KG Kaboom

Cpt. Axle

L1: Registered
Jul 20, 2009
18
1
Inspired by a work of fiction by a member of the Kakariko Graveyard Forum (http://kakariko_graveyard.invisionzone.com/Forum/index.php), KG Kaboom takes off from one of the great struggles in the younger days of KG's existence. Well... it was like that, then the map sort of shifted about and made a completely altered version of the KG Dreamer universe - the plot is now on its head.

Something has gone oddly amiss, and now the residents of KG have broken into two separate factions. On one side, several members seek out to perform some "renovations" to KG, whilst the other side seeks to prevent this at all costs. It is believed that an unattended sandvich was the spark of this grand conflict...

Seeking aid to succeed in their endeavors, both factions have established an agreement between the Red and Blue corporations. The contracts... however, were unknowingly swapped by the ever devious Cpt. Deep - the owner of the shed seen near Red's spawn. As such, Red finds themselves in the ever so odd situation of having to push the bomb, rather than defending the base. Cpt. Deep does love KG as much as the next person, but he can't deny that he loves explosives even more... hence his allegiance to the attacking team.

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The attack: KG was built into the side of a mountain, making it a natural fort location. To top it off, a giant wall, called the Invision Power Wall (IPW) was built to completely seal off the mansion from invading forces - it fills in the gaps that the mountain doesn't close off. Red has decided to make an attack from the rear side of the mansion, where a fault in the foundation of the IPW has caused a weak point in the wall. All it needs is a good hit, and they should be able to break through.

While the press has questioned why this fault was not fixed, the admin of the mansion has informed them that due to the economic crisis, the cost of the repairs would be too much to manage at the moment.

Once through the wall, Red will then wind its way around the grassy courtyard-like area until they reach the foot of the mansion, where they'll push the cart into the mansion, and up to the foot of the grand staircase within. The bomb will go off after three seconds - giving everyone a chance to get the heck out of there - the bomb's packed with enough explosives that they're certain the windows on the second floor will shatter from the detonation.
 
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Hanz

Ravin' Rabbid
aa
Jan 18, 2009
844
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It looks like an awesome map for a sniper and a bad map for a heavy or pyro: it looks waaay to open at the outside places.

The detailling is also looking a bit boring because you aren't using a lot of different textures, etc. :)
 

Cpt. Axle

L1: Registered
Jul 20, 2009
18
1
~sighs~ I've been fighting those comments for a long time now. I am aware of the difficulties that are present of sniper ownage... and I've attempted to respond to that by adding in plenty of trees and other little things. I don't know... I've been stuck trying to figure that out since I have this theme I running with... and haven't had any real chance to try the map out.

Regarding the detailing, that'll come after... I really need to know if this map is going to work, or if I'll need to shift a lot of things around. I'd hate to plop things down, only to realize that I'll have to spend twice as many hours re-fixing those areas due to whatever problems arose. Once I have all of that taken cared of, and I'm certain that the map works mechanically, I'll start getting into the pretty stuff after.
 

Hanz

Ravin' Rabbid
aa
Jan 18, 2009
844
479
I also don't really know how to fix those wide areas, but you could maybe put in some buildings at screen 2 and 5.

If you want to, you can first test you map as it is now. (Go to the events forum and pick a gameday you want. :) )
 

Cpt. Axle

L1: Registered
Jul 20, 2009
18
1
I may need to change the layout of the map some to be able to add into other buildings or changes of terrain style. I have attempted to submit this for a game day, it's just a matter of time until I have a confirmation for it.

To be honest... I'm actually shaking in my boots about this. While I'm usually the first to say "hit me with your best shot"; it seems my courage flew out the window with this project. I don't want to use this as an excuse... but it's true that this is my first map...


so hit me with your best shot! >D
 

Ravidge

Grand Vizier
aa
May 14, 2008
1,544
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You are countering snipers the wrong way, adding cover for people is just solving half the issue. The sniper himself doesn't need to move around at all to be effective. No one can reach him except other snipers, making it devolve into a sniperwar.

You need to make the useful sniperlines more dangerous, and the safe ones less useful :)
In most cases this will solve itself if you just avoid creating very large flat open areas.
 

Cpt. Axle

L1: Registered
Jul 20, 2009
18
1
Any suggestions on how to go about that?

I have a few thoughts, but they're going to completely change the layout of the map. This is what comes to mind:

- Make the map wrap around like Badwater Basin.
- Make more use out of the mountain (more tunnels, push the cart through the mountain a bit)...
- Make the roof of the mansion a little more accessible ( roof is already accessible, but only on one staircase, and to those that can jump high enough to get above it ).

umm... <<; Other than that, I think this layout has reached an impasse. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
 

Ravidge

Grand Vizier
aa
May 14, 2008
1,544
2,818
Just to make sure: I havent played the map/opened it. I dont know what mountain you're talking about, and I dont know the track layout.

But just from the screenshots I can tell that the layout is not going to work. You have to be prepared to do some major reworking on the whole map, or just start over and keep everything in mind from the start (all classes, routes, sightlines, objectives).
 

A Boojum Snark

Toraipoddodezain Mazahabado
aa
Nov 2, 2007
4,775
7,669
You've made more newbie mapper mistakes than I can count, but avoiding the obvious ones (large size, repeating textures, etc) here are the major ones:

No visibility cutting. (engine visibility, this isn't sight lines)
I'm not sure how (func_detail overuse?), but for some reason your entire map is being rendered at any location. pic1 pic2
The single biggest contributor to poor performance of a map is if all the players are rendered at once. The server only exchanges player data for players that can be rendered, so blocking vis is important to minimize the amount of data the server and clients have to deal with. In a situation like this on a full server it will create a huge drop in performance.

Displacements belong only on the faces you need.
While in wireframe I discovered you turn the entire brush into a displacement. You can, and should, do this to the individual faces you want. Otherwise it creates extra rendering and causes the bad lighting at seams as I'm sure you've noticed.

The big box method.
You've encased your entire map in one large box of sky. This contributes to the extra rendering issues of both previous points I noted. Each individual "area" should be sealed on it's own with sky on the top, nodraw behind displacements on the sides/bottom (or just normal walls).

Those three are the worst offenders. I would highly recommend you open up one of the valve maps that come with the SDK and turn off all visgroups except world geometry and have a look around. What You'll see is the base shell of the map that defines visibility blocking, and that should help you understand how the shell of a map should be constructed.

The truth is, this map would take a lot of work to salvage. As hard as it might be, I believe the best course of action would be to scrap it, learn from the mistakes, learn from a valve map, and try rebuilding it from the ground up (since you have a reason/story behind making the map).
This would also be better than trying to fix it since you'll better be able to rebuild at a smaller scale than trying to shrink the existing map.
 

Cpt. Axle

L1: Registered
Jul 20, 2009
18
1
Just to make sure: I havent played the map/opened it. I dont know what mountain you're talking about, and I dont know the track layout.

But just from the screenshots I can tell that the layout is not going to work. You have to be prepared to do some major reworking on the whole map, or just start over and keep everything in mind from the start (all classes, routes, sightlines, objectives).


I was referring to the rocky faces on the sides of the map when I mentioned the mountains. Some of the people I passed this map to said the same thing until they played it, then they seemed to have really liked it. You'll have to play it to see for yourself. :)

---

Anyways, from the sounds of it, I'm going to have to start over then. This will give me the advantage of designing the map in a better fashion. Regarding the displacements, I never knew about that, but now that I do, I might actually feel better working with them, haha. >_< I really started to dislike working with displacements since they kept breaking on me.

I'll admit... this map had no optimization on it. I tried working with area portals, but wound up crashing TF2 when I tried to load it. I was hoping I'd be able to skip around that to see if my map would work with people on it, but... you have a point.

bleh... I sort of wish I hadn't spent four months on this thing; but not all is lost. Thank you for you input, and here's to a better map.
 
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Trotim

aa
Jul 14, 2009
1,195
1,045
Four months? Sorry, but are you exaggerating? I find that a little hard to believe.

Anyway, it's not bad, it's a typical "this is my first proper map" map. Everyone has made one of these, it's just that most mappers a) don't publish it and b) give up after having made it. I sincerely hope you don't stop mapping, because the potential is there :3

Did you func_detail every brush? Otherwise I really don't know why it would render everything at once D;
 

Cpt. Axle

L1: Registered
Jul 20, 2009
18
1
I'm actually being serious about it taking me four months. You can verify my claim here. The project was on and off over that period of time, which is what stretched the project out.

Regarding func_detail... Initially I was doing that until my testers were pointing out flaws on the map. After that, I think I forgot to revert everything back to func_detail.
 

Cpt. Axle

L1: Registered
Jul 20, 2009
18
1
Ahoy ladies and gents, I'm back.

Today, I bring forth a new version of KG Kaboom. This version should be considered an alpha as it is far from complete (see the change log). The map, overall, does function correctly, and can be played on.

I have attempted to address most of the issues that were brought up with this map's previous version - and it pleases me to say that it currently takes 27 seconds for a full compile (before it was 30 minutes). Of course, this is only round A, however if I manage to keep up with things at this pace, as well as add in a few other things (like hints), I'm certain I can keep full compile time still under the old mark.

So, on to the more relevant news: why am I posting an incomplete map? In short, I am looking for your feedback again. Is this map suitable for play testing?