KotH Cold Breach

Fruity Snacks

Creator of blackholes & memes. Destroyer of forums
aa
Sep 5, 2010
6,394
5,571
koth_cold_breach
By Joe 'Fr0z3n' Radak


A small/quick KoTH map I'm doing for an exercise in environmental detailing (rather than structural). No, cp_frozen is not dead. I wanted to do this for the practice, and because I don't want to deal with a large map during school.

The map is based in a canyon/ravine thing. Red/Blu are fighting over a satelitte dish (in the mid) that they need to use to guide a missile to the opposing teams base down in 2fort. (Supposedly to break up the constant stalemate there)

Notice that there is minimal structures, and a lot more environmental geometry, this is the point of the map. (I also wanted to see if I could get something better than rundown for my psuedo-portfolio)

Enjoy.
 
Last edited:

Aqwertybqwerty

L1: Registered
Aug 26, 2011
49
2
Looks really good actually for a quick map, although the cliff walls are too straight to look natural. Try adding some noise to them perhaps?
 
Last edited:

Fruity Snacks

Creator of blackholes & memes. Destroyer of forums
aa
Sep 5, 2010
6,394
5,571
Another cold-themed map? Frozen, your narcissism is showing again.

I liek snow.

EDIT: Modified the story of the map. Going to hold an impromptu to have it tested in the next couple hours. Don't know how it'll play... but we'll find out.
 

LeSwordfish

semi-trained quasi-professional
aa
Aug 8, 2010
4,102
6,597
koth_ferret.jpg


I don't think it looks like a turd.

I don't have anything helpful to say btw.
 

Schrikvis

L1: Registered
Aug 3, 2011
37
11
Download + bot time!

~ 5 ~ minutes later...

Done!

Map seems VERY polished, although a natural spawn room looks very weird.
There's a lot of narrow hallways, but that's alright.
Sniper sightlines are OK.
Optimization is awesome.
I suggest adding some more flanking routes as I was kinda... chanceless as scout.
So.... that's it. Minor complaints.
 

Fruity Snacks

Creator of blackholes & memes. Destroyer of forums
aa
Sep 5, 2010
6,394
5,571
Yea, we had a 6v6 test today, I noticed there was a couple of really bad chokes that I'll fix up really quick. I also need to adjust some health things. For the flank routes I don't know how much I can do the help you out as a scout, I felt it was pretty jumpy already, and I was getting wrecked by scouts.


EDIT: nvm, going to do some displacement work or detail the mid tower. So a day or 2.


EDIT:EDIT: anymore feedback from the small test today?
 
Last edited:
Mar 23, 2010
1,872
1,696

Fruity Snacks

Creator of blackholes & memes. Destroyer of forums
aa
Sep 5, 2010
6,394
5,571
_a2 Released...

And here's the new story:

"The map is based in a canyon/ravine thing. Red/Blu are fighting over a satelitte dish (in the mid) that they need to use to guide a missile to the opposing teams base down in 2fort. (Supposedly to break up the constant stalemate there)"
 

LeSwordfish

semi-trained quasi-professional
aa
Aug 8, 2010
4,102
6,597
I was kicking ass on this as a soldier, and i suspect it's a good soldiering map- plenty of height advantages, relatively small corridors, lots of places rocket-jumping gives an advantage. Possibly widening the areas away from the point a tad would help, to give more room to dodge? The roof on the point will help, i guess.
 

fubarFX

The "raw" in "nodraw"
aa
Jun 1, 2009
1,720
1,978
cold.jpg


fastest, main path
you have nothing to work with once you’re at mid, your enemy is standing on the point and has height advantage (and they’re probably spamming the chokes so you can’t even get in from these paths). you, you’re just a peon on the lower ground and you’re going to get fucked up. going to the lower cap is pointless because your enemy is standing right on top of you and by the time you get up the slope to the higher area, you’re already dead. forget about it.

longer, secondary path
Lower routes are shit so you try the longer, upper path. Then you realize it’s not even a better path, it's just longer. Altho higher, the point is still higher than this path so you can’t even spam the point. You, however, are standing in hell of a choke. fish in a barrel! and you probably don’t have any backups because everyone is taking the main routes. Even if they wanted to help you, they can’t get up from down there so forget about it. the only thing this path is good at, is letting enemies push in and destroy everything in the main path.


so yeah, whoever takes mid first wins the round. you'll see some backcaps from time to time but these are usually taken back easily.

it's up to you to do whatever you think is needed.
 

waxpax

L5: Dapper Member
Feb 25, 2011
238
151
Looked at your map just a bit ago. Most of what I noticed was the health placement is kind of bad in that it looks like there's too much health too close together. There's a lot of health that would really aid spawn camping, and, while it might also aid pushing into the point, I think it will be more annoying when the offensive team abuses the health to hold forward since it will make it harder to pick any players and kind of negate the spawn differential that is built into koth.

I'd just get rid of this lunch box in the back right here since you have a lot of health in this area and I think leaving the snack is the better option. Maybe leave the ammo there, though, or make the ammo with the pill a medium. Making it a medium might make it really easy to hold point since you wouldn't have to fall back very often to grab more.


I think the other lunch box is ok but I might put it on the ground.

I didn't really look for sightlines, but, looking at the ss i posted, that one seems a little nuts. I think it goes all the way to spawn? Idk. Sometimes I think koth has to be balanced with sightlines in mind because a sniper is one of the easier ways to kill a heavy and heavy is usually really powerful in koth because the maps are so small. But then if you can control 80% of the map from one spot, like you can in via, it can get really annoying to play on if you don't have a sniper as good as the other team's sniper or are otherwise unable to pick that sniper.

Idk, some of that criticism might change once I play it.
 

waxpax

L5: Dapper Member
Feb 25, 2011
238
151
http://www.mediafire.com/?k630vozrd0qsxz2

Pugged your map tonight. People enjoyed it, some requested that there be more variation in the walkway heights to make it a little more interesting. Scorpio also wanted you to make the point easier to rj to, but he can't really jump so, idk :p One person also thought it seemed a little long and some people just said "it needs more," I think they thought the geometry was a little boring and repetitive? Not really sure about it and didn't really press it, sorry.
 

Fruity Snacks

Creator of blackholes & memes. Destroyer of forums
aa
Sep 5, 2010
6,394
5,571
Alright, so after watching the demo, it played better than I thought, but I do see flaws.

I'll work on adding more height variation to what is already there. I noticed not a lot of people were using the lower cap area, was this just because it wasn't useful, or they didn't see a need for it, or it just wasn't marked well enough?
 

Sergis

L666: ])oo]v[
aa
Jul 22, 2009
1,874
1,257
Alright, so after watching the demo, it played better than I thought, but I do see flaws.

I'll work on adding more height variation to what is already there. I noticed not a lot of people were using the lower cap area, was this just because it wasn't useful, or they didn't see a need for it, or it just wasn't marked well enough?

maybe they just didnt expect it because this is not Arnolds' map :p
 

waxpax

L5: Dapper Member
Feb 25, 2011
238
151
No, people knew about the dual layer cap, or at least I know my team did because I told them (forgot to tell everyone :/). Generally, if you can cap from height, it's best to do so, though, since height offers such an advantage. I don't really like dual cap zones that much, though, since they're often setup so that you can easily block the capture by staying on the bottom when they're up top and it can be really annoying to deal with. Your point isn't that bad since you can see thru it easily and it's pretty small, but some I've seen are really big and don't let you see the other layer and can be really, really annoying if you have to deal with someone on the other layer blocking you.