Ivory a11

Didn't get too much feedback last playtest, which is surely a good sign but I'm still trying to figure things out in adjusting the layout of course. So here's a few more experiments to be playtested thrown your way.

-Removed the sightline blocker outside of flank's transition route entrance, in order to try and make rotations from balcony/valley to the flank easier

-Made the highground in valley's connector higher meaning it can no longer be crouch jumped onto, providing more cover, making it a more annoying spot for building on, while inversing it to make it better for attacking the point or valley

-Moved the medium health & ammo in flank

-Replaced the small ammo packs in the back of the map with small health kits instead, replaced the medium health in the same area with a medium ammo pack instead

-Replaced the full ammokit in valley's connector with a medium healthkit to see if it sees people go for riskier plays due to connector remaining relatively unused and the full ammokit not drawing enough eyes

-Changed the cap timer from 6 seconds to 9 seconds, a minor change but the point was capturing far too quickly previously to make it seem like there was a more active back and forth when a team had a much stronger hold (just further back than the point itself hence the point trading)

-Made the ramps up to mid slightly longer, (genuine statement I have 0 idea on how they ever became so steep it did not look intentional)

-Reworked the middle spawn transition to remove the sightline from flank's transition route which would've opened up after I removed the sightline blocker

-Moved the far back shack in the flank further back a smidge, a little iddy biddy bit

-Added some barrel props to valley/connectors cover to stop sentries being placed right in the corner of the point

-Once again made flank's transition route slightly wider

Look after finishing a new map I managed to get an Ivory version done in a day. Wow ! Exclamation mark !

-Removed the Sniper sightline from balcony's door to the enemy team's flank exit

-Removed the ability for classes to get on top of the crates outside of the flank exit by jumping off a barrel that was located next to them

-Removed one of the crates

-Decreased the size of the cubby in valley Engineers were using to nest outside of mid

-Removed the railing from valley's exit making it a smooth drop-down

-Decreased the height of balcony's entrance porch in order to allow for easier rotations from valley to balcony. (Players can now jump onto it rather than having to
walk all the way around to use the ramp to get up)

-Flipped each team's spawn again so the side exit now faces the left not the right

-Pushed the mid-shacks forwards a teeny bit a tincy wincy little bit like just a smidge

-Made flank's transition route hallway wider to allow for more dodging of splash when inside

-Redid the far left spawn transition route exit again

-Rotated the pickups in valley so ammo is now further away from the cubby barely

-Added spectator cams

haha whoopsies, fixed my packed hud (I changed my TF2 directory to my Hard-Drive from my SSD just before the 72 hour jam and forgot to fix my compile pal directory for my hud)

-Reworked the spawn & spawn exits once again, this is to try and have players take valley more often, rather than having them be drawn to main like they were in the a8 playtest. To achieve this the furthest left spawn exit now faces into valley rather than into main, meanwhile the main spawn exit is now closer to the far left and middle spawnyard transition routes.

-Fixed various clipping issues around the map, such as fences you could stand on, roofs, & some fences.

-Streamlined block bullet brushes on fences which were designed to be active cover. This is because there was a previous lip you could shoot through at the top of the fence, which is pretty substantial for sniping onto mid.

-Moved some cover around in each team's backyards.

-Raised each team's backyards to now be higher over their respective transition routes, ideally making it easier for each team to push out & hold. As the previous playtest saw a lot of aggressive play from the team that held mid.

-With the previous note, the balconies over mid are now mildly higher up, (but they can still be double jumped onto off of the fences outside of main).

-Fixed an issue where the prop jump up to main's exit wasn't working because the fence clipping was RIGHT on the edge of the wall preventing players from being able to jump onto the floor off of the crate (I designed the prop jump while I had clip brushes disabled haha whoopsies).

-Fixed an issue where the respawnroom brush did not extend to the back of the room on each team. Whoops again, punishment for me reworking the spawn so much.

-Rotated the sloped cover at mid 180 degrees, this is to try and make it so the ledge is over mid itself rather than over each team's transition route exits. Making it easier to splash when coming out of your transition routes rather than when you're holding the point.

-Changed the sun angle to make the sun be higher up to light the level up more (forgot to change the shadow entity or the sun entity to align with this haha whoops).

-Redid the entire spawn building, spawnyard & spawnyard transition routes. All of these have been pushed further towards valley, to try and give all routes a proper equal split between the back-yard transition route options, compared to it feeling lobsided in the past.

-Added a basic propjump in mid to climb up to each team's main exit.

-Fixed a single railing clipping bug where I accidentally left an old playerclip brush so you could just stand on the air. Luckily no one noticed it so we didn't have any levitating players last playtest. (Not that it was in an advantageous spot anyway)

-Added some mild new cover to valley.

(Update title is not a complaint just wanted to try some stuff out haha and I was a bit stumped to do anything major besides experiment, thank you for the warm reception to a6!)

-(Likely to change back maybe?) Rotated the far left spawnyard transition route exit 90 degrees to face towards the valley, this is to try and stop it from being the best possible route to take out of all the spawnyard exits (unless pressured). This change will hopefully see players take more agency over which specific route they choose. As it now takes longer to use it to rotate to main than other routes unlike in the past. (Long explanation)

-Streamlined the team spawnrooms to be smaller, more direct, & gave them some mild internal highground to try and mildly weaken any damage being thrown at main shutter.

-Opened up main's initial entrance based on feedback.

-Fixed some clipping issues where a roof was unclipped and luckily no one noticed haha.

-Decreased the size of far right spawn transition route's balcony by snipping a little bit of it. idk it was throwing me off didn't like it being so big and wonky.

-Decreased the height & size of the cover block at main's entrance in the team's backyard. Now with the far left spawn transition route exit being changed it no longer covers said transition route so there's no need for it to be so aggressive. Now the highground the cover provides on a crouch jump can be used by all classes from one side.

:fish:

-Made the Sniper balconies bigger to make them less restrictive to players standing on them.

-Replaced the previous highground over connector with a brand new shack to cut off sightlines while keeping a tiny bit of the back area for cover. Previous highground wasn't really useful unless you were hugging the wall outside of denying connector, something which the new highground only offers up to people that can reach up there/buildings.

-Removed the second exit off of main's transition route, the route itself really only ever got used by people to flank attackers coming out of main, especially now that I made it a highground entrance in the previous version. May revisit having a second exit if this leads to main itself being too hard to push out of due to spam.

-Made the transition route on the far right of the spawn-yard more obvious by pushing it closer to the left and putting the entrance to it at a 45 degree angle, so hopefully more people take it stopping everyone being funneled through only two transition routes to the backayrd.

-Added more cover in the back-yard to prevent a sightline from main's exit up to one of the spawn-yard transition route exits. Bad to be able to spam people coming out of the spawnyard from there I think.

-Tried to make the Sniper sightlines more predictable on the far left route by adding more buildings to the back of it, pushing the Sniper further forwards.

-Moved some cover at mid to open up more sightlines and make the level easier to traverse around connector.

-Added an overhang to the far right route to prevent people from being able to sticky/rocket jump to the enemy team's backlines as easily. Hopefully positioned it in a way where it doesn't impact any potential rollouts.

-Changed the small healthpack at mid to a medium healthpack.

-Mildly reworked the back-flank area. Concerned if I made any evil sightlines, but it should now be more open since it does not have the long cube divider between both team's sides. Which while annoying previously only existed to prevent a door to door sightline. (Not an issue anymore as that second exit off of main has been removed as noted in a previous bullet point)

-Fixed some clipping for a mild out of bounds area no one noticed. Thank Goodness ! Luckily gave no tactical advantage.

Trying to make it so it's easier to take the point now after an initial cap, so the match isn't so one sided. Hopefully my changes help.

-Reworked the map's cliff-side flank by killing the divider building between mid & the flank. Now this ground offers open highground over the point in exchange for less cover to get around.

-Added some highground on the transition routes to mid near the map's connector section. This should help teams watch connector and spam out the point, while being a tight enough angle to hopefully be contestable.

-Swapped where the mid cover pylons were located to the other side of the little block-out thingymbobs to try and block sightlines further going into the back flank

-Added some larger cover by connectors to also block the sightlines from the backflank

That's about it really Got distracted with other stuff which is why this version took a little bit to make haha

Minor tweaks since I couldn't really think of too much to do based on the established feedback so rather than a3's layout overhauls this is more just experimental layout changes to ensure the map has less hard-rolls after a mid capture.

-Changed main's transition route to be higher up, giving the attacking team free equal highground to the point upon exiting, hopefully to make it harder for the defending team to push up to after a mid capture.

-Changed one of the spawn transition routes to exit further into the team's frontlines & to be at a new 45 degree angle to divide up the exits further than they were previously, stopping centralized camping from occurring if the defending team push through the mid transitions.

-Simplified the balcony area further to remove "fluff", while allowing for more movement options on generalist classes.

-Fixed an issue with a ramp slide bug thing at 45 degree angles, yeah.

-Gave each team's side flank more highground and moved the health & ammo behind cover to make the spot easier to hold.

-Made mid brighter based on a3 feedback
-Extended out 1 clip brush on both sides of the level as you could still stand on top of a piece of angled geometry which was meant to be clipped off.