- Jul 6, 2009
- 261
- 110
Backstory:
Red and Blu battle it out for each other's secrets inside TF industry's mega complex, Machina: a factory-like complex the size of a small city.
Functional information:
The map was built with 2 main objectives in mind: avoiding stalemates and keeping the fight interesting wherever it may happen, particularly in the neutral area.
I tried to cover the first point by making defending the flag harder (and consequently capturing it easier). There are 3 ways into the enemy base, and 3 ways into the flag room specifically. There are 2 ways out of both. It's impossible for one person/sentry to cover all entry points or either of the exit points by itself, and the flag room is small enough that a single uber should clear out all sentries inside it.
The intent is to make it more important to shift the focus of the game from the usual "camp our flag, and then make a run for theirs when the heat dies", to "get theirs before they get ours".
For the second point I decided to pick my current favorite ctf "neutral ground", turbine, but add to it. The problem with Turbine's neutral ground to me was the lack of more vertical combat, and a bit more space (not open space specifically, just neutral space in general) I tried to have a lot of possibilities for vertical fighting in most cases for Soldiers, Demos and Scouts, while providing enough cover and choke points for Heavies, Pyros and Spies, and enough sightlines/open ground for Snipers and Scouts with a tad of "good but not invulnerable sentry spots" for Engineers.
The vertical combat, specially for scouts, comes at a risk though: The higher you go, the less cover you have. It's a trade off.
At the end of the day I tried to make a map that is hard to camp, particularly the neutral ground and the intel rooms, and rewards aggressive strategies while keeping the fight interesting. As testing goes on, I'll see if it worked and try to fix whatever might need fixing.
Cheers.
30/07/10 - Edit: After a heart crushing HDD problem which had seemingly sunk my entire mapping work into oblivion, I stopped mapping entirely. I didn't mean to stop forever, it was just devastating having my entire work (on both this and my cp map) completely lost. As such, I was, obviously, incapacitated to meet the ctf contest's deadline (which was over several months ago).
That said, couple days ago I received the kind of information that left me absolutely ecstatic: my brother managed to recover my HDD, and with it my entire mapping "career".
I know the contest is long gone, but I'll see this map through nonetheless. I was very proud of it when I said my goodbyes, and time has only reinforced my resolve. I'm not competing for any prizes, except for the biggest one of them all: see my map finally finished and out there.
Hey ladies... I'm baaaaaaaaaack.
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