Ben Lubar makes an Alien Swarm map: Remtax Evacuation

[ben]

remna tanxe (human crate)

big box in space

has people in it

get them out of there

[ben]

ɺɛmtɑx ɪˌvækjuˈeɪʃən

ˈɺɛm.nɑ ˈtɑn.xɛ

[ben]

here's my entire layout so far (attached)

the actual space station is larger than the playable area

definitions!

• hangar - room with a fixed location at the south center end of the map. depressurizes when dropship enters or leaves.
• dropship - ship you arrived in. can take up to 15 civilians out of the station to safety at a time. takes about 2 minutes between starting to leave and finishing returning.
• civilian squad - group of 3 civilians that you're supposed to rescue.
• morale - meter that determines whether new civilian squads will spawn. starts at 1/1 after the first civilian squad is rescued. if every member of a civilian squad dies, you lose 1 from the numerator. rescuing 3 squads (even if it's just one civilian per squad alive) adds 1 to both the numerator and the denominator.
• oxygen generator - civilian squads path to these; they heal nearby civilians. a computer nearby searches for new civilian squads once the civilians have been instructed to leave the area and proceed to the next. computer can be hacked by tech marines to finish the search instantly. computer permanently shuts down if this is not a "leaf" oxygen generator (that is, if other oxygen generators path to this one).

the mission starts with a single oxygen generator (A). the computer needs to be turned on manually here. once a civilian squad is found, the computer at A is permanently disabled. if the civilian squad is lost, the mission is failed. if at least one civilian makes it to the dropship, oxygen generator B boots up and starts searching. civilians go from B to A to the hangar. once at least one civilian from B has reached the dropship, oxygen generator C boots up. civilians go from C to A to the hangar. in difficulties Hard, Insane, and Brutal, once the dropship leaves, the computers at B and C shut down and B1, B2, C1, and C2 appear. on Easy or Normal, B and C remain leaf nodes in the tree.

scoring: 1 point for each civilian that reaches the dropship. 2 additional points for every civilian squad that reaches the dropship without anyone dying.

ending the mission: there's an area in the hangar where if all living marines are standing in the box marked on the floor, the mission ends with success (not activated until at least one civilian reaches the dropship)

[ben]

as for layout: oxygen generator A will have, let's say, three possible locations

and then at least two locations for each of the other 6 oxygen generators

the paths between oxygen generators will be labelled with colored lines like the walls in Black Mesa are at the start of Half-Life or the path between button and thing-button-does in Portal

[ben]

Adding a bunch of goodies to the beta branch

The beta branch has been updated with the following changes:

• Combine soldiers now use asw_weapon_pdw_single rather than being hard-coded to use the single PDW model and animations. The entity becomes an asw_weapon_pdw, so scripts that deal with weapons do not need to be updated to handle asw_weapon_pdw_single entities as they only exist before the weapon has fully spawned in.
• Aliens now make AI sounds that can be heard by colonists and combine soldiers whenever they finish or loop an animation. There is no change to the player-audible sounds they make, but this now means that humanoid NPCs can notice aliens loudly approaching them from behind.
• Added ai_goal_actbusy support to asw_colonist.
• asw_colonist is no longer targeted by aim assist by default. There is a new keyvalue in Hammer to revert this to the previous behavior.
• Aiming at an asw_colonist with aim assist turned off will now show the friendly fire crosshair and laser pointer.
• The ability to USE a colonist in order to make them follow the marine now has an on-screen prompt and can be disabled in Hammer.
• Added the ability to have asw_colonist spawn with a weapon, as well as a Hammer keyvalue to determine whether they should drop their weapon on death. Known issue: Colonists currently don't animate most weapons correctly.