Feedback and your map.

Theres a reason Alphas stay here and only here for testing. Its Alpha. Thats it. Dev textures everywhere... except if its Acegickmo, which renders everything null and void.

Once it gets it to Beta, its pretty. People like pretty. People don't mind pretty, and want to see pretty. So give people pretty maps.

Pretty.

Most other communities dont like dev textures. We dont mind. When my friends ask me what 'mapping' is, I show them a dev textured block out. They then look incredulusly at me and wonder how that could take a month to make.

Agree with both. Because of how simple it is to get tests going here it works well for jump starting a map... however to give your map that extra step it requires feedback from the community as a whole, not just other artists. That's why critics and artists are usually different people.

(of course, as was evident during the French New Wave of film, critics can go on to make brilliant things with the knowledge they've gathered).

Yeah, I've found this to be a pretty common fact of mapping too. Testing with TF2maps people and testing with non-mappers are both really helpful but very different!

I've been sticking myself out there for impromptus but I'm trying to get together some friends too for more raw feedback. Mappers give me nitpicks and focus more on what's "good design", while just pulling people from my friends list will be a good gauge as to what is "fun".

If you're in tight with a particular community and have friends there they'll likely be happy to test even your alpha, dev-textured. Most of the time waiting for beta is more likely to get your map actually tested with communities you're unfamiliar with, though.

I agree with the consensus of this thread that TF2M is about testing alphas to make sure maps dont SUCK BIG TIME. from there on out you need more communities.

One excellent way of actually seeing how the map plays is go over to your friends house and watch him or her play your map against other players. You will see what areas they prefer to play really quickly, when they get confused and where they die horribly to fire because they can't find a healthkit. You might even try and record a demo with several players and spectate through it. The worse player the better, then it will be even more obvious.

When you have a testing day, being in it yourself will make people follow your lead instead of following the map flow, making you distort your own result. Mappers will help you with alphas and nitpicking release candidates. Play testing is for people who play the game purely for fun and will stop when it's no longer any fun.

Well, normal players lack at 1 part in knowing how a map works. They compare to highly popular maps like dustbowl, goldrush and 2fort. That often means they basicly turn everything down 'because its not the same'. And thats why new mappers better dont listen to them as they demotivate them alot. However, other mappers do respect beginners and want to let them learn the basics.

Its very important to know which communities are good to give comments (i know ukcs by myself but even then its not allways that they give usefull comments). And yes, i do perform most of those tests also - i test ramparts that way also

Dev textures realy arent an issue if your map gets tested on a server as long as its announced there will be. On ukcs we do have a WIP test each month and from my experience people like them. They only complain about orange ground textures repeating in the map due to the brightness. But notice that such things are gameplay details.

Its important to know what to listen to and to ensure that the publics who do care for your map to see it. And most important. if you get your map tested on a public be sure its for people that prefer custom maps above 2fort, dustbowl and goldrush. When you got that then a test is allways usefull.

Notice 1 thing. in ramparts in the tf2maps test i had comments that sentries didnt have any realy good spot. all of them get killed quite easily. However, 32 player instant respawn (which many big public servers area) showed that the counters i made for sentries were effective (and even that there is a point where there is simply no hope - that was at the engy update with 7+ sentries). Personaly i prefer comments in publics above the tf2maps comments due to public servers being the target for my map. But then again, as there might be less players you still want it suitable for those so you add an overtime condition that changes the battlezone a bit to reduce the stalemate factor.

Comments from the players its aimed for are the best. if they say the map sucks it does. Even if most tf2maps members say its a good map and in publics they say it sucks the publics win if you aim it to them. tf2maps members are however better at finding exploits and such as they know better what can go wrong in maps.