PL Boundary rc

[Jonny]

I have a couple points that come to mind right now.

Firstly, I love the start of the map and the fights around that area, but it seems to go much faster than the rest of the map. Maby put a medium health next to that large ammo and a higher ground plateau somewhere for the defenders.

If the second point is too hard to defend, you could possibly put an entrance from the bit with boxes above the ladder, going into the top floor of that building with the point.

I still find the end of the map a little odd, too many railings maby, but I like the bit just before that.

You could also experiment with making the small health inlet (with computer bank) just before the third point into a corridoor route or something..dunno.

One last point I found a steel doorway under the three window room at the end needed clipping around it.

Keep up the polish

 

[PMAvers]

Got a chance to play a few rounds tonight with a full 24-man server.

It's nice, although the phrase "chokepointopolis" was coined in chat in reference to it. One round the offense just stalled after the third point and couldn't get past it due to a sentry.

 

[honeymustard]

That's a popular sentry spot but it's fairly easy to take down with one uber coming through the room above (with the two windows). You can also just spam through the window with the hole.

 

[BrokenTripod]

I played this on the PA servers today and it got stuck in that exact same spot despite a number of ubers, because of pyro pushback and because that doorway gets clogged with people and the uber can't move through until everyone clogging it is dead (And then the ubered person has to reload)

The doorway is a bit small for getting rid of the sentry and the railing doesn't really help for the offense here.

I think one of the problems is that this corner is where the cart always gets stuck. If red is good, it'll get stuck here for the whole time, but if red lets up just a little, it's easy for blu to get it the rest of the way, since it's a downhill battle and there's a lot of entries to the final area.

EDIT: Also, spamming at the sentry though the window is difficult due to the shelves in the room.

 

[ShamanBond]

We haven't had issues at that corner on FreeFrag, the room above is sufficient to provide a distraction for the sentry while an uber demo comes around the corner from the cart level and wipes it out.

 

[honeymustard]

29 Dec
- rc3 released - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6591985/maps/pl_boundary_rc3.bsp.bz2
- Raised the ceiling in the upward tunnel at cp1-2
- Moved cp2 back slightly, to the top of the tunnel
- Fixed a clipping bug with a backwards displacement around cp1
- Added boxes for cover on the first part of the balcony
- Added some more detail to some areas
- Added a small nobuild area at the one way gate at cp4
- Filled the stairs on the balcony
- Improved optimisation around cp1

Updated the pictures in the OP.

 

[ShamanBond]

I'll get this on the Free Frag Payload server on monday, thanks for the update.

 

[simoneaolson]

A really great map you have here, but one major gripe i have with it is that the second point is extremely hard to capture unless you are rolling the cart to some degree.

On one round, i was playing on a full server. Blu go stuck at the bottom of the tunnel and they eventually lost, unable to push the cart to the top of the tunnel because of 3 or so level three sentries. So teams switched, and same thing happened, blu lost due to the chokepoint. I would really like to see some more balancing at the part of the map.

I also noticed that it was very hard to take out those sentries even with 2 or so ubers at once. I would highly recommend adding a couple windows on the side of the building so demos could spam the sentries from below.

 

[honeymustard]

I tried to address this problem (which I haven't personally seen) in this update. The blu team needs to use the alternate route to clear out the room first before pushing the cart up (if red have adequately set up in the room). To be honest I'll need to experience it myself or see a demo to really appreciate if it's a major problem.

 

[honeymustard]

I've made a couple of changes already based on feedback:

I've added fog settings for the interiors - looks a lot nicer now I think. Changed the ammo pack on the right to a medium one so more than one engineer will have a slightly harder time in setting up there. Might also make the ammo pack on the left a small one. Also finally fixed the pipe lighting..

Added a one way door here, which should eliminate any of the red team getting behind the blu team's forward spawn. Also should slow them down a little bit in getting to cp2, if they don't have a teleporter.

Thought this was worth a post

 

[Pocket]

I've added fog settings for the interiors - looks a lot nicer now I think.

Well, you now have one thing Coldfront sadly lacks.

 

[honeymustard]

Coldfront does use them!

 

[honeymustard]

Couple other updates:

Changed the building wall texture so it matches up with the red stripe.

Enabled fog on the forest sky cards (no idea why Valve disabled them - looks bad in Viaduct). Gives it a lot more depth

edit: also reduced the fog (ie increased the distance) due to fixing the trees - though it's not shown in any of the pics here. Looks nicer now I think.

 

[Acumen]

That's quite a lot of trees you got there. Don't know how much you see from an actual ingame position but...it's a lot of trees

 

[honeymustard]

You can see them all really, it's part of the big death pit under the balcony. FPS is fine though as they're low poly (block of 4 is 716 polys (and that might be doubled - not sure how it works) + most get culled by the fog.

 

[Acumen]

Nah, it wasn't because of the polycount but because it looked quite repetetive to me - trees everywhere ^^

 

[Jonny]

Thats called a forest innit.

 

[honeymustard]

You knows it. Anyway, I'm a bit upset that my map wasn't featured despite it getting more votes than one of the maps but I do have a huge ego so what do ya know.

 

[tyler]

That seems like something you should have mentioned to drp.

 

[grazr]

Yea, but there's always next month. There's only so many maps worth a highlight. lakeside almost got in last and it got in now, your map almost got in this time so it'll probably get in next. Despite the "votes", DrP is the one to make the decision; we were after all only making suggestions.

I reckon you'll probably benefit from a little leg work on your part in smaller communities and then when you get the highlight, individuals/server owners will be more keen to download and check it out if it's been around the block... and then is highlighted on one of the primary TF2 level design communities.