I'd thought I would share my creative process of my 72 hour map while its still all fresh in my mind.
So this map first started me before asking people what there favorite game mode and what they wanted to see, The majority said CP A/D as 5cp has been done so much. Started looking at Valve A/D maps (Gorge, Artpass and Gpit) I tried to analyse what they did just from first glance and why they were good and fun to play.
Starting with gorge, It has a very unique playing style. The blu spawn leads to an open yard with a lot of height on the first building. I saw how It worked and tried to see how I could interpret that with my own knowledge. Also Gorge is flat, which was another thing I made a note of.
The Artpass map (manor and mountainlab) are very different from Gorge but play fairly similar, they both have a strong last. The other point are not that easy to defend, but when the team finally pushes last it is a chanllenge.
Gpit I just look at the point design and again the variation in heights.
I then started to put my ideas down onto "paper", I started by trying to a software called Grid Cartographer which lets you draw quick floor plans quickly. I found it helpful but it was hard to show variation in height and also things where blocky.
As you can see the result was nice, but confusing to most people so I went the old fashion way of just drawing it out.
You can now tell what things are better and what the general idea is of the map. As you can tell the map changed a lot just from the first version to this plan, This was the original A cap point.
As you can see its changed a lot, I wanted to try to get a Harvest feel but realised just laying it out this point would be horrible to attack on. So I went back to what I researched on and looked at gorges 1st point which was on a short open bridge so I tried to think how could I do that but more open with height variation, I came up with this.
You can see the similarites to it with narrow bridge and under pass, but the problem was the point it was that the rest of the map was just too small and short! Comparing A1 to A8 (72hr release)
You can (sorta) see the size difference from a1 to a8 the map as a whole has expanded a lot adding more routes and opening up a lot more of the areas.
A Cap Point has turned into the iconic point of the map as it has a lot of very unique gameplay, People think its is impossible to push out of. but in fact it involves the attackers to work together to push out from the sides whiles flanking from beneath, which makes for some impressive pushes out. The reason it works is because the minimal cover for red on the high ground which makes it easy for Demos and Snipers to get early pick offs.
This is the majority of what I did for Planning and Cap Point A, I will talk about the rest of the map another time.
Oh and here is a time lapse of day 1 map making:
http://youtu.be/eN7WPU7Pjwc