Obviously snowy textures are annoying to a bunch of people, because they are so much more bright and with retina burning quasi nuclear configs being commonplace the problem is only compounded, most clanned players seem to prefer more temperate terrain in maps, and if it can be done well then I can't see a reason not to change the look of the map a little!
If you want to look at the map with less offensive textures you can get a rough idea of it's looks by downloading the files for "fueldump springtime" and testing railgun on a locally hosted server, it's not a perfect solution but it's immediately clear what a difference this could make.
The main pro of this is making the map easier on the eyes.
On the other hand using a skin pack wont change the snow coming down and erupting out of the ground, although this can be disabled by simply turning off the effects, then you have to consider that it would need every admin to upload the pk3 and every player to download it - that is the big stumbling point that I can envisage.
It may be possible to change the textures in radiant but this would need a lot of work to get the FPS back to a useable setting unless you can get the original .map from Splash Damage as reverse engineering the level causes problems in the editor, I'm not sure on how possible it is to change the textures with map scripts as of yet but I'll try to look into it some time soon :)
Aside from the visual aspects, the fact that it is an unedited stock map may proove to be a barrier to entry to competitions as ET becomes (hopefully evermore) streamlined and offensive, that said it may be possible to make some changes to the map which would convince admins, essentially creating sw_railgun.
I have thought about some changes that could be made and created some very shabby images to help demonstrate them, I'm not advocating using all of these in one but each of them could be viable..
If you want to look at the map with less offensive textures you can get a rough idea of it's looks by downloading the files for "fueldump springtime" and testing railgun on a locally hosted server, it's not a perfect solution but it's immediately clear what a difference this could make.
The main pro of this is making the map easier on the eyes.
On the other hand using a skin pack wont change the snow coming down and erupting out of the ground, although this can be disabled by simply turning off the effects, then you have to consider that it would need every admin to upload the pk3 and every player to download it - that is the big stumbling point that I can envisage.
It may be possible to change the textures in radiant but this would need a lot of work to get the FPS back to a useable setting unless you can get the original .map from Splash Damage as reverse engineering the level causes problems in the editor, I'm not sure on how possible it is to change the textures with map scripts as of yet but I'll try to look into it some time soon :)
Aside from the visual aspects, the fact that it is an unedited stock map may proove to be a barrier to entry to competitions as ET becomes (hopefully evermore) streamlined and offensive, that said it may be possible to make some changes to the map which would convince admins, essentially creating sw_railgun.
I have thought about some changes that could be made and created some very shabby images to help demonstrate them, I'm not advocating using all of these in one but each of them could be viable..
