- Jul 14, 2008
- 47
- 0
Cliffside is my first real map for any game, so a lot of this has been an exercise in learning through infuriation, but it's finally starting to come together. It is an assault CP map like Gravel Pit, but with a fourth point, D, that must be captured after C. It is a fairly vertically oriented map. I've got screenshots, so I'll walk you through it.
Starting off in the BLU spawn. Nothing special here.
The first major landmark from the spawn is this warehouse.
The roof of the warehouse is a vital hub of the map, providing passage to CPs A, B, and C.
It is not, however, safe passage. The inside of the warehouse, which most classes must pass through to reach the roof, contains huge #$@!-off missiles which, though they have a high enough strength rating to make blowing them up strategically impractical in some (but not all) situations, they will likely accumulate enough damage through stray bullets to eventually explode.
The roof of the warehouse connects to CP A by this bridge, seen here from A.
Cap A sits atop a one story building which allows roof access through interior stairs on the left and exterior stairs in the back. It also contains corridors inside well suited for ambushes, or for establishing a forward base. On top of the A building sits a small guard tower, a good spot for an engie to set up, or for explosive classes to deliver death from above.
In the back of the A building sits minecart tracks (note the upended cart near their end) that can be walked on to reach Cap D on the roof of the RED base, at least if no one knocks you off of them. But we'll come back to D later.
For now, we'll focus on Cap B. B sits on top of a large tower with a spiraling staircase wrapped around it. The roof of the warehouse connects to the staircase midway up by a large pipe that players can walk across. The B tower is the highest building in the map, which I hope will make for a lot of fun airblasting people to their deaths off the top.
Inside the B tower sits a partially hidden room full of spy computers and dangerous chemical weapons. It is also a nice place to snipe from.
This is the view from the top of B. On the left is the warehouse roof (with much of its architecture unfortunately out of frame) and on the right is the RED base, which contains both caps C and D. Cap C is on the ground floor in a configuration somewhat similar to Cap 2 of cp_well. I forgot to take a picture of it, so use your imagination.
The second floor is mostly residential. In addition to housing the RED spawn, it also contains these bunks. The second floor also has the outward exit to the battlements, which is this building's connection to the Warehouse roof, they're within jumping distance.
Continuing the risk/reward/explosion dynamic, this room on the second floor contains health and ammo. Those valuable items sit on the far side of highly explosive barrels, though, so you risk your life by attempting to retrieve them. You could also lure an enemy into this room and detonate the barrels for mutually assured destruction.
We now return to the barracks. Going through them is the only way to access this staircase, one of two on level two that can access the roof. The stairway is caged off from the rest of the room outside the barracks, so defenders can see the attackers coming up to the roof, but cannot stop them.
The roof is the site of mining into the cliffside, and of the final control point. The mining scaffold (pardon the crappy shadows) overlooks the CP, and is a great place for the defenders to mount their final push against the invading BLU team. It is also directly connected to the mine tracks from the A building (hey, remember those?) but can be accessed from those tracks, the attached stairs, or a rocket-jump.
The view from atop the scaffold.
These screenshots are all from the current build, Test 2, though this is a misnomer, as Test 1 was so horrifically incomplete that it was never used for any actual testing.
Known problems/anticipated changes:
- Aesthetics. I'm going to be doing a lot of detailing and other work on this front between this and Test 3. Any suggestions would be awesome.
- Balancing. This map has not been played yet, so timers may need to be adjusted. Possibly more, but I won't know until we play it.
- Going to add additional architecture to the roof as soon as I figure out what to put there. Again, suggestions would be great.
- The warehouse is too open inside, so I need to add something. Still figuring out what.
- Fix the spotlights on the crane to actually cast light on the parts of the scaffold that are covered in shadow.
- The actual explosions look much smaller than they are. I'm using env_explosion, triggered by a func_breakable over the various explosive things. Any idea how to make the visible fireball a bit bigger so people don't complain about it looking like it's further away/smaller than it is?
Don't know when I'll be getting to playtesting it, or what, if anything, is offered here, but I fully expect there to be balance problems until I can play through it, but setting up the timers properly might help. For now I have a 10 minute base time, with 2:30 added for each of the first two CPs, and 5:00 added for C. RED gets a five second respawn time penalty when A and B are both captured. A takes 14 second to cap, B takes 8, C takes 12, and D takes 8.
Any questions, comments, suggestions, death threats, feel free to post. Thanks for reading through this whole long !*$#ing thing.
Starting off in the BLU spawn. Nothing special here.
The first major landmark from the spawn is this warehouse.
The roof of the warehouse is a vital hub of the map, providing passage to CPs A, B, and C.
It is not, however, safe passage. The inside of the warehouse, which most classes must pass through to reach the roof, contains huge #$@!-off missiles which, though they have a high enough strength rating to make blowing them up strategically impractical in some (but not all) situations, they will likely accumulate enough damage through stray bullets to eventually explode.
The roof of the warehouse connects to CP A by this bridge, seen here from A.
Cap A sits atop a one story building which allows roof access through interior stairs on the left and exterior stairs in the back. It also contains corridors inside well suited for ambushes, or for establishing a forward base. On top of the A building sits a small guard tower, a good spot for an engie to set up, or for explosive classes to deliver death from above.
In the back of the A building sits minecart tracks (note the upended cart near their end) that can be walked on to reach Cap D on the roof of the RED base, at least if no one knocks you off of them. But we'll come back to D later.
For now, we'll focus on Cap B. B sits on top of a large tower with a spiraling staircase wrapped around it. The roof of the warehouse connects to the staircase midway up by a large pipe that players can walk across. The B tower is the highest building in the map, which I hope will make for a lot of fun airblasting people to their deaths off the top.
Inside the B tower sits a partially hidden room full of spy computers and dangerous chemical weapons. It is also a nice place to snipe from.
This is the view from the top of B. On the left is the warehouse roof (with much of its architecture unfortunately out of frame) and on the right is the RED base, which contains both caps C and D. Cap C is on the ground floor in a configuration somewhat similar to Cap 2 of cp_well. I forgot to take a picture of it, so use your imagination.
The second floor is mostly residential. In addition to housing the RED spawn, it also contains these bunks. The second floor also has the outward exit to the battlements, which is this building's connection to the Warehouse roof, they're within jumping distance.
Continuing the risk/reward/explosion dynamic, this room on the second floor contains health and ammo. Those valuable items sit on the far side of highly explosive barrels, though, so you risk your life by attempting to retrieve them. You could also lure an enemy into this room and detonate the barrels for mutually assured destruction.
We now return to the barracks. Going through them is the only way to access this staircase, one of two on level two that can access the roof. The stairway is caged off from the rest of the room outside the barracks, so defenders can see the attackers coming up to the roof, but cannot stop them.
The roof is the site of mining into the cliffside, and of the final control point. The mining scaffold (pardon the crappy shadows) overlooks the CP, and is a great place for the defenders to mount their final push against the invading BLU team. It is also directly connected to the mine tracks from the A building (hey, remember those?) but can be accessed from those tracks, the attached stairs, or a rocket-jump.
The view from atop the scaffold.
These screenshots are all from the current build, Test 2, though this is a misnomer, as Test 1 was so horrifically incomplete that it was never used for any actual testing.
Known problems/anticipated changes:
- Aesthetics. I'm going to be doing a lot of detailing and other work on this front between this and Test 3. Any suggestions would be awesome.
- Balancing. This map has not been played yet, so timers may need to be adjusted. Possibly more, but I won't know until we play it.
- Going to add additional architecture to the roof as soon as I figure out what to put there. Again, suggestions would be great.
- The warehouse is too open inside, so I need to add something. Still figuring out what.
- Fix the spotlights on the crane to actually cast light on the parts of the scaffold that are covered in shadow.
- The actual explosions look much smaller than they are. I'm using env_explosion, triggered by a func_breakable over the various explosive things. Any idea how to make the visible fireball a bit bigger so people don't complain about it looking like it's further away/smaller than it is?
Don't know when I'll be getting to playtesting it, or what, if anything, is offered here, but I fully expect there to be balance problems until I can play through it, but setting up the timers properly might help. For now I have a 10 minute base time, with 2:30 added for each of the first two CPs, and 5:00 added for C. RED gets a five second respawn time penalty when A and B are both captured. A takes 14 second to cap, B takes 8, C takes 12, and D takes 8.
Any questions, comments, suggestions, death threats, feel free to post. Thanks for reading through this whole long !*$#ing thing.