Smalltime

Smalltime RC1a

The last version had a pretty fatal areaportal bug in it. This version fixes it.
CHANGELOG B5a:
- Removed Minicrits around the JACK Carrier. Ultimately a decision I am still not too sure on. Consider this an experiment.
- Increased heal rate of the JACK from 10HP/s to 12HP/s
- Increased base respawn time from 6.5s to 7s
- Fixed various minor visual issues
- Optimized map. Again. This time using Occluders - seeing if they help things or damage them. Early tests have shown that they seem to work decently well, but unsure if other rigs confirm that behavior.
- Tips now show up with a 50% chance of death, instead of 100%.
- Reduced filesize

Goal Zone Changes:
- Heavily extended vent slope forwards and changed general shape of it.
- Changed HP pack size from small to medium for the pickup right at the shitpit
- Added a bit of extra cover in the form of two small hoodoos right at those exact pickups

20210518142817_1.jpg


The goal of these changes was to offer more meaningful cover to people attacking from the shitpit + to generally make the grounded area a wee bit more interesting and less of an open field.

- Made the concrete floor a little bit less bumpy

If you play this, please let me know how your performance is behaving!
CHANGELOG B4:

- Added PASS Time Respawn Tips! Thank Burguers again for helping me out with this. Every single time you die, the screen will display one out of almost 50 hand typed PASS Time tips. The purpose of this is to inform and educate players about PASS Time so they play better and are generally less confused.

20210516171315_1.jpg


- Some extra optimization work.
- Fixed various minor visual issues scattered throughout the map. Again.

Very curious if the player competence will grow thanks to these tips. Not like you have anything else to do on the respawn screen.
CHANGELOG B3:
- Fixed various minor visual issues, such as strange lighting or minor displacement clips.
- Zoomed Spectator cameras out a little bit, from 70 FOV to 90 FOV.
- Clipped spawn tunnel so you no longer get stuck at the edges
- Heavily optimized the map using areaportals, some extra hints here and there and lots of prop fading.

Just walking around with no players the lowest my FPS drops is 180, average is +200. Hopefully I won't have to bust out forbidden occluder technology.
After compiling 300 times and debugging the water being real fucking weird I've settled to use the cheap hydro water as a base instead of expensive water.

Map is open and hard to optimize and expensive water, especially in that flank area, has been a real performance killer. As such, I think making it cheap is a wise decision.

Also optimized the map a bit, making props fade out earlier.
you no longer get stuck on the stupid gravel
CHANGELOG B2:

- Clipped the 5000 spots floof and others have reported. Mostly horizontal, still unsure what to clip vertically.
- Minor visual adjustments.
- Minor lighting issues fixed.
- Replaced the displacement going directly up to the window at the puddle with a pile of gravel - you will now to have jump through it, too.
- Added an arrow at the puddle flank to make it clearer for people entering it where to go.
Art Pass Time.
Not a lot of actual layout changes. The TL:DR: is that I have encased spawn inside a minecraft cave, added some planks from the defensive highground to the offensive top rope and removed point scaling. I've also removed the "top blocker" from mid for various reasons.

CHANGELOG B1:

- Art Pass! Skybox, Textures, Geo, Spectator cameras, the whole package.

- Point scaling has been removed. The fundamental basis of my reasoning for keeping it was flawed: In Pubs, there will *almost never* be a situation where people will take less than 2 min to score 5 times in a row. In that case, it's a stomp. The goals granting 2 points each by default decreases round length already to a nice average of 7-8 min.

- Round Time has been decreased from 15 Minutes to 10 Minutes. Nuff said. With the changes made rounds already end before hitting the 10 min mark, this is more of a faillsafe to ensure that rounds end - at most - after 10 minutes.

- There are now planks leading from the defensive highground to the offensive top rope. This both allows attackers and defenders easier access to that particularly vital gameplay spot.

- Added a small platform over the puddle to grant players more wiggle room when pushing in.

- Encased spawn in a minecraft cave. This prevents the ugly spawncamping situation and also generally makes the spawn area much safer from particularly toxic sightlines when players are jumping real high. Also helps with optimization. The minecraft cavefication has also led to some routing changes to the spawn area.

- Adjusted floor height in goal area.

- Healthpacks in the buildings at mid are now small instead of medium. Mid should be an area that is controlled by the JACK owning team, with the JACK's increased healing sustaining them there for longer.

- Updated MOTD Image to account for the new changes.

- The JACK now gets aggressively thrown out of a window when it spawns. I wonder what's going on in there.

- An explosion sound effect now plays when players score in the Run-In and Throw-In goals, granting it more "oomph".

- Made it easier to escape the kiddie puddle.

- Ever so slightly expanded mid horizontally to grant more space to fight in.

- After scoring, the losing team will now spawn in their top spawn for 10 seconds after scoring, instead of instantly switching to the bottom spawn.

- A ton of other changes which I forgot about, probably.

I'm planning to wrap this map up soonish since it's been on my mind a lot and I also intended to release all the funky logic the map is using to improve PASS Time as a Prefab pack for people to use.
There are probably a few rough edges both in gameplay and visual that I've missed, and I am especially interested in performance. Since the map is so open, it's been a real pain trying to optimize it. Let's hope it worked.

I will update the OP with new screenshots of the map shortly after this update.

thumb.jpg
I will once again use images to convey the changes made.

LAYOUT CHANGES:

20210422132254_1.jpg

The entire bottom "in-door" route has been cut. After checking out the demo and playing a bit, even with the most recent change of making it mostly defender to mid sided, it was still a number 1 spot for players to just bleed directly into your base. Defenders didn't really use it either.

This leaves BLU with 3 entrances into the goal area, while the defenders now have 4 means to get back into mid, with the left route now being heavily biased towards them - allowing for a definite entry into it.

I've used this opportunity to add an extra focus to the top-rope and make routing to it far, far easier for defenders. It is a vital position to hold, and the two giant ramps should now make it more inviting to go and hold there.


20210422132319_1.jpg

The other side has been "shrunk" a bit by moving the outside wall inwards.
The brush before was made smaller, tilted and heightened - making it incredibly obvious for ground-dwellers that no, they can't jump up there.
Defenders can use this as an additional height advantage to push into mid, and mobility classes can use it to get up on the high ground from an alternative position.


20210422132338_1.jpg
A smaller change: I have extended the ramp upwards to be as wide as the entire room. Should make it easier for attackers to push up there.


SYSTEM/OTHER CHANGES:

- The heal rate of the JACK has been upped to that of a level 1 Dispenser. It now heals 10hp/s instead of 2hp/s.
- The JACK will now grant teammates in the pack Minicrits!


These JACK System changes are HIGHLY experimental and have a good chance of going tits up. I want to see if this changes how players interact with the JACK and how much they treasure it.
The Minicrit status effect can be easily switched out for a different cond, so I want to experiment with what sticks and what players feel like is fair.

- Metal on the map has been upped significantly around bases. Mid still only has small ammo packs.

With the above changes to the JACK, I feel more comfortable giving Engineers a bit more power on the map.

- There is now a "MOTD Image" that elaborates on some of the map's changes so players are more aware of what they are getting into. It appears on the loading screen (after having the map loaded at least once) and on the map's MOTD.

20210422130617_1.jpg
CHANGELOG A19:

- Increased base goal worth from 1 to 2! Bonus goals still grant 3 points.
If PASS Time would give me the option to lower the "playing to..." variable from 5 to 3, I would do it. Unfortunately there is no such option, so setting the base score worth from 1 to 2 does the job just as well. This also means that the bonus goal only awards 1 extra point compared to 2.

- Score scaling changes:
--> 2/4min mark have been changed to 3/6 min mark to account for the new base goal worth.
--> The bonus goal is only affected by the 3min mark, meaning that at it's max it caps at a score of 4. No "One goal" victories anymore!

- Increased base ground height of goal area a little bit to reduce "shoot the feet" syndrome a bit.
- Reangled and positioned the jump pad effect a bit to make it clear where it will launch you while also preventing it from clipping outside the rock zone

- Spawn Changes:
--> Spawns remain the same, with the difference that either the top or bottom are enabled/disabled depending on if the JACK is within your base or not. Top is active when it is, bottom is active when it is not.

- Smoothed out a variety of lips for easier traveling

- Bathtub has been made a bit smaller so you can jump over it now as an average speed class, the ground also is a bit more raised when going towards the ledge of it.

- Added a small window to the one-way shutter on the right spawn exit (blu to red direction)

- Added "roof" over walk-in so you can't catapult yourself into it from mid as easily. It's still a strat, just a bit harder.

- Adjusted some geometry around the "small hut" on the highgroundd with the fences to make it easier to schmove through

- Made it easier to escape the kiddie puddle

- Adjusted width and height of defensive structure at goal to adjust for that new fancy "roof"

- Speedboost on cap now has a team filter on it, meaning that after winning the winning team will no longer get a speedboost when invading your spawn. You'll keep it though, because why not.

- Slightly increased ball trail length so people without glow outlines enabled can still get a good idea of where the ball man

- Some minor other shit