Icy Flats rc3

Starting to feel more and more proud with each update. This time I did some thinking about how the layout could be improved. There were three main complaints about it in the previous versions, however each complaint was difficult to address as these were intentional design choices that I felt were important to keep in the map.
1) The sniper sightline from the guard tower courtyard corners to the roofs is too strong.

• I feel that this sightline is mostly justified by the fact that it exposes the sniper and makes the courtyard useful late-game.
• I decided to make it a little more difficult to use by blocking some of the sightline with fences.

2) The main rollback ramp is brutal to push.

• This was a design choice that was largely due to the payload checklist contest. I feel that it is part of the map's identity and makes matches more exciting at the start.
• I realized the main issue is when your team is behind, so half the team is defending, making the ramp very difficult to overcome. I decided to reduce the number of areas you could be attacked from (with fences again) so that pushing is a little easier.

3) Last is too easy to defend as an engineer.

• I feel that last is pretty well balanced at this point given that, for attackers, it is easily accessible and gives the height advantage over spawn, and for defenders, it is close to spawn and is a tight choke.
• Given that engineers were the cause for a long-term defense, I decided to move the health and ammo packs so the engineer must expose themselves a little if they want it.

In addition to all this, I did one more major change. I thought about how koth adjusts respawn times based on who is in the lead and decided I should do the same for plr. This change should also help in fixing problems 2 and 3.

• Now, all teams start at a 6 second respawn wave time
• After getting up the first rollback, your team's respawn is increased to 7 seconds
• After getting up the second rollback, your team's respawn is increased to 8 seconds

With that out of the way, here are the minor fixes.

Gameplay:

• Increased the duration and frequency of blizzard gusts
• Increased the brightness of some areas
• Decreased the explosion sizes
• Added more clipping

Detailing:

• Added a shutter detail by last
• Fixed misaligned door textures
• Adjusted the snow slopes so they look less low-poly
• Fixed floating camera props
• Adjusted fade distances on some props
• Added detail to ramps by spawn
• Added more ropes
• Decreased the width and added detail to the lowest spire catwalk
• Fixed the part of the skybox overlapping with the real world
• Added more fence detailing
• Adjusted some of the story details

By this point I'm excited to say that the map is 99.9% done! I know there are a few prop fades I need to adjust, and I can always improve optimization, but I'm going to take a step back for now so I can focus on school. If you're curious what happened to the rc1, well, it was kinda rushed. It was pretty much the same as b3 but with cubemaps and hdr. One important thing was my realization that I needed to follow copyright laws with some of the custom assets I was using. For that reason, I decided to remove the props from the construction pack and the skybox because I think it will be too difficult to get in contact with the authors in order to add them as contributors.

Gameplay

• Fixed a bug that could cause the carts to become stuck
  • Messed that up pretty bad
• Changed the prop jump behind the spire into a ramp
• Added some extra clipping
  • Also adjusted the vents clipping
• Removed the ability to build in spawn
  • Turns out I forgot to extend parts of the func_respawnroom!

Detailing

• Adjusted some details to better fit the theme
• Changed the skybox to a more stormy sky
  • Currently I'm torn between sky_alpinestorm_01 and sky_nightfall_01. I love the dark sky of nightfall but alpinestorm fits the theme sooo much better.
• Added some lights that were in the blue tunnel but not in the red tunnel
• Fixed a few misaligned and clipping props
• Adjusted some of the lighting and hdr
• Added icicle props around the map
• Fixed some missing faces out of bounds
  • These were only visible from the back of the spire, but I still can't believe I missed them!
• Revamped soundscapes to be more accurate
• Fixed the red stairs not touching the ground

Optimization

• Slightly lowered the skybox height

I'm believe I'm getting very close to completion, and I'll probably make the rc1 and put it on the workshop later today. My biggest concern is that the b2 crashed the server, but I've never experienced this personally so I have no clue why it would crash. Just gonna hope for the best. School is also starting to get very busy, so I might have to step back for a bit.

Detailing

• Replaced almost all lights with spot lights for a more dramatic effect
• Added light glow effects
• Adjusted detail rooms to tell more stories of the map
• Adjusted the detailing in spawn and tunnels to address a lighting bug
• Added more buildings to the skybox to make the facility appear larger
• Adjusted fog levels

Optimization

• Turned off collisions of out of bounds props and displacements

So, I've been working pretty hard to get this ready for Smissmas, and while I've made a lot of progress, there's still a lot of fine tuning to do detail-wise. Still, I need to test the slight layout changes asap, so here's the changes in this version:

Gameplay

• Adjusted spawn courtyards to reduce spawncamping
• Changed the connector from lobby to tunnels into a dropdown
  • This should dissuade players from going straight to the enemy spawn through the tunnels
• Added a route from the tunnels to the tower side mid courtyard (thanks Defcon for the suggestion!)
  • This should make traveling through the tunnels more useful later in the game
• Changed small health packs in the tower side mid courtyard into medium health packs
• Changed the medium pack inside the tower to a full health pack
• Added a "blizzard event" that occurs in the guard tower courtyard every few minutes

Detailing

• Changed the skybox to an edited version of Mikroscopic's sky_alpine_night_01
• Patched seams in the 3D skybox
• Added some snow overlays and displacements to "dry" playable areas
• Added snow to the roofs of buildings
• Added a Smissmas tree in the guard tower
• Fixed the missing nuclear waste submerged texture
• Added a few props and move_ropes to enhance the atmosphere

Optimization

• Removed collisions from snow particles
• Decreased the snow particle count