How do you feel about this game element?

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Sundelta

L1: Registered
Oct 7, 2011
3
0
Hi,

Let me start off that I'm not a new player or TF2 mapper, however I decided to make an account here to make my new map project much more fruitful.

Alright, so I'm still blueprinting my 3-round cp map on paper, and just had an interesting idea pop in my head. Now in the third round, outside the rural part of the map and inside red's industrialized base, what if the last control point had random intermittent blackouts that turned the whole room pitch black for a few seconds? No doubt it would give some classes an advantage.

Love to hear your thoughts on that.
 

tyler

aa
Sep 11, 2013
5,102
4,621
It would kill both your compile time and your file size, making the map a chore to build and an irritation to download.

You'll notice that flashing or moving lights are few and far between in TF2 maps--it's not because no one has thought of it yet.
 

Sundelta

L1: Registered
Oct 7, 2011
3
0
It wouldn't affect time/size all that severely, but it would simply be more annoying than interesting for gameplay.

Would it be less annoying if there was a fancy prelude to the blackout, so players would know 5-10 seconds beforehand?
 
Apr 13, 2009
728
309
Pitch black doesn't sit well with TF2. There are very few areas of low light in official TF2 maps and they're usually remote, far from the action.
If you want a blackout, fine, but leave enough light to be able to identify player's team, class and weapon.
(emergency lights on backup power ? Natural light shining through ? Inexplicable light that just happens ?)
 

grazr

Old Man Mutant Ninja Turtle
aa
Mar 4, 2008
5,441
3,814
Beware that health/ammo pickups are lit seperate from the environment, they'll essentially glow in the dark.

Also the lower the light levels, the stranger the lightmapped shadows appear to render, odd RGB seperations occur and large blobs of "brown shitty smears".
 

Goombac

L4: Comfortable Member
Mar 27, 2010
172
84
like in harvest_event?

I was just thinking of that. But with harvest_event there is one major difference: if you are in the blackout, there's a big change you are scared by the ghost and can't attack and the same goes for anyone else in the area. And it usually stays that way until the ghost is gone. And the locations of the blackout are in places that are really easy to enter and exit and have enough lights near it.

I think what you're trying to do could work if you did everything right, but there's a good chance it would come off as frustrating. I could see maybe if you kept the blackouts around choke points, it might add interesting effects like preventing a push or even provoking a push while the opposing team is distracted.

Maybe if you kept some emergency lights on, like a fire exit or something, that way the pitch black is never totally black? Or add some windows and lights outside to add additional lighting there.
 
Jan 8, 2011
397
393
I think it could work as long as it had a prelude so people knew it was coming, and if you had emergency lights or large windows to keep the room bright enough to see teams and weapons.
 

tyler

aa
Sep 11, 2013
5,102
4,621
If you look at harvest_event, the lights that get turned off in an area are like 75% of the lights, plus the area is tiny.
 

Sundelta

L1: Registered
Oct 7, 2011
3
0
Maybe if you kept some emergency lights on, like a fire exit or something, that way the pitch black is never totally black? Or add some windows and lights outside to add additional lighting there.

The room I'm imagining right now would have natural sunroofs over main pathways, so if there's a blackout they will still be illuminated. However everything else would fall in a dark shadow; perhaps not pitch black, but enough to hinder one's ability to see the enemy.

A good idea would be to put ammo/health in those naturally lit spots to avoid the glow-in-the-dark effect.
 
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grazr

Old Man Mutant Ninja Turtle
aa
Mar 4, 2008
5,441
3,814
environment light tends to bounce more so you wont get crisp contrasts in shadow and illumination if windows to outside are your light sources in such a scenario. Unless, you up the secondary ambience "blackness" in the environment_light but then all your outdoors shadows will subsequently look strange.