Happy New Year 2016!

Since bumping my old production update thread and announcing my return, I have had an insane amount of people contacting me about the anniversary of the 4 maps in the Ender/Jayden/Tiamat team. Seems there is a ton of excitement about seeing these maps updated and fixed. That is Hotzone, Extinction, Coldsnap and Downflow. I won't be touching Hugeass, as it is timeless and needs no updating. Honoring the legacy I will be releasing updated versions of all four of them to launch with the Trinity Map Pack =)

Exciting Stuff! =)

The best of luck good sir!

Check your PM's Ender :)

Well ladies and gentleman I have spent several hours researching and trying to get myself up to speed with all these new things. I have come to the conclusion that I have no clue about half of the new things available to me. I want to put together a team for this massive undertaking.

I volunteer as tribute.

If you want I can make sure you are already up to speed, we've already been talking though so I think you know that lol.

I spent most of the night isolating the Trinity's source data/tags directories and building a directory infrastructure while deleting all other baggage. Backing up every inch of my dev pc's hard drive took hours. The machine that made every map in my career was a 2002 compaq running XP and it will be the one to finish the series. Over a ten year period of using the same tagset you can only imagine the myriad of lost and abandoned weapons, vehicles, levels, bipeds, and the like that were never finished or were outdated or just generally terrible that had built up. Slowly but surely organization is happening. So tedious...

So glad to hear about this anniversary update!

On a related note, I've always been surprised that Downflow was never played as much as extinction since, in my opinion, it's better balanced.


Given Extinction's strict Covenant vs. Human theme, I think the ability to pick between Spartan and Elite bipeds would be very fitting.

I don't know if you're aware of this, but whenever you try to use a covenant ground vehicle (ghost, specter, etc.) on the human side, it sinks into the ground and you get stuck without a vehicle. My guess is this is an issue with the map's collision?

This is what exactly Jayden and I thought after we released Downflow but Extinction remained the favorite. Downflow was our main project. Extinction was a beta map made to test the Scarab gameplay that was meant to be my first custom single player map. That project was later abandoned and Extinction's bsp remained a random poorly developed idea. Friends and fans of the Scarab team and people on the forums demanded I release it however. It was rushed and many parts were not finished including the snipers/textures and bsp.



We tried to implement this back in 2006 but it was not even conceivable back then. I re-visited this idea in 2010-2011 during the first time I tried to finish the Trinity maps and I was developing a way using biped permutations but it never succeded. This was always a huge goal for me as Covenant Vs. UNSC was always my running theme and was part of the success of Downflow and Extinction. I would love to see that happen.




HAHAH! YES! The infamous physics glitch. That glitch became present when we introduced the new bridge model to the bsp. It was modeled by a friend of mine at the last minute and he begged and pleaded for me to include it. It would have taken time to attach the model to the terrain properly and so to continue testing and development of the scripting code (which was our biggest scramble to finish) the bridge was just inserted, not attached to the surrounding faces as it should have been. This was always meant to be changed but we ran out of time and had to leave it. It was the famous glitch that we all knew was there but did nothing about. My OCD was enraged but in those days I was less of a perfectionist and I was dying to get the Scarab into people's hands. That's also why the Scarab's physics, weapons, and Camera nodes left something to be desired. Always a race against time. People were hungry for the map and the Scarab. I was out of desire to perfect Extinction as I was focusing on Downflow and the beginnings of the Trinity maps at the time and we never expected Extinction to become the super smash hit that it was.

The anniversary edition will focus on the textures, shaders, tagset, and gameplay balance. I would love to see the bsp for Extinction get touched up and it's ideas finished. With some help I could definitely make that happen, I still have all the source files for everything I ever made.

Anybody interested in assisting or joining the Trinity Development Team, you can add my Skype account (DA)Ender, my email to contact if you don't want to use PM on this forum is sixx.syns@hotmail.com and my cellphone number is 1(403)506-5331 text messages only.

Today I have begun building the Trinity tagset and I'm looking for suggestions for vehicles and weapons. I would also like a nice looking modern HUD. Not sure what to use for bipeds as well. Trying to stick to as high resolution as possible. Post your suggestions below =)
Edited by DA_Ender on Jan 2, 2016 at 09:36 AM

My favorite part of the development process. :0

Off the top of my head:
•The LAAG Warthog was fairly impotent, given the ranges involved. I would suggest beefing it up a bit, replacing the .50 caliber (12.7mm) rotary gun with an autocannon (something in the neighborhood of 20-25mm).
•There are Sparrowhawks, now. These could be suitable replacements for the Skyhawk jets.
•I don't think any have been made available, but if possible, a Rhino tank could be a good replacement for the Scorpion.
•Someone (ImBrokeRU, I think) released a nice gauss rifle a while back. That would fit the theme of heavy, man-portable, long-range anti-armor weapons. The Spartan Laser could fall into this category, as well.
•The assault rifle could be modified, replacing the ammo counter with an electronic scope display and replacing the flashlight with an integral light grenade launcher. This would offer some incentive for people to use it over the various marksman weapons.
•The flatbed Warthogs in the original Extinction were neat, but there wasn't much incentive to use them. Perhaps they could be replaced by troop transport Warthogs.
•A man-portable light machine gun could give infantry a means of ad hoc air defense.
•If Longswords make a return, perhaps the nuclear payload could be replaced by carpet bombing functionality.
•Covenant aerial assets could be supplemented by Banshees (with appropriate modifications to performance), with the Banshees serving as counterparts to the UNSC's fighter and the Seraph functioning as the Covenant's Longsword equivalent.
•The Brute sandbox of weapons and vehicles may help flesh out the Covenant arsenal.

Will post more suggestions when I get a chance.
Edited by Echo77 on Jan 2, 2016 at 10:34 AM

I'm going to try to stray away from taking on new custom content projects. I was more thinking along the lines of completed tags and maps with newer better looking content I can improve on and customize for the Trinity tagset =) WWLinkMasterX, Spiral, and MEGASEAN2812 have given me a great starting point and I was thinking more along these lines. =)

Yes! This is beautiful rifle and its exactly what I'm talkin about =). I was thinking a Battle Rifle with a powerful grenade launcher, a Silenced Assault Rifle which I've already completed, a silenced pistol which is completed too but using the old skin on a slightly modified model, and a silenced SMG (Have several variants of this already but all low resolution textures and they are ancient tags) Need a good looking rocket launcher still as well, and a newer better looking Spartan Laser as the one Jayden and I ported back in the day while for its time was good doesn't compare to the ones today. The covenant weapon is going to be much better if I can find some of the new weapons the later games came up with. If possible I was gonna try to find someone who might be able to put together a reskin of the sniper we used in Coldsnap, as it has a special place in my heart and I'd like to revisit it. For the Covenant loadout, Fuel Rod Guns with fast moving, long range homing projectiles with high damage, low splash damage. The needle beam rifle will return but I need a pretty looking one, and hopefully I can find some of the Reach covenant weapons as they would be great to have. I also need to update all my particles and whatnot as people have made effects look fantastic these days.

Suggestions?

Here is a quick look at my BSP for Xenocide. Everyone will be happy to hear that today I was able to begin work on the scenario as the glitch in the bsp that was haunting my previous builds has been solved!


Edited by DA_Ender on Jan 2, 2016 at 12:05 PM

Battle rifle with grenade launcher could work, but I'm not sure what the best way of mounting it would be. With the assault rifle, it'd be a simple matter of editing the skin to replace the flashlight lens with a muzzle (because superposed, electronically-ignited ammo is a thing, so if you wanted it to be reloadable you could just have rounds/preloaded tubes dropped into the muzzle)

Since Extinction is a very large map, I don't think there's much (if any) need for suppressors, especially when the sound of gunfire doesn't seem to carry very far in CE anyway. The extreme ranges involved also make me question the usefulness of the submachine gun, and as far as the magnum is concerned, a carbine variant like the M6J would probably be the most appropriate.

You're right, the reason I want to keep a stealthy theme is just cause its simply really, really cool. I have been working for hours and run into issues with the old pc. So I'm attempting to transfer everything over to my newer machine and get things underway as the tagset comes together. Basically the weapons other than snipers and anti-aircraft weapons are simply for slayer free for all where spawn points will drop you right beside enemies and and when you infiltrate the flag areas there is closer range chaotic combat that has been quite fun. Hopefully now the switchover will go smoothly and I can put together some images to show you the work in progress.