Furnace Creek

CP Furnace Creek rc

StoneFrog

L6: Sharp Member
May 28, 2008
395
81
Welp, that was my first time playing the map (despite all those Steam Community notifications). Seems relatively balanced, and the visuals are fantastic. You guys really put a lot of effort into it. :)

In regards to gameplay, I think that the tunnels linking points A and B to C are a bit too chokepointy - popular location for sentries and Pyros. May want to widen them a bit, work on those sharp turns as well.

The sun color debate is pretty amusing. When you look at it and the skybox together, the current color definitely compliments things quite well. When you're running through a building and the sun shoots out half of your screen as you pass by a window, you may start to think otherwise. Not sure what you could do.
 

uma plata

L6: Sharp Member
Jan 20, 2009
294
93
I've played it a few times, I haven't noticed the sun interfering with gameplay at all. Just my 2 cents...
 

YM

LVL100 YM
aa
Dec 5, 2007
7,135
6,056
For anyone who was interested.. I took a level overview today
furnace-creek-overview.jpg

The coords are:
|x|y
max|7168|3027
min|-3200|-3329
 

Corion

L2: Junior Member
May 17, 2008
67
8
Here's what I thought from playing today:

  • Very (too?) similar to Gravelpit. Not necessarily a bad thing. As a comparison, Furnace Creek is more like Gravelpit than Goldrush is like Dustbowl.
  • Feels like B is too big. Snipers seem to dominate this area a little too easily. It is difficult for an attacking team to get close to the point.
  • On a related note, the left exit from BLU spawn into B is situated very far from the point across an incredibly open area. It's VERY hard to close this distance with snipers on the other team, and RED scouts can easily help destroy any BLU snipers trying to counterattack from this route. In the time that I played, this was hardly ever a route from BLU->B worth taking.
  • It felt like, given the above two points, that the only real viable route for attacking B was going through A, which was counterintuitive, especially to a first-time player (of the map) such as myself. I'm sure that people who are used to the map would start taking this route to B at least as much as the other two options (if not more).
  • The cap point at B could really use some sort of designating marker as to where the capture area actually is. I would suggest a wooden "truck loading platform" BSP/detail just under the CP, with the capture area marked off with the caution decal.
  • It seems like RED can get to B too easily (especially when compared to BLU's route). Even when we were on horribly unmatched teams and BLU should have dominated us, we held out B decently long - very RED-prejudiced. I would suggest reworking the outside path from C->B so that it is longer than taking the same route from B->C. (E.g. do a small dropoff that requires RED or whoever is coming from C to go a bit farther and/or double-back up a stairway).
  • Needs more signage.

Hope this is properly explained. If you have questions, hit me up on Steam.

EDIT!:
One more thought. It seemed REALLY easy for scouts to get up into the exit areas from BLU spawn. This wouldn't normally be a problem, but they're very narrow and it's hard to engage opponents in this area. I can't help but wonder how it would play if those entire cliff areas were Visualized off.
 
Last edited:

Cerious

L420: High Member
Aug 10, 2008
455
133
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE:
Reduce the number of heliostats. they extend so far back they lag my computer out, and lower the gun while you're at it.
 

MrAlBobo

L13: Stunning Member
Feb 20, 2008
1,059
219
Very (too?) similar to Gravelpit. Not necessarily a bad thing. As a comparison, Furnace Creek is more like Gravelpit than Goldrush is like Dustbowl.

Considering its the same gametype and you can only take the same general layout so far...that said it really did not feel like gravelpit to me. Its annoying to see people apply the same general strategies as gravelpit, the other day i was playing this and the entire red team (minus me) ran to defend B, and the entire blue team ran to attack A, somehow knowing it was going to be undefended...As such I saw nothing useful on if the points seem to be even or not. <_<

As with gravelpit, I love how easy it is to get behind the defending team, makes offense engie so fun ;)
 

MangyCarface

Mapper
aa
Feb 26, 2008
1,626
1,325
Courtesy FLOOR_MASTER:

cp_furnace_b2:
A 4 (13%)
A, B 7 (23%)
A, B, C 13 (43%)
B 2 (7%)
B, A 1 (3%)
B, A, C 2 (7%)
None 1 (3%)

versus a3:



cp_furnace_a3:
A 25 (10%)
A, B 57 (23%)
A, B, C 96 (40%)
B 4 (2%)
B, A 9 (4%)
B, A, C 33 (14%)
None 19 (8%)

Edit: These are end-game scenario percentages displaying capture order. The number to the left of the percent is the amount of rounds in which this was the final set up.
 
Last edited:

FLOOR_MASTER

L3: Member
Mar 10, 2008
118
140
Here's my update thingy to generate these stats:

PHP:
# 2008-11-15 FLOOR_MASTER
# 2009-05-17 Updated to display cap progression (for CP maps)

# THESE STATS ARE ONLY VALID FOR ONE-ROUND PAYLOAD MAPS
# I may extend this to a general case that works for multi-round payload maps,
# as well as A/D CP maps

# Usage:
#   ./mapstats.pl [FILES]

# Examples
#  ./mapstats.pl L11*
#  Reports stats for November

use Data::Dumper;

my @files = @ARGV or die "You must specify a set of files to read";

my %maps = ();
my @lastcap = ();
my ^lastmap = undef;
my ^lastfile = undef;
my ^activeround = 0;

sub logStats {
    if (^activeround && defined ^lastmap) {
        if (scalar(@lastcap)) {
            ^maps{^lastmap}{join(", ", @lastcap)}++;
        }
        else {
            ^maps{^lastmap}{"None"}++;
        }
    }
}

my ^filesFlat = join ' ', @files;
my @lines = split /(?:r|n)/, `nice -n 19 egrep "(Started|pointcaptured|Round_Start)" ^filesFlat`;

for (@lines) {
    /^(Ld+.log)/;
    if (!defined ^lastfile || ^1 ne ^lastfile) {
        logStats;
        ^lastfile = ^1;
        ^lastmap = undef;
        @lastcap = ();
        ^activeround = 0;
    }

    if (/Started map "([^"]+)"/) {
        logStats;
        ^lastmap = ^1;
        @lastcap = ();
        ^activeround = 0;
    }

    if (/World triggered "Round_Start"/) {
        logStats;
        @lastcap = ();
        if (^lastmap =~ /^(pl_|cp_)/) {
            ^activeround = 1;
        }
    }

    if (/Team "Blue" triggered "pointcaptured" (cp "d") (cpname "([^"]+)")/) {
        if (^activeround) {
            push @lastcap, ^1;
        }
    }
}

for my ^map (sort keys %maps) {
    print "n^map:n";
	    ^total = 0;
    for my ^cp (keys %{^maps{^map}}) {
        ^total += ^maps{^map}{^cp};
    }
    for my ^cp (sort keys %{^maps{^map}}) {
        printf "  %-32st %3d (%.f%%)n",
            ^cp,
            ^maps{^map}{^cp},
            (^total ? ^maps{^map}{^cp} / ^total * 100 : 0);
    }
}

[edit] Apparently this forum has a problem with the dollar sign - replace every instance of the caret (^) with a dollar sign.
 
Last edited:

Void

Local Man Unable To Map, Sources Say
aa
Sep 14, 2008
1,865
2,972
Footage from earlier:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBgeErOq3PE"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBgeErOq3PE[/ame]

Watch in HD.
 

YM

LVL100 YM
aa
Dec 5, 2007
7,135
6,056
Courtesy FLOOR_MASTER:

cp_furnace_b2:
A 4 (13%)
A, B 7 (23%)
A, B, C 13 (43%)
B 2 (7%)
B, A 1 (3%)
B, A, C 2 (7%)
None 1 (3%)

So is that exactly 50% red/blu wins for _b2 or am I misinterpreting these stats a bit?

Also I'm amazed A->B is so much more popular than B->A but I guess I can thank gravelpit for that
 

Tinker

aa
Oct 30, 2008
672
334
Feedback time, hurray. As said in the other thread, it needs a few places with more detail, as people often look at some places that aren't very detailed, making it feel less detailed than it really is (seriously, this map has loads of little touches, but if you don't watch them much..)

Here's the few I found:
cp_furnace_b20000.jpg


Under the lights in the corners. The lights already draw extra attention to these corners, but there's nothing there! adding a poster or something would be perfect.

cp_furnace_b20001.jpg

And the other side, too. When around C, you look at the building a lot, and these ramps are the main way to get up. However, in the lightning of the map this looks like one big single-textured wall.

Other things:

cp_furnace_b20004.jpg


Why is it this way? It looks nice, but it's mostly annoying. I'd mirror it so the broken wood is still there, but not in the way of travelling ease, but on the other side, where it has pretty much no gameplay effect.

cp_furnace_b20002.jpg

Cool displacement, but that doesn't look natural at all - rocks don't work that way and that smooth. Also, people try and get over this, but it's fully playerclipped. I'd change it for something else.
cp_furnace_b20003.jpg

Being BLU, walking to B, it feels like no skybox exists.
 
Last edited:

YM

LVL100 YM
aa
Dec 5, 2007
7,135
6,056
Wow you've got some serrrriosuly major problems with the colours on your pc!!
 

drp

aa
Oct 25, 2007
2,273
2,628
Feedback time, hurray. As said in the other thread, it needs a few places with more detail, as people often look at some places that aren't very detailed, making it feel less detailed than it really is (seriously, this map has loads of little touches, but if you don't watch them much..)

Here's the few I found:


Under the lights in the corners. The lights already draw extra attention to these corners, but there's nothing there! adding a poster or something would be perfect.


And the other side, too. When around C, you look at the building a lot, and these ramps are the main way to get up. However, in the lightning of the map this looks like one big single-textured wall.

Other things:



Why is it this way? It looks nice, but it's mostly annoying. I'd mirror it so the broken wood is still there, but not in the way of travelling ease, but on the other side, where it has pretty much no gameplay effect.


Cool displacement, but that doesn't look natural at all - rocks don't work that way and that smooth. Also, people try and get over this, but it's fully playerclipped. I'd change it for something else.

Being BLU, walking to B, it feels like no skybox exists.
lower your gamma. its way too high.
 

FLOOR_MASTER

L3: Member
Mar 10, 2008
118
140
So is that exactly 50% red/blu wins for _b2 or am I misinterpreting these stats a bit?

Also I'm amazed A->B is so much more popular than B->A but I guess I can thank gravelpit for that

Yes, that's the correct interpretation. I should note -- I've probably mentioned this elsewhere -- that win/loss stats aren't a complete reflection of map balance. There is a large gray area where a map can be reasonably well-balanced but still hit 50/50 win/loss stats. In the situation where, say, BLU team is stronger than RED team, in the first round, BLU will win, and in the second round (after teams switch), RED will win - a 50/50 split. However, the win/loss stats will point out any egregious balance issues, and I can say through extensive playtesting that I've found gameplay to be very well-balanced. The only issues I have are related to clipping.
 

Tinker

aa
Oct 30, 2008
672
334
I'm not quite sure why the screenshots came out that way after I converted them, sorry.

It's not meant as an investigation of my computer's colours, though ;)
 
Last edited:

pitto

L3: Member
Feb 17, 2009
109
73
Awesome map in the making Youme & Nineaxis
For the next beta you should try changing the A and B points names to be B and A respectively and compare the capture percentages with the values you already have. Would be a good psychological experiment.
 

Kronixx

L5: Dapper Member
Apr 17, 2009
205
38
Awesome map in the making Youme & Nineaxis
For the next beta you should try changing the A and B points names to be B and A respectively and compare the capture percentages with the values you already have. Would be a good psychological experiment.

If you did this, i think a black hole would open up and suck us all into a flowery oblivion of nonsense, where nothing made sense....i forsee bad things happened if you try to confuse already easily confused people.
:blink:
 

Termaximus

L5: Dapper Member
Jan 11, 2008
229
32
Got a chance to play for the first time yesterday. Played one round. Seemed pretty balanced. Blu won but not without a fight from Red. Point C seemed harder to defend for Red when comparing to Gravelpit. Overall a fun map and I like the dusk color scheme.