The Lunarbase Revamp

Lunarbase is a level we all know and love. It was one of the teams first levels released back in Build 16 created by Chairwalker. Chairwalker also created our SBD model, Korriban, Yavin Assault, as well as weapons such as the A280, Projectile Rifle, and PLX-1. For the most part, Lunarbase hasn't been updated anywhere near as much as some of our other popular levels like DOTF have been over the years. Only fairly recently was an additional route from tunnel to the main doorway of side was added.

Years ago Shadriss started work on a visual only update to Lunarbase. Sadly real life had its priorities and he needed to leave the team before he could finish it and some other projects he was working on. I have been sitting on an outdated version of that visual update for years and never managed to get the most recent version from him. Now, why am I talking about this and not about changes to DOTF? Well, I wanted a small side project while I thought about some of the changes I wanted to do and to take a small few week break from working on the same thing as I had been since last summer. I saw the old Lunarbase work in progress in my level folder and thought I would make an attempt to give it some life as a short term project. I wanted to bring some life back into Lunar and update it to look a bit more standard Imperial in some aspects. Even including some minor touches and ideas from Jedi Outcast single player levels.

So without further adieu, lets go over some of the changes shall we?

Rebel Spawn
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Rebel Spawn has been made a fair bit larger to accommodate some of the visual design changes. I wanted to bring the imperial style hangars we see on Star Destroyers, the Death Star, various bases in the Rebels TV show into Lunarbase. As a result of that change I needed to shift the ship back away from the main door a bit, shift spawns to be more uniformly spaced (a majority are now closer to main/side), and make the catwalk area purely visual. RIP catwalk once again. These changes also end up adding some cover around both doorways that can be used if the hangar is about to be breached.

Storage Room
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The storage room was expanded quite a bit and a secondary door from hangar was added. The goal was to bring some of this area into the main hangars gameplay region allowing people to move in and out of both areas once either of the consoles were hacked. The second hack to open these doors has also been made much more obvious. I also modified both the stairways and the elevator to flow better onto the upper area. It always bothered me having to go up those stairs and make a 180 degree turn to continue. The elevator is now more centralized within the room and can be accessed from both upper walkways when used. This also allows for an escape route on the upper right walkway rather than getting trapped in some situations if you don't have the ability to hop over the railings safely.

Doing those changes results in the Rebel team getting to the fight faster and smoother than before. Imperial side also had a similar but less drastic change that we will talk about shortly.

Main Hangar
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Now the Main Hangar is where we see a large majority of the layout changes to Lunarbase. We see added cover on both side walkways to help shield and protect from sniper fire, as well as less precise grenades and rockets. You can see the hangar side effect of increasing the size of the storage area. You can also see that the upper walkway area on the imperial side has been pushed back and the general size of the hangar increased in the long direction with the addition of a TIE bomber for use as additional cover and vertical play. That side has also been drastically expanded and numerous cargo containers added to allow for more play and cover in the area. If you look carefully, there is also a door on the upper walkway area. This door goes into the main hallway area and is only open to Imperials before secondary objective is completed giving them much quicker access to the upper walkway area. The elevator also now starts in the up position to add additional cover when coming out of the doorway.

The secondary objective has been put in a more centralized location making it directly in the path of either team to fight on. Rather than a place to go after the fight is over. The stairway down from the walkways is also more centralized and accessible from both sides and comes out down below the control room.

These changes thus far have lead to some more interesting, and more even fights in the hangar with a lot quicker travel time between each of the locations.

Control Room
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As part of making it a more central location in the hangar and a place to fight over expanding the control room was a necessity. adding cover in the form of consoles in the center of the room and some thick cover around each of the doorways. Currently Jedi and Sith can also use their lightsabers to break through the front windows of the control room as either an attack or escape route. So make sure it is safe before attempting to complete the secondary objective!

Imperial Main
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Much of the Imperial side of main remains. Layout wise there is only the addition of the door to the upper walkway in hangar. The rest is mainly visual changes and very minor cover additions.

Central Route & Vents
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Like the Imp side of main the general layout remains unchanged. However due to the addition of the stair way in Hangar below the control room I had to make a minor vertical change to a part of the room as well as moving some boxes and changing vents. Vents are also slightly larger now and much shorter of a route.

Side Route & Tunnel
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Side route remains largely the same with some minor cover additions along a few of the walls. However tunnel saw some more changes. Pillars have been added as minor cover that covers about half of a players body. A minor box Rebel side has been added. I intentionally increased the height of the tunnel to give players some more room to move, but also to preserve a lot of the bounce shot potential when reflecting blasters off of the glass. However, the additional pillars do prevent some of the low angle bounces so that will take some adjusting to.

Imperial Spawn & Objective
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Layout wise this area is largely unchanged with pretty much all the changes being visual. A little bit of cover has been added in the imperial spawn room and the position of the generator has been adjusted slightly. There are many that feel the objective area could use some more tweeks as well but sadly that was out of the scope for this project. Maybe we can make some changes here in the future.

Layout
Lower and Upper layers.
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Look to see the updated version of Lunarbase out in the next few weeks!
 
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Dunno how this will feel gameplay-wise, but I really like what you did there, mace. I especially like the generator - that's some really cool looking generator. You also captured really well the imperial feel. I felt like really looking at episode 4 death star or the jedi outcast imperial bases. I think the consoles give you this feel the most.

Are there going to be some visual effects to live things up? E.g. a squadron of 3 tie figthers flying over tunnel once in a while, lightning/energy field over the "cables" that are behind glass, etc.?
And what about imperial stormtroopers killing poor rebel soldier once map ends? :D
 

MaceMadunusus

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Shadriss did the generator, I just textured it. But yeah it turned out pretty well.

The tie fighter that flies over in the current map is still there. I probably won't add anymore unless I figure out one if the issues I am having with DOTF (I made some droid starfighters fly over in that as well but they weren't cooperating). No energy for the cables though.

The end round cinematics are still there, but they need to be adjusted in position a little bit. Still a bit a ways from release so there is time to do that still.
 
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This looks really good, but I have to say, I don't really like new DOTF a lot. I did at first, but after the cool new visuals wore off, it was just..... meh. I feel like I loved the old obj so much more. It was fun playing as rebs and barging in and shooting down some imperials. New obj is just boring. Could you bring back the door with the panel that needs destroyed to open it?
 

MaceMadunusus

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The panel and door will not be returning. I will be making other adjustments though. Including to the objective area.
 

MaceMadunusus

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Can you at least add back in old one? New one has been out for a while.

I said in my post in your thread minimum 4 months. And that is 4 months after a change to dotfv2. It has only been 1.5 months since then and will reset with the next major patch since I have changes for hangar and throne room coming.
 
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I said in my post in your thread minimum 4 months. And that is 4 months after a change to dotfv2. It has only been 1.5 months since then and will reset with the next major patch since I have changes for hangar and throne room coming.
2.5 MONTHS AND MY BABY'S COMING HOME.
 

Lessen

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Speaking of 2.5, it's been about 2.5 weeks since this thread was posted, and the thread claimed the map would be out in the "next few weeks."

I think of "few" as capping out at around 3 or maybe 4 at the most, after that you're getting into "couple" territory. Any updated estimate on when we can play this rad-as-fuck map? Will it be pushed back a bit and bundled with the new Dxun map (just announced at "new few weeks" range) in some larger patch with other stuff like balance changes and bug fixes? Or patched in in a smaller patch?

*prod prod prod prod prod*

i hunger (to explore a new map/layout)
 

MaceMadunusus

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I think of "few" as capping out at around 3 or maybe 4 at the most, after that you're getting into "couple" territory. Any updated estimate on when we can play this rad-as-fuck map? Will it be pushed back a bit and bundled with the new Dxun map (just announced at "new few weeks" range) in some larger patch with other stuff like balance changes and bug fixes? Or patched in in a smaller patch?

For me anyway. Couple = 2. Few = 3-5, Several = 5-10, etc. Of course you can use several, many, etc in different ways. This is just how I use it. But I am pretty sure few always > couple.

I think of "few" as capping out at around 3 or maybe 4 at the most, after that you're getting into "couple" territory. Any updated estimate on when we can play this rad-as-fuck map? Will it be pushed back a bit and bundled with the new Dxun map (just announced at "new few weeks" range) in some larger patch with other stuff like balance changes and bug fixes? Or patched in in a smaller patch?

Dxun, Launcher, Lunar, some other unannounced things that will have their own news posts, and more will all likely be in the same patch.

Other things that should be included (linking cause I am not going to type it all): Star Forge Bug Fixes | MaceMadunusus on Patreon Duel of the Fates updates | MaceMadunusus on Patreon
 

Lessen

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Thanks for the reply :D That view of "couple" vs "few" certainly makes sense. I feel like it's sort of a shame that everything will be bundled together. I mean, it'll have big impact all being released at once, but it also means the more-done stuff gets pushed back until the less-done stuff is done. But I'm sure the dev team's thought through the options and picked Big Explosive Patches over Small Frequent Patches deliberately. I'm definitely looking forward to it :D :D
 

MaceMadunusus

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This next patch is delayed a bit due to the leadership transition, holidays, new release schedule prep, the fact that we blew our load with most of our "finished" stuff leading up to the movie release, and wanting to time new release with new launcher to avoid problems of current launcher.

I am also timing how i do all of my work with that release schedule. Lunar isn't 100% finished yet but its like 99% finished and I have a few things left to do but because those are less crucial tasks and release is still a bit away I am focusing on the other things (like dotf above) that needed its changes to get tested plenty before hand.
 

Lessen

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@MaceMadunusus Heck, thanks again for all the communicativeness. we do not deserve this dev team

but mb2 deserves this dev team
 
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New Lunarbase:
- There is a spot on that allows you to get out of the map if you go aide (with duals again),
- Bomber is super ugly, go with Hexodious idea or maybe a new model,
- Main hallway leading to Generator is till a clusterfuck favoring gunners too much,
- Windows are cancer with lot of people (but make the round last 10 seconds longer when last guy on enemy team blasts the window and dies, so suicide attacks are more relible).
 
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