CP Sacred

iciz

L2: Junior Member
Mar 17, 2009
84
60
Story

Some ancient Inca ruins high in the mountains of Peru hold a secret source of unimaginable power that the Administrator desperately wants to control. Mercenaries have been dispatched to secure the site, but have been given strict orders to touch nothing!

Gameplay

It's largely an experiment in extreme vertical combat and freedom of movement, but being as unethical of an approach as I think this is it may all go horribly wrong, only play testing will tell. D: It's currently a 5 point push map, but I may experiment with other game modes like koth in the future.

Visuals

I'm going for semi-stylized/fantasized ancient city inspired by various pre-columbian era architectural designs (Maya, Aztec. etc.) with a particular focus on Machu Picchu and the Inca's.

History

Sacred is a kind of “spiritual successor” to Spire, a map a few of the old timers :D here may vaguely remember me releasing many years ago. Were the hell does the time go? Anyway, I quickly discovered shortly after the initial alpha release of Spire that it just wasn’t going to work the way I wanted it to and that it would require a complete overhaul. Sacred is the result of that overhaul. So after two years in the making hopefully it will have been worth the wait. :lol:

I haven't actually been working on it constantly for two years straight though. I originally started working on the resign immediately after the first release of Spire, but the problem was that I really wanted to create a map that was unlike any other TF2 map out there in both visuals and gameplay and this was an extremely tall order for someone's first stab at building a “normal map”. I could have just gone the easier traditional way, but I always find that boring. So this made it more challenging and complex then it needed to be and I found my self stuck on how to go about it.

On top of that Valve continued to unintentionally discouraged me from continuing my work on it with all the promotional and micro transaction crap that they added to the game that I felt was degrading the whole experience for me. So I ended up shelving the whole project a little while later. I did go back every once in a while and take a stab at it again when I was bored, but nothing really progressed, until about a months ago when I suddenly found inspiration again. I now feel that I finally have it at a level suitable for public testing.
 
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ricardojvc6

L6: Sharp Member
Jun 8, 2009
268
66
I hope this has it own theme like Antiquity has. Good luck with the Inca Style.
 

iciz

L2: Junior Member
Mar 17, 2009
84
60
Posted the first screenshot. Download coming later. Source SDK is being a pain in the butt right now. It keeps crashing on me in different ways. Mostly when I'm viewing the 3D preview full screen in hammer. Think it's a video driver issue, but it's also been doing other strange things.

Think I'm going to call this a pre-alpha build because there's a ton of tiny things to tweak and test out before it will probably be very playable including; respawn times, sight lines, and a few experimental elements I'm trying out including deadly spike traps activated on point capture, and a jump pad shortcut to the spire instead of forward spawns.
 

Pocket

Half a Lambert is better than one.
aa
Nov 14, 2009
4,694
2,579
Wait, you're the Spire guy? I remember that map! Was basically Orange X but less sucky. Got my Jumper Stumper achievement there. Looks like this'll still be a fun map to snipe on, but not nearly as overpowered.
 

lana

Currently On: ?????
aa
Sep 28, 2009
3,075
2,778
I very much like the Shangri La feel you're going for. Be wary of pyros, though. They seem like they'd throw the last point into absolute chaos, what with it being completely open and over a death pit.
 

iciz

L2: Junior Member
Mar 17, 2009
84
60
...wary of pyros, though. They seem like they'd throw the last point into absolute chaos, what with it being completely open and over a death pit.

The last point is actually inside the base and surrounded by water.

Bot Pyros love to use air-blast so they've been very helpful in testing that particular control point for problems, but are of course nothing compared to real humans and that's why I'm doing a public play test. We'll see what happens.

The pillars do help in countering push effects and sniping sight-lines, but I've noticed that Valve seems to have some kind of lower platform to any death pits they make. Probably to give players a better fighting chance when they fall off. So I might try to add something like that if it feels to overpowering.

Hard to tell, but I think mid to TOO high up, but looks like it could be interesting.

Scale is something I've struggled a lot with on this map and it's actually been scaled down (vertically) a ton from the original draft. Something just felt wrong with it before and I think it's height was the primary problem. It now feels pretty good to me, but like I've said before we'll just have to see how it plays.
 

waxpax

L5: Dapper Member
Feb 25, 2011
238
151
Since you asked me to pug this map last night, I took a look at it and these are the things I saw.

I think you should switch the doors to some other color/texture, the way they are now, they blend pretty well into the walls:
R8G05.jpg


I think you need some way out of the water on the last point. Seems like it would be very frustrating to fall in and then have to trek to the second point to get out. Maybe make it so the stairs extend into the water?:
Ho5Xv.jpg


I think you should change the map so that's it's more standard push, where only the mid point is neutral at the start and each team owns two points. I also don't like the way you have the points set up atm since, if you cap your 2 but the other team hasn't capped a point, the hud makes it look like you can cap either 3 or 4, but you have to have 3 before you can get 4. So, either switch to standard push control, or make it so you can cap 3 or 4 at the same time, I guess.

You'll probably want to put something in these types of alcoves that are kind of useless, maybe a statue or something to cut down on the stupid hiding places/annoying sentry placements. Idk.
kTrTg.jpg



Mid's kind of a mess. It's really, really high up, and then, when you get there, there's barely any area to fight on. I'd say, either expand the top of the tower, or lower the tower so it doesn't take most classes 4 seconds to climb it.
BujZz.jpg



I think you should move this health pack to the top of the water, just float it or something. I don't care if it doesn't make sense to float a health pack, but, with the pack where it is now, most people will probably never know it's there:
2FZRc.jpg


I don't like that the water route from last exits here:
U209P.jpg


I think it would make backcaps really easy

You might want to clip some the towers and make it so you can't jump all the way across the map with 2 stickies. This was my demo rollout I came up with, jump from here:
ukhis.jpg

and basically land in the same spot on the opposite side of the map:
CR2Eu.jpg


If you add some clipping to it and make it more standard push game type, it would probably be playable in a pug, idk if i can get people to try it until you make some of those changes though. I'll probably have people look at it at the start of the night and get more opinions on it, though.

EDIT: Forgot to say, the sniper sightlines didn't seem nearly as bad as I thought they'd be, seemed like you did a pretty good job of obstructing most of them.
 
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iciz

L2: Junior Member
Mar 17, 2009
84
60
Thanks for the feedback Waxpax! I really appreciate you taking the time to give it a look. Specially helpful since I missed the play test here the other day and never got the demo form it. :(

All very good observations I think.

Map setup will be restored to standard 5 cap push in the next release. I basically did it that way so people would notice the DEATH SPIKES that pop-up when you capture the 2nd and 4th points, but those will probably be removed and where just a fun experiment.

I think you're the second person to mention the water exit problem so I'll definitely be looking into that.

Spawn exit door will be modified (on the inside at least). It's supposed to be something like a semi hidden (to the enemy) one way spawn exit to help reduce spawn camping.

Lowering the tower was something I was thinking about doing, but it's a real pain in the butt because I have to redo all the ramps also. I decided to test it out the way it was first to see what happens. The size of the fighting area at the top was another thing I've wonder about because it does feel very small with those inside stairways cutting into it. I may experiment with lowering it first and see where it goes from there.

I intentionally didn't do any clipping on any of the towers because I wanted to experiment with the idea of a kind of “free flowing” map. Where Instead of creating hard set paths I would allow classes that can to go almost anywhere in the map they want, but at a cost. The idea is that the lowest path is the safest while the higher you go the more dangerous it gets. Snipers for example can see halfway across the upper part of the map from the upper platform at their base, and can see all upper areas and even a few lower ares from the middle tower. Snipers then become a counter to any class that decides to take a higher, quicker path. Scouts for example can move across the map extremely fast, but at great risk.

It's also important to note that instead of reduced re-spawn times being rewarded for control of points I've decided to experiment with the idea of giving the team that owns the middle tower a short cut to it by means of a jump pad on the balcony of their base. This make getting to the tower extremely fast for any class on the team that controls it. In fact this might be too much of a reward, but the pads are somewhat exposed to danger.

I do understand the problem with a demo getting from one side of the map to the other so easily though. Maybe I'll see if I can block some ares better.
 

Sergis

L666: ])oo]v[
aa
Jul 22, 2009
1,874
1,257
extreme vertical combat seemed too extreme, as the steps at mid were too high to rocketjump (and i was failing at wallclimb :D ). the bottom paths could use some more ways to get up as being down there between high grounds as high as yours is a serious disadvantage. seeing as you already toss players around with catapults, maybe you could make some vertical-ish catapults for easier high ground access.
 

Sebi

L2: Junior Member
Aug 13, 2011
65
13
If you see this:
2u2p.jpg

Then you know that your map has OMGWTFBBQ sightlines.

One time I even got shot in the back of my head by a sniper standing on the middle emm... mountain, while I was assembling my sentry behind a wall!:O :crying:

I suggest simply making the middle-mountain less OP-high and blocking a some sightlines.
 
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Malachi

L1: Registered
Apr 25, 2008
2
0
Tested this map today on our server w/ 12-14 players. Reaction was generally positive.

The usual things apply:
Signage nonexistent.
Sparse health/ammo kits.


Players mused about doing the map in an Egypt style. An alternate was mentioned: future tech style.

The launch pads that pop up for the team holding the middle point seem like a poor substitute for forward spawns.

Cap points turned over pretty quickly. One moment red was capping blu's 2nd point, the next was reversed. This seems too quick to me. Map distances may be too small cap to cap.

Some railings strategically placed might be nice - there was a bit of air-blasting off the edge going on.

Sniping is a bit of an issue.

Various exits from spawn arent arranged to get players to notice them.

Difficult to climb up side of throne chair at last point - is that intentional?

Layout of interior of middle point need cleaning up to make it less clunky.

Like the angled doors.


Looking forward to seeing what you have in store for us!