glacies

TerabyteST

L4: Comfortable Member
Aug 18, 2009
181
82
Video:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwTgOwpZkvo"]YouTube- Pl_Glacies[/ame]

This is my first payload map. It's a 3 staged payload map ambiented in a winter environiment.
For now I've done the first stage only. After I see how it plays at gameday, I will move on to the others.


Backstory: This sunny and snowy map is ambiented in Montana. Bluarch industries have discovered Redmond are keeping a huge oilfield secret and taking profit from it. It's the first days of november, and it snowed for the first time this year two days ago. Redmond own a huge territory there, and Bluarch was never seen around there in past years. Redmond left one dismissed factory out of their property tough, so Bluarch bought it and transformed it into their command center in a week, with Redmond not even knowing. They got the knowledge of what was happening when they saw a huge helicopter carrying a bomb (with a ribbon) approach their territory and land right out of it. They sent their team out and started fighting to stop the cart. And here you enter the game!


This map features a custom payload cart model, which adds a yellow ribbon to the normal bomb model. I modeled it and textured it in Blender (free and open source 3D application).

I am gonna make a more original model for the payload cart for the final release as long as other custom models I may need.

-Update 11/9/2009
Posted new screenshots of the map, edited changelog. Downloadable map update tomorrow, because I need to recompile

-Update 11/9/2009 (later that night)
Map is downloadable now, please test it :3
 
Last edited:

Bockagon

L3: Member
Jul 15, 2009
147
72
Disable the shadows on your tracks. They look especially weird on the snow.
[ame="http://forums.tf2maps.net/showthread.php?t=8758"]Quickly modify many props' properties - TF2maps.net[/ame]
 

Freyja

aa
Jul 31, 2009
2,994
5,813
No, don't. Just compile it with [ame="http://forums.tf2maps.net/showthread.php?t=2994"][Tutorial] REMOVING UGLY SHADOWS - TF2Maps.net[/ame]

But it doesn't matter in an alpha anyway.
 

UKCS-Alias

Mann vs Machine... or... Mapper vs Meta?
aa
Sep 8, 2008
1,264
816
Well, i use 1 of those commands for my map. It gives the tracks a little bit of shadow looking even better:
-lights -LDR -staticproppolys ...

The staticproppolys couses shadow to be defined by the polygons of the props instead of the bounding box. This will remove most ugly shadows. (the tracks do but the fence ones however dont!). -textureshadows will fix that but that one will probably increase the compile time alot (staticproppolys barely does that)

The staticproplighting couses your map to increase in size massively and often isnt worth it. Especialy for alpha and beta versions its overkill.

But maybe its a bit too much work to even get such config done.
 

Psy

The Imp Queen
aa
Apr 9, 2008
1,706
1,491
Don't bother until you're going to release.

Anyway, the map itself doesn't look that bad. Could you give us any more info on the map? :p
 

TerabyteST

L4: Comfortable Member
Aug 18, 2009
181
82
Yeah, it was midnight and I didn't spend much time on the details. I've updated it with some more info.
 

Fearlezz

L10: Glamorous Member
May 4, 2008
787
476
I must say, this map does look good indeed and I bet your gonna detail it more later on.

However, you haven't created this map with optimization in mind. You need to rethink some of the layout of this map to get the best performance possible.

Nice cart tho!
 

TerabyteST

L4: Comfortable Member
Aug 18, 2009
181
82
Bump! Updated the screenshots, the downloadable map is coming tomorrow! Please comment!
 

Ida

deer
aa
Jan 6, 2008
2,289
1,372
The video kinda dragged on, so I didn't watch it all. If I were you, I'd make a 1-1.5 minute flythrough to give a quick taste and an incentive to find out more/download it.

Well, I played this quite a while ago, all I can remember is that it was quite a steamroll for BLU. There seemed to be too many angles of attack for both teams, especially near the final point. I'm not sure how this has changed in the new version(s), though, so I'm counting on seeing more of this in a future gameday.
 

Swiftmind

L2: Junior Member
Dec 6, 2009
73
20
I played glacies for about 2 rounds, offensive and defense, but then I had to stop playing TF2. But I must say I thought the map is good. Layout is well thought out and seems balanced. At first I was a tad confused on where to go, but that is with any new map. After the second round I had a decent idea on where to go. Playing it the whole 30 minuets I would have understood it better. Well done on the layout!

As for environment, I remember you asked. I think it looks great. All the textures of the buildings blend in well with each other and the snowy surrondings. No complaints here.

I remember someone mentioned the respawn locker for blue (I think it was blue) needs to be moved since it has line of sight to the exit. I agree. I think it should be moved to the wall opposite the big glass window of the building the blue team spawns from.

This is just my opinion when it comes to light details, you can do what you want. I noticed the light blare graphic on same light sources seemed over the top in blareness. There was one hanging lamp near the top of the tallest building that had I believe a lightglow but it was very large compared to the light model. Also the florescent lights in red spawn had too much. It created a nice blind effect when your were directly under it, but I wonder if it is too much. For those lights I usually just use a lightglow with an oval shape.