Barnblitz Discussion

What the fuck Scott

it's bloody smart, that's what it's called! smart!

LOL.

Oh man I didn't notice those ladders, holy crap that is bad.

That weird structure on the building I can kind of dig, but it is completely useless and looks kind of silly. As for the funky red roof, I did think it was a bit too strange when I first saw it.


...those ladders, wow.

So why did Dario tell us that it was Iikka making it if Scott made it? Oh well, I'll find out through Driller since I sent in an email requesting it be forwarded to Iikka with the thought that he made Barnblitz.

I noticed those ladders right away on my first time playing. I'm trying not to let them ruin my opinion of the map, which is awesome.

But that roof...

I like the map aside from

1. Anyone else see that one train that, if it were to keep going past the closed garage door in front of it, would probably destroy most of the building?

2. the bland spawn rooms

Plays well IMO

Wasn't Scott Jordan a mapper for HL2DM?

TMP said:

Wasn't Scott Jordan a mapper for HL2DM?

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dm_underpass

I think he actually works at Gearbox now, and he's made levels for Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway

this thread is about how he works at valve

Om nom nick said:

And according to Google Chrome, 2fort is in the English dictionary but Dustbowl isn't? I would've thought IF ANYTHING it would be the other way around?

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Dustbowl, or Dust Bowl, is a name. The dictionary doesn't contain names. At least not the Oxford Dictionary. Online dictionaries will usually contain references though.

but in this case "dictionary" is being used to mean "list of spellings", not "list of definitions" so what the latter may contain is irrelevant

nick, often dictionaries don't spell check words with numbers or words in all caps

MangyCarface said:

I think I've written about the faults of PL elsewhere, but the main one being the battles usually have nothing to do with the cart til the last few feet of each point. Everyone just pushes up to there and then expects someone to drag the cart up while they have it held. At the final point PL maps make a bit more sense, as everyone dogpiles on the cart and uses it as cover frantically, but up until then I don't get the point of the cart at all

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I've never encountered anything like this. The dispenser on the cart always draws people to it. I guess it just depends who you play with.

Mexican Apple Thief said:

I've never encountered anything like this. The dispenser on the cart always draws people to it. I guess it just depends who you play with.

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The dispenser heals at the same rate as a level 1 dispenser which isn't very fast at all and since the cart attracts so much spam it's usually better to heal up away from the cart where you attract less attention.

I've found players are only likely to heal at the cart if A) BLU are already pushing an advantage or B) it's a matter of healing 10-15% health or as a base health class, otherwise the health pack system of providing 25.5%, 50%, 100% works out more beneficial for pyro's/demo/soldier/heavy. A medium health pack is much more appealing to a heavy who instnatly acquires 150 HP than a scout who gains 75HP which is just as easily gained stood infront of a dispenser for 3 or 4 seconds.

The problem is actually a lot more fundamental and stretches across all the game modes except 5cp push in that the reward system for objectives is to a lack of better words, bollocks. Far too much emphasise has been put on the combat of TF2, classes like the spy and sniper get 2 points for headshots/backstabs and you gain even more points for dominations and revenges and said killing also increases your chances of crits which in turn keeps you in combat to make those crits worth while; whilst a single flag capture gives you 2 player points and usually involves a lot of self sacrifice to accomplish, not to mention time and effort.

Nobody cares if they lose a round on goldrush if their KD ratio is 5-1 and the post game humiliation is barely motivation to not lose.

My approach has always been that if capturing a control point rewards 10 player points instead of 1, players would have more incentive to capture objectives as it makes them look better on the scoreboard. Of course most players don't realise this happening on a one off custom map; they're usually too set in their killing ways to care to capture objectives in the first place.

But, payload is broken, so getting on the cart in the first place counts as a capture. You're likely to get quite a few points by pushing the cart.

Regardless of whether or not the dispenser is motivation, I still never have a problem with people not pushing the cart, and especially not more than people who ignore the flag in ctf. I suppose at this point then it's just anecdotal evidence vs anecdotal evidence.

Though Mangy, I'd like to say your easy to stand on death cart is an elegant solution to this problem.

Jumping on the payload doesn't reward a capture point. You are rewarded partial captures for pushing it X amount of feet along the track and for each capture event.

Also i'm not saying people wont push the cart because they quite clearly do, otherwise we wouldn't see a general balance between BLU and RED wins. The trouble is RED are more likely to win because of certain map design faults regarding the mode and general player selfishness.

Stage 1 of goldrush is a clear example. The cart track runs flush along a wall out of BLU's LoS and away from RED defences. BLU are forced to take combat away from the cart to progress and tend to follow through straight to RED's spawn because that's more appealing than falling back to push the cart. The amount of times i've seen a team spawn camp RED for 30/40 seconds whilst the cart rolls back to CP1 is painful.

If there was more incentive to the individual player or more appropriate map designs that are less counter intuitive to payload gameplay, this wouldn't be a problem.

EDIT: Also 2fort is notorious for being compared to death match for a reason. My personal motivations for capturing it are just for the response from both teams when it does get captured. People actually forget it's capture the flag and It's almost as if capturing the intel, IE completing the objectives pruposefully set out by the map author, is griefing the other players. Again, i'm not saying people don't try for the objectives such as the intel, but the incentives to do so are pretty pathetic.

Scott Jordan's own words. http://i.imgur.com/K22ji.png

Here's his reference picture. http://i.imgur.com/PxX9d.png

Wow, I was pretty certain Dario made it. It had a bunch of stuff that screamed Thunder Mountain and Badwater to me, like his switchback stairs and wierd prop usage.

Also he discovered model train buildings for inspiration as well :> I got gigs of images from model train buildings.

I think Barnblitz is a great map, and like others have pointed out, I really like the excess of open spaces and various routes that make playing Spy a much more rewarding experience.

On the point of scoring, I actually agree that there should be more points awarded for capping points, even though Payload is already kind of generous with the points. What would be really cool (but probably not likely to be seen!) would be a dynamic scoring system that awards more points the longer a point hasn't been captured (increasing the incentive to break a stalemate, or push a cart that is going backward). Another interesting idea would be an indication on your HUD of how many points you receive upon a capture (like a brief "+5 points" in the corner for five seconds) to making objective scoring more transparent.

Of course, these are all just nice ideas, but not vital in my opinion. I still enjoy Payload very much as it is, even if you do get a rotten team from time to time.

2nd best payload map to badwater. didn't think valve had it in them since upward.

Technically it wasn't "in" Valve. Rumour is the map was produced by the community, only that the guy got hired around the time the map went official.

Even then, "hired" is a loose term. Most people under Valve work on multiple projects under multiple roles; concept artists, modellers, Source coders, level designers, etc. Level designers also have a tendency to only work temporarily at Valve. If you look at the level designer list in the credits you'll find a vast majority of the level design team don't have perminant positions at Valve HQ and work for several companies on several games including mirrors edge, crysis, quake etc.

Phil Co is one such individual who has been working the level design scene since Doom and has worked for Valve on numerous occasions and is credited in several HL2 based mods, including the singleplayer. But doesn't actually work for Valve.

It's one of the things that has me concerned about under taking Level Design as a potential career path. I know many people here dream about working for Valve but it's way more competitive than most people realise. You'll find many environments across multiple big titles were created by only a few senior designers. It's made me realise the market potential isn't as big as we like to naively believe. A whole bunch of us here just make levels and have fun but very few take it seriously enough to do real world research on this kind of thing. If only a few senior level designers can get work for several companies on several games at a time, it's incredibly competitive, even if it's still a growing industry.

My only question at the moment is on whether junior level designers are actually getting credited on such big titles. Junior positions should be plenty available if that's the case. It's something i've been considering emailing valve about.