Hey guys, forgive me if this is in the wrong section or a silly question, but why hasn't anyone done any portrait style scenes, instead of all the landscape?
The reason I ask is I'm working on one (portrait) and haven't run into any problems yet, and all I have to do now is the scripting....

IMO there's a lot more to be done with height than width.... Having cover so someone can't set two things to free and just use them over and over until the game's finished.... Other neat things like people who live underground and such.... Crawling and clawing their way to the surface, showing the weak, squishy surface dwellers what real power is. Power is more than holding explosions.

Also, I was thinking of trying something else, can you have something like.... a whole scene set in a cave in space? Like inside a meteor? And because it's hollow, when you're outside, you walk like normal, but when you're inside, instead of walking around the center, you're walking around the inside of the outer perimeter? 'Course, that last bit would probably take a bit of scripting more than anything else, as long as you can create the scene....

Sorry, it's just that I feel like everyone's being creative with everything but scenes.... And don't get me wrong, the new actors/weapons/etc everyone's making are all very cool....


EDIT: I might have to do something with the underground dweller thing.... You're sent to an area seemingly devoid of life with a large underground cave and only a small amount of gold near the surface, but when you decide to take the gold from the cave, the crab people come forth.... Craaaab people crraaaaab people....
Give them a 'turret' like the mechanical actors but only has a certain radius (or maybe have some "spitters" too.... their way of digging?) like the shovel, but it does a large amount of damage, give them a hard shell that's only weak against a couple specific weapons like the digger or some other cutting style weapons.... And obviously, we'd have to make a new emitter for when they're flying.... Wings instead of sparks/fire....

The problem with walking on anything but a level surface is that Data hasn't made actors quite that flexible. If you try out TLB's gravitation scene, you'll see that Actors do not rotate to gravity, but stay in the "upright" position unless they're being thrown about.

The reason most people don't make portrait style landscapes is that most people don't like to fight in enclosed spaces. If confined, they'll tend to go to the surface and hit things coming in from above.

You are certainly free to try it though, perhaps you can create a movement.

Data's walking system relies on actor's torsos automatically staying upright. Try and modify it with Lua and either A: it doesn't work or B: it straight up crashes your game. It's not designed to happen within the game, and probably won't be fixed unless Data sees a need to. Also, crabs can rotate somewhat more freely, but not past 90 degrees (which is why they can climb walls)

I see. I was actually thinking of LUA when I was reading about TLB's scene, if it's the one I think it is. (The one with the planet in the center and gravity is pulled to the center of the planet instead of down?)
Very cool idea, one I doubt I would have put as much time and effort into it as he did.

I guess I'll just have to make my portrait scenes really cool and hope it catches on.... I'll be sure to post it up when I'm finished. Share and share alike, neh?

For Christ's sake, It' Lua not LUA. It is NOT an acronym. It does NOT stand for anything. (Just one of those small things that piss some people off...)

Anyways, unless it's a REALLY wide portrait, or some sort of tunnel network (like anthill), then I will have to wait to be proven wrong.

Forgive me for capitalizing it. I do know it's not an acronym and is pronounced Loo-uh, as well as it made its first appearance in 1993.
I've just always seen it written out as LUA, not Lua. Nothing explosion-worthy, imo. Call me semi-ignorant and move on.

See the funny thing is when the people who take the time to correct you end up flaming you and saying "by the way change your behavior so no one flames you"

hypocrisy is great A++

numgun had some portrait maps in BW. i personally love them, and intend on making some for zombies, or at least maps with tall bases. the only problem with them is the AI sucks at anything to do with verticality, so while you can shoot your guy up a shaft with ease and blow someones face off they end up grinding their guy's face against the concrete until you come around and euthanaze them. this means that you either end up camping down the bottom of the map and blowing everyone away, or getting sick of the lack of enemies and sitting at the top of the map shooting their dropships down. just make sure the scene is short enough for there to be enemies feasibly at any given point.

I'm pretty sure I made most of the portrait maps for BW mercenaries, though I can't say for certain I made them all...

the reason people don't make more of them is it doesn't work too well when placing terrain frostings, terrain debris, or bunkers for the most part. If you have ever tried making a vertical wall of dirt while using the default gold terrain debris you would notice that the gold frequently sticks out into the air, which is very unprofessional.

viewtopic.php?f=24&t=14082
in this mod there is one map (Quarry) which is portrait style and I believe it illustrates the problems of gold poking out of the walls pretty well, and it has sloped walls.

The other problem is with the frostings, and as you may have noticed, in the new vanilla maps there is a mysterious lack of grass anywhere that is even slightly underneath an overhang. This isn't as much of an issue, but it is slightly frustrating especially in maps with lots of platforms.

I noticed some of this.... When I was first working on the map, all the frostings, as well as gold, would be in a straight line above the topmost point of earth. This doesn't bother me for one scene I'm working on, as it's a one-man infiltrates with what he has and nothing else type of scene.
I'll have to check it out for the other one though....

To fix the terrain frosting you can just use null background-only bunkermodules.

The problem with bunker modules is you have to make them

God forbid you have to make something from scratch ...

Well, for a first go, I can't say making it from scratch is the best idea.
Copying and editing to fit your desires is a really good way of figuring out how or why it works the way it does.

Empty bunker modules are easy. Just make the shape you want to cut out from background color (copied from another bunker module) and use two more pink squares of the same color. Voila.