Yes, they spin, and that's where the fun begins. The two 9-blade fans are positioned lower and spin slightly faster than the two 6-blade fans. This is important to remember. Adjacent fans spin in opposite directions.
Gametypes: I've only fixed the spawns for Oddball. Entity refused to view the BSP, making all further spawn edits a prohibitive hassle. This map was built almost entirely by employing my hard-fought knowledge of Cartesian and polar/spherical coordinate systems, and a lot of FTP-ing. I'd love to add KOTH and CTF, but that's a crapload of coordinates to calculate and enter by hand. I might do it if enough people pester me though. As it stands, this would be a great map for slayer, oddball, juggernaut, and zombies.
Weapons: There are no weapons or ammo on the map. I didn't want to clutter the space or the few stable XY surfaces, or manually edit all the itmc spawns. Instead, the less crappy guns (by my judgment) have been quasi-infinite ammo-tized. This may seem cheesy, but trust me, you've really got your act together if you can unload ten clips or kill two other people before you die on this map. It plays very quickly. Short range weapons work best.
Due to a deliberate quirk in the Halo physics, the Master Chief maintains his yaw, pitch and roll even while he should be rotating out of them. I presume this is so that you don't feel like your reticle has been hijacked by Isaac Newton. Anyway, what this means is that you automatically counter-rotate to maintain your YPR, and keeping the reticle on a fixed point in space is easy. This makes scopes very cheap and unbalanced, so they've been removed. Additionally, magnum bullets do a bit more damage. The one clip wax factor is in effect, as it should be. Bungie came so close to not botching the magnum.
Here are some weapon combinations I suggest for this map. Set them in your quick options or game type. It's what everyone does anyway, right?
battle rifle + magnum
carbine + magnum
carbine only
magnum + magnum
Shotguns / swords (lunge melee at your own risk)
ROCKETS
In addition to the above guns, the plasma pistol and plasma rifle have also been infinite ammo-tized. Nades are worthless here unless you're really good at sticking people with plasmas, while both you and your target are on counter-rotating merry-go-rounds. In that case, you might wish you had them. TDB.
Gameplay tips: Make a custom game type where the suicide respawn time penalty is off and lives are unlimited, because you are going to die die die on this map. Even once you've figured out the reference frames and have a feel for the funky Halo physics, you will be taking many a flying leap. Everything moves except the claw below the center carousel, and if you end up on the claw, it means you have eaten your last can of beans this side of Oblivion.
Still, it's great fun. Just expect that the suicide tolls will be higher than usual.
Physics time
When traversing the fans, it's much safer and more productive if you move radially inward (toward the center), where the blades are closer together, their translational velocity is lower, and your angular displacement is greater. Then move back outward again to end up where you want. Jumping from the ends of the blades while trying to move any direction other than radially outward will probably result in a long, long drop, but not necessarily. Keep in mind that by the time you are at the end of a blade, your translational velocity (tangential to the circle) will definitely alter your trajectory. You must compensate for this. For example, let's say you're at the center of a fan that is spinning counterclockwise, and you want to go straight ahead, jumping from the fan blade to the center carousel. Here's what you have to do: Look at the blade that is 90 degrees to the right of where you want to end up, and run toward it. It will move maybe 30 degrees by the time you get to the end of it. Then run radially outward (down the blade) and jump from that blade BEFORE it gets where you want to be, because it's going to be throwing you to the left when you jump from it. Kind of funky, eh? In order to go straight ahead, you have to move to the center, go to the right, and jump earlier than you'd expect. It will take some practice. If you try to jump against the rotational direction of the fan, you will probably fail, especially on the two 9-blade fans. For the same reasons, you'll jump farther than you might expect if you jump tangentially to the circle in same the direction it's rotating.Huh?
Just play the thing.
The other big clue is that you want to jump such that something will be under you when you land. I know it sounds obvious, but it means you may have to jump toward what is currently a gaping hole in space, reckoning beforehand that a fan blade will spin underneath you at the proper moment.
By design, it is not possible to jump from a lower fan to the adjacent higher fan. The height differential and orientation of the blades make it impossible, so stop trying.
The high ground is more strategically valuable and should not be so easily reached. The tradeoff for strategic advantage is that you must flex skillz and risk your life to get there. Wow! Balance.Try it. You will die a lot, then you'll start to figure it out, and then you'll die some more. Don't get frustrated.
Credits:
Entity 1.6. It's not perfect, but for everything it can do, you can't beat the price.
UndeadGhoul for his tutorial on active scenery.
Headshotmasta, for graciously supplying the sky/ambience/fog, and many top shelf mods in general.
NOTE: THERE IS NO SKIN. I HAVE NO INTEREST IN SKINNING.
I AM NOT GOING TO SKIN.
I AM NOT GOING TO SKIN.
I AM NOT GOING TO SKIN.
Download from filefront, because the halomods server didn't like my patch. I'll try again later.
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