KotH waterworks

Sylver

L1: Registered
Jan 29, 2012
38
2
This is a small, indoors map, but with high ceilings as to give some room for rocket/sticky jumping.

Very plain visually for now. I want to adjust the layout first before doing much else.
 
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Blizzmaster

L1: Registered
Dec 1, 2011
10
0
I had a quick runthrough your map, and here's what I think so far:

The Good:
-Your lighting is pretty good. It's bright enough at all parts of the map.
-The visual style fits the "waterworks" title. Looks like sort of a basement maintenance tunnel for a dam or something. Pretty cool.
-I think almost every class could have fun on this map. Lots of corners for pyros, heavies, and spies to work with.

What needs work:
-Your doors on the spawn don't quite work correctly. The whole model moves up and clips into the wall, instead of just the door sliding up into the holder.
-It feels like snipers won't have a very fun time on this map. I didn't really feel like any parts of the map featured long enough sightlines for a sniper to be effective. Of course, you don't want to do what I did with my map and make it a total sniperfest on initial release either. :O
 

Sylver

L1: Registered
Jan 29, 2012
38
2
What needs work:
-Your doors on the spawn don't quite work correctly. The whole model moves up and clips into the wall, instead of just the door sliding up into the holder.
-It feels like snipers won't have a very fun time on this map. I didn't really feel like any parts of the map featured long enough sightlines for a sniper to be effective. Of course, you don't want to do what I did with my map and make it a total sniperfest on initial release either. :O

Thanks for the feedback. I didn't even notice those doors were doing that. :p
 

Sylver

L1: Registered
Jan 29, 2012
38
2
Updated to A2. My displacements need a little work, I'll try to take another shot at those cliffs really soon.
 

grazr

Old Man Mutant Ninja Turtle
aa
Mar 4, 2008
5,441
3,814
Recommend you stick to a 64 grid setting to keep things easier to work with. In the second image your second floor and drop down above it looks to be 80 units. Though your lower floor looks to be 64, which is fine.

Keeping to 64 units is good practice. It's the crouch jump height and syncs with the 4x4 grid pattern (16, 32, 64, 128 etc). It also syncs in with damage fall off which uses the same distance scale, 256, 512, 1024.
 

Sylver

L1: Registered
Jan 29, 2012
38
2
Recommend you stick to a 64 grid setting to keep things easier to work with. In the second image your second floor and drop down above it looks to be 80 units. Though your lower floor looks to be 64, which is fine.

Keeping to 64 units is good practice. It's the crouch jump height and syncs with the 4x4 grid pattern (16, 32, 64, 128 etc). It also syncs in with damage fall off which uses the same distance scale, 256, 512, 1024.

Thanks for the advice, I really appreciate it, I'll keep it in mind for future maps too.

Also, updated the map to A3.
 

Spacek531

L4: Comfortable Member
Jan 28, 2012
165
94
looking at the screenshots, it appears as if the textures are just aligned willy-nilly, for example, in the second screenshot, there's a wall where the red spytech texture is not aligned to the bottom of the wall even though the texture is meant as a floor border. I noticed because I happened to be farting around with textures in a map that hasn't even got spawns in it Dx
 

Spacek531

L4: Comfortable Member
Jan 28, 2012
165
94
While playing around by myself, I noticed a few things, first and foremost is that it is an awesome map. Second, the health and ammo are dual-function: they give both ammo and health at the same time, which could work out with a custom model or something, but right now there are 2 medium health and 2 medium ammos on either side of the cap point. The second thing I noticed is not necessarily a problem, but an interesting quirk of the door frames that you used; you can stand on them by rocket or sticky jumping. This stood out to me because of the lip over the doorframe suggests trying to keep people from doing that.
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I also noticed the lack of any chokepoints on the way to the point; there are 4 routes for the team to take to the point, meaning that one team couldn't really push the other team unless they were really coordinated, which, if they were, would be super effective because most of the cover beyond the courtyard is pillars and corners, which are good for surprises, but not for outsmarting bullet.

suggestions for detailing:

This was something that threw me for a loop:
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the shadow is very irksome because nowhere else in the map is there a shadow that points straight down. The very last thing is the brush that keeps people out of the spawn is visible even when the door is down. Also, the motor thing is floating in midair.

I really like what you did with the different computer wall textures at the point, it is really creative.

Another thing I found that should probably be fixed come-detailing is the brush edges do not carry over reflections, so the reflection of the blue sky is chopped in half by the brush ending.

Among other things, the cliffs look a little bit tall, and very dark, the lighting is very even throughout the map, making it look bland, the roof of the little house is mirrored, which is an interesting effect, but I didn't really see a practical application for it in the real world, so the 'effect is lost.' Also, as I mentioned before, the texture used for the walls is repeated along the height of the wall even though the texture is normally for being flush with the floor. Blah blah blah I should keep these comments to myself until beta
 

Schrikvis

L1: Registered
Aug 3, 2011
37
11
SWEET JESUS

This map is gold!
Good things;
- layout overall
- the bots love it

Bad things;
- sentry spots
- indoors
- looks
 

Fruity Snacks

Creator of blackholes & memes. Destroyer of forums
aa
Sep 5, 2010
6,394
5,571
bots loving it =/= good, understand that quickly. Looks do not matter in alpha.

Just from my initial thoughts based on the images, your mid looks cramped. You also (from what I can see) only have 1 route higher than the point in the main room. Can't be 100% sure but you might want a bigger area overlooking the point. When one team is capping the point, and they have equal or greater height advantage, it makes it hard for the opposing team to get the cappers off. When this happens, you'll see that majority of the time, the team who caps first holds the point for 3 min solid, or very very close to it.
 

xzzy

aa
Jan 30, 2010
815
531
Bots don't give very detailed insight into maps gameplay either.

Not detailed insight, no. But you can get a feel for the overall flow of a map by watching them.. their patterns can help reveal obvious problems. And they're a lot easier to gather for a game than humans.
 

Sergis

L666: ])oo]v[
aa
Jul 22, 2009
1,874
1,257
Not detailed insight, no. But you can get a feel for the overall flow of a map by watching them.. their patterns can help reveal obvious problems. And they're a lot easier to gather for a game than humans.

bots play way too differently from humans to be useful for anything beyond playing for fun.
 

Sylver

L1: Registered
Jan 29, 2012
38
2
bots loving it =/= good, understand that quickly. Looks do not matter in alpha.

Just from my initial thoughts based on the images, your mid looks cramped. You also (from what I can see) only have 1 route higher than the point in the main room. Can't be 100% sure but you might want a bigger area overlooking the point. When one team is capping the point, and they have equal or greater height advantage, it makes it hard for the opposing team to get the cappers off. When this happens, you'll see that majority of the time, the team who caps first holds the point for 3 min solid, or very very close to it.

Actually, in the only gameday I've submitted this to so far, that was the case. The team that capped the point first won the 3 games. (although it was always the same team so I passed it off as unbalanced teams) but in any case, I'll definitely look into adding more high ground.


Bad things;
- sentry spots

By that do you mean that there is not enough sentry spots or that there is too many good ones?
 
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Schrikvis

L1: Registered
Aug 3, 2011
37
11
The bots don't have opinions. You do know that?
It's not really a good way of expressing one's thought about something,
but if the bots 'like' it, the same way a cat likes certain toys, that means that it's likeable for humans as well; bots being able to use all classes generally results in a peacefull environment, in which same-skill-players (all bots share the same skill level, obviously) live up to their full potential.
Bad maps don't offer such occasions, thus leading to the bots either overwhelming the other team or repeatedly stalemating.
I also do multiple tests of all-guys-go-one-class gameplay.
That worked fine too.

On maps like, say, cp_alluvium (taking a pretty off-the-charts example), most bots don't get to behave well. Scouts and spies couldn't do what they're supposed to do. Testing it later on with some friends reinforced that.

Bots may not be a good way to grade a map (due to buggyness and overall unintelligence), but for the time being it's a somewhat-reliable source of what-if gameplay. (and overall class-usefullness on maps)