ARENA Blackhole

tyler

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Sep 11, 2013
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arena_blackhole_a1

arena_blackhole_a10003.jpg


Somewhere out in Badlands, Alpha Electric attempts to create portals -- the likes of which Aperture Science is apparently making, rumor has it -- but their results are less than ideal. RED and BLU, hearing of the technology, engage in an end-all battle to capture the facility.

Blackhole is an arena map put together by Frozen and yyler. It features a black hole.

Custom content:
Particles are mostly Psy's work
 
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Omnomnick

L6: Sharp Member
Aug 16, 2009
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Aperture Science and TF Industries are in two entirely separate universes. Don't confuse or mix them up in the fiction of your map, it doesn't work.
 

LeSwordfish

semi-trained quasi-professional
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Aug 8, 2010
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A) Nobody ever reads the map fiction. The map fiction is, to me, less important and less relevant than whether the cubemaps are at eye level or you've just stuck them at 64 units above ground.

B) It's a joke.

C) The entire tf2 universe is built upon the Rule of Cool, the Rule of Funny, and the Rule of Game Design.

D) It's a joke.
 

grazr

Old Man Mutant Ninja Turtle
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Mar 4, 2008
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C) You're talking out of your arse.

Despite the mockery of new weapons and hats in TF2 the level design still follows strict links towards a narrative and groundings in reality. It frustrates me that so many people think "anything goes in TF2 because it has a sense of humour about itself". People fail to make the connections between the "silly" and "narrative" that exist in current content. Then proceed to make bullshit circumstances under the guise of "TF2 is random so i can do this random thing" because of not understanding/failing to properly observe such connections and/or the concept of lampshading.

Your "rules" of "cool" and "funny" are in a stark contrast to what "game design" actually is. Design is problem solving, not making ironic jokes. Someone obviously thought it would be cool and funny to make mariokart, but that doesn't make it good game design; and "it's a joke" is and always has been a cop out. So few people grasp the concept of connecting a product to an idea; mostly because many people around here havn't been educated in the relavent areas. They read a book and enjoy the characters but don't understand why the characters were interesting as the author pulls and tugs at your empathy with them.

For Yyler's sake i'm not arguing on the validity of the map, i have no problems with it other than the fact that the black hole doesn't really look like a black hole. I have no opinion of psuedo-joke maps like this or Tachyon, incase you thought my rant was aimed at the map instead of Swords response to nick/myself.

I guess what i'm saying is, you can't say the map's a joke and then say it still falls sensibly within the TF2 universe. It's either a joke or it's not; and just because a map isn't serious doesn't mean it shouldn't recieve serious feedback. Whether or not the map is taking itself serious its aesthetic would still bother me; I'm not complaining about the maps concept but the aesethetic of its execution... And Nick wasn't complaining about the concept but rather the reasons made for the maps existance; there are easy enough alternatives to justifying this far fetched concept than to saying it's related to aperture science.
 
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Fruity Snacks

Creator of blackholes & memes. Destroyer of forums
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Sep 5, 2010
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It's arena because he wouldn't make it KoTH (i told him to)

@Grazr, we don't know what black holes actually look it. But from what we do know, they do capture and trap dust particles and other debris into its orbit (this is called the accretion disk). When said debris falls past the event horizon, it will fall into the black hole. With all the debris its sucking up, it has to release energy, which comes out of the top and bottom. They are usually jets of gamma particles and other high-energy things I'd rather not talk about. So frankly, this black can infact be an actual black hole.

TAKE THAT!
 
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LeSwordfish

semi-trained quasi-professional
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Aug 8, 2010
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(It would be rude to bring "Get shit on by FACTS" into this now wouldnt it?)

I'm not sure i like the little health packs on the far flanks. I though health in arena was designed to generally be in a bad position to discentivise gettin it: it looks as if that is too easy to retreat to, although it is above a deathpit.
 

grazr

Old Man Mutant Ninja Turtle
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Mar 4, 2008
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@Grazr, we don't know what black holes actually look it.

I'll assume you mean "actually look like" but if i explain myself, my point is there's no event horizon and the colour of the accression disk should reflect the colour(s) of your room. Blue and purple seems a bit arbitrary, unless you were trying to work with blue shift and red shift.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_H9Eynnt_TVU/TBbl_Db25wI/AAAAAAAAAJk/sreRJmAGADE/s1600/rouge-black-hole.jpg
http://encorelit.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/eventhorizonphoto.jpg

Someone linked this in chat the other day: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82AMwQGjc8Y

Use some shaders and an orb and you could have an awesome event horizon at the centre of this. Blue and purple seems a bit arbitrary, unless you were trying to work with blue shift and red shift.

At the moment it just looks like a rip off of HL2's portal storm.
 
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Psy

The Imp Queen
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Apr 9, 2008
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Use some shaders and an orb and you could have an awesome event horizon at the centre of this. Blue and purple seems a bit arbitrary, unless you were trying to work with blue shift and red shift.

Except you can't add your own shaders to a map because they're hardcoded.
 

tyler

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Sep 11, 2013
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For a while I thought about changing the colors more drastically for Hella, but when I looked at what actual black holes should look like, or at least look like in popular fiction, I realized there wasn't really a good way to make that happen. It looks fine anyway.

Why Arena? :(

It could, with small modifications, arguably work as a tiny koth map. I don't really want to make it one, though.


I'm not sure i like the little health packs on the far flanks. I though health in arena was designed to generally be in a bad position to discentivise gettin it: it looks as if that is too easy to retreat to, although it is above a deathpit.
It's so far to the edge that anyone would have an easy time knocking you off, especially since you need to jump to get up there in the first place. A couple minigun bullets would slide you right off. A single rocket, probably. The map does have a fair share of health on it, though, and we both know that. I don't want to turn this into sci-fi Hardhat, but it (and maybe Arena in general) needs more than Lumberyard, imo.

Then again, the problem with adding health to Arena is rounds take longer -- so the people that don't like it due to sitting out will like it less. This is something I'm aware of and want to "balance".
 
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Sep 12, 2008
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The biggest problem with the black hole thing is (to me at least), that's you're putting it inside. Why not get rid of the roof/ceiling? I mean, what dumbo would build a (simple) building and put a black hole thingie inside it? I think you can increase the epicness of the map a lot more with an opened roof.
 

Fruity Snacks

Creator of blackholes & memes. Destroyer of forums
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Sep 5, 2010
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The biggest problem with the black hole thing is (to me at least), that's you're putting it inside. Why not get rid of the roof/ceiling? I mean, what dumbo would build a (simple) building and put a black hole thingie inside it? I think you can increase the epicness of the map a lot more with an opened roof.

Its a very small black hole, but if you were making a black hole, would you want it inside, where you can probably contain it easily, or, would you rather have it outside and not be able to contain it (and what goes into it) at all?