TF2Maps.net Major Mapping Contest #10: Tale of Two Skillsets Phase 2 - PUBLIC VOTE

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Fruity Snacks

Creator of blackholes & memes. Destroyer of forums
aa
Sep 5, 2010
6,394
5,571

TF2MContest10.png

TF2Maps.net Major Mapping Contest #10
A tale of two skillsets

Rules and Regulations | Phase 2 Upload Thread

And thats it! We've hit the end of the contest! Time for the final voting session of the detailed maps! Play through the maps over the next few weeks and rate each category on a 1 to 10 scale.

  • Aesthetic Appeal (40%)- How pretty is it? How realistic is it? How does the ambience feel? Could we sell it to a gallery?
  • Design (30%)- Does detail draw the eye to the right places? Does it feel like a real place? Does the detail add to the gameplay, instead of taking away from it. Look at Grazr’s “Immersian and Your Map” tutorial, nodraw.net’s tutorial and others (Seriously, Grazr has a lot of good ones!). This is about the “smart” aspects of detailing.
  • Optimisation and Technical (30%)- is the filesize reasonable? Are lightmaps optimised? Is the map broken up correctly with hints, areaportals, and skip brushes? Is the FPS high enough? This also includes a limited amount of technical stuff, including packing, clipping, entities and so on.


You can just can just copy in this handy dandy table and fill in your votes!

HTML:
[table=head]Map&Criteria|Aesthetics|Design|Optimization/Technical|Comments

cp_bridges_b2|x|x|x|Any Comments here
cp_excavate_b2|x|x|x| Any Comments Here
cp_highnoon_b1|x|x|x|Any Comments Here
cp_keikoku_b1|x|x|x|Any Comments Here
cp_shiro_b1|x|x|x|Any Comments here
koth_petrichor_a1a|x|x|x|Any Comments Here


[/table]
You can download all the entries here.

Updated: May 13th
Here is an image gallery of all the maps. This does not substitute actually going through and playing the maps with bots or other players. I would highly, highly suggest that you do that for optimization and technical judging!


Please keep this thread to VOTING ONLY. All discussion should be done in the official Rules and Regulations Post!
You have until JUNE 2ND at 4PM EST TO VOTE!​
 
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Waffe

L5: Dapper Member
Dec 2, 2012
230
203
Map&Criteria|Aesthetics[40%]|Design[30%]|Optimization/Technical[30%]|Total

cp_bridges_b2|5.5|8|8|7
cp_excavate_b2|9|8|10|9
cp_highnoon_b1|4|6|9|6.1
cp_keikoku_b1|7|8|9|7.9
cp_shiro_b1|10|10|4|8.2
koth_petrichor_a1a|6|10|8|7.8
koth_swampwater|5|8|2|5


Comments:

cp_bridges_b2: Huge ERROR left from BLU spawn. Some areas fairly undetailed. I like the BLU spawn and first point. Nodraw texture visible at 2nd point. The water looks odd in the 3d skybox (at 2nd point, when looking right from BLU's perspective). Some entities pop in at 2nd.
cp_excavate_b2: Wow. Signage could be improved though (for defenders)
cp_highnoon_b1: Props in spawn have different lighting than walls. Gray skybox/-cards towards A looks bad. A looks generally wierd, there's metal/rust with mannhatten style textures. C looks great. I especially like the geometry of the crazy wooden buildings. Nodraw visible towards C
cp_keikoku_b1: I was expecting lag, but there was NONE. Something should be added to the right side of BLU spawn (BLU's perspective). Tracks at B lack playerclip ramps. You can stand on the cliff around A
cp_shiro_b1: Absolutetly beautiful. The night theme really helps to make you focus on the important doorways/cap points/health and ammo packs. I feel like it's a bit of a cheat to use the beautiful Japan models. Something also causes my view to freeze for a split second (maybe it's the models loading into memory? idk) My FPS was around 60 at lowest, at this spot here. Same spot with mat_wireframe 1. The map size is also very big, considering it's 5cp.
koth_petrichor_a1a: Very nice. The point needs something though, it looks bland. Found a missing overlay(?) in the background room at the point (low).
koth_swampwater: I don't remember this being mirrored in the first stage. Looks cluttered. 2spooky. No optimization is a crime, and it results in a minimum of 40 fps. Some dark spots. Also, by jumping on the fence you are able to fall through the level.
 
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radarhead

Basically? Kind of a Huge Mess
aa
Mar 6, 2013
1,045
625
Map&Criteria|Aesthetics|Design|Optimization/Technical|Comments

cp_bridges_b2|7|6|8|Some seams visible at final point, huge error by blu spawn. Texture difference visible in canyon water.
cp_excavate_b2|9|9|7| It looked so cool, it should become official
cp_highnoon_b1|6|5|7|Cool details here and there, but huge concrete blocks seem to dominate
cp_keikoku_b1|7|8|8|Very nice looking, but I feel like the badlands/deserty theme is kind of dull
cp_shiro_b1|8|7|8|Very beautiful, but many indoor areas looked too similar to others. Only played briefly.
koth_petrichor_a1a|x|x|x|Not played yet
koth_swampwater|6|5|6|Looks real pretty, and I like the change in symmetry- can't wait to see how that plays, but a lot of the details are mirrored throughout the whole map, and it rains in the spawns.

 
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Idolon

they/them
aa
Feb 7, 2008
2,105
6,106
Map&Criteria|Aesthetics|Design|Optimization/Technical

cp_bridges_b2|6|7|7
cp_excavate_b2|8|6|8
cp_highnoon_b1|3|6|5
cp_keikoku_b1|8|8|8
cp_shiro_b1|10|5|7
koth_petrichor_a1a|5|6|7
koth_swampwater|6|5|5


cp_bridges
-Hella console errors about props with no collision models. No points off for this, don't worry.
-3D skybox transition is kinda shoddy, but probably better than I could do :L
-oops
-All of the detail through this window is tucked into the areas that the player won't glance at. Place it where the player is going to look.
-The deathpit at C, while it makes logical sense, doesn't look death pit-y enough. Make it a bottomless pit like Nucleus, or maybe fill it with toxic sludge, or lava, or whatever.
-Also about C - the silo walls are really bland! Put some columns and windows peering in, maybe some wires connected to the central cylinder, etc.
-The stairs here look like they're attached directly to the tile/concrete walls. Put a a rail on the sides of them. Also, don't forget to randomize your stair texture positions!
-I like this room. Good job!
-The rest of C, however, is kinda bland overall. Look at all of the big metal machinery and pipes in Gorge, and go from there.
-It looks kinda strange that these wood beams go all the way to the ground. Maybe embed them in the cliffside?
-This bridge feels like it needs some beams going across, attaching the two "walls" of support you have on either side. Right now, the whole bridge would be structurally unsafe because of that.
-This wood wall looks neat. You should consider adding some more to it, by putting another similar wall behind it to imply some sort of gate that's been opened.
-The attention to detail here is fantastic.
-These metal shacks in A->B are pretty empty. They could use some more junk laying about, posters on the walls, and crossbeams on the walls. Also, that B signage is really goofy looking. Maybe use a <-> sign instead.
-blaaaaaaaaaaaand
-also bland
-You've got really big spaces of undetailed, empty space like this. Your large layout doesn't help it much, but you can do a lot more with these walls. Right now, they don't really look like uninteresting walls - they look like unfinished walls. It breaks the immersion. One of the hardest parts of detailing is to make areas that aren't interesting, but don't look like a blank "You are in a videogame" wall.
-The big C silo pops in from the draw distance when approaching B (as blue).
-Weird drawing issues at B. Also this building is just kinda ugly overall.
-The displacement work here is actually pretty nice, and nice throughout the map as a whole. Good job on that!
Not sure what to make of this, really. I'll just assume you forgot to put something here.
-Clipping issue on these.
-Door clips through wall.
-Oops again!
-And again. I'm glad you care about nodraw optimization, though!
-Another invisible wall.
-The styling inside of blue's spawn is pretty cool.
-Your map could use a lot more areaportals. You've got them on sliding doors, which is good, but you don't have them on all of your doorways. It causes a lot of unnecessary rendering. It's mostly noticable around A.

cp_excavate
-First thing I noticed is that your color scheme is hella muted. The sun shining down looks really nice, but you turned up your ambient lighting a lot so that everything gameplay-wise would be visible. This is fine, but there's a noticeable lack of lighting interest. This screenshot, for example. Everything in this screenshot is approximately the same exact light level. I would put bright lights around doors where players may be entering or leaving, creating some sort of visual interest in important areas.
-Could use a black gradient overlay in the grinder pit.
-Lots of roofed areas like this have lights with no source. It looks strange and unnatural.
-This is cool!
-Cut-off overlay.
-This light looks too bright for the area that it lights up. Don'T be afraid to put brightness values at things like 800, or even 1200!
-These environment settings are gorgeous, seriously.
-Having two crossbeams at different angles here looks weird and probably isn't the best thing structurally either.
-If stuff drains into this room, where does it go from there? I can't figure out what the point of this room is.
-Light this up better.
-Apparently people had trouble finding A during a test. Put a big "A" sign on this. Also, there's an edge of a displacement sticking up through the rock.
-I think these skycards are too close to be effective. They look really fake.
-The underground soundscape is really loud, it almost sounds like I'm in an active volcano.
-This is super picky, but having the numbers/lights to the side of the doors looks weird. Maybe move them above/below?
-This cliff wall could use a lot more shaping. It's pretty flat as is, and a lot of your other cliff walls as well.
-I see a satellite dish on the sign, but not one in the map. I would use a big red circle "B" instead, because it's a lot more noticeable.
-Don't forget that you can put opening/closing areaportals on your spawnroom doors!

cp_highnoon
-Obviously just unfinished. Keep working on it!
-This concrete bridge is way thin to be structurally sound.
-eeeeeww
-Your lighting is just all sorts of goof.
-Also, don't forget about cleaning this up.

cp_keikoku
-There doesn't seem to be a doorway out to these stairs.
-Blue spawn in general doesn't seem to have a narrative purpose, it's just a big building on the edge of a cliff.
-The lights underneath of the "B" sign need a slightly longer fade distance.
-I've never seen this poster before. It's pretty clever.
-Speaking of clever posters... the different text sizes look kinda sloppy though.
-Overall, the detailing is really nice. I don't think it's detailed quite enough, though. Especially indoors, you've got a bad case of Thunder Mountain Syndrome. Aside from blue spawn, every single wood room uses the same wood texture! Also, don't be afraid to use multiple wood/metal/brick textures in the same room - Valve does it quite a bit on Foundry, if I'm not mistaken.
-Your spytech looks really nice.
-Optimization could be better, but it's not bad either.
-The slight glow here looks nice. However, I think you forgot it on the sign on the other side of this door, as well as a lot of the lit signs. I know that you put it in that particular spawnroom because the room looks dark (which is really neat by the way), but even a point light at ~20 brightness (or something around 5 for HDR) would look good.
-On the topic of these signs, you seem to be missing quite a few. Even just a small "EXIT" or "BATTLEMENTS" signs above spawn exits would go a long way to making the map feel like a "normal" map, since most official maps do it too.
-These doors are missing dynamic areaportals. I don't know if you tried them already and they didn't work, but I thought I'd mention it, since it seems like a pretty significant optimization issue.
-This underneath area looks really nice with how dark it is, but I think it could stand to be just a smidgen brighter. Not much brighter, but just a tad - you're approaching the level of darkness that makes VRAD start to panic. Just a thought.
-"Blue Mountain" in red base?
-I know I already talked about how good your spytech is, but I'll say it again. This world map wall is way cool.
-One detail I noticed that was missing was black pipes. Upward has black pipes running down walls and along ceilings almost everywhere, and your map doesn't have many. I'm not trying to say your map needs them to look good, but it's something you should consider (because they look neat).

cp_shiro
-Needs more spytech.
-Okay, okay. I'm kidding. However, I think you could stand to make the spytech a bit more visible. Maybe turn this platform (and surrounding area) to metal, and make the cap platform out of grate? I think it could help sell the narrative a bit more.
-Noticeably bare.
-Honestly, I don't have much to say about this map. It's drop-dead gorgeous and I've heard it sucks to play on. Good portfolio piece, I guess!
-I really just can't get enough of how good this map looks. Please try and make some edits to get this more gameplay-friendly, even if that means killing the dark mood with some brighter lights, or even turning this map to daytime.
-Optimization note: While, yes we can see from the 2nd courtyard to mid, you might want to put a skybox wall here and try and seal off that area best as possible.

koth_petrichor
-Missing cubemaps!
-These big walls at mid look all sorts of weird. The colored concrete implies that somehow each team owns one half of the neutral-colored spire. It would be easy to lose track which direction you're facing if the walls were completely neutral colored, so maybe make them out of wood/metal and put a few red/blue paint patches on them instead? Also, the "Capture Zone" overlays aren't the same size.
-Speaking of the middle spire, I have a hard time figuring out where the walkable area is, since the walls and floor are the same color. This needs a lot more interesting visual stuff happening, especially since it's the visual focal point of the entire map.
-This room is just all sorts of weird. It's a really neat and tidy room, but anyone who comes in through the door (from the outside) is probably going to have dirty or muddy shoes, and it seems like a waste of money to furnish a room that well if it's going to be getting any foot traffic from people working outside. Also, this is being incredibly picky, but I think the TV would be on the other side of the table. The chairs are all facing the window already, and people will probably want to be able to look through the window as well as the TV at the same time. Also, sunshine coming in from the window would cause a glare on the screen. Not that the environment we're in gets much sunshine, but it's a thing to think about. Wow, I wrote a lot about that TV set.
-I can't really come up with a logical reason for it, but concrete with metal directly on the side like this looks wrong. I would make them metal walls instead.
-This metal door seems kinda redundant, since there's already an open doorway to the side. Garages sometimes will have human doors to supplement their larger, automobile-sized counterparts, but this room, judging by the spytech, doesn't get much large-or-heavy-equipment traffic. Also, you use this door a lot outside, and it just looks like you ran out of ideas for what to put on walls.
-This little bit of scenery in the 3D sky is kinda out of the way, and anyone playing the map normally probably wont notice it. Also, the alpine environment isn't really a great place for a farm.
-If I was an electrician and I had to access this electrical panel, I wouldn't be very happy.
-Underneath the point is this perfectly-symmetrical crowd of barrels in water and I'm having a really hard time figuring out what it's significance is. Are red and blue fighting over some barrels? That idea makes sense in itself, but the way that it's presented is just really bizarre.
-Despite all of the negative criticism, this is certainly an improvement from your other maps. Keep at it!

koth_swampwater
-Worst framerate of any of the maps in the contest. :(
-The wood planks in the ground here look pretty nice! However, a good number of them have misaligned textures. I would also maybe look into picking a darker, more brown wood texture.
-The symmetry here looks lazy and wrong.
-The vines that cover everything around mid are really tacky and just look bad/fake. Instead, I would look into using Spud's vineyard models, as well as some more subtle stain overlays. Subtlety, really, is the biggest issue with your current vines, because they create a whole bunch of visual noise where there really shouldn't be any.
-Doors like these could use lights above them to create some visual interest. Right now, they tend to blend into their surroundings.
-This metal duct is really out of place.
-This exit sign looks angelic. Not in a good way, either.
-Speaking of exit signs, I wouldn't recommend putting them above doors you can't actually go through. It just creates visual interest where there doesn't need to be any.
-The sudden change of texture here is kinda jarring. I would pick a more neutral texture, and apply it all around.
-Overall, you've got some good ideas. The execution needs a lot of work, though.
 
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Bereth

L4: Comfortable Member
Dec 13, 2011
170
197
Map&Criteria|Aesthetics|Design|Optimization/Technical|Comments

cp_bridges_b2|6|4|4| http://imgur.com/a/jMXq4 Noticable fps problems around B. Generally detailing felt unrefined.
cp_excavate_b2|8|0|8| Really like the theme. Not a fan of some of the red-ish textures at the blu initial spawn, but otherwise good. The real deal-breaker is the layout changes. Also poor clipping. Great fps.
cp_highnoon_b1|3|8|7|All I can say is: please finish it. You were off to a great start. Some fps problems and terrible clipping.
cp_keikoku_b1|9|8|3| Couple of weird details (especially those fence-rock combos near B). The theme was meh but well done. Big FPS problems, though, as well as some poor clipping.
cp_shiro_b1|6|0|0| Not a big fan of the theme, but you really committed to it. Needed more spytech. All of the lights and the particles and the lighting in general made the whole map one giant distraction from the actual fighting. Kind of nice to look at, terrible to play in. Also even without players I noticed some big fps problems in certain areas.
koth_swampwater|4|0|0| Vines and the spawn really hurt the visuals of the map. The seam of the river also looks bad. The mist/smoke are pretty unnecessary and a big fps killer. Terrible FPS.

 
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Freyja

aa
Jul 31, 2009
2,994
5,813
Map&Criteria|Aesthetics|Design|Optimization/Technical

cp_bridges_b2|3|5|7
cp_excavate_b2|9|6.5|9
cp_highnoon_b1|4|4|8
cp_keikoku_b1|x|x|x
cp_shiro_b1|x|x|x
koth_petrichor_a1a|4|3|5
koth_swampwater|5|5|3


CP Bridges

The detailing on this map is interesting. You held your theme together reasonably well and the colours of textures and overall atmosphere of the map is great, this is partially because you did a reasonably good job with soundscapes too. Some desert maps (looking at you, gullywash) feel really drab, and nothing really comes together.

Here are some things I found.

Why is this clipped off? Blue spawnrooms in A/D maps force the players to sit around for over a minute. There's no reason to arbitrarily clip off areas like this that the player could explore. It doesn't change the layout, gameplay, and generally makes your spawn more interesting to wait around in. It's especially bad because it looks like you can walk there!

These fences could have really used the -textureshadows compile option. Most of the time you can get away without compiling it, but here, when there's a big wall of just chainlink fences, the shadow looks really odd and just creates dissonance. Even disabling the shadows may have been better here, as in reality with light refraction and diffusion there wouldn't be that much shadow at that distance anyway.

Floating root/bush/shrub thing In general I felt that the top of your cliffs could have been improved. Look at dustbowl or goldrush and see the top of their dividing cliffs, they have fences and shrubs and weird up and down shapes.

This fence isn't aligned properly and causes a really odd looking floating barbed wire section.

This empty space is another example of random, arbitrary clipping. Put some form of barrier there, even if it's just a simple rope or a randomly placed crate. Just something to explain why you can't walk through it.

I don't understand this. Not only is it below the "horizon line" of your in-general-far-too-small 3d sky, which causes half of it to be covered anyway, it's an odd choice of a prop, being a farmhouse and windmill in the middle of a desert. The main problem though is how disconnected it feels from the rest of the skybox because you can't see the land below it. (And noclipping shows just how disconnected it is).

This ground area is very empty. Ignoring the huge error model you've sure heard about by now, this entire area is a bit boring. You've got a few rocks, put some clutter around them. In a windy desert, rocks like this is here grass clings too, and it has the double effect of making the area less orange. Place some of the small, scattered rocks around, just give the area a bit more roughness to it because without an interesting building behind, the area feels way too clean and stark for a desert.

This building was weird to begin with, gameplay wise, but now detailed I'm afraid to say it's even weirder. It has no reason to exist, it's not even structurally logical. A wood building with a flat roof like this would not only collect moisture and rot super fast, it just looks really odd in contrast with the rest of your map which has angled roofs on all your wooden buildings. Additionally, it feels very "gamey" because it has no reason to exist apart from gameplay. I would have extended it too the right, made it a rock conveyor or something similar just to give it a bit of justification for being so weird.

This facade is probably the most boring part of the entire map. Not only are your roof and cable props sticking easily visible out the top, the entire thing is incredibly gray, boring, flat and...just ugly. From this image you can't even tell it's blue's spawn room. It also doesn't, again, have justification for existing. It's simply a random concrete block building in the middle of the desert. One of the most fun parts of detailing spawn rooms is how creative you can be with what's behind them and what they are. Detail a giant industrial building, or build it into a mountain like badwater, because at the moment this is the weakest part of your map.

This bridge still looks super odd. The wood constructs are far too thin to hold up a bridge that trucks roll over and even has an entire builidng on it. If you look at real life trestle (3 links) bridges, they have huge logs to hold up even less weight than your bridge. Additionally, they spread out to distribute the forces, and are thus wider at the bottom (triangles are very strong shapes, squares are _not_). Your bridge would probably fall apart at the touch of a leaf. Additionally, the water you chose here looks really really odd in a desert.

Misaligned grain texture. This building is also another very strong case of "flat roof on wooden structure" but at least this time it's a metal roof. The windows here also really need a frame or something because it looks very odd right now.
This building also has a lot of these, the broken wooden walls. While granted, look cool, they make no sense. If you "closed" all the broken wood areas, you'd be left with a building that no one could enter or do anything with. It makes very little sense.

This would look far better closed. Not much else to say about it.

Floating Stairs. You have a few of these around the map. Please add a trim, they look far nicer anyway.

I can see the top of this cliff (or lack thereof) through here.

Walking through this area you can see very large, visible pops as the buildings around A pop and out of rendering.

This whole C building is incredible empty and monotonous. I don't even know what this silo is meant to do in the context of the TF2 universe. Is it for storing a missile? Your only part of context is the random computer desk in the middle of the spire. Even without doing any of that, throwing pipes and cables and stuff up here would go a long way to making it more interesting.

Not sure what this is, a rogue brush perhaps

Final Breakdown

Aesthetics: Your Aesthetics is okay. The map's theme holds together quite well, but there are a lot of points of dissonance, things that bring you out of the setting. There are also many misaligned textures and things like floating stairs that hurt the aesthetic rating a lot. 3/10

Design: The design is interesting, mainly because I think this category has a lot of overlap with aesthetics, so it's hard to grade. That said, I think the design was reasonably okay. A lot of the buildings did not make structural sense, like your main bridge, the skybridge thing at blue spawn. C cap does not do anything to make the point important apart from the fact that it's in the center, it places no importance on it in the grand scheme of the map. However, your lighting was okay, you didn't have any bad dark spots, signs were reasonably common and I don't recall getting lost. 5/10

Technical: Your map ran absolutely fine for me. No noticeable frame drops at all. The only lost marks come from the huge and obnoxious error model and the random rogue brushes and such. 7/10


CP Excavate

This map was pretty strong overall. You are quite masterful at creating a location and atmosphere and the sound design is great. I still remember your detail mini contest entry quite vividly. I love the rock, quarrying theme. In general I felt the weakest part of your map was the lighting.

Here are some points:

This is what I mean by weak lighting. With all the detail shutter doors you have in your map, it would really help to give a lot more prominence to this one, as well as the other setup gates. It's good you have lit up the resupply cabinet, but doors are very important too, especially when projectiles can come flying through them.

This entire area doesn't feel very...naturey. Primarily because you didn't have detail sprites which would have helped a lot, but I felt this area could have been improved with random tufts of grass that are oh so common in alpine maps, as well as the small rock props scattered everywhere. Especially for such a "rough, rocky" theme that you're going for with the whole rock crushing thing.

I am not a fan of how this rock just sort of molds into the wood next to it. It doesn't really fit well.

This is another area that could have been improved with lighting. Deliberate or not, I really like how the signs on the left are lit up, but apart from the giant arrow, there's very little to suggest to the player where the point is. I feel that if you could have creates the same daylight-effect on the point area, or at least done something to show that the point was there would have helped a lot. I remember when playing this on kritzkast, people were legitimately getting lost and couldn't find the first point, on both teams.

I really like what you've done inside a lot of the buildings to break up the walls without affecting gameplay, like this shutter door. It's a nice detail.

Another example of where lighting could have helped. Looking at this, it's relatively hard to tell at a glance where the attackers are coming from. Your eye is immediately drawn to the back wall, which is not necessarily a bad thing because that is where most of the fighting over the point takes place, but it does draw you away from things on the left, especially that window far to the left behind fences.

Few things here. First, which is just nitpicking, the train gate collides with the rail. Second, I don't really get this awning. I understand why you needed it there, but it makes zero sense. Awnings are to keep water off the window, not off a random out of place concrete thing :/ Honestly I'm not really sure what I would have replaced it with, but even maybe just a pile of wood could have worked better.

Some of the areas in red spawn like this felt really empty. Just some junk or pipes or even random overlays could have helped.

I really like the creativeness of this crusher and rock conveyors. I think it's a really smart replacement to the lava pit from the original map that fits your theme really well.

This room could have really benefited from something. Even just wood beams like you've done in most other buildings.

Final Breakdown

Aesthetics: Your aesthetics are really good. The map feels really nice, I'm a huge fan of the alpine theme already and I like that it felt alpine without heaps of green grass and trees (that would be my own fault with alpine). The progression was also good, Red's base felt really imposing, and you detailed the cave really nicely. 9/10

Design: Like I said earlier, the main thing that hurt this map was the lighting. People were genuinely getting lost (which is a huge thing!!) because important game play areas were not lit up properly and felt like they blended in. The overall immersion was great though, except for a few things like that weird awning, so 6.5/10.

Technical: Very good. I noticed zero vis popping, my frames never dropped except looking back at B, but a very small drop. No missing textures or models, there was misisng clipping on the stairs in spawn which lost some points but was in general pretty good, and HDR cubemaps. Additionally, your welcome camera is in such a black void I thought my tf2 had crashed. 8/10

CP Highnoon

I don't really have much to say about this map because honestly you probably know most of it. It's unfinished and rather empty, but still the result is quite amazing given how long you actually did it in.

Here are a few things:

This wood texutreIs way too overused. It feels way too noisy. It's actually a bit overwhelming and rather confusing because of it.

Likewise here. Bad texture for big walls, especially with nothing to break them up.

I'm not a fan of this huge random wall. It doesn't make sense in context, it feels really game-y just to divide the areas.

Final Breakdown

Aesthetics: I like the refreshing lighting and atmosphere, but I actually feel it makes the map feel quite drab and visually flat. The phantom lights probably don't really help that, they seem to fill in all shadows which makes it feel really...icky! The rushed detailing really shows through and hurts the map. 4/10

Design: Like I said in the previous point, much of the map feels very samey, both from textures and lighting. This leads to the fact that each area doesn't really feel unique. 4/10

Technical: I didn't have any fps issues. There's not much to get stuck on so I guess clipping is quite good, except in spawn with the large thick beams, though it not mattering as much in spawn. 8/10

KOTH Petrichor

In general I felt that this map's detaling, apart from the middle point, was okay but uninspired. All the buildings feel cut and paste of each other, even the sides don't have their own personalities. A few coloured stripes only to differentiate them. Also you lack HDR cubemaps which really really hurt the aesthetic. Overall the map felt very monotonous.

These trees are not compiled with full detailed compile options. It's a pet peeve of mine, granted, and even gorge does it, but I feel it just makes them sooooo ugly. They're so flat and don't have any depth to them, and in your map a little depth would have really helped.

A lot of your roofing like this could have really done with some extra stuff. Look at roofing in say, gorge, you can see that their roofing is full of junk which really helps break up the squareness and monotony of the building.

The Point was the biggest weakness in your map. It makes no sense and it's visually uninteresting, which is a real shame because it's quite an interesting canvas. Even varying the texture a bit might have helped, or making a concrete building with wooden scaffolding or something.

Obvious fade on these props

In general I liked these little areas of detailing off to the side, through windows and such. The main building indoors was actually pretty good, generally, but the outside is what lets this map down.

I can't see any of your 3d sky without noclipping. Either get rid of it or design the map so the open edges are more open so you can see it. At the moment it's just wasted, albeit small, performance.

Final Breakdown

Aesthetics: Your indoors has a rather nice take on spytech going for it, but the entirety of the outdoors feels incredible drab, visually flat (not helped at all by your choice of environment lighting and skybox). I always felt that gorge's visuals only succeeded being very white and bland was because the environment itself was so incredibly vibrant, from it's strong greens and blues. Your map lacks these and it all very much blends together and it looses all visual interest, even with interesting indoor areas. 4/10

Design: The cohesion of the theme is so,so. The map is consistent in it's detailing, except for the point which while using the same textures, feels so out of place because it's unexplained. It has no purpose except to be a weird shaped concrete block. Things like this also don't really help. Where's the tap? Many of your details just seem to be there to break things up and don't serve logically (like the current/fuse box things next to the doors at spawn). 3/10

Technical: Missing HDR cubemaps really hurts the visuals, especially when your maps lighting is drab as it is, turning off HDR isn't a good option. I could not find any issues with clipping, and FPS is pretty fine. Not as high reaching as the other maps but not as unreasonable as my own. The missing HDR cubemaps is the real kicker here. 5/10

KOTH Swampwater

I'm not really sure about this map. It's really atmospheric but much of the detailing is really strange and doesn't make sense.

Some things:

This wall does not look like a cliff. It looks like a mutant alien blob come to swallow the map. Maybe swap it out for a rock texture would go a long way.

This rock wall looks far too artificial. It tiles on itself! As a prop!

If it wasn't for the bugged lighting on this door I wouldn't even know this was an exit. It would really help to light it up, for attacks and for people coming out of the spawn.

I...Wow...

The edge of this cliff, dirt thing is very straight. Even if it was manually dug out yesterday it would have become a lot rougher in the rain and water. It looks too artificial.

I'm a bit confused as to why there's a vent here. The vent feels extremely out of place and far, far too clean compared to the rest of your environment. I also think the red lighting is a bit extreme and will make team colours confusing, not to mention the strong red light on blue side.

The point building in general really confuses me. I'm not sure why plants would be growing there, I'm really not sure why plants are growing down under the water on the bottom either. The vines don't seem to be following anything. In fact in general your vines didn't make any sense and I felt detracted from the map.

These are melting into the concrete

Some misaligned wood grains

Why is this arrow not centered? It feels off balance, (like an unclosed parenthesis

Really not sure what's going on with this


Final Breakdown

Aesthetics: While you really captured the rainy, swampy atmosphere, I felt in general the map just felt too tacky. The vines detracted a lot and I think the map would have been better in general without them, and the entire point building made no sense. The skybox was nice but the water flows uphill which is both humerus and immersion breaking. Many things like the vent and clean metal walkway near mid break the cohesion of the map too. But I like your embedded narrative, like the severed hand in spawn. 5/10

Design: I think the biggest issue I had with design was the water. This map places a lot of gameplay emphasis on the water, and choosing the theme you did and the water you did meant the water was extremely foggy and didn't make for very good gameplay. The harsh coloured lighting also serves to make team colours less distinct than they already are in the dark map. 5/10

Technical: This map gives me lower FPS than Shiro, and that's saying something. Anywhere in mid and spawn gives me <80fps with no players on the map, while on other maps in the contest I get 320+ under similar circumstances. From a look in wireframe, your entire map is being renderd at the same time. I see you have a lot of areaportals but they don't remotely help, maybe look into occluders and hinting, and auto-closing areaportals on your spawndoors. There was a lot of clipping issues on things like the fireplace, and the props in this room, as well as some stairs missing clips. 3/10
 
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Fruity Snacks

Creator of blackholes & memes. Destroyer of forums
aa
Sep 5, 2010
6,394
5,571
cp_excavate is given a -2.5 point deduction to its final score (public and judging combined) for removing the hallway after A that becomes playable after A is capped.

EDIT: I realized that I was thinking in terms of 100, rather than 10. Point deduction has been updated to reflect change.
 
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Sep 19, 2010
475
499
Map&Criteria|Aesthetics|Design|Optimization/Technical|Comments

cp_bridges_b2|4|5|8|You have a good start here, just need to finish out everything. All the textures are in place, but some of the buildings don't have any character. Trims, roofs, props, etc. Displacements are a little rugged. Yes, you want them to look like cliffs, but not quite as jagged. Like I said, it's a nice start, but it leaves a little to be desired.
cp_excavate_b2|x|x|x| Any Comments Here
cp_highnoon_b1|x|x|x|Any Comments Here
cp_keikoku_b1|x|x|x|Any Comments Here
cp_shiro_b1|10|9|4|Map is gorgeous. Really love last, didn't even recognize the map when it first loaded up. The spytech underneath spawn and last was really well placed in my opinion, and added something extra to the map. If we were judging maps strictly on looks, this would be my #1. Unfortunately, I had fps problems on this map, probably more my fault than yours (laptop), so the score takes a hit there.
koth_petrichor_a1a|6|8|8|Actually really liked this map. You don't see these textures used very often with a darker sky, so it was a nice change. That being said, it was a little boring. Everything is just a little bland, especially the mid point. Looks decent enough, but this is a detailing contest. I feel like you could have pushed it a little bit further. However, it's not bad and I do enjoy it.
koth_swampwater|5|5|3|This map is interesting to say the least. Swamp theme is rarely used, and you did a decent job using it here. The vines seemed a bit much, a little sporadic in places. Building at mid was just odd. I know the base map had it floating, but there really should have been some supports holding it up. Map also caused low fps, almost to the point of unplayable for me.

 
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Berry

resident homo
aa
Dec 27, 2012
1,056
1,898
Map&Criteria|Aesthetics|Design|Optimization/Technical

cp_bridges_b2|9|7|8
cp_excavate_b2|9|8|5
cp_highnoon_b1|6|7|6
cp_keikoku_b1|8|8|7
cp_shiro_b1|8|8|5
koth_petrichor_a1a|7|7|9

Other comments:
Bridges
Nothing of specific to say, maybe I'll find something to say after a re-play. Good looking, detail made sense, nice to play. Shame you didn't make the odd bridge-building thing at the A point look less.. weird? out of place?

Excavate
Looked great, everything was alright except some of the lighting. This was exactly how I imagined someone would've detailed Amaranth (even if I wasn't going that way when I was detailing it). I cut the Technical though because you detailed the wrong version somehow?

Highnoon
Looked pretty nice, although the fact that you made this in 2 days really rubbed off. I wasn't so fond of how all the aesthetical detail was flipped (two observation houses, same window layout either side etc etc). I liked the custom skybox though, and I could really feel the wild west-y theme you were going for. However, you used a lot of boring wood fence textures over the spawn (which got boring ~fast~), and a lot of the detail was mostly just textures, the rest of it appeared to be unclipped.
 
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Fruity Snacks

Creator of blackholes & memes. Destroyer of forums
aa
Sep 5, 2010
6,394
5,571
koth_swampwater has been disqualified from phase 2 for layout changes that extremely affect gameplay. All points given to the map are now null. Feedback is still appreciated for it though, but I will not be including it the judging sheet, for sake of confusion.

If you feel like a map has made big changes compared to the original, please make sure to report it to me either on Steam PM or forum PM.
 
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Egan

aa
Feb 14, 2010
1,375
1,721
Map&Criteria|Aesthetics|Design|Optimization/Technical|Comments

cp_bridges_b2|5|5|7|Some detail doesn't make sense, invisible wall in blue spawn room. The environment lighting looks like its been hit with colour correction, some walls seem oversaturated. Some walls are really big and boring. Some odd choices of details, some details don't continue off into the distance. Can't really imagine what this setting is, why are these buildings here? Your indoor spytech rooms are cool in general. Can't tell the area under C is a deathpit. What is the area of C supposed to be? Skybox transition on B is messy, should use same cubemap for water under B as the water next to it in the 3d sky. Your optimisation around the forward spawn is wonky, visleafs going up too high (whatever visleafs your current visleaf can see, the geometry in that will be rendered - thats why you often see horizontal hint brushes, they slice the visleaf in half so it doesn't go straight into the sky and see every other visleaf).
cp_excavate_b2|8|9|9.8|The overall rock quarry trading plant theme is cool and apparent in most areas of the map. Some clipping issues around the caves / cave exits, but otherwise very solid job. The lighting overall is a bit bland, not enough direct lighting and all this ambient lighting makes it feel very mellow (which is okay, but just makes us all feel mellow). 70% of players exiting blue forward spawn go the wrong way. Optimisation is great.
cp_highnoon_b1|3.5|6|8|simplistic detailing, nodraw in places, too short far z clip, kinda weirdly made displacements at B, C looks good but Im not sure what it is, the bad clip pass lets me get to cool areas.
cp_keikoku_b1|10|9|8|Overall really well done detailing. Standing on A I render the entire map? Clipping is a bit wonky on the cliffs surrounding the map, some stick out past the death trigger and you can stand/build on them.
cp_shiro_b1|10|6.5|7.5|Im kinda conflicted on shiro, the detail is very very very nice, but the darkness on second is difficult to play in - jumping classes easily getting out of the light. and the lamp poles all around mid make projectile classes hard to play. The optimisation was destined to be tough to achieve (mat_leafvis 3, go through a wall that renders the entire map, crash). Standing right on last was really the only bad spot, mid was well optimised.
koth_petrichor_a1b|5|8|10|Overall it's got that solid made-for-comp people detail style, but I can't really tell what this place is supposed to be. There's a yellow pylon on the rightmost route out of spawn, but it's off to the side, and there's no road nearby, what's it for? The indoor spytech is cool looking around the mid buildings, but under the point and under spawn are both pretty boring. The size and constraint of the details makes it well optimised.


 
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Mar 23, 2010
1,872
1,696
Map&Criteria|Aesthetics|Design|Optimization/Technical|Comments

cp_bridges_b2|6|4|7|Any Comments here
cp_excavate_b2|7|6|8| Any Comments Here
cp_highnoon_b1|7|6|8|Any Comments Here
cp_keikoku_b1|8|9|6|Any Comments Here
cp_shiro_b1|8|5|5|Any Comments here
koth_petrichor_a1a|6|6|6|Any Comments Here


 
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