Shapes a51

a51 contains very few changes, as the primary goal is to try and see what little things I do can solve the "eternally fighting at mid" problem that's been occurring in playtesting.

• Removed a bunch of health packs and ammo packs around mid and in the central transition to mid.
• Reverted the upside down pyramid to the smaller a49 size, while kept the top part from a50 making it a diamond.
• Increased spawn times by 1.
• Increased spawn time variability upon capping mid from -2 to -3.
• Increased second cap time by 2.
• Lowered spawn time variability upon capping 2nd from -2 to -1.
• Removed the xox door that appears blocking drop down when second is capped.

a50 is here! There's relatively little change from this one to the previous one, but it can potentially be a significant gameplay change.


Firstly though, players will notice that my arrows now pop, spent a significant amount of time getting the lighting on these juuuust right. There's a few areas that suffer from obnoxious lighting as a result but oh well.

As for the gameplay changes ...

1: Mid point time to cap value is lowered by two (seconds for a scout). I did this because a lot of fights seemed to linger a while on the mid point without being able to properly exchange to second. Spawn times and completely separated routes are a culprit but I wanted to see if making the mid point cap faster like koth_bagel would change anything.
2: 2nd point time to cap value is lowered by one, for symmetry reasons such that mid is now 7, 2nd is now 5 and last is 3.
3: I put the last cap point back to it's original position of slightly off to the left side. This is to try and see if defending team uses the platforms that overlook the point more for defense, as this position gives better sightlines for both platforms and is closer to them.
4: Numerous resource packs around last have been readjusted, to accommodate what I was seeing in terms of gameplay flow.
5: Two new health packs and one new ammo pack got added to mid on both sides. The health packs positioned to try and encourage high ground positioning.
6: To also encourage a bit of highground positioning, one of the glass window sightline blockers has been removed to give the accompanying platform much better sightlines and spam angles.
7: The narrow ledge across the sideways pyramid to the big pyramid overlooking the point has it's "ceiling" slanted so players can more easily jump off of. They can now jump onto the platform mentioned in 6 from this ledge.
8: Two boxes were introduced to let players jump onto this platform while they are on the point.
9: Finally, the big upside down central pyramid was reverted to its original size. But then I deleted the big square pillar ontop of it, duplicated the pyramid, put it ontop of it, and then stretched both such that they touched the skybox. This should still give mid the same sense of open-ness, while both giving a bit more protection around the bottom of the pyramid to stand next to and let soldiers have more open space in the sky to bomb. They can also surf the upper part of this new diamond, saving health on bombs and having greater control of timing.

A lot of these changes are tests to improve/change flow to how I want.

• The hollowed out half-pyramids in front of the central chokes leading up to mid had their tops chopped off, you can now see across the entire point from the chokes.
• 3 of the smaller cubes next to the big cube are gone, not necessary to keep them as the pyramids are closer to a couple of them that you can jump from one to another with ease.
• The big central upside down pyramid has been shrunk considerably, revealing the point capture zone prop that was always there.
• Many of the spheres adjacent to the cylindrical platforms overlooking second have been removed.
• People hate jumping more than bots do so the spheres that are remaining have been clipped to be smoothed out. Again.
• The big sphere that marks the entrance to the chokes to mid has a new exit to the other side.
• Missed an arrow sign.
• Some resource packs were not even.
• Cleaned up and shifted a lot of geo to better positions.
• The dropdown from last to second closes off when your second gets capped by the enemy team again. I did this because it resulted in medics having very little safe place to position.
• The last point was put more centered what with the new slopes coming from the flat zigzag tunnel made it easier to access.
• Removed the pillar that overlooked that doorway and replaced it with a fence to make it harder to rush the point. Capping and swarming last was a little too easy.

B4nny's feedback boiled down to a few things:

• Sniper can sit pretty far back on the transitions in second, letting him cover most of the second area with little to no way to counter.
• Transition exits always had advantageous high ground directly in front of it overlooking the transition, stuffing would-be pushers.
• Very few transitions had great vision of the point.
• Transitions were far apart from another, making them hard to rotate from one to the other.
• Many of the transitions were functionally long corridors that didn't end with any advantage to being there.

To accommodate these changes, I did the following:

• Shrunk down the center dome of second from 2100x2100x1050 to 1800x1800x900.
• Brought forth the side "igloos" (as b4nny called them) much closer to the big dome, effectively cutting their total area by half.
• Shrunk down collective transition travel size by a total of 2,000 hu. A GRU heavy spends about 4 less seconds running to mid from spawn now.
• Shrunking down the center dome naturally resulted in a lot of the sphere high ground per spots to be closed off as the spheres were dug into the wall more.
• Removed a lot of perch points that overlooked transition exits. Eg. Many spheres on second and the triangle flats on the edges of the sideways pyramids.
• Transitions into second don't have as egregious sightlines across the point but instead got much higher doorways, making bombing through a choke and into a choke much easier.
• Transitions into mid have all been raised up to give more vision of the point and to make it easier to push into.
• Doing the above meant needing ways to reach said high ground, so a lot of the high ground that previously overlooked transition exists now met the transition exits, treating them like walkways onto the point.
• A result of the above meant there was a lot more dead space inbetween the transition exits and the point, so I brought the point significantly closer to the transition exits, and shrunk it down to fit better.
• The two bigger layout additions were the carving out of the sides of the two smaller pyramids that overlooked the central transitions into mid, creating a tunnel that one can walk through them. And then the opening up of both sides of the lower transition from last to second, meaning one can travel into and out of it and into both other sides of the transition a lot more smoothly.
• All forward spawns can now be walked into as an engineer.
• Healthpacks have all been divvied up into small pack arrays, mostly for casual appeal, so things like a scout missing 5 hp or a demo rolling out of spawn doesn't consume medium or large pack resources for players that might need it more. Players aren't always going to be well mindful of sharing or leaving the resource packs so doing this forces players to share better without them having to actively think about it.

This is an experimental update that looks to see how gameplay turns out.

• There is now a highground platform all across the far wall (the wall with the drop down) to encourage players to use that area to fight.
• There is now quick and short paths from the two low ground entrances into the front of spawn, should make pushing those areas have more options.
• Three less pillars on last as a result of these new areas.
• The large middle sphere that overlooked the landing space for dropdown is now a pillar instead, hopefully to curb scouts.
• Another sphere was added to the defending team's highground vantage point over second, to block off some sniper sight lines and get even better vantage over the point.
• Removed all non-spawn related shutters and gates, we'll see how this plays out.

Based on this demo preview and some testing against bots I have made some changes to how last is played.

1. The big sphere that you normally drop down onto is now blocked off from snipers getting onto it. There simply was no way to counter a sniper that was standing there.
2. Dropdown now has a gate that blocks all entry if the attacking team captured the other team's second. This makes orchestrating a push much easier to do without having to deal with enemies dropping into mid all of the sudden.
3. Increased spawn times all around by 1-2 seconds.
4. All the little pillars have been removed. In their place are fewer but much larger pillars, with different positioning. These can now more reliably be used as cover.
5. Improved the bot nav_mesh greatly, though it seems func_nav_avoid isn't entirely functional.

An update in response to this test.

Relatively small update, took only two days to do.

1. All the low ground spheres on second have clipping to make them easily walkable.
2. The side ramps on last are now positioned to flow better.
3. There are now ramps leading up to the hexagonal platforms on last to make them actually accessible.
4. Removed the fences in the same area as they are no longer necessary with the ramps blocking sightlines themselves.
5. Fixed vphysics prop errors with all the arrows by making them not solid.
6. Did a LOT of nav mesh editing to make the map work with bots. Engineeers are still borked but much less this time around.
7. Turns out copying and pasting one side of a 5cp map to make it symmetrical means that the copied side won't be aligned to the grid at all. Spent a lot of time fixing leaks that resulted from trying to align stuff to the grid.
8. Removed 6 skip hint planes and added 2 area portal planes. This cuts down numportal count by 300.
9. Moved some healthpack placement to make them less focused to scouts.
10. Some additional minor clipping and no draw.

While the feedback from my second playtest wasn't that useful to me, me playing during it did highlight two big things I did not like.

1: The entire far left and right flanks to the mid point that go behind the big triangle.
2: Most of the transitions.

Those big flank points resulted in a lot of players grouping together in there, separating themselves from the main point. It resulted in both teams frequently walking past each other. Further, it seemed to be the route that people walked to the most, despite it taking the longest. Completely removing this makes walking to mid from spawn a lot shorter, which was a common complaint.

Compounding on the long walk times were all the transitions. I cut out three transitions entirely. Kept one intact (the large sideways triangular cylinder that exited out into a pentagon entrance is still there in the exact same spot, but the entrance to it has shifted). And altering three others to accommodate the size difference (the two side routes and lower route into second from last are all basically the same but take less time to traverse).

What happened was that with the removal of the side flanks to mid, I had to shift the 2nd and last over. It's now a straight line from one spawn to the next. This means that the center of 2nd now goes to the center of mid, instead of the right side of 2nd going to the center of mid.

Further, I brought each point much closer to each other, greatly making the central path much shorter to travel, and the flank routes too. The three new transitions are the ones from middle of last to the middle of 2nd, the middle of 2nd to the middle of mid, and the one from the right of 2nd to the right of mid.

First what was once a long narrow hexagonal tunnel that went into a 90 turn is completely gone, as now the points are all closer together that can't be done, and I hated ubers exchanges just sitting in there doing nothing. This is now a drop down that attacking team can only access if they are a soldier, demo or winger scout with some difficulty.

The middle of 2nd to mid transition now leads into a mini triangular pyramid, with the flat side facing 2nd and the pointed side facing mid, but you don't get to see the walls. Each side of the point hosts a small triangular cylindrical tunnel to mid, so one exit out of 2nd leads into two entrances into mid, each behind the two medium pyramids that form the staging ground to push the point from the front.

The right side entrance is square tunnels, much like the left side entrance but shaped like last to 2nd left side tunnel. They lead into the backside of the pile of cubes that I left there, mostly because I like those cubes and they do cover the sightlines that would be an issue from any entrance at that area.

This did mean a complete change of where the mid forward spawn was, which I put ontop of the right side entrance to mid. Kind of like Foundry 2nd. This does mean that engineers are going to have a harder time setting up but there has always been an issue with the team pushed to their last point needing to push out of spawn into easily defended sentries on longer spawn times. Felt odd that the offending team also gets a great defense.

I also made it so you can enter your spawn tied to the associated point and hit up the resupply cabinet that was also placed in them. Though demos, soldiers and scouts are the only ones that can reach the mid forward spawn.

To balance this I made sure anyone sitting inside of them gets teleported out to the new associated spawn room. This should also just be a good UX for players that don't have resupply binds enabled, and to force turtling engies away from last.

Additional misc stuff: Lots of no draw and lots of area portals to clean the map up in certain skybox sightlines and to prep the map for future detailing by starting the optimization now. This map never had optimization issues because of the massive walls it has blocking sightlines, but it's always good to start now.

I also removed all misc orange decals to make it even clearer that orange=cap zones. And I fully got rid of the mix blue/red colour scheme entirely as players will never get accustomed to that since no other map does it.

There are a lot changed in this update. Source of feedback.

1: The initial spawn for both teams was moved forward a significant amount. The low-ground right in front of the initial spawn was such a no-man's land when testing against bots even when I had an easy slope up to the point that I decided to shrink it down by bringing that spawn closer.

2: The catwalk above the center door of the initial spawn I found incredibly frustrating as I constantly bonked my head while trying to blast jump out of, so instead I divided the walls in half horizontally along the top of the door and then cut those walls in half vertically to create that ledge again.

3: Turns out that doing the above means you get launched up if standing above the door as the door goes through the small platform above it. So I made the door open down instead. I then increased the door open speed and made the tolerances for a it a lot tighter to hope to try and stop it from catching people.

4: I removed the far left and right side flanks into mid that led you to a pile of boxes and a large healthpack that bypassed the point and the big triangles in the middle. It's completely closed off now with the boxes inbetween the big and small pyramids. The healthpack is now a medium since it's much easier to get to. All of this should help alleviate both the separation of teams into small fights (this will still happen to some degree and I don't want to completely remove that feeling) and help prevent people from getting behind too easily.

5: The small door from flank that is on the big pyramids leading onto the point has now been opened up greatly, very few people ever used that door. This should help that. Also with the loss of the widest opening to mid I needed another larger entrance into mid.

6: The small pyramid under the point was lowered so you didn't have to crouch to grab the healthpack, and turned into a small as a result of both that and that the boxes were brought much closer.

7: The small health pack in flank to mid next to forward spawn was removed, instead the two medium pyramids were shifted right a little, and the further one sports a medium med pack and a large ammo pack.

8: I changed where I wanted large ammo packs what with how I discovered that they tell newer engie players to build near them. So now they are located more where I want engies to build their sentries.

9: Most entrances and exists now have a bright light lighting them up, this utilizes visual weight concepts to draw the player's eyes towards them more, hopefully helping them figure out where to go in the event that they don't notice the arrows for some reason.

10: Bunch of superfluous arrows were removed.

11: Most of the spheres on 2nd were lowered 12-18hu, and the two big platforms that open up to the point were lowered 18hu. This greatly helps maneuverability inbetween spheres and the ground. The 3 small spheres on the ground that are used to jump up to the platforms that overlook 2nd point have clipping on them so you can just walk up them instead of jump.

12: Got rid of all the z-fighting that results from func_detail and world geometry clashing.

13: Cleaned up a lot of the geometry to reduce numportal count by 300.

14: Hid the ends of the displacements that make up most of the inner dome better.

15: Made all areas that one can cap, orange coloured. Debating on whether or not to remove the misc amounts of orange in the map that isn't on a pyramid to further reinforce that colour scheme.

16: Doing all this obliterated the lighting on my prism props and some of my geo for some reason. A significant amount of time was spent trying to fix that x.x