Shapes a65

Version b0h featured different transitions from 2nd to mid. Blue side had them and red didn't, but after 4 rounds of testing players couldn't tell which one was better, so I got another round of feedback from B4nny for this map. There is a lot of large changes here so I ended up going back down to an alpha instead of a beta, as the series of b0 versions were meant to mainly test the new textures.

This led me to use the connector on blue's side for both sides, and to rework how the pyramid transition connected to mid. The goals were to simultaneously make it far more open and to prevent sniper sightlines. Making the inner pyramid much larger and then opening up the sides of it while blocking the front accomplished this goal, and removed the complex geo that was there originally, and gives a clean and safe place to retreat to cover, something that was sorely lacking.

The 2nd bit of feedback he gave was that there wasn't really a good way to fight the point from a mid distance. Putting a ledge on the new forward slanted wall that blocks the pyramid transition sightlines gives a bit of height over the point, and I removed the boxes and mini slope that created effectively a valley directly in front of the point. Instead it is now a large smooth slope to the point letting you fight from much more different distances and approach much easier, and makes that area not so deadly.

Speaking of deadly valleys, the one area that was a struggle with the map since the first time I reworked this map based on B4nny's feedback has now been solved. The area inbetween the highground granted from the stepped stairs transition and the pyramid across the way from this transition entrance was a massive death valley. If you fell there as a medic or a support class or even if you were weak you were just dead as getting back up was cumbersome and there was no solid retreat options from there. The new larger pyramid transition helps with the retreat options but it didn't prevent how often falling happened and how bad it felt. The fix was honestly really simple and a big eureka moment for me. The slope that connected the lower portion of mid to the entrance of the stepped stairs was simply made much bigger, such that you had plenty of space to move about and dodge on it, and as a medic you could stay on this platform while healing your heal target that was approaching the pyramid and could safely fall down when they started to push down the other side of the pyramid. But it being bigger meant that you could actually jsut jump to the thin platform with a mini healthpack that overlooked the point.

These thin platforms have also undergone a change. Everyone of them used to have 2 fences blocking the front of them meant to be a safe place to stand. Frequent complaints about how they obstructed the game meant that I had to consider removing them. Previously this wasn't possible as they blocked deadly sniper sightlines but with the change of the pyramid transition I can now remove half of those fences so they are far more open. And I also made them not fences but walls so you can't see through them so you can play with them more.

B4nny had said that the connector that was made to connect the V transition to the pyramid transition was a place that could hide people quite easily. So I made a slice of the wall into one way glass so people pushing into 2nd from mid could see people in this connector easily. It also made me think that I should add a ledge across this wall just as something else to attack the transition with, since the connector made defending team also have highground over the transition.

The stepped stairs transition also received flow improvements. From clipped walls to overall raised ceilings across the board, makes it possible for a soldier to rocket jump through this transition. It's still a challenge however and I think I like it being hard to do.

The prism like structure overlooking the packs just outside of the 2nd side of the stepped stairs transition was shifted over a bit to make flow better.

Previously blue side of the pyramid transition had a one way glass distorted window that overlooked 2nd. This has been inversed such that this glass now looks into the pyramid transition from 2nd. I did this because there are 5 exits to watch on 2nd so having more visual info to effectively make it 4 exits to watch instead should be better for defending team.

Cap times on mid was lowered from 8 to 7, and the respawn time reducer for owning mid was increased from -2 seconds to -3 seconds advantage.

Another set of sloped prisms was added in the lower transition from 2nd to last, just to give that corner something. Further, there is a small ledge right above this transition that runs along the wall. I have smoothed out the wall to make that place much better to navigate and made the ledge slightly bigger.

Last has received a vertex overhaul, basically everything has been shifted/cropped/resized a little bit to make everything connect visually smoothly.

Finally, nav_mesh has been added back in. A lot of work has been done to get it fully functional and now bots should feel like they flow and play a lot smoother. Also there is a lot of engie bot hint locations so while they still struggle they don't pace around in spawn anymore.

This update changes a lot about how the transitions between 2nd and mid work.

They are only done to blue side however, so please compare and contrast which features of each side you like best.

Changes:

• Connected pyramid and right angle transitions to make a short route between the two. I noticed people were just bashing their head against a choke instead of flanking so maybe this will help decided to flank.
• Pyramid transition is bigger.
• The triangular prism doorways are also much bigger, but they are also straight, potentially meaning there's going to be a lot of sightline issues but also a lot more vision pushing out of pyramid.
• Sphere side of pyramid transition has one side been turned into distorted glass so you get more vision of the point instead of having to turn kind of blindly since there's no safe way to get vision here.
• The ceiling of both the entrance and exit of the sloped stairs transition have been raised a fair bit, making jumping through them a lot more smooth.

This is a minor update to hopefully address mid being too hard to recapture.

• Spawn time adjustment to owning mid went from -3 to -2.
• Mid cap time value went from 9 to 8 scout seconds.
• Mid is now locked at the start for 45 seconds to prevent point bum rushes from being complete blowouts.

The big change for this update is replacing the brushwork domes with displacement domes. They now look smoother, the texture can be applied better, and most importantly, less face side count so I have more leeway during art pass.

Other notable changes include:

• Spot lights for the nooks of the smaller domes so people can see better.
• Clipping brushes for the dual sphere paths in some of the smaller domes so people can walk up them butter.
• A cap value time of 9 scout seconds instead of 10 for mid.

You think I wouldn't do it?

Regardless, this is the update on the feedback gained on the new textures of the last test. These new textures are 4096x4096 instead of 2048x2048, and are much less intense in the differences between its highs and lows so hopefully it seems more like low background contrast and not full visual weight focus contrast.

But there's also some gameplay changes.

First I increased the cap time on mid by a value of 3. Didn't like scouts capping mid before the other team even got there.

And second, I completely resized the staging area on last that leads into the left flank, making it much larger, more fluid and more open for combat. I did not like how there was so little one could actually do when exiting from one of those flanks.

This update does a few things:

• Puts the mini on the ledge overlooking mid back.
• Lowers recapturing time of 2nd down to 5 seconds. Yes this breaks the hud.
• Expands the left flank route from 2nd that was a zigzag into low ground. There's now three steps to it and it has two exits into mid.
• Brought back the locked drop drop down when 2nd is capped.
• And as the namesake of this update title says: Puts in A LOT of custom textures every where that features complex patterns.

a51 contains very few changes, as the primary goal is to try and see what little things I do can solve the "eternally fighting at mid" problem that's been occurring in playtesting.

• Removed a bunch of health packs and ammo packs around mid and in the central transition to mid.
• Reverted the upside down pyramid to the smaller a49 size, while kept the top part from a50 making it a diamond.
• Increased spawn times by 1.
• Increased spawn time variability upon capping mid from -2 to -3.
• Increased second cap time by 2.
• Lowered spawn time variability upon capping 2nd from -2 to -1.
• Removed the xox door that appears blocking drop down when second is capped.

a50 is here! There's relatively little change from this one to the previous one, but it can potentially be a significant gameplay change.


Firstly though, players will notice that my arrows now pop, spent a significant amount of time getting the lighting on these juuuust right. There's a few areas that suffer from obnoxious lighting as a result but oh well.

As for the gameplay changes ...

1: Mid point time to cap value is lowered by two (seconds for a scout). I did this because a lot of fights seemed to linger a while on the mid point without being able to properly exchange to second. Spawn times and completely separated routes are a culprit but I wanted to see if making the mid point cap faster like koth_bagel would change anything.
2: 2nd point time to cap value is lowered by one, for symmetry reasons such that mid is now 7, 2nd is now 5 and last is 3.
3: I put the last cap point back to it's original position of slightly off to the left side. This is to try and see if defending team uses the platforms that overlook the point more for defense, as this position gives better sightlines for both platforms and is closer to them.
4: Numerous resource packs around last have been readjusted, to accommodate what I was seeing in terms of gameplay flow.
5: Two new health packs and one new ammo pack got added to mid on both sides. The health packs positioned to try and encourage high ground positioning.
6: To also encourage a bit of highground positioning, one of the glass window sightline blockers has been removed to give the accompanying platform much better sightlines and spam angles.
7: The narrow ledge across the sideways pyramid to the big pyramid overlooking the point has it's "ceiling" slanted so players can more easily jump off of. They can now jump onto the platform mentioned in 6 from this ledge.
8: Two boxes were introduced to let players jump onto this platform while they are on the point.
9: Finally, the big upside down central pyramid was reverted to its original size. But then I deleted the big square pillar ontop of it, duplicated the pyramid, put it ontop of it, and then stretched both such that they touched the skybox. This should still give mid the same sense of open-ness, while both giving a bit more protection around the bottom of the pyramid to stand next to and let soldiers have more open space in the sky to bomb. They can also surf the upper part of this new diamond, saving health on bombs and having greater control of timing.

A lot of these changes are tests to improve/change flow to how I want.

• The hollowed out half-pyramids in front of the central chokes leading up to mid had their tops chopped off, you can now see across the entire point from the chokes.
• 3 of the smaller cubes next to the big cube are gone, not necessary to keep them as the pyramids are closer to a couple of them that you can jump from one to another with ease.
• The big central upside down pyramid has been shrunk considerably, revealing the point capture zone prop that was always there.
• Many of the spheres adjacent to the cylindrical platforms overlooking second have been removed.
• People hate jumping more than bots do so the spheres that are remaining have been clipped to be smoothed out. Again.
• The big sphere that marks the entrance to the chokes to mid has a new exit to the other side.
• Missed an arrow sign.
• Some resource packs were not even.
• Cleaned up and shifted a lot of geo to better positions.
• The dropdown from last to second closes off when your second gets capped by the enemy team again. I did this because it resulted in medics having very little safe place to position.
• The last point was put more centered what with the new slopes coming from the flat zigzag tunnel made it easier to access.
• Removed the pillar that overlooked that doorway and replaced it with a fence to make it harder to rush the point. Capping and swarming last was a little too easy.

B4nny's feedback boiled down to a few things:

• Sniper can sit pretty far back on the transitions in second, letting him cover most of the second area with little to no way to counter.
• Transition exits always had advantageous high ground directly in front of it overlooking the transition, stuffing would-be pushers.
• Very few transitions had great vision of the point.
• Transitions were far apart from another, making them hard to rotate from one to the other.
• Many of the transitions were functionally long corridors that didn't end with any advantage to being there.

To accommodate these changes, I did the following:

• Shrunk down the center dome of second from 2100x2100x1050 to 1800x1800x900.
• Brought forth the side "igloos" (as b4nny called them) much closer to the big dome, effectively cutting their total area by half.
• Shrunk down collective transition travel size by a total of 2,000 hu. A GRU heavy spends about 4 less seconds running to mid from spawn now.
• Shrunking down the center dome naturally resulted in a lot of the sphere high ground per spots to be closed off as the spheres were dug into the wall more.
• Removed a lot of perch points that overlooked transition exits. Eg. Many spheres on second and the triangle flats on the edges of the sideways pyramids.
• Transitions into second don't have as egregious sightlines across the point but instead got much higher doorways, making bombing through a choke and into a choke much easier.
• Transitions into mid have all been raised up to give more vision of the point and to make it easier to push into.
• Doing the above meant needing ways to reach said high ground, so a lot of the high ground that previously overlooked transition exists now met the transition exits, treating them like walkways onto the point.
• A result of the above meant there was a lot more dead space inbetween the transition exits and the point, so I brought the point significantly closer to the transition exits, and shrunk it down to fit better.
• The two bigger layout additions were the carving out of the sides of the two smaller pyramids that overlooked the central transitions into mid, creating a tunnel that one can walk through them. And then the opening up of both sides of the lower transition from last to second, meaning one can travel into and out of it and into both other sides of the transition a lot more smoothly.
• All forward spawns can now be walked into as an engineer.
• Healthpacks have all been divvied up into small pack arrays, mostly for casual appeal, so things like a scout missing 5 hp or a demo rolling out of spawn doesn't consume medium or large pack resources for players that might need it more. Players aren't always going to be well mindful of sharing or leaving the resource packs so doing this forces players to share better without them having to actively think about it.