Heaven

The first 3 points were good but the last was very meh. I spent more time walking in the spawn then anything else. I would really like see that condensed!

Sounds good to me.

Let me start off that the map is decent. I liked playing. I would play it again. I played cp_heaven_a4a but I ran through a5 just now. I love the new look of point C! But I liked the green lights =(. You have a nice mix of a TF2 environment and a little bit of your own making. I love the environment you are building here, keep it up!

The layout itself seems a bit vast and a little windy. I was able to find my way but I am better then most at reading signs for navigation. I have noticed most players just run and not really read where they are going. I have a feeling in public servers people will get confused. One way to solve this is to add gates once the point is capped. NOTE: I did not play a5 if you did add gates. The gates allow those inside the point area to exit but no one can go back in. If you noticing people getting lost or going to points already capped, I would put in the gates.

Outside of Blue's first spawn, please move the light pole away that is near one of the doors. I got snagged on it when I was fighting red. It is kind of out of place right there, it should be placed in the corner where the building wall and brick wall meet; and also be non-solid.

In spectator I noticed a few areas that really need nodraws, like the detail structure on the roof past point A, no need to have textures within it.

I like the blue grates with the blue light behind them within the base. But the inside should be nodraw, the player does not see the other side.

Some other things I saw that need nodraws: Underneath the stairs at Point A, the bottom of the new red beams over point C. If you have the time I would run around and look for faces that should be nodraw.

That door going out of red spawn at point D was having portal issues still.

I see you got an open areaportal in the straight hallway connecting point B and C near the river/bridges. But you got gates/doors there, make these open/close areaportals. It will help with performance.


I found a bunch of mapping issues. I have screen shots !

Screenshot 0000: You got a few prop issues. Looks like you selected the wrong prop type. There is some other error near the bottom, bad displacement? Also looks like im missing some cappoint logos?

Screenshot0006: OHMY big portal issues. This is point D and I see the entire area around Point B, not good. This is going to kill slower systems later on when you add more detail. You need to use open/close area portals at point D. Looking around I noticed this is slightly trickier since red has that big window. But I think this portal plan will work, look at the screenshots 0008, 0009, 0010. This will close off point D from the outside yet allow red spawn to still look out through that crazy huge window in their spawn. So basically red spawn and the outside area with the bridges and river is one portal, while the insides of point D is another.


Point D is an interesting point. not sure what it is yet, a stadium or something. I am interested to see how it comes out.

Good work so far. But the map needs some work on portals and optimization. The details are great!!!! I cant wait to see a6.
Hope this helps!

Last one is the newest. This map is fantastic and gets better with every version. Keep up the good work.

My clan play a more recent version of this map as part of finding new maps to put up on rotation. While I can't really offer specific items, a few things stood out at me during it:

1) The idea behind the layout is nice and unique. Kudos.

2) Several attacking routes seemed unintuitive. For example, the two corridors leading to B with the glowing blue wall. Both of them were just long hallways that came out to roughly the same entry, yet you treat them as seperate paths. It might spice up gameplay to somehow combine the two, like two elevations in the same room, because as it stands now, they're just two long hallways with a glowing wall. And the upper way leads me to my next point:

3) Often you cover up key visuals with geometry, or otherwise confuse the player. The upper pathway mentioned leads to a concrete wall, and only if you look around do you realise that there's a drop there, and it leads directly to point B. Another example is the switchback stairwell leading to D frpm the bridge. It wasn't until much gameplay had passed that we realized that was supposed to be the main path to D. And even then, we went to the area around D and then realized D was there once we were getting lost because any view of it from the attacker's side was blocked by the corner into the turn onto it. Just putting signs up in these spots would help players along.

4) I just don't like D's layout. It's a longish capture time on a point right above their spawn area, so a red demoman can (and did) walk out a few steps and sticky spam the point. The rest of the area is huge, which strongly supports classes with more accuracy over distance than others.

That's my two cents.

Time for some map testing. I'll let you know as soon as it's done.

You do prefer waiting for your newer version ?

Looks much more open. Looking forward to testing a6!

Okay so we had the test, and desptite the usual trolling "f*** map whiners" we gave it a whole 4 rounds run, because, well, it's not as if they had a choice in the first place, so I chained them... kidding

So in short :
- people found your spawn system excessively strange. Blue complained about red exit near the B and C point, Red complained about the blu exit near D. In both case it was impossible to push farther than a room away. Personnaly, I didn't mind it for B and C. The first control point may be quite tough, but considering the distance, it's quite balanced. Maybe be you could trade a bit the pure giant space of D to give it to the starving A

To our surprise, the giant theatrical last CP worked better as expected, but red found themselves trapped on the lower area, unable to push the blue team outside.
There may be optimization issue. At time the server felt quite laggy specificaly on your map, in the blue spawn and around B and C. I suspect you may have used many areaportals would could be a burden to the server. It's just a guess. Btw, players loved the skybox and the "green line".

So submitted to your curious eye, the complete record of the 4 rounds. I played mainly as medic and scout, which you could find interesting to see how the defence behaved. Engineer were or weren't present depending of the round.
Hell getting loose on Heaven