe
SideWinder
SpinCycle

Obfuscation.mis fix
Domino.mis fix
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INSTALLATION
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Follow the self-extracting zip instructions. Extract the files into your 'tribes' directory.

Also because these maps are client-side and ppl wont be able to connect to the map/server if they don't have them.. there are a couple measures u can take to make it easy for them to find if you run a online server. Here 
are examples of strings u can use, the $MODinfo string is the best option imho.

These strings can be placed in your startup/server configs or autoexec.cs (which is the best spot)

//(this info will be visible on the server/join menu when u click on a servers info.)
$Server::Info = "John's server\nAdmin: john doe\nEmail: john@doe.com\nThis server is running clientside maps.\nYou must download these to play ctf+ maps\nThey can be downloaded 
from..\nhttp://www.planetstarsiege.com/blueprint/";

//(this will be displayed during your connection to the server.)
$MODInfo = "<f2>This Server is running clientside maps\n<f1>You must download these, otherwise you wont be able to connect to the server when they are played!\nGet them from 
<f2>http://www.planetstarsiege.com/blueprint/";

//(this info will be displayed when have finished connecting to the server.)
$Server::JoinMOTD = "<jc><f1>Message of the Day:\nWelcome to John's server!\n\nNew maps can be downloaded from http://www.planetstarsiege.com/blueprint/"; 


TROUBLESHOOTING
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If when loading one of the new maps and it quits out on loading the level, make sure all these volume files are in your 'tribes/base' folder.


AW_extras.vol
CC_extras.vol
DD_extras.vol
FC_extras.vol
ID_extras.vol
JC_extras.vol
MM_extras.vol
SW_extras.vol
SC_extras.vol
DOX_textures.vol


The remainder of the files in the zip should be in your 'tribes/base/missions' folder.

ArcticWolf.dsc  CanyonCrusade_deluxe.dsc DusktoDawn.dsc  FleetCommand.dsc
ArcticWolf.mis  CanyonCrusade_deluxe.mis DusktoDawn.mis  FleetCommand.mis
ArcticWolf.ted  CanyonCrusade_deluxe.ted DusktoDawn.ted  FleetCommand.ted
ArcticWolf.vol  CanyonCrusade_deluxe.vol DusktoDawn.vol  FleetCommand.vol 

IceDagger.dsc  JaggedClaw.dsc  MidnightMayhem.dsc  SideWinder.dsc
IceDagger.mis  JaggedClaw.mis  MidnightMayhem.mis  SideWinder.mis
IceDagger.ted  JaggedClaw.ted  MidnightMayhem.ted  SideWinder.ted
IceDagger.vol  JaggedClaw.vol  MidnightMayhem.vol  SideWinder.vol

SpinCycle.dsc           Obfuscation.mis
SpinCycle.mis           Domino.mis
SpinCycle.ted
SpinCycle.vol


UPDATES/FIXES in V1.1
---------------------
These have been mainly balance changes. A few maps havent been played the way i originally envisioned them, especially on pubs. For example dusktodawn isn't meant to be a ski-fest of mach5 flag snatch and 
grabbers, (thats what CC_d is for) it was designed to promote a bit of more teamwork & vehicle use to get the flag.. but on the other hand, NOT turn into a defensive picnic where 12-14 of your 16 man side goes HOF 
or roof snipers, like a nightmare version of DoD, but with turrets. The same goes for Icedagger.. ive just seen teams go entirely defense.. with 3-4 hofs on the flag and 5-6 snipers on the entrances and the rest of the team 
dueling around the sensor platform. So, some changes have been necessary to help smooth out the bumps so to speak and make them more enjoyable/balanced for both offense and defense. Basically i had hoped to try 
and make each map require slighty different skills/strategies.. but perhaps its a bit too late to change peoples current attitudes towards game play (i.e. SH chaos play + jump.cs)


 ArcticWolf: 
 - Pod repair pack raised slightly (now mediums & heavies can pick up) 
 - Scout capping deterrent.
 - Jumping flag 'hack' fix. (flag wont 'jump', but has zero player momentum when dropped) 
 - Anti-turtling flag stalemate deterrent in bridge/hallway area. 

 DusktoDawn: 
 - Rocket turret removed 
 - Mortar and plasma turret added
 - Base inventory stations removed. Peltast armour only
 - Weapons and packs laid out in base (picked up ala DoD)
 - Minefield partial fix.
 - Minefield no longer instantly kills.
 - Cap limit reduced from 8 to 5
 - Group trigger 'you stood on something lethal' effects in other maps, fixed.

 FleetCommand: 
 - Objectives.cs interference with mods such as bwadmin fixed (thanks to poker) 
 - Better teleporter effects and messaging on who controls teleport switches. 
 - Objective hud/s now work with the map.

 IceDagger: 
 - Rocket Turret replaced with mortar turret. 
 - Roof fusion turret removed.
 - Layout of sensor platform adjusted.
 - Base Generator now exposed/destroyable, so hangar elfs can be taken down easier.
 - Cap limit reduced from 8 to 5 

 JaggedClaw
 - Indoor turret moved more over shaft.
 - Solar panel added to base roof.

 SideWinder 
 - Rocket Turret replaced with mortar turret. 
 - Vehicle pad added & scout capping deterrent

Also in this release at the request of the OGL admins, Ive included fixes for Obfuscation (fixing noclip/holes inside the missionzone) and Domino (fixing the beaconing forcefield bug) ..untill such time as dynamix gets to 
fix them (probably very unlikely though with t2 their number 1 priority.) 



BUGS/FIXES
----------

-- The 'INVALID PACKET' kicking clients problem when stepping in the minefield in dusktodawn (and now also if u use the teleporter in fleetcommand) is fixed.. 'partially', but still there unfortunately. I can only 
assume this problem is because the projectile/explosion data blocks for the effects of the minefield and teleporter aren't being declared properly/early enough to be pre-loaded into the map. About the only true fix would 
be to make it part of a mod, and include it in scripts.vol.. which would break all the mods such as bwadmin/renegades/shifter/havoc etc.

Although now you CAN host dusktodawn or fleetcommand on your OWN in game server.. if you either.

a) start a server and host dusktodawn or fleetcommand 'FIRST' up. or 
b) start a server, host any OTHER one of my ctf+ maps first before switching to dusktodawn, fleetcommand or any other map etc.
 
You will get a invalid packet if you say start/reset a server up and host say iceridge first..then load up dusktodawn or fleetcommand.

But, if the invalid packet does occurs, it will only happen ONCE on a dedicated server (until it resets).
One way to fix it (if it really bothers you) so you wont even see a invalid packet even if your server restarts/reset is to change the last mission played to one of the ctf+ maps in your serverprefs.cs in the config dir. i.e. 
$pref::LastMission = "DusktoDawn";


-- Certain maps such as 'ArcticWolf' the jumping flag bug may be noticed. THIS is NOT a map problem, BUT a TRIBES script issue caused by trying to flag capture in vehicles.
Version 1.1 of AW and SW now have a triggers on the flag stand to detect vehicles, which will destroy any that touch it almost instantly, hopefully deterring scout capping whores in the long term.
 
Also i decided to try and fix the jumping flag by modifying the (flag ondrop function). While the flag wont jump as often or at all on AW again, the tradeoff is when a player drops the flag now, dies with it or throws it etc.. the flag will just drop like a heavy sack of shit :), with no player momentum or velocity carried on it. (so if you where sniped midair at mach5 speed carrying the flag it would just drop 'straight' down and not a arc etc.) Slighty annoying, but far less annoying than having the flag jumping all map instead. 

Also on ArcticWolf.. the bridge area in the subs has a trigger area to detect and penalize you if you carry the flag in there to hide, this should help stop some of those nasty turtle flag stalemates. (thanks MT)

-- Some ppl have complained that the hangar doorways on IceDagger haven't been pinned/cut properly (and other maps that have holes cut into the terrain, i.e. AW, MM_d, SW), so from a distance you cant see into the 
hangar. All the openings on the hangar have 'always' been pinned/cut properly and work perfectly in glide mode (3dfx). Unfortunately tribes has a poor OPENGL mode, i.e. if you use a TNT/2 or Geforce/2 you will have this 
problem, where basically pinning isn't enabled or working properly .. not to mention zbuffering/clipping problems with the ground. There is nothing that can be done im afraid, not on my end anyway. 

-- 'You stood on something lethal' in other maps with triggers/teleporters such as broadside/siege etc. fixed. Basically what was happening is that triggers by default DON'T get reset after a map.. so any map that had a 
trigger would have legacy triggers in memory included in all subsequent maps.. i.e. the dusktodawn mine trigger.. which would cause u to blow up on broadside lifts :P. Originally in tribes u needed trigger/buttons to 
open doors or use lifts.. before the trigger code was integrated into the door/lifts themselves. But some maps such as broadside/siege still have the old triggers there near the doors/lifts which caused the problem (also on 
other peoples teleporter maps too). There are rare circumstances when the trigger reset script wont reset it (i.e. if the map is on dusktodawn and the last client leaves while the map is still running) ..to fix it just change to 
one of my ctf+ maps and then back to the offending map and the problem will be fixed.

-- The carriers in Fleetcommand have a portion of their keel that's 'noclip' (u can fly/move through them).
Luckily this isn't exploitable as it leads nowhere and u cant hide anything in there without it falling out.. other than maybe a beacon. I could fix it by sticking blocks or something in there.. but it would only slow fps down 
and serve no real purpose. Any other fix would make it clientside again.

-- MidnightMayhem_deluxe still has the weird 'walkabout' flag that can pop up every now and then that affected the original MM. Although in MM_d when it happens it only moves about 1 metre back from where it should be and acts exactly normal other than the capture spot is now there. I have no real explantion why it does this, other than the flag and stand are situated almost directly underneath the terrain where its been cut (i.e. its there, but just invisible/noclip) and some sort of scripting issues are causing it (much like how vehicles shoot straight upwards when passing through a 'cut' terrain tile).

-- If u cant hear the crickets on Dusktodawn or the new wind/snow on Icedagger, make sure u don't have a extracted snow.wav or rain.wav in your tribes/base dir. or you haven't disabled weather effects in the 
graphics options.

-- Can look fugly in software (but then again what doesn't :P) with all the coloured/mood lighting in these maps.. it translates very poorly into the tribes 256 colour software palette, part of the reason dynamix buildings 
are almost fullbright in appearance. FIX = get some 3d hardware u caveman :)

-- Holes outside the mission boundary.. This is also NOT a bug, but the way the in-game engine works by mirror tiling/repeating the terrain outside the mission boundary. So any holes cut for buildings will be repeated 
N,S,W,E every map size until the edge of the map.

-- any updates/fixes will be found at http://www.planetstarsiege.com/blueprint/


CONSTRUCTION
------------

With the exception of a few rocks and ruins, every other shape/building was constructed by myself using
the released tribes tools and worldcraft 2.1. a bit of sweat and a few tears :)
A large volume of textures i also created (with a couple borrowed from half-life) with the aid of Adobe Photoshop.

Construction time roughly started in janurary, on and off between tribes gaming. Some maps took a very short time, like a day or 2 for Dusktodawn or Spincycle to several weeks/month for FleetCommand which is very 
large both in size (twice the size of the scarabrae base/shape) and weighing in at over 3000+ polys and 990 light entities. 

I learnt a lot from my first effort of maps included in the opencall selection (heh i had 6-7 out of the 14..CC, MM etc.). With some clever poly/texture use and a bare amount of pinning the deluxe maps run a lot 
better.. CC_deluxe runs atleast 25-30%+ faster than the original.
 
My specs for machine they were created and ran on are a celery 300a o/c 450mhz, 128meg sdram, v3 3000 ... and my target framerate was the equivalent of normal dynamix base maps which run in the 45-60fps range on this hardware. 



COMMENTS
--------

Originally i was encouraged by the response from the dev team and the general public who liked my opencall maps.. especially ones like CC, MM. And talking with Scott from dynamix, around the time of the 
opencall/balanced maps release, there was talk of a regular map pack (ala balanced maps) being released with new maps every month or 2. But unfortunately the OC/Balanced maps didn't go down to well with most ppl 
along with certain crashes associated with frost giant etc.. so that idea was pretty much shelved. (although allot more ppl play OC/balanced maps these days.) Anyway i wasn't discouraged, as i thought i could some 
really cool client side maps with the aid of worldcraft (btw i HATE server side maps with a passion,... upside down scarabrae bases really annoy me). It was originally going to  be a 3 mission pack, but soon it expanded 
to 5.. then 6. Eventually here we are at 9 maps... i'd really would've liked to have made 10 straight.. but at this rate tribes 2 will be out by then ..not to mention some of these maps im starting to look at and think.. geez i 
could really do that better if i did it again :) ...so yes get em out the door i say.. and quick! :)

There was a allot of stuff i wish i could've have done with these maps.. but the engine/poly limitation was a barrier... frame rate is far more important for a multiplayer only game. On hindsidght i could've done a lot more 
with the aid of some more spiffy textures.. but alas tribes1 doesn't have any :P, and making textures all the time takes too long. So watch out tribes2, more polys, water, 32 bit colour.. geez even 16bit colour would be a 
luxury, boy did i get sick of 8bit colour :P

If you really like these maps, get your server admins to stick em on servers.. its the only way they'll get played.
Or even bug the guys at dynamix to release another map pack with these, maybe with the next patch or with base+ if its ever released.


THANKS
------

Id like to thank the guys at Dynamix.. Scott, Dave, Ian and especially John who tracked down and fixed the non-dynamic lighting problem with WC shapes that bugged the hell out of me :)

A big thanks goes out to Mental Trousers who was kind enough to do the scripting for several of the maps, the team teleporters and the perm minefield. (not to mention the scoutcapping/turtling deterrent triggers) He has his own scripting site.. so be sure to drop by it. http://www.planetstarsiege.com/mt/

Thanks to Poker, who did some nice scripting to reset settings and triggers at a mission change (which has also been used to reset group triggers at map changes).
 
Also thanks to Stonk & Kromax for help bugtesting etc.. aswell as my fellow clan members and everyone else that bugged, nagged or lamented the fact they still aren't finished yet and to finish them :) 

mmmm did someone mention secrets?? :P


DOX
28/8/00
dox@planetfortress.com or dox@planetstarsiege.com
http://www.planetstarsiege.com/blueprint/
