mge_castaway_v1 finally released!
Go check it out at either Gamebanana, Steam Workshop, or download it directly.
Hopefully will be added to servers soon. And when that happens, please submit any feedback to this thread, would be appreciated a lot.
Finally tried this out, from a gameplay standpoint i have no major complaints so far. The arenas play how i expected them to and are a lot of fun.
Biggest complaint from me is the asteroid skybox on every map. That's stupid. It looks tacky and weird. Keep the skyboxes natural for what the map is supposed to be. Undermining the unique aesthetic of every map to show how much we heckin love asteroid is retarded.
Remove the skybox gimmick and keep adding arenas and when we have enough this can replace default MGE as far as im concerned.
Gabber wrote: Wed Apr 08, 2026 4:30 amFinally tried this out, from a gameplay standpoint i have no major complaints so far. The arenas play how i expected them to and are a lot of fun.
Biggest complaint from me is the asteroid skybox on every map. That's stupid. It looks tacky and weird. Keep the skyboxes natural for what the map is supposed to be. Undermining the unique aesthetic of every map to show how much we heckin love asteroid is retarded.Remove the skybox gimmick and keep adding arenas and when we have enough this can replace default MGE as far as im concerned.
The 2d skybox is map wide, it has to be the same for all arenas
random wrote: Wed Apr 08, 2026 10:19 amGabber wrote: Wed Apr 08, 2026 4:30 amFinally tried this out, from a gameplay standpoint i have no major complaints so far. The arenas play how i expected them to and are a lot of fun.
Biggest complaint from me is the asteroid skybox on every map. That's stupid. It looks tacky and weird. Keep the skyboxes natural for what the map is supposed to be. Undermining the unique aesthetic of every map to show how much we heckin love asteroid is retarded.Remove the skybox gimmick and keep adding arenas and when we have enough this can replace default MGE as far as im concerned.
The 2d skybox is map wide, it has to be the same for all arenas
Makes sense. I guess i never noticed this in default MGE because all the maps there are daytime so it's not apparent. Meh. Guess it'll do then, but playing on space/night hydro/doomsday feels weird.
random wrote: Wed Apr 08, 2026 10:19 amGabber wrote: Wed Apr 08, 2026 4:30 amFinally tried this out, from a gameplay standpoint i have no major complaints so far. The arenas play how i expected them to and are a lot of fun.
Biggest complaint from me is the asteroid skybox on every map. That's stupid. It looks tacky and weird. Keep the skyboxes natural for what the map is supposed to be. Undermining the unique aesthetic of every map to show how much we heckin love asteroid is retarded.Remove the skybox gimmick and keep adding arenas and when we have enough this can replace default MGE as far as im concerned.
The 2d skybox is map wide, it has to be the same for all arenas
What's funny about asteroid's skybox is it's actually a 3D skybox and even black void in it is a spherical prop, so are stars and nebula and so on. Even original asteroid technically uses gold rush's skybox, you can see it with r_3dsky 0. Meaning I could just assign all other map's skybox brushes to toolsskybox2d, which would just default them to another, daytime skybox. this might introduce weird look to asteroid though since light_environment (light emitting from skybox) is the same on all the maps, so asteroid would have light mismatching the skybox or glow of that yellow light thing in it's skybox.
I am not going to replace skybox however, because this is the first time I am even hearing such a complaint while many others previously adored asteroid's skybox, I also believe it makes map unique because no other map really has that (or can since, again, asteroid's skybox is more complex than normal skybox, where you have to simply paste name of a skybox in a box on map properties), and if you see a screenshot of the map you can instantly tell the weird skybox, you can tell instantly it was taken on mge_castaway instead of any other map. Basically, I decided that if all maps are to have one skybox, it should be asteroid's because it's visually interesting, cool, looks good on a lot of maps and is a pretty rare sight, not just because "we heckin' love asteroid".
I also chose asteroid's skybox because some old custom maps for more wacky gamemodes in half life, cs1.6 etc games used to have space skyboxes that might've or might've not fitted them, so I decided to also have that, because again, it looks cool, and I don't really need to preserve any visuals since it's mge map after all, if anything I think space skybox only makes it all look prettier and more visually distinct.
And yeah even if I ran all of them on 2d skybox, it still would have to be only one, wouldn't it be weirder to play nightfall with hydro's skybox or hydro with goldrush's skybox? Minor thing but it looks weird, just as on mge_training_v8 which uses granary skybox for all the maps, so badlands light looks redder than it should.
If you have issues with this skybox you can just run r_3dsky 0, I am pretty sure it works with sv_cheats 0.
Gabber wrote: Wed Apr 08, 2026 4:30 amFinally tried this out, from a gameplay standpoint i have no major complaints so far. The arenas play how i expected them to and are a lot of fun.
Biggest complaint from me is the asteroid skybox on every map. That's stupid. It looks tacky and weird. Keep the skyboxes natural for what the map is supposed to be. Undermining the unique aesthetic of every map to show how much we heckin love asteroid is retarded.Remove the skybox gimmick and keep adding arenas and when we have enough this can replace default MGE as far as im concerned.
I may add all the arenas from mge_training_v8 to completely override mge_training or if there will be a big support for that, but I already crammed existing maps greatly and there are some artifacts from that (eg hydro's dish has weird lighting especially on the middle radar tower itself), but other than that I don't think it needs any other arenas, there's already more arenas than there can be people to populate them (17 proper maps, 2 locked behind elo, 7 "special" gamemodes (bball, endif, etc)) while duels can only take up maximum 12 at a time (12 pairs of people, not considering bball which would need 4 people). Also limit for maximum amount of possible arenas is 65 btw.