WiP in WiP, post your screenshots!

I just wanted to get a little more feedback on my map: cp_dam

Here are a few picks of the latest WIP.









And just so you are aware of the general layout and whats going on here are a couple of old pics.

5 point symmetrical CP [ 4 common points within the dam and 2 different E points exclusive caps to each team]





FOR MORE INFO : http://forums.tf2maps.net/showthread.php?t=6113

For the flamethrower, I would keep the red and blue gas cans and make them a bit more of a pastel color. Not pink per se, but girly pastel colors I think would look nice on it after seeing the pink one. You could even paint on flowers

[O];251073 said:

I just wanted to get a little more feedback on my map: cp_dam

Here are a few picks of the latest WIP.

[pictures]

FOR MORE INFO : http://forums.tf2maps.net/showthread.php?t=6113

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those stairs: dear lord no. nobody likes moving up or down anything remotely resembling a spiral staircase, and theyre pretty much an unassailable sniper position. massive bodies of water are no fun to battle in either

soylent robot said:

those stairs: dear lord no. nobody likes moving up or down anything remotely resembling a spiral staircase, and theyre pretty much an unassailable sniper position. massive bodies of water are no fun to battle in either

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Just so we're clear there never really is any battling in the water. The water is there so the teams work on removing it in order to cap the winning point: E.

It also increase/decrease the travel time depending on which side you are on.

The majority of control points are inside the massive dam itself.

As for the stairs you only have to go up half the distance because the water is half way up to begin with.

If the water has dropped completely on your side and you have the full stairs exposed you are not obliged to go all the way up anyway because the top two points [located on the top 2 levels out of 4 total inside the dam] are locked by that time.

Access will be open to D [bottom level inside dam].

Oh and opposing snipers cannot possibly be shooting at the stairs because they would have to be on your side of the map beneath your spawn.

Does that explanation help at all? Please let me know.

You may want to put the stairs inside a building attached to the dam, with windows (glass, not open) at each landing. Otherwise, it seems like it might become infested with snipers. Perhaps you could give them some battlements halfway down the dam that open up when E is unlocked?

Shanghai said:

You may want to put the stairs inside a building attached to the dam, with windows (glass, not open) at each landing. Otherwise, it seems like it might become infested with snipers. Perhaps you could give them some battlements halfway down the dam that open up when E is unlocked?

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Thats a good idea. I just might do that with parts of the stairs. Might also make it more interesting to look at as well.

Thanks!

This is my design theory for my Linear Push TC idea. It incorporates 4 spawns, 4 control points, and 3 rounds. The map starts in the middle round/area, functioning as similarly to a TC round in the sense that the objective is to capture the other teams control point. If your team is able to capture the other teams control point you are able to move on to their "final round" where you can take their last point. The spawn room the enemy team used in the neutral middle round will now be your spawn room for their "losing" round/area. The catch is that they can push back to the middle round and ultimately into your round if your team is magically bad all of a sudden.

Some variant idea's that would require more work but ultimately add more gameplay and make for a bigger map.

• Make this 5 Control Points, 4 rounds, and 3 linked CPs.
  Would require a 5th spawn which I'm not to keen on.
  
• Make this 6 Control Points, 3 rounds, and 2 linked CPs.
  The catch is 3 CPs are in use per round instead of 2. (Haven't tried to make it so the middle control point goes back to neutral upon entering a new round/area.)

This is the version I have working. The 4 Control Points, 3 Rounds, 2 linked CPs idea.



Suggestions and critism would be incredibly appreciated, I want to know what everyone thinks.

As a note, obviously thats not how the map would be in terms of layout. It'd be much more varied and twisty, I just want to hear everyones opinion on whether or not they believe this mode would be fun.

Vincent said:

This is my design theory for my Linear Push TC idea. It incorporates 4 spawns, 4 control points, and 3 rounds. The map starts in the middle round/area, functioning as similarly to a TC round in the sense that the objective is to capture the other teams control point. If your team is able to capture the other teams control point you are able to move on to their "final round" where you can take their last point. The spawn room the enemy team used in the neutral middle round will now be your spawn room for their "losing" round/area. The catch is that they can push back to the middle round and ultimately into your round if your team is magically bad all of a sudden.

Some variant idea's that would require more work but ultimately add more gameplay and make for a bigger map.

• Make this 5 Control Points, 4 rounds, and 3 linked CPs.
  Would require a 5th spawn which I'm not to keen on.
  
• Make this 6 Control Points, 3 rounds, and 2 linked CPs.
  The catch is 3 CPs are in use per round instead of 2. (Haven't tried to make it so the middle control point goes back to neutral upon entering a new round/area.)

This is the version I have working. The 4 Control Points, 3 Rounds, 2 linked CPs idea.

Suggestions and critism would be incredibly appreciated, I want to know what everyone thinks.

As a note, obviously thats not how the map would be in terms of layout. It'd be much more varied and twisty, I just want to hear everyones opinion on whether or not they believe this mode would be fun.

Click to expand...

Vincent I think that is a great concept.

1- Its familiar yet different enough to make it very original.

2- Its just the right size. If its balanced right I can imagine some back and forth, so 3 sections [or rounds] to move back and forth between will give enough time.

I would definitely default with this size and wait for testing to see if it needs to be lengthened.

Good job showing the basic entity set up as a start.

I'm looking forward to see more.

Trying the "big indoor greenhouse" idea again, but doing a 3cp gravelpit-style map instead of 5cp, with each point in its own 'house'. It's 99% ready for MP testing, with a couple minor player clips not working right and a few lights that need to be moved/brightened. I think I may need to raise the roof a little bit, right now the current height on A is a bit short for rocket/sticky jumping.

C is probably the point that needs the most work, with red's spawn being right there I think it'll probably end up either being camped by blue or camped by red. Right now there's only a small portion of the middle "green" area accessible, and I'm hoping to open that up as well, but that might make the map feel even smaller by cutting down on the length of routes between points.

Main things I was trying to work with was providing a couple good sentry spots that weren't completely unbreakable, and providing some sniper lanes that can be avoided at the cost of speed. I think soldiers/demos are a bit limited on mobility right now due to the aforementioned height limitations. There's a couple nice places for spies to hang out.

Areas I want to focus on after doing some basic testing are filling out blue's spawn greenhouse, adding some vertical elements to C, cleaning up the vent work, and working on the center area (at the very least adding some displacements and maybe some water before opening it up).

A couple bigger screenshots, and some more notes:


The B point. Blue has semi-direct access from the tunnel on the left and another door directly below the camera (I will probably move that one hedge to separate the two entrances). Red can come in from the main tunnel and the A<->B vent. A couple barriers (will probably change these to wood instead of metal) prevent red from snipe-camping the point from C.


The A point. Blue can get in from the main tunnel (mostly hidden behind the shed) and there's another tunnel below that one that comes up on the left of this shot. Red's tunnel comes up on the left as well (but from a different direction, and separated by a wall), and can also get up on top of the shed, where there's a small hole. This point actually sucks for taking screenshots because (1) it's on two levels and (2) the shed blocks a lot of sightlines.


Swimming pool! This fits in with the theme of A being a "rec room". B is supposed to be some kind of plant research facility and C as a computer room/administration area.

forcing yourself to build inside three similarly sized boxy rooms makes the map dull when it comes to layout

@xerol try using Imgur.com to upload pictures, it's difficult to see these.

Xerol said:

Trying the "big indoor greenhouse" idea again, but doing a 3cp gravelpit-style map instead of 5cp, with each point in its own 'house'. It's 99% ready for MP testing, with a couple minor player clips not working right and a few lights that need to be moved/brightened. I think I may need to raise the roof a little bit, right now the current height on A is a bit short for rocket/sticky jumping.

C is probably the point that needs the most work, with red's spawn being right there I think it'll probably end up either being camped by blue or camped by red. Right now there's only a small portion of the middle "green" area accessible, and I'm hoping to open that up as well, but that might make the map feel even smaller by cutting down on the length of routes between points.

Main things I was trying to work with was providing a couple good sentry spots that weren't completely unbreakable, and providing some sniper lanes that can be avoided at the cost of speed. I think soldiers/demos are a bit limited on mobility right now due to the aforementioned height limitations. There's a couple nice places for spies to hang out.

Areas I want to focus on after doing some basic testing are filling out blue's spawn greenhouse, adding some vertical elements to C, cleaning up the vent work, and working on the center area (at the very least adding some displacements and maybe some water before opening it up).

A couple bigger screenshots, and some more notes:

--snip--

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A couple of suggestions if I may throw them out there.

1) Cap point A and cap point C both seem to have very low ceilings based on the architecture in the room, leaves no room for rocket jumping or sticky jumping.

2) The boarders around the cap points are much to higher and will be a nuisance for people when trying to cap it, I would refrain from such higher boarders and keep them at 1unit in height.

3) Increase the water texture size a bit, possibly to 512x512 that way it does not look like there are so many waves in the pool that no one is even in.

4) Add a bit more height variation for gameplay, this is what makes a map soar to the top or keeps it burning at the bottom, with you having an all indoors map it already puts it at a disadvantage, so you need something else to make up for it, I'd raise the greenhouse roofs up by 512-1024 units and add some other gameplay/aesthetics to keep people interested.

Vincent: I think that that's what Icarus did in Faultline. Worked well IIRC.

Look ma! I'm placing barrels in the snow! I'm a pru-fesh-u-nal!

Seriously though, how do you guys deal with non-cubic displacement geometry?


Also, doing shit like this is ok as long as I func_detail it afterwards, right?

To the last image, yes....

Deodorant said:

Seriously though, how do you guys deal with non-cubic displacement geometry?

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What a mess! :O

Use a bigger brush radius when displacing (around 50+), then for small details go in with a brush radius of 3 or 8. Use a distance of 2 or 3 so it doesn't shoot all over the place with one mouse click. It'll end up looking much cleaner, trust me.

Also if you have your displacements lined up on the grid, sew is your best friend.

protip: you can enter decimal values into the strength/distance box for displacements. This works for both geometry manipulation and sculpting.

[Never mind this whole post. Dr.Blob has helped me. Dr.Blob is a great person!]

My first "finished" spawn room! Just got in to TF2 mapping (not Hammer mapping in general, though).

Thought I'd give it a try. Made a generic spawn room. This is my first "finished" and lit spawn room. It's a little big but whatever, I was winging it.

looking good! maybe vary the pipes in the ceiling though, so they twist and turn all over the place, to give it that proper tf2 feel. look at the ceilings in the 2fort spawn rooms for examples