Substratum Stage 2 -- Alpha 2

• Welcome to Stage 2! That's it.

Decided to try something a bit different with the layout, we'll see if this works out at all.

Stage 1 Alpha 7 -- Doug Walker begins moonlighting as a level reviewer

Welp, this probably should do for a last run before I can finally say stage one is okay and go prepare (read: horribly mangle) the second stage for you lot. Or this attempt to address the one big sniper spot leads to the second area playing much worse and we'll be back here in a few weeks?

• Added this building thing to second area
• Added func_nogrenade to both spawnrooms
• Added floor patches for kits, roll the red carpet
• Made all of the decor planks of the bridge nonsolid
• Re-routed the left flank-route that led through the tunnel (was just opening a 2000-ish sightline, that ain't good)
• Adjusted and added clipping to various areas
• Adjusted door brushes to fix a case of fire squeezing through a 1-HU gap?
• Adjusted some props at second area

And that's because of the following
also hello, I'm going to give this another go and see if it still goes nowhere

• Adjusted geometry at second checkpoint
• Adjusted respawn wavetimes for both teams
  • And yet I probably will just revert it if this leads to teams spending too much time being dead?
• Actually fixed a case where the cart doesn't capture a checkpoint properly
• Fixed a spot that allows Engineers to trap teammates
• Some other things I don't remember anymore

Well that was unexpected now wasn't it?
I was a bit too hesitant to add an additional route but as it turned out, just a dropdown isn't entirely enough address either point that was made earlier
So this time I'm going to put in that third route into the second area and see how things will work out from there

• Lowered RED's respawnwavetime back to 8 like it was earlier
• Lowered the bonus time BLU gets for capturing the first point
• Re-routed the dropdown into a secondary exit leading into first area
• Added an additional route into the highground at the second area
• Adjusted the window in the first area to look more like a window
• Adjusted the trigger of the oneway door RED had so it now opens from both sides
• Adjusted the stairs in the second area
• Adjusted clipping in a couple of locations at the first area
• Adjusted geometry in BLU spawn
• Moved the observer point in second area to account for the new route
• Raised things at the first area to make clipped off areas more clear (I wasn't clear enough it seems)

Not sure how many people even read these but damn am I glad I reworked that first area, feels way better now
The real issues that I see right now is the choke being too good, the flank not really helping BLU break out of that choke and RED feeling like they have fairly limited options once they have to fight in that second area
So this time I figured I'd try messing with things and seeing if it'll help RED out spread out a bit and help BLU clear the tunnel safer (also try to make some OOB areas more clear with the power of big scary metal fence)

• Added a dropdown to lessen the iron grip of the spam tunnel
• Added a wee little window of sorts to a wall in the spam tunnel
• Adjusted kits at first area
• Adjusted geometry at second area to give RED more space to work with than just hang back at the point
• Adjusted OOB areas to clarify map boundaries better
• Clipped some stairs and props that should have clipping but did not
• Fixed one of RED's resupply cabinets being linked to the wrong one
• Fixed one of the rotating doors at the second area opening the wrong way

• Decided to test all stages separately to make testing easier and less reliant on BLU winning "enough"
  • Starting with Stage 1 (obviously) because it's both the first and the worst
• Reworked first area
• Raised RED's respawnwavetime to 9 (lets see if I revert this immediately)
• Lowered amount of kits at second area