For showcase maps: Being reviewed

HQDefault

...what
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Aug 6, 2014
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Basically, if it is confirmed that Valve is looking at the map for official public release, then a little box pops up and says: "BEING REVIEWED FOR OFFICIAL IMPLEMENTATION" I'm not sure if TF2maps would be able to track that, but it would be nice.
 

Fantaboi

Gone and one day forgotten
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Mar 11, 2013
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>Valve
>Confirming things
>adding maps to game
D2eVbzW.jpg
 
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Crash

func_nerd
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Mar 1, 2010
3,315
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We never know that information. The most I've ever gotten out of a dozen or so messages to them about my maps is a reply saying one of emails has been forwarded to the rest of the team.

They are notoriously quiet about most things, but especially custom maps. We've gotten very little information out of them over the years regarding what they are even looking for, let alone what they are looking at.
 

Ermac

L1: Registered
Aug 5, 2014
13
0
We never know that information. The most I've ever gotten out of a dozen or so messages to them about my maps is a reply saying one of emails has been forwarded to the rest of the team.

They are notoriously quiet about most things, but especially custom maps. We've gotten very little information out of them over the years regarding what they are even looking for, let alone what they are looking at.

Valve are quiet about everything its what will kill them eventually
 

Fruity Snacks

Creator of blackholes & memes. Destroyer of forums
aa
Sep 5, 2010
6,394
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We never know that information. The most I've ever gotten out of a dozen or so messages to them about my maps is a reply saying one of emails has been forwarded to the rest of the team.

They are notoriously quiet about most things, but especially custom maps. We've gotten very little information out of them over the years regarding what they are even looking for, let alone what they are looking at.

Actually, we do, infact have 2 confirmed and written cases of what Valve will accept.

1) It's not GPit Style, as they have said they will not ever accept ones of those maps again.
2) It's better and more fun than Process/Standin.

To my knowledge, that is all we have seen (outside of various emails)

The only other thing I know is that Valve likes narrative. But whenever someone brings up Narrative design, they get yelled at for being stupid. So, eh.
 

Crash

func_nerd
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Mar 1, 2010
3,315
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So in other words... very little information? :p

Glassworks basically exists because of the paragraph we got that led to point #2.

These maps were selected by the TF2 team in part for their straightforward and intuitive layouts, and in part because they were a hell of a lot of fun to play. These CP maps were designed with little visual noise, were easy to understand and fun to navigate through. If you're a community map maker and want to see us ship your map, here's another spoiler on how to do that: Make it better than these.
 

Freyja

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Jul 31, 2009
2,994
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Standin is like the single noisiest map apart from junction I've ever seen.

Sometimes I wonder what the TF2 team is doing.
 

xzzy

aa
Jan 30, 2010
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Standin is like the single noisiest map apart from junction I've ever seen.

Sometimes I wonder what the TF2 team is doing.

We're playing a game with Valve, we try to figure out the rules and they keep moving the goalposts.
 

fubarFX

The "raw" in "nodraw"
aa
Jun 1, 2009
1,720
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stop trying to figure out what valve wants, figure out what YOU want, figure out what makes tf2 fun, figure out what YOU want to achieve, figure out how you want to contribute to the game. you will most certainly end up with far better maps than you would trying to emulate what you think valve wants.
 

BigBros

L3: Member
Aug 20, 2014
147
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*cough cough* koth_king *cough cough* visual noise *cough cough* easy to navigate *cough cough*
 

Sergis

L666: ])oo]v[
aa
Jul 22, 2009
1,874
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Actually, we do, infact have 2 confirmed and written cases of what Valve will accept.

1) It's not GPit Style, as they have said they will not ever accept ones of those maps again.
2) It's better and more fun than Process/Standin.

To my knowledge, that is all we have seen (outside of various emails)

The only other thing I know is that Valve likes narrative. But whenever someone brings up Narrative design, they get yelled at for being stupid. So, eh.

iirc they didnt like gpit style because it splits teams...which is exactly what standin does.

so yeah



also what going on with our own showcase reviews? havent heard much of that going on
 

wareya

L420: High Member
Jun 17, 2012
493
191
most gamemodes split the team. any that's not a/d in fact. the thing about gpit is that it explicitly splits teams on an a/d mode. you usually get implicit splits, but it's so much distance.
 

Freyja

aa
Jul 31, 2009
2,994
5,813
stop trying to figure out what valve wants, figure out what YOU want, figure out what makes tf2 fun, figure out what YOU want to achieve, figure out how you want to contribute to the game. you will most certainly end up with far better maps than you would trying to emulate what you think valve wants.

Sightlines!
 

Sergis

L666: ])oo]v[
aa
Jul 22, 2009
1,874
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stop trying to figure out what valve wants, figure out what YOU want, figure out what makes tf2 fun, figure out what YOU want to achieve, figure out how you want to contribute to the game. you will most certainly end up with far better maps than you would trying to emulate what you think valve wants.

dis

erry piece of info valve gives moves mapping further from 'i wanna make cool shit' and closer to 'gimme dat valve money'

mapping is better off with them not saying anything at all
 

Crash

func_nerd
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Mar 1, 2010
3,315
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also what going on with our own showcase reviews? havent heard much of that going on

We've been working on them behind the scenes, but we slowed down. I'll push the rest of the staff nerds on it.
 

xzzy

aa
Jan 30, 2010
815
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iirc they didnt like gpit style because it splits teams...which is exactly what standin does.

This explains perfectly why they've spent the last few months making a new "super CTF" gamemode that requires teams to split into offensive and defensive groups. :O

Basically Valve doesn't know WTF they want, just make a good map and maybe something will come out of it.
 

worMatty

Repacking Evangelist
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Jul 22, 2014
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Perhaps it's more to do with choosing maps that bring new, enjoyable gameplay experiences. Maps that have a distinctive, unique feel, compared with the existing official maps. Otherwise, it would be the same kind of experience as the ones that are already there, so all that would happen is the expansion of the old, rather than the introduction of the fresh.
 

RubbishyUser

L7: Fancy Member
Feb 17, 2013
414
488
Basically Valve doesn't know WTF they want, just make a good map and maybe something will come out of it.

This is the sort of thing that I've always wondered about with Valve. They're very proud of their data-driven strategies, and yet when it comes to TF2 they seem to put their foot in their mouth more often than you would expect for a rigorous company policy. That leaves three possibilities: either the people making TF2 don't know what they are doing, which seems unlikely, they don't actually do much testing, which would be surprising, or the game that the TF2 team wants to play isn't the same one as the game the general population are. Think of this as the difference between 6v6 and pub play. The reason so many items are banned from 6v6 leagues is that Valve makes design decisions for pub-play and not 6v6, which means default 6v6 is poorly balanced and from the view of the 6v6 player, many new additions to the game are "terrible". That would explain why some of the Valve hypocrisy: the games their playtesting groups take part in reveal Kong King and rd_asteroid as the funnest maps ever made, while popular community maps like, say, Glacier are ditched because their group just does things differently.