Oversea

Kronixx

L5: Dapper Member
Apr 17, 2009
205
38
Welcome to Oversea!


UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Overview:

PL_Oversea, a pretty classical payload map when it comes to comparison of some others out there, namely Waste. But I tried to keep the mechanics simple and add strategical complications in other aspects, mainly teamwork and communication. We will see how this strategy takes shape as the map develops.

Storyline:

The infamous battle of Red and Blue, lasting for years and has yet to find any conclusion as the battle keeps flaring up with new weapons and strategies to overpower the enemy. This particular battle has been nicknamed by the factions as "The Oversea Battle". Once upon a time these factions worked in harmony together as a very powerful partnership in foreign shipping and processing. But due to many disagreements over company policy and wages, the tempers flared and battle ensued once again, no surprise really... Blue, devoted to ending the Reds once and for all, has obtained a very large bomb which they plan to eradicate their "flamboyantly colored" enemies and their pier. The Reds fighting for their facility tries to repel the Blu's into submission. The Blue fight for blood, the Red fight with attrition on their side. As blue transports their bomb closer and closer to the Red pier, the fighting becomes more intense and the teams become more and more witty about ways to flank and maneuver around enemy defenses as the environment changes around them. The outcome of this battle of wits will lie in the hands of the smarter team, so...which team are YOU? Be ready to find out come Alpha testing!
 
Last edited:

taraph75

L1: Registered
Apr 23, 2009
48
10
Hi! I have a payload rotation server (tf2newbs.com #7) where we run custom payload maps in addition to the stock pl maps. We downloaded this map to try it out. But, could you possibly rename it to pl_overseas_a1 so that it follows the typical naming convention? It's much easier to find it in my list if it's with the other pl maps. Thanks in advance. :)
 

Kronixx

L5: Dapper Member
Apr 17, 2009
205
38
it's far from a finished product...not sure you would want to go through the trouble for this map. It is only a project for school so it's hugely incomplete and there are some bugs in the system I need to learn how to fix. I would recommend skipping this map.
 

Kronixx

L5: Dapper Member
Apr 17, 2009
205
38
I have the map up for testing tomorrow the 26th on the TF2maps.net server because i need to learn how to fix the problems it has and i need the video from STV for part of the project when i turn it in. If you really want to try it, i'll possibly get the renamed file this weekend after i get a chance to recompile it under the new name. That is one of the things i also learned in this process, i named it wrong accidentally leaving off the gametype tag "pl_"
 

Kronixx

L5: Dapper Member
Apr 17, 2009
205
38
File has been updated to fit into normal naming conventions:

should be 'pl_oversea_a1'
 

Bslashingu

L2: Junior Member
Jan 29, 2009
53
11
I really loved this one during gameday, I liked the idea of being able to attack the team that was pushing the cart on all sides, it made for a challenging match.

I think some more signs would be in order, though. A lot of the players got lost on the defending side. Also, the defender's spawn is far too close to the payload track, and too close to the last point. It seems in order for the attackers to win, they have to spawn camp, which happened often.

A lot of players found it hilarious that the cart just drops into the ocean in the end, but some type of machinery at the end or something would make sense to put there.
 

Kronixx

L5: Dapper Member
Apr 17, 2009
205
38
I really loved this one during gameday, I liked the idea of being able to attack the team that was pushing the cart on all sides, it made for a challenging match.

I think some more signs would be in order, though. A lot of the players got lost on the defending side. Also, the defender's spawn is far too close to the payload track, and too close to the last point. It seems in order for the attackers to win, they have to spawn camp, which happened often.

A lot of players found it hilarious that the cart just drops into the ocean in the end, but some type of machinery at the end or something would make sense to put there.

Well awesome, i'm really glad you liked at least parts of it. I can offer explanation for these issues as reads in the above file summary this is a project for school. I started out 7 weeks ago knowing absolutely NOTHING about hammer or how to work in it. So in this short, very very short time i had to completely learn hammer from the ground up and build this functioning map. It is a project for school and frankly i'm out of time to work on the map, i had to draw the line somewhere on when to just cut my losses and say "ok this is gonna have to be it or I won't finish the project in time." It's due in 2.5 weeks... So for that i apologize that there are some serious design and layout issues. The lack of a thing to blow up boils down to a looming deadline, i had so many ideas for that ocean scene but frankly i just ran out of time to build them and make them fancy, so i just had to stick a sign out there and bend the story line of blowing up the dock itself instead of an actual object. The sign really only served a purpose of marking the last point because i found it hard myself to see the CP glyph floating out there without a something behind it to show "HEY THIS IS WHERE YOU BLOW IT UP!".

But the main idea behind my layout was infact to make it challenging for both teams. I sometimes get annoyed when maps force bottle-neck situations as they always seem biased toward one team. This map was an attempt to counter those situations by offering many different ways of flanking your enemy. There is no "predictable" part of this map as your enemies can come from any direction at literally ANY time. It was a gamble i know, but i like to push the boundary of normality. I look forward to not having a deadline loom over my head so i can make a full production map and learn the finer details of map making, like optimization which this map has none :blushing::(

Thank you very much for the positive feedback, it is very motivating to hear
 

Bslashingu

L2: Junior Member
Jan 29, 2009
53
11
Well awesome, i'm really glad you liked at least parts of it. I can offer explanation for these issues as reads in the above file summary this is a project for school. I started out 7 weeks ago knowing absolutely NOTHING about hammer or how to work in it. So in this short, very very short time i had to completely learn hammer from the ground up and build this functioning map. It is a project for school and frankly i'm out of time to work on the map, i had to draw the line somewhere on when to just cut my losses and say "ok this is gonna have to be it or I won't finish the project in time." It's due in 2.5 weeks... So for that i apologize that there are some serious design and layout issues. The lack of a thing to blow up boils down to a looming deadline, i had so many ideas for that ocean scene but frankly i just ran out of time to build them and make them fancy, so i just had to stick a sign out there and bend the story line of blowing up the dock itself instead of an actual object. The sign really only served a purpose of marking the last point because i found it hard myself to see the CP glyph floating out there without a something behind it to show "HEY THIS IS WHERE YOU BLOW IT UP!".

But the main idea behind my layout was infact to make it challenging for both teams. I sometimes get annoyed when maps force bottle-neck situations as they always seem biased toward one team. This map was an attempt to counter those situations by offering many different ways of flanking your enemy. There is no "predictable" part of this map as your enemies can come from any direction at literally ANY time. It was a gamble i know, but i like to push the boundary of normality. I look forward to not having a deadline loom over my head so i can make a full production map and learn the finer details of map making, like optimization which this map has none :blushing::(

Thank you very much for the positive feedback, it is very motivating to hear

It's actually a really interesting map, and I'd like to see a completed version of it. The concept of being able to attack the enemy from any side works very well, and adds an awesome dynamic to defending on PL. The layout seems fine, it just needs more signs to direct players. Moving the defender's spawn room would help out immensely.
 

Kronixx

L5: Dapper Member
Apr 17, 2009
205
38
yeah i'll definitely try to experiment with some different options and see where it takes me with that spawn room. It's gonna be a couple weeks minimum until i can work on this map again, i got all the other final projects to work on, including this one for school...gonna be busy!
 

Sgt Frag

L14: Epic Member
May 20, 2008
1,443
710
I didn't read through any of that ^^^^

Was fun on gameday.

One MAJOR problem imo. Going left out of red spawn takes you around that big open barely used alleway. And most of the time it was just wasting red's time trying to find the cart. It's a really simple hallway but lead to mass confusion for some reason, took me a few tries to learn that it was not a good way to go.
I'd either get rid of it, or maybe block it off from the rest of the map from red side. Then put a red spawn there for first cap (red can only use it at start of map) and have it lock down and red use back spawn for all points after first.

(maybe make a one way path there for blu to get behind red)

Other than that, pretty cool map. Some of the buildings on the other side of map were kindof strange too I guess, like they are just out there out of the way for no reason (blu was using them for advanced base). You can get ontop of the edges of the roof but not middle, that's kindof weird.
I'd probably block off the roof and the back area and only leave the first building.

One round it seemed like a struggle but the team pushed the cart in, the next round was close to steam roll and we pushed cart in just fine. So it's playable, not a total stalemate.
That's good.
 

Kronixx

L5: Dapper Member
Apr 17, 2009
205
38
yeah i agree with what your saying, i'm gonna look into some options for those things mentioned when i get some free time and improve or just completely rework them. There are a lot of things that need rethinking. :)

Thanks for the feedback though, it will give a solid place to get started on when this quarter of school is over i'll know where to concentrate my efforts first.
 

taraph75

L1: Registered
Apr 23, 2009
48
10
We playtested this last night and it was a fun map. The feedback was:

-blu spawn seems to easy to camp
-there's a lot of wide open space that could be tightened up.
-blu won one round and red won one round, so it does seem playable either way
-on the water: one person felt it should be water with a ladder to get back out if you fall in, i think it should be water but with no ladder, so you drown lol (i guess demos and soldiers could still get back out), just a design choice if you want to change it
-there were several deadends that were time wasters, mostly for red i think, and yes, blu did build a base in the crates that were basically out of the way. A lot of different ways to go though, could possibly use some gate to close off or have one way traffic to increase complication (in a good way) and flow of map.

I do think it has potential.
 

Kronixx

L5: Dapper Member
Apr 17, 2009
205
38
much appreciated, glad to see you guys had even a little fun on the map. I'm in the process of sketching up a brand new map. i might tinker with this one too though, we'll see how it goes :D
 

Kronixx

L5: Dapper Member
Apr 17, 2009
205
38
HOLY CRAP, was that a bump in the road?!

Oh, just a bump in the thread...

I am officially re-opening this project. As you can see work has been done on a brand new stage 1 that the other version as discussed earlier in this thread lacked (it was a 1 stager, this new one will be at LEAST 2). So you can officially ignore the previous 2 pages of chatter as this project is being restarted from square 1, square 1 as in I hit File>New in hammer. Nothing is being recycled! So from this point on discussion on the map should be reset as well. I look forward to taking this map through the development chain as I was unable to do so for so long and it hurt, my heart ached for many months not being able to work in hammer (got stuck in UnrealEd for school) and finally try to do something worth putting my name on. So i'm excited to get back to work and look forward to discussing everything and most importantly testing this baby!

Cheers fellas