Update:
Thanks to all the magnificent testing that has been going on, you guys are going to get a very polished product. I had a few people make a few layout suggestions so I am changing those accordingly right now (don't worry, they won't take more than a night
). It isn't like my previous layout redo where it took forever. This is just a minor thing that will make gameplay A LOT more interesting while providing some more cover.
Secondly, thanks to the testing we had I realized Siberia actually was an OVERLY intense map to play on. People were reporting lower frame rates than any map previously due to me going a little overkill on some features and not optimizing the best I could. I am happy to say that I have demolished a lot of this problem in just a few hours of working on it. At the moment, whatever testers were getting previously as their lowest FPS is now +42 frames from lowest value. (previous low while looking at the dish + 42FPS). This is a remarkable improvement so far in FPS and I expect it to only get better. Still working on a few things to improve it even more, but yeah.
Thirdly, weapon spawns are being redone because of poor placement and lack of understanding when I first did them. Because I based them around team spawns balancing (or what I thought was balancing), the map actually played out quite poorly. Thanks to many members of the community (mostly ES), I now have a clearer understanding of how to make it so wherever you spawn you are almost guaranteed to not be stuck with a klobb.
So anyways, these are just a few things that are coming in the next INTERNAL RC2 update that will undergo testing here soon. If everything pans out and starts balancing up, you guys might possibly see a release date show up here on the forums.
Also, please be sure to thank ES for making a model of the observatory dome, snowmen, and snowballs. He really did a nice job with them and he should get some praise for putting in the effort to help me, along with many other things.
Take an easy and more to come later,
Saint