Quarry

KotH Quarry rc

Idolon

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Feb 7, 2008
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Winner of the 3rd 72hour contest!

Quarry is a unique King of the Hill map with an emphasis on height advantage and strategic placement. With many different ways to approach the fight, every class has a chance to shine. Set above an abandoned rock quarry, Red and Blu fight to the death to take control of this important mining resource.

Quarry was tested by UGC Highlander teams. While it was decided that the map just isn't suited for Highlander, the feedback left by the competitive teams helped make Quarry a better map. Thanks to RedRum for reaching out to me about competitive TF2, as well as managing all of the tests for Quarry (and other maps)!

Thanks to:
A Boojum Snark - Gamemode library
Ravidge - Lighting library, feedback, danger sign texture
umbratile - I.D.O. sign
Acegikmo - Environment lighting library
LeSwordfish - Feedback x2
ScorpioUprising - Feedback
Fr0Z3n, STAR_ - Contests that spawned this map
RedRum - UGC testing management
shm, pvp, qt, knd, syfy - UGC teams that tested the map and gave feedback
All the people who convinced me to work on this instead of Aspen
All the people who told me this map is hella fun
Probably some other people too

RIP Conveyor "Best Gimmick Ever" Belt
2012-2012
Taken too soon
 
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Sergis

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Jul 22, 2009
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im a bit disapoint with all the stuff youve built. before, you had a great and unique vista of a huge quarrything as you run into main area, now you have run-of-the-mill buildings-in-your-face scene and the deathpit is barely visible. sure, you might have blocked spam that wasnt really there and made it harder for players with no spatial awareness to fall down and blame the map, but the map is less awesome than it was initially. still the best one tho.
 

Idolon

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Feb 7, 2008
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After talking with some people and a bit of deliberation, I've decided to enter this map into the KOTH Highlander contest after all. Maybe not the best decision I've ever made, but whatever.
 
Aug 23, 2008
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Hey, we pugged this in 6v6 tonight. I think you have several problems that will make this not such a competitive friendly map.

The demo from tonight: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3492731/spacesaver/20120714-0256-koth_idolon_72.dem

Quick comment on the demo: we played this using ESEA 6v6 rules, but the red team was pretty crazy with the offclassing shenanigans. Mangachu, in particular, played atrociously and refused to take it seriously, which means this demo is not fully indicative of how this map might play out in comp settings.

1) Death pits are usually a big no-no in comp maps. They are okay in some very, very infrequent scenarios. Unfortunately, you have the largest and most all encompassing death pit ever directly under your entire map, and it will probably be impossible to fix it. However, if you were interested in changing it. I think you would need to radically rethink some areas, and make a lot more of the platforms and bridges expand out in all directions so that you don't have any areas where you can fall. Its going to be way different than what you intended, but thats about the only way I could see comp players wanting to play it.

2) The rooftop exit is very very strong for snipers. I mean, you can see almost everything and you can weave your shot between all manner of buildings and seriously wreck people. Further, because you put spawn_visualizers over all the doors back to spawn area, only soldiers and demos have any reasonable access to the sniper if hes up there. If you compare it to viaduct, your map is more sniper friendly by an order of magnitude, and thats already one of the key problems with viaduct to begin with. I reccomend you remove the spawn visualizers (you should probably do this anyway, just to fit with the established trend of koth maps) and then change it so that instead of having one exit below and one to the roof, you have two exits below. This, combined with 1) would really help to give both sides of the map some identity, and allow for players to really have some options when choosing between them.

3) The side of the map closest to the point is a bit odd. For one, you can't retreat back up if you drop off the ledge. I saw multiple people during our pug get caught in that little alcove beneath the exit, thinking they could back up there, only to get destroyed when they could not. The two connecting huts near the point are a pain to walk through, having them be so narrow and congested leads to really boring gameplay. Either your med gets in there and just sits around, doing nothing. Or they immediately get destroyed by the tiniest amount of spam, because they have nowhere to dodge to and from. And, then the death pit means you pretty much want to sit on the far (southern?) side of the map and just hug the wall the entire time.

Reccomendations: Put a ramp so people can back up onto the ledge. Make the two houses one house so that combat in there is a bit more open, while keeping the dropdown and a window to the point. Make it so the side over by the medium healthpack is much more solid without so many ways to drop down (see 1) above)

4) The height all over the map is interesting, but it makes the map much harder to play for any non-soldier class. I think those two accessible roofs could be salvaged, but you'll have to lower them quite a bit. Maybe, drop the grey building down as well, making that entire platform area flat and level, with the grey building brought down to compensate. Then, take the buildings rooftops and bring them down as well. That would make it much easier to see players up on top of those roofs, and would make it much easier to fight them. If you get rid of the rooftop exit from above, you'll have to figure out another way for scouts to get access to the roof. I'm guessing that the grey building might work reasonably well, as long as the heights match up.

5) Health and ammo are in weird spots. The conveyor belt with (almost) randomly timed large health and ammo is pretty broken. A lot of our scouts abused that, but many felt like it was a dice roll of whether or not the health would be in a spot you needed, or not be there at all (not good for comp play, when you feel like a feature of the map is randomly determined). Also, the fact that its a full health down there is probably pretty broken for comp play, scouts and spies would abuse the hell out of it (medium at least, please). Other than the medium, there is very little ammo around the rest of the map. Given where we were fighting, I feel like you should put some small ammos near the point, and not spread to either edge of the map. You could keep one of the medium ammos in the southern building (if you made it) but I would reccommend putting another near (not in) the grey building towards the north. The medium near the point is okay, but it does seem pretty large to be sitting right next to the point. You might consider making it a small, moving it back towards the grey building, or making ita small and moving it towards the grey building.



I think you have some really sick geometry that could play really well in a comp setting, but that death pit has to go if you are honestly considering this for competitive play. The conveyor belt is hit or miss, but if you got rid of the full health/ammo and repositioned some of the health and ammo around the map, it would work out for the better. You could add another conveyor from the other side, with the only death pit being where they meet, and that MIGHT work for comp. People will always complain about a deathpit, so you should be prepared for some pretty strong criticisms even if you leave a very VERY small deathpit. And that sniper rooftop is broken beyond belief.

If you made some of these changes I'm sure I could convince my pug group to give the map another go around, but the bare minimum would be the radical reduction of the deathpit.

Hope this helps!
 

Idolon

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Feb 7, 2008
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Map is bad for competitive play without major changes.
(I did actually read the whole thing, don't worry!)

I decided to use this map for the contest, knowing that this would happen. But now that it has, I'm a bit more reluctant to use it. The map works great for pub: It's ridiculous, it's different, it's stupid, and most importantly, it's fun. However, for the reasons that you mentioned, it doesn't work great when professionals (for lack of a better word) play it. So, that leaves me with two options:

-Change map drastically to make it work for comp play even though you don't want to because it's fine the way it is for pub play
-Use a different map, keep this one same as it is

The choice at this point seems obvious (2nd one). I would be the worst politician, with all this flip-flopping! Oh well.
 

tyler

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Sep 11, 2013
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Scorpio is right, but remember he's running 6s which is different than Highlander. Highlander is a lot more like pub play because you're guaranteed one of every class.

Your map is ridiculous, but do some actual Highlander testing before you decide one way or the other.
 
Aug 23, 2008
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I guess the other thing I didn't think about was pl_upward. That map definitely sees play in highlander leagues, and it has some similar death pit areas. Though i'm playing in UGC this season, we havent played upward (all customs or odd maps so far) so I don't know how much of an issue it is for that map.

What you might consider is a not such a radical change? Maybe just do some of the player clipping fences that they do in upward in key areas and make sure people have areas where they can back up to in order to avoid getting knocked into death. Like, say the ramps that go up to the rooftop area, extend those back to the wall they are near so you don't fall down?

I would definitely get some more highlander feedback, like yyler says. I do think the way the deathpits in this map are set up is way different from upward, so it could really go either way, but the geometry in general is very good, and competively interesting, so long as you adjust some heights and room sizes to accomodate comp playstyles, and avoid some of the more annoying tendencies in competitive play (snipers sightlines, etc).
 

Idolon

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Feb 7, 2008
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BETA 1 WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
See first post for changes.

There's a lot of missing detail in the spawns; possibly some other areas too. I'll get to those in future versions, right now I just want to make sure everything works.
 

Idolon

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Feb 7, 2008
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So I wasn't able to attend today's match on this map (yay headaches) but the feedback pretty much tells me what I was already thinking and wanted to confirm. So, here's what I've got planned for beta 2 (and hopefully a final contest version WOOOOOO):
Moving the roof over more so every class can get onto this dirt area with out doing "cool trick jumps"
b2_01.jpg

Along with the roof idea, move the door over so that it doesn't line up and create a spawnvis-spawnvis sightline.
b2_03.jpg

Last but not least, I'm making the OP sniper spot more vulnerable to spies and whatnot. Kinda an afterthought, but I think it'll be for the better.
b2_02.jpg
 

Idolon

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Feb 7, 2008
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Hey nerds, guess what map just got updated? That's right - this one! KotH_Quarry is now at b3c status, featuring a whole bunch of revamped detailing from b2. Now the map doesn't look like ass!

Download (may expire!)

For b4, I'm going to be fixing the issues that b3c had (disp lighting errors, some "leaks"). I'll also try to address spawn-camping issues, since that was a problem during the test today.
 

Idolon

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Feb 7, 2008
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3xOpn.png

Well...

EDIT: Also coming in b4 is more optimization. Here's a current look at the visleaf structure for b3c:
3xQ2n.jpg

gimme a break, source
 
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YM

LVL100 YM
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Dec 5, 2007
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I said it multiple times when we played the other night but here are my thoughts:

Very fun map, I like the oldschool feel of many walkways at different heights, and I especially love how the HUGE MASSIVE deathpit is almost never a cause of death because if you fall off one platform you almost always land on another below you. It's a setback, but you don't die. And that feels great.