[TUTORIAL] Spiral Staircase

DjD

L5: Dapper Member
May 18, 2010
230
55
If you want to bring some variation in your level or are tired of straight slopes/stairs, use a spiral staircase to connect two floors.
(For more information about stairs check this tutorial out)

Here is how it works:

Click on the block tool, select "arch" in the drop-dwon menu on the right (red arrow)


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Create your brush and press "enter". A window will pop up, in which you enter the following values.


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(You can use another value for "Wall Width", it determines the width of each step.)



If you have entered every value as you want it, click OK and your staircase is done. You can adjust the width and height, so it suits your map.



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DjD

L5: Dapper Member
May 18, 2010
230
55
imo it fits pretty well, imagine a map like cp_well, the last point.
A spiral staircase would totally fit in there. (It fits into anything that has this "factory/concrete" theme)
Its much different to elevators, since staircases arent electronical ;)
 
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grazr

Old Man Mutant Ninja Turtle
aa
Mar 4, 2008
5,441
3,814
Spiral staircases make for boring gameplay in TF2. They reduce vision of the playing field and create significant choke points. There was a reason they removed the spiral stair case from 2fort's sewer route.

ramp3.jpg

spiral2.jpg

corner2.jpg

corner.jpg


(images: granary, granary, lumberyard, 2fort respectively)

These all produce better/more interesting gameplay experiences and conform to TF2 aesthetics.

edit: Whilst this article does teach people how to make spiral stair cases i think it's important to forward people to this article: click me for more TF2 based stair design methods.
 
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Jakkarra

L4: Comfortable Member
Aug 26, 2009
167
36
Wouldnt an open-style spiral staircase be fine for part of an area?
 

UGLYdumpling

L3: Member
May 24, 2010
127
56
In the spawnroom, maybe?
Or maybe off the spawnroom, barely visible behind a giant pane of glass ? :cool:

Kiding aside, maybe it's not practical to feature spiral staircases in many TF2 levels as grazr has illustrated, but the silver lining? Now TF2Maps.net rounds out it's tutorial section a wee bit more.

Thanks for the post DjD!
 

megawac

L4: Comfortable Member
Oct 2, 2009
180
29
The only "spiral" I can think of that worked in tf2 is the Badlands spire - and even that most people avoid and use alternative routes to get to the control points than climbing the spire top to bottom.

They simply aren't good for combat situations as you force a player to have to twist their mice in a continuous motion.
 
Feb 18, 2009
640
629
I'm just elaborating in what grazr said, but this is what I think.
Spiral staircases are not good generally. For starters, players don't lie franticly whipping around the mouse in any occasion, and small, tall spiral staircases certainly involve a lot of wrist action to get up. This ultimately means they can interrupt the flow of the map and conflict and end up not being used much. Also, they can be a bitch to playerclip depending on their dimensions.
 

grazr

Old Man Mutant Ninja Turtle
aa
Mar 4, 2008
5,441
3,814
...small, tall spiral staircases certainly involve a lot of wrist action to get up.

Ah, the days when 2fort used to give me wankers cramp...
 

Wolfmane

L1: Registered
Jul 29, 2010
6
4
Thanks for this. I'm mapping a TF2 version of Bam4 from the ground up and this will help immensely.