This is my first attempt at creating a map that's explicitly made for "King of the Hill" play. I've almost always designated some obvious polygon as a "Hill" in my previous net maps--basically as a courtesy to anyone who might want to try them that way--but quite honestly, none of them really ever struck me as very successful in KOH mode (or "Kill The Carrier", for that matter). Since the hill was usually easy to get to, everyone had to head straight there, and most games just devolved into a bunch of guys with one pistol each and no more ammo, running around punching each other. Blecch.
I think the most important aspect of a good KOH map is the path you have to take to get to the hill. That path needs to have two qualities: a) it takes some effort to get there; b) you're exposed to fire from anyone already on the hill (and vice versa); and c) you pick up weapons along the way. (OK, so there's three qualities--what do I know.) I've tried to express all of these ideas in this one map, and it seems to have turned out pretty well. Getting to the hill involves a quick but nimble run across a couple of platforms, with an intermediate step that gives you a very clear, relatively protected shot at anyone on the hill. Once on the hill, you've got to keep an eye out in two opposite directions for challengers (assuming there's not already someone with a shotgun to your left temple).
All the ammo's on the ground floor, and the weapons are all on the way up (super goodies are down in the pools, if you can spare the time). The path to the hill, in case it's not immediately obvious, is:
Up one of the corner stairs
Jump to the facing machine gun ledge (this does not count as "hill" time, but you might want to try and clear some space for your imminent arrival)
Jump again to the side stairs with the missile launchers, etc.
Turn left or right and jump one last time onto the hill
Once you've mastered it, it's actually pretty easy to do in one quick run (as long as one of your colleagues doesn't rudely interrupt your concentration).
One quick point: the two little side alcoves on the top level do actually count towards "hill" time--take your chances there if you want, but they tend to end up with a lot of raw meat on the floor by the end of a game.
This map supports any number of players from 2 to 8 pretty well, although it does make for a much different game with more players. One-on-one works nicely (try it with radar off), three to five is ideal (it's not all that big a space), and 6 to 8 makes for a carnage fest with a high DPM and low hill times (which isn't necessarily all that bad).
I've included a copy of the physics model that we use here for network play. You certainly don't have to use it to enjoy this map, but it's what I used when I designed it and what we use when we play it. While the weapons have all been tweaked a bit, the most relevant differences for this map are the slight increase in speed and the fact that the maximum legal step height has been bumped up--both of these help make it easier to jump across gaps like the one in this map. See the "Read Me" file for a more specific description of the changes. (I have taken care, though, to make sure you can definitely play this map with the standard M2 physics model. Making it up to the hill just becomes a little more of a challenge, which actually works out pretty well.)
One last note on performance--I actually designed this map on my '030 at home, but it definitely plays a lot better on PowerMacs (what can I say, I like polygons).
Other original maps I've made and distributed:
5D Arena
Rampfhitheatre
Space Tower
Water Sports
About my "tribute" maps:
I've also recently done several M2 maps that are remakes of some of our favorite Marathon 1.0 net maps. These include:
Another Arena?! (by Mark Brooks)
Billy! (by John Howard)
Cross Guard (by Kendall Redburn)
Hunter Prey (by Kendall Redburn)
Killing Fields (by Butch Massoni)
Palace (by Kendall Redburn)
All of these maps (and many, many more) are available at the excellent Marathon HyperArchive NW (http://www.ese.ogi.edu/pub/entertainment/marathon/), maintained by Claude Errera.
About our company:
LTI is a software design company with a few new products out--check out the web page for our upcoming product Qin (pronounced "Ching") at:
http://pathfinder.com/twep/products/qin/
as well as for the multimedia version of Bartlett's Book of Familiar Quotations:
