Washout a12

In this update I've attempted to improve the options available to soldiers by opening up the airspace in the map and increasing the roof space at mid.

The battlements have been turned into an open platform. This opens up a jump for scout to get on centre roof, too. Changed ammo here from medium to small. Also broke the skybox water :\

The path from spawn to battlements has been widened and had its air space opened up to allow for jumping soldiers and demos to more quickly get to the battle.

Windows have been added to the wall on the central roof to give people on the roof more situational awareness. The roof has been extended over the middle area to provide a better vertical combat option. Added a small health pack underneath. Note: this is an older shot and is missing the white tank on blue battlements.

This next change isn't to do with improving soldier play, I just want to try it. Added a drop down route from the main path down to the water route.

This is where the drop down exits. This should allow the team to bypass a lot of the action when entering the main area.

That's about it. I somehow messed up the skybox water (no specular)... which is really irritating me. Will hopefully figure it out for future versions.

Layout has been refined and pickups rethought. Some minor detailing as well:



Following are WIP shots, but illustrate the effective changes for this update.

Cut the route joining the two side yards, which were allowing a very direct push to the enemy spawn. Added a doorway to a new room, following:

This feels like it was really missing. This goes from the side yard (light in the bottom right of the shot) through to mid and up to the battlements. Also has some much needed health. Also this area appears to be a strong position for engineers to set up, which was an issue in the test.

Added some height for the attacking team and added cover. This, plus the health pack inside the doorway should make direct attacks on the point more viable. Also it's not apparent in the screenshot but the fence does a lot of work cutting long sight lines from a couple of angles.

This is how the area around the point looks now. Oh I also changed the small ammos in mid (off to the bottom right in the image) to medium ammos.

I removed the confusing-as-hell clipping in this room, creating a drop-down to the water route. Upped the health to a medium pack. I've cut the small ammos shown in the shot. Fixed the glass texture on the window, though to my defence the texture I was using is tagged as a "tf" texture in hammer

Added a medium health pack to the water route; combined with being able to exit from mid tower here should hopefully make it more interesting.

Attempted to make water route's access to the battlements a little more obvious.

Now the area after spawn. It's difficult to capture in a single screenshot, but I've attempted to really kill the enemy's ability to push this area. The health has been removed, the home team has height advantages and good angles. The home team also can set up sentries in the area that cover everything and hopefully are quite tricky to take down. This shot also shows the new, much more open route up to the team's battlements.

Replaced the single incredibly chokey hallway leading up to the battlement with a more open area. This should hopefully give each team actual command over their battlements.

This new area also has a drop-down that leads directly to the water route for slipping into mid unnoticed.

This is how the interior of the battlements looks now. I've also changed the large ammo in here to a medium ammo.

Another view of the staging area. The two passages come from red spawn.

It's getting kind of tricky to show all the routes in one overview, but hopefully this illustrates the most important changes.

http://tf2maps.net/posts/340775/

Thank you to everyone that tested and gave feedback on the gameday and Friday impromptu. The map seemed to play alright, but lacked variety. Defending the point seemed too easy and people were frustrated trying to attack. Also there were some sentiments that the map was small and areas cramped. With these points in mind I'm implementing these changes for a9:

- The point has been lowered to have no height advantage over the garage doors.
- The roof is still accessible but has been limitted. You can't access the other team's side of the roof from your side and there's very little room to dodge while on there.
- A ramp has been added to the middle wall of the point to provide another route to it. This opens the point up more to all the classes.

- There is now sleight height advantage (64 units) for people coming out of the garage doors. Hopefully this will help them attack the point better.

- The middle tower has been expanded in size to allow for a bit better combat within.

It's just an extra 64 units but it seems to feel much better.

- Reduced the amount of health available in the base of the middle tower to 1 medium kit. It has been placed in a more exposed area.

And I did a very basic texture pass and added a few details mainly because I was bored.