PL Corn Farm [Deleted]

neat

Looks like a first-time map, but like... the good kind of first-time maps. Looking forward to testing this.

It looks REALLY good! I like the granary theme

We imp'd this today from chat, not sure if you were there or not. One thing I noticed is there are A LOT of routes haha. Some that wind around the map and aren't really focused around the track. I'm sure you'll get a lot of other feedback, but that was something I noticed. A bit confusing at first. Overall, not terrible for someone who (I assume) doesn't have a ton of mapping knowledge!

I enjoyed the map as a whole, especially the theme. One thing that will make it look exponentially better is more dynamic lighting. Everything seems kind of washed out and same-y, which really affects the textures. Allowing for a balance of dark and bright areas makes the map a lot nicer and you can even use lighting to subtly direct players.

The map was pretty fun to play aside from being kind of confusing (due to not very well-placed signs) and having some low ceiling heights in places, but being able to rocket/sticky jump on top of all the really tall roofs and other things was kind of ridiculous, I could sit up there as a demoman and spam stickies down on everyone below. Try to clip all the roofs and edges and stuff that you don't think people should be able to get up on, and make it obvious that you shouldn't get up there so people don't get confused.

I also noticed that some ledges and thresholds and stuff were not clipped and kind of weird to walk over, some of them might as well be flat with the floor. (I !fb'd one in the BLU spawn, for instance) A demoman also got stuck behind one of the wooden fence things in the final room, basically there are a lot of clipping issues and you should try to find them.

I really like the theme of the map with the industrial/farm-y look and the tall buildings, but I think a few detail things can be much improved upon.

One thing is the lighting, everything is really bright, which is good to a certain degree but right now there's very little variation in the brightness and the shadows are next to none, some props don't even cast shadows at all(?) The sixth screenshot almost looks fullbright. Try to change the color of some lights, experiment with the light_environment values and the brightness/angles/distances of the normal lights to add some more depth.

The biggest thing with the detailing though is the textures, as there are a lot of textures in places where they don't really fit in, as well as some that are improperly aligned and generally look kind of weird with their surroundings. The third screenshot is a good example of this, pretty much everything is made out of wood and the colors feel a bit washed out. Another example is the second screenshot, one of the two closest wooden walls have horizontal planks while the one next to it has vertical planks, it doesn't make much sense.

I'd experiment with some of the textures a bit and change them around to see if something else works better.

The map looks pretty promising though, good luck!

Reminds me a little too much of barnyardblitz. Clearly you've taken some inspiration from it, but perhaps too much has been replicated?

Also the theme doesn't exactly support the map name. There's no haybales or real vista's of corn fields. That should be looked upon and frequently referenced throughout your maps development.