polarplant b1c

Healthpacks on second/mid have been reworked:
-There is now only one medium healthpack in lobby (that one has been shifted closer to the middle of lobby). The other one that was closer to river has been moved onto second.
-The medium ammo on battlements has been removed.
-The small pack by the forward spawn has been moved in front of the middle choke, and given a small ammo pack on the snow pile.
-The small health and medium ammo pack on the left side (dev texture building) has been moved closer to the attacking side and has been updraded to a medium health kit. It's more exposed but more usable by both sides.
-The medium pack in the right choke (previously dubbed 'grate' by some) has been pushed into mid so that mid gets more health.
Along with the above, this right choke has been readjusted.
-The grate has been cut in half so soldiers can't camp the ramp.
-Since this opens sightlines, the door has been redone and turned into a shutter door.
Back to the second point, the middle choke has had its exit raised, and the wall facing the exit has been pushed back. In addition, another short wall has been introduced to help make pushing through a little safer.
On the right (or "open") choke, an arch at the top has been introduced to limit high bombs.
On last, river has been opened up just a bit at the end so that bombing is easier.

Reworked geometry on 2nd to hopefully encourage defenders to hold closer to the middle instead of hugging the right side.
This means that the packs in the right room has been moved closer to the defending side (to discourage pushing solely through the fastest route), putting the highground closer to the left side and removing the highground on the right side.
Also, due to popular demand, last has received an inkling of thought in regards to lighting so it's not "fullbright". Might be too dark now.

Thanks as always to TEST.CO for the feedback and testing.

Some geometry was sticking through a wall, and some other geometry was z-fighting.

Last has been redone again in accordance with feedback from TestCo.
The entrances into last's lobby have been squished together some so rotating does not take as long.
Changed the small ammo pack to a medium ammo pack.
Fixed some places that lacked playerclips, and added func_nobuilds to roofs.
The black roofed perch now has less surface area and standing there leaves you vulnerable to splash damage at all spots.

Healthpack asymmetry!

Minor Tweaks after a discussion on the TEST.CO server:
Colored the spawns at last.
Tweaked the sightline from river to the spawn door.
Fixed an unsightly hole in a ceiling.
Adjusted health packs.

It's 2am. I'm tired.
In my opinion, the map received a downgrade in both visuals and function. But this version is supposed to help me gauge what functional ideas work and what doesn't so I'll refine them in the next version. Chances are before long I'll create this map on a fresh .vmf again because I'm starting to feel like the brushwork is getting unnecessarily cluttered from all the changes it's gone through. Anyways...

Mid's shrunken down a bit to get rid of dead space.
The platforms on mid got an extension. Also helps with sightlines.
The right path from mid to 2nd has been overhauled. Not sure if it's better or worse, but I swear it's all in the name of progress.
Second has been minorly overhauled. The forward spawn there has been moved up from beneath the point to the black roof building.
There's a porch-like area from that right side of mid now.
Some doors have closed, while others have opened. There's now a "river" over on the left side (looking from 2nd to last) that connects the points.
Last has been redone again. No more flank room on the right side that leads into a building.
There's crates on second and last now. I guess last has become the warehouse. Makes sense 'cause the exterior looks like one and the interior looks like one. Not sure how I managed that without consciously piecing that together.
Some health and ammo packs have been redistributed.

Geometry Changes
- Made the map smaller overall by reducing the size of mid and one of the pathways from mid to 2nd
- Reduced sightlines on mid via a couple changes:
- Raised the point by a large amount so the whole area behaves more as a pyramid instead of a valley (can't wait to catch flak about this one)
- Rotated the forward spawn rooms and removed a ramp, which eliminates a popular sniper position while simultaneously makes it easier for players to navigate towards the fight
- Retextured some bricks to be a deeper shade, just so everything isn't so "samey"
- Inspiration takes place from Icelandic power plants, which are all very bland in nature and use next to no wood at all. It's an intentional limitation. Nevertheless, I'd like to emphasize that this is still an alpha, and the focus is not on detail or texturing, despite the recent detailing that has taken place. As I've said before, it's a very rough concept that is a way to portray my intentions for the person who will detail it later.
- Added a shipping crate on 2nd so there's another way to escape the lowground

Other Stuff
- Added info_overlay signs to help direct people. I'm already expecting people to say, "don't use the A/B/C signs for 5cp, it's inaccurate and confusing". To them, I say that I don't care, it's alpha and it's better than just having the vague signs that say nothing but "Capture Point ->". It's a linear 5cp map, c'mon now.
- Dimmed the light entities across the board. Lighting, while important, still is not a major concern since I'm still working out the layout of the map. It's a part of the design that takes a huge amount of time (as you should know), so obviously I'm not going to put a lot of effort into it until the map is ready for the effort.

Rebuilt the map on a new .bsp so I could extract the parts I liked from the map while being able to make major changes to other areas, as well as tweak a ton of little things.

The map is now primarily aligned to the 32 grid instead of the 16 grid to keep brushes more broad.

Most importantly, though, everything past the second point has been reworked from scratch. There's a new second lobby, and a new last point that hopefully will be more fun and balanced to play on. I'm a little worried about the amount of play space on last, as well as sightlines throughout the map, but we'll see. I really cannot tell if Sniper will be really good or subpar on this map.

Additionally, the old main choke between mid and second has been squeezed down a lot, to the point that I'm not sure it's worthy of being called "main" anymore.

I've also done some "detailing" (definitely my best work yet, but still not that good in the scheme of things) by including a greenhouse, a building with a curvy black roof, and the large building at mid.

b4nny has reviewed the map again, looking at r7. Along with playtesting and feedback from other sources, I've made significant changes to all areas of the map. So significant, in fact, I've incremented the alpha version to 2.

Geometry Changes
- Mid isn't as wide as it used to be. It's been moved in so every square inch is a bit more objective-oriented.
- Replaced some walls with blast shield looking things. I just thought it looked cool.
- Reworked the entrances from mid to 2nd:
- The room from left path now has a far left door and subroom to facilitate easier navigation to that side of the map. Prior to this point that section wasn't really utilized in midfights.
- The right path has had changes in the way you get to the upper path. The entrance is no longer on top of the concrete ramp and instead meets up right next to the lower path. There's a closed window looking into mid as well.
- Moved the forward spawns inside of mid further forward so there's not a bizarre room with no purpose.
- Reworked boundary walls some (see artpass changes below).
- Reworked health packs in mid with the intention of making rollout better
- Added a small shelf by main/choke so teams coming from 2nd have a place to avoid spam.


Honestly you should just look at everything changed on 2nd, way better than me trying to describe it...
- Redid the roof of the barn on 2nd so it better covers sightlines to point.
- Redid the small shed beside the barn on 2nd and made walking up easier with a ladder prop.
- The area around the shipping crate on 2nd has been redone so walking is easier without sacrificing accessibility to point.
- The ramp on the lower left side of 2nd now hugs the wall of the point.
- The left side of 2nd now connects all the way to the 2nd/last lobby, and instead of a ramp on that side there is now a plank.
- Changed the left door to 2nd/lobby so it faces at a 90 degree angle, and extended the leftmost 2nd/lobby room to compensate for this.
- Shrunk the right ramp shutter door into 2nd/lobby and removed the shutter -- instead this is a small balcony with a larger doorway leading into the flank lobby on the right.
- Removed the far right entrance into flank lobby.
- Redid the ramp work in the flank lobby to match changes.
- Moved health packs around in 2nd and all the lobbies.
- More minor stuff I really can't be bothered to detail.

- Removed the rightmost (from defender side) spawn shutter and reallocated the space to make a ramp connecting up to the other spawn shutter.
- Moved health packs around in last a bit.

Artpass Changes
I've textured a significant portion of mid, mid/2nd connectors, and 2nd. This isn't even remotely final -- I recognize I don't have the artistic mindset / skills needed to make a map look good. That being said, I do have broad ideas about how I want the map to look and feel. Alongside the fact that geometry is still being moved around quite a bit, I will only do simple artpass stuff so that whoever comes through and does a better job at detailing will have a basic visual understanding of what I want accomplished. So please don't laugh at my strange texturing choices

Notably, boundary walls are an important part of how the map is played -- having an invisible wall plays very differently for soldier compared to having a solid, jumpable wall (think of how highbombing works). To this end, I have removed the highwalls alongside a section of 2nd as an introduction to this aspect of map design. I've also fenced a few areas for jumping reasons as well as to make space for out-of-bounds aesthetics.

Other Changes
- Reoriented the spawn points in last to face towards the doors instead of at a wall.
- Restructured internal framework using visgroups to more easily mirror changes in the future.