monsterbux

• Offline
• Denmark

Me too!

Now, I'll try my hand at doing one of these! The construction of Meccha: The story

So this is a map with a history as chaotic as the map itself. I was the only constant builder throughout the entire ride. It went through countless macros, styles and concepts Let me sketch it out: 

• Started out as a Week 2 park with Jene/94Noah/Bux.

• It was moved to a Week 5 park with Jene/AVC/mbux - Atomic Cowboy/Fallout/Cyberpunk. AVC Wanted in on the fun, and it needed much more time to be fleshed out. It got swapped with Castello Altovento. 

• Jene shared the happy news of becoming a father again! Meaning his baby got prioritized over H2H (sigh). Leon stepped up to save the day so we now had the Leon/AVC/Bux. 

• Finally, the rule change allowed us to add Saxman to the team, the final boss being AVC/Leon/Bux/Sax

For the theme we always wanted to stay clear of doing exact recreation of IP's like Mad Max. We would generally use inspiration from several sources like Mad Max, Fallout and a million smaller games like Stray, Welcome to Kowloon, Cyperpunk 2077 etc. 

The original proposal was Atomic Cowboy with junk and more junk. We knew pretty early on that we wanted some aspect of 'betting' and 'festival' having merchants ride in on their mechs, but it took a lot of time to refine the concept.

Very early on while r1 was going on, I started practicing with CSO, getting the very first Mech fleshed out: 

 image.png (67.58KB)
downloads: 58

 image2.png (175.58KB)
downloads: 75

In the end, he was adapted to a more 'Junky' theme rather than the wooden atomic cowboy. This was only the beginning of shitting out mechs and assets since I wanted to leave the macro for the Pros. AVC finally came in Swinging after VERB! The first macro was based on a Wasteland desert with a giant city in a pit of rockwork. The battle arena was meant to be a minor part in the back corner of the map:  

 IMG_5515_2.png (2.23MB)
downloads: 88
 image3.png (265.12KB)
downloads: 85

We got pretty far with this macro. At some point I suggested 'Mecchapotamia' as a name (lol). Leon replied 'Meccha is kinda funny on its own lol'. Two messages later 'the question is, do we want to make mechs our entire personality or not'. The rest is history: Have the whole concept be centered around the mechs, and a giant arena as a focal point. 

Now, it would be a shame to say we all just built happily from there. The macro went through countless versions I will not bother you with. Let's just say that readability was a huge struggle.

This also meant that we didn't have much of a build flow on the map for a long time (other than assets). Macro was unkind to us, the style was so difficult to nail, and the Leon/AVC duo was pretty burned out after VERB and Screameasy. This map had an incredible ability to just mentally stun us all. We would all open the map with intent, motivation and happiness only to close it an hour later stating 'I didn't know what to do'. Even as Saxman joined, the same thing happened.

One faithful day we all had just had it with this map. There were three weeks left at this point and we all started panicking. Nothing was readable, everything sucks (you all know the process). Fortunately, AVC and Leon are absolute pros: 'Change the ground texture to sand. Don't do anything else until that is done'. I'm not gonna lie, I couldn't see how this would fix anything. I was ready to delete half the map being at my wits end. Ground texture was changed, nonetheless. 

Boy, was I wrong! It changed the entire nature of the map. From that point on, we pretty much just built in a flow. We had tons of assets ready to paste in and find its space. It became the Meccha we know today. 

So who did what? It's actually really hard splitting up this map into who did what, because we all worked on all areas at some point. However, here's the rough idea:

• AVC: Garbage corner with giant round centerpiece over the furnace, most of the tall structures, Coaster station, go-karts + station,  Half-pipe

• Leon: Hammer Game + Sign, Entrance area with three towers, oil river, plane, detailing dumpster diver, Meccha Metro + station

• Leon/AVC: Arena structure and stands around the arena,  dueling coasters, a ton of amazing signs, pathing 

• Monsterbux: Mechs, Dodgems, Ferris Wheel structure, Small archy assets (like container homes and trashpiles), Mech bay interior + roof and sides, peep scenes

• Saxman: General Mech Bay structure, rockwork supporting coaster in the back, added VIP stands around arena

• Shared: rockwork, pasting, detailing, crunch

Signs: 

Leon: comet lounge, jazz air, inferno circuit, Octopussy, Cinnabar (with AVC), dumpster diver, Yucca steakhouse, Cafe, and Hammer game signage 

AVC: PC issue sign, Atomic cowboy lounge, Junkyard Karts, Hotel, Meccha under zero g roll, Halfpipe, Meccha on tower, Cinnabar (with leon), the Overlook 

Monsterbux: Mech VS LED, Mech scoreboard

Hacks: 

94Noah: Ferris Wheel, Dumpster Diver

Mr. Brightside: Helped figure out the spacing of the leaderboard text so it lines up top to bottom

CTR’s: 

Tolsimir: Animated billboards

There is probably a ton more that could be said about this park, and I may have missed a few things. Hopefully it somewhat gave an insight into the process! 

Before I end completely, I want to mention that AVC, Leon and Saxman are absolutely amazing partners. I am not only so happy with the end product we came up with, but also the great teamwork we had during this build. The fact that we simply cannot make a dot map is proof of this. 

What a ride. 

Thanks for the comments guys, and for helping us to silver! 

I do agree with all your points of critique, and I think the areas you mention certainly are a product of the speedrunning we had to do to get it done in time. 

I'm so happy Levels brought us in to help on this project. Doing different little themes was so much fun and just what I needed at the time. 

Role: Player

Games: ORCT

Availability: Away 6 days in June, may have a bit more vacation TBD (1 week) during summer. Otherwise should be ok.