As announced on both the forums, as well as the www.to-crossfire.net site, with the new 1.7 patch for TO:Crossfire comes a new map. The name has been chosen by the community. First by random names, after that, by a poll. The work-in-progress name of OBJ-This will thus be replaced by OBJ-Deluge.


Once There Was a Dream...
The map officially started as a 'boredom' project. Just a thing, a feeling, an idea that was at the back of my mind constantly. To get it out I started mapping. Being inspired by the FarCry game a little, I wanted to create something warm, moody and above all dreamy.

A very rough early version was posted on the development forums, due to an IRC discussion with some of my fellow developers. Enthusiastic reactions fuelled my motivation to make something of the map. OBJ-This.to2 was born. Now my initial thought was to create a sandy canyon with loads of water. Mainly dominated by terrain and less by buildings. Since this is not such an interesting layout option, mainly due to nade-spamming and the optimisation of the map, I decided otherwise. Create a dreamy Arabic-looking little town.

And Then the Dream Continued Even When I Was Awake...
Still recognise certain areas? I admit, it changed dramatically. But that is the beauty of being a level designer; dream, think, map. As you can see, the shadow and dreamy lights are the most attractive features of the map. I didn't want to create a complex map that looks good only because of the details. I wanted to create a map where you can dream about, but above all, play, with joy. The Arabic theme lends itself beautifully to flat rooftops and simple box-like architecture. Ideal for the game that the map is being developed for.

After these shots, I placed the map on our internal distribution network. This means that everyone can download the map and play with it. Now this is where true teamwork comes in. Various people responded to the map, giving hints, tips, ideas and best of all, inspiration.

Teamwork Truly is a Wonder...
As I can't work with a 3D modelling program, I create everything with BSP. We also often use this method: make a final BSP-version and slowly replace everything by mesh. Why? Because of optimisation (rather a better running map then a slow, laggy one) but most of all, because of the details we are able to give with meshes.

Perfect_Storm kicked in here as he gave a good deal of his time to modelling the needed meshes for the map. As he worked, he also put some quick screen shots on the forums. This way the team can judge and think-through the whole process.

  (read more for extra images!!!)

Sorry for the lack of recent updates, between heavy workload, update posts getting lost in mysteries of Joomla and not wanting to crash the news post's party it's been a while.

 So, where do we stand at the moment?

1.7 was going to be a quick fix patch.  Hardly ended up that way.  We have, as previously reported, managed to fix some of the last remaining major issues that have haunted us since day 1, as well as implementing tighter security that should help set players minds at rest that they are playing on fun and fair servers.  The time the patch has taken has been at times frustrating, however I can now say we are pretty much ready to start putting together the release in the next couple of weeks or so (it takes us a week to package and test a final version), we had originally hoped for the end of march, however now it's clear the date will be mid to late April.

A quick list of some of the included work in the patch:

Tweaked gameplay physics
Tweaked weapon handling (snipers, especially)
New weapon sounds
New weapon arms and anims (currently only seen on the AK47, however for 2.0 we will use these improved arms/skins for all warpons)
several special bonus additions that we aren't going to let you know about til release night,
New map, OBJ-This by Sswing'
Several major bugfixes (cornerbug, improved network performance, improved effects handling)
Visual effect improvements
Tracers extended to FAMAS/Galil
More sound fixes
Integrated cheat protection, package security and known exploit blocking.
Co-operation with 3rd party cheat protection providers to bring further server security tools for TOC
Some fun stuff ;)
Improved interface
Improved admin interface
Improved karma deaths
Improved player shadows (scalable for performance including new high detail shadows and uber high detail shadows for players with kick-ass rigs)
Improved player damage system
Improved recoil penalty system
Varied per weapon death messages
Improved weapon indicator bar
Reduced nade damage radius/killzone
Map fixes on several existing maps
Zombies...well, no actually
Improved and optimised smoke effect

There are actually quite a few more things we have achieved that I have forgotten to add there, we'll make sure to get a changelog up as soon as the patch is completed and ready for packaging, as well as keeping you updated on exactly when to expect to get your hands on 1.7