So I swapped the elevator for a series of wind tunnels (2 up and 1 down on each team side). Also made a new room that holds them, including a ramp for rants to get up in to base easily. The wind tunnels right now are a series of tubes (patch meshes) with a gravity of 0 inside and target_push for directional push. It all works quite nicely. The 0 gravity isn't needed, but it makes it slightly smoother. Some parts of the pipe are transparent others opaque. I even had to fix some invisible hangups that (rarely) occured between the structural parts with some invisible player_clip fittings inside the pipes. I've hit some snags though, firstly wallwalking aliens are not transported correctly using target_push (they simply stick to the wall) and jetpacks can simply hover inside. Needless to say that'll turn into a pesky hiding spot for both sides. The alien bit is easily solved by using a 'slick' shader, but the jets are more problematic. I could slap on slick and disallow jetpack buying, but that would be a lazy solution. And though the map has a jetard problem I think I can have some alien solutions that would actually make aerial combat fun.
I'll probably keep the wind tunnel concept but try to make some invisible elevator that forces stuff through. Gonna try making it so it's impossible for stuff to get crushed, we'll see...
Here's some screenshot. Graphics are still wip. I kind of regret slapping on those textures early on, it slows down the layout process. From a mapping perspective there's certainly upsides to only using 1 texture
Don't know when I'll release the next version, I need to fix the tunnel thing first, and soup up the outside area somewhat.
The babyblue (lol) textures are for humans, aliens will have red.
