CP Rocky Road (reincarnated)

So, after several months of doing other things, I'm back to mapping. Since I started Rocky Road (then Rocky Mountain) a long time ago to enter it into the CP contest, I picked it right back up where I left off and remade nearly everything except some brushes and the general look of the central area.

The layout is standard 5 cp with a wide open central area and a few different routes without making it too complicated (hopefully). In the overlay I've drawn the separate routes inside houses as well as trying to explain how they connect together. Since the other half is just rotated I haven't included it.

Given its early stage of development, it wouldn't surprise me if some areas were too big or too small but I'd say it's fairly playable.

If you played the map and want to help out by taking the survey, the link is here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8909833/Images/Rocky%20road/Survey%20for%20Rocky%20Road.docx

For historical purposes, the original thread is here: http://forums.tf2maps.net/showthread.php?t=16291

Yay everyone's favorite thing to do: displacements! I've also raised the skybox, added clips and done some work on lighting and basic texturing.

While the metal wall is the basic staple of fastlane and badlands, I think I want to go more towards the well/granary industrial look. It might have something to do with the fact that metal walls look like crap with no windows and detailing, concrete just goes better with low-detail buildings.

The area I'm currently happiest with is the concrete sniper deck thingy (left in picture) that will contain a couple turbines and such in a detail area. I think my basic problem is that I've focused so much on getting a decent layout that I haven't really considered what the buildings themselves are supposed to be for or look like but I've fleshed out some ideas. May or may not be a good idea before first playtest, who knows.

SirRaffi said:

I can tell this map's been influenced by Badlands (not that there's anything wrong with that). Anyway, the displacements are looking nice.

Also, as the map is still in alpha, you shouldn't be worrying about detailing just yet. Hold back on the detailing until beta, so layout modifications are less painful do carry out.

Click to expand...

As of now, all my detailing consists of adding trims around doorways, using a total of 3 textures per half of the map and doing displacements on the mid point (which has been the same for months). Trying out a few different textures makes it easier for me to figure out where I want to take the map once I get into the art pass and it also helps me know what parts should be saved and what I can completely scrap if I want to (like most of the cliff side of cap 2 and the indoor side of cap 3).

I'm basically just trying to make it more pleasing for people to playtest, in my experience dev maps only gets players that make their own maps while somewhat detailed maps is easier to force your friends to play.

So A4 is out (link updated) with mostly minor changes for the upcoming test (today). I've also created a small survey for any friendly testers to make feedback a bit easier.

The link is here, feel free to use it and modify it as you wish: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8909833/Images/Rocky%20road/Survey%20for%20Rocky%20Road.docx

After the first playtest the general feedback was that the map was too wide (flanking was too easy), too flat and too hard to defend. Given that just adding a few hills will generally be difficult, I remade both cap 2 and cap 3 and also made Mid point a bit narrower (about 128 units).

The main idea was to create a natural choke on 2nd point while still keeping the last point as open as I could. While the ground on last is still very flat, the containers and the cliff side on the right side will hopefully add more height variation for next playtest (even though I have a nagging feeling that everything looks more like Granary).

cap 2:


and cap 3:

Bump for A6 as well as new screenshots. This version should be much better than A5, which was a bit rough. Still has a few issues but is generally playable.

I've also created a steam group to send out notifications for the map tests. If you're interested in joining, search for "huckle map testing" or send me a friend request.